(Las Vegas, USA) Welcome to the Good Life…

I stand at the edge of a precipice. In another three days, I will finish the last final I will ever take as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. In another three days, I will climb aboard a plane and head to South America for a long-deserved holiday. In another three days, I will complete 2.5 years of study at the Wharton School culminating with a title captured in three words (Bachelor of Science), Greek letters (Summa Cum Laude), and a list of other scholarly titles. But this is not the end of learning, thinking and questioning…or to my academic career. With luck, I will be doing a Masters next year and possibly a PhD after that.

A friend asked me what I learned in the last 2.5 years at college. The most important lesson I take away from university is developing a fuller appreciation of who I am and what I want. I learned that I am an individual, with my own unique passions that should not be subsumed by how others believe I should live my life. I also used university to explore. I remember telling my middle school teacher that the last thing I would do in life is to teach. I ended up breaking my vow in university.

I remember talking to my Negotiations class professor on the last day of class. He quit the legal profession to teach full-time after realizing that teaching makes him happy. His class explores negotiation but more importantly, it explores his life. He believes that succeeding at negotiations is about understanding what a good outcome is. In life, he his good outcome after many years is practicing as a lawyer. And his words sums up 2.5 years at Penn for me: it is about understanding what a good outcome means to me.