Youth:
· I was born with jaundice.
· My father was an airborne army ranger, police officer, and salesman. There was no lack of discipline and structure in my family.
· My mother worked for State Farm for over 30 years.
· When I was three, I went on a camping trip with my family. I accidently tripped over a tree root and my hands slid into the fire, resulting in severe third degree burns all over both my hands. There was no lasting damage or scarring to my hands.
Elementary School:
· I had 5 different kindergarten teachers because my school kept moving me from class to class.
· In first grade, my elementary school thought I had a learning disability due to my poor behavior and performance in class, so I was held back one year.
· In my second year of first grade, the same elementary school tested me and found out that I was intellectually gifted and the reason for my behavior and performance was due to boredom. The school immediately put me into the gifted and talented program.
· My grandma paid me $1 to learn my address when I was six.
· My parents began giving my $1 for every "Excellent" or "A" on my report card in elementary school. After 7 years of paying me for perfect grades, my parents decided to abandon the policy of money for grades.
· My family had some financial troubles. Both of my parents frequently had to work part-time jobs in addition to their full time jobs in order to pay the bills. I was in daycare when I was young, but to save money my parents asked me if I wanted to stay home instead of going to daycare. I thought it was a great idea because I could play with kids in my neighborhood. I started going home and taking care of myself in the third grade. I was raised to be very independent because my parents often had to work late into the evenings.
· In elementary school, I wanted to be a marine biologist when I grew up so I could play with dolphins.
· I was the sprinting and long jump Field Day champion at my elementary school, I also dominated kickball and dodge ball games.
Middle School:
· To make some extra money, my family decided to delivered newspapers. We had to be at the distribution center at 4am, where we assembled hundreds of papers and ads, rolled them up, rubber banded or bagged them depending on the weather, and then delivered them using our station wagon. I did this every day before school and on weekends. I hate the smell of newspapers.
· As for most adolescents, my middle school experience was awful and the seventh grade was the worst year of my life because I was not involved in any activities and I had few friends outside of my best friend. I had my first life-altering epiphany that if I wanted a better life, all I had to do was change my life. The next year I got a haircut, some new clothes, spoke to anyone who would listen to me, made tons of friends, had a girlfriend for two weeks, and joined several sports teams and clubs. I was the happiest eighth grader in school.
High School:
· I was a natural athlete and excelled at football and basketball. My freshman year of high school, I joined the distance group on the track team to help condition me for those sports. I started as one of the worst 3 runners on a team of 30 kids. I was horrible at running distance, I had no distance running talent, and I instantly became addicted to the challenge. I abandoned basketball and football, and ran all year round in cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track. By the time I graduated high school I was running 70-80 miles a week, I competed in the Virginia State Track and Field Championships, and I competed in the Footlocker National High School Track and Field Championships.
· I realized during my first season of track, before I had even run my first 10 miler, that I was going to complete a marathon.
· The summer after my freshman year, I decided to join a swim team to help me cross train. I was a pool rat growing up, spending all my summers swimming and diving. To my surprise, I had no competitive swimming talent. I joined the team when I was 15 and I had to train with the 12-year-olds (there is an incredible difference in physical development between the two ages). When I first began, I often became nauseated during practice. I loved the challenge! I found an inexpensive swim team at the Jewish Community Center, and I began swimming all year round in addition to running. two years later I competed in the Greater Richmond Aquatic League Swim Championships where I won 2 silver medals, 4 gold medals, and set 2 varsity swimming records for freestyle and breaststroke sprinting events.
· I had my second life-altering epiphany in high school: Talent is overrated when compared to determination and discipline, and the only true failure is quitting.
· I spent the summers during high school working as a lifeguard. I started my first lifeguard job when I was 15 and it paid me $4.25 an hour. That's right parents, A 15 year old was paid minimum wage to protect your children from drowning! And I had to dive into the pool to save someone, twice!
· I was also Domino's Pizza "delivery expert" which required that I work most Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings all year. It was the best job because I made a ton of money, I got to drive around in my car all night listening to music, and I got all the free pizza I wanted.
· A typical high school day involved me going to school from 8am to 3:30pm, going to track practice from 4pm-6pm, then going to swim practice from 7pm-9pm.
· On my PSAT, we could specify three careers we were interested in and I put down actuary. I remembered my statistics teacher saying actuaries make a ton of money, but it was really difficult to become one. For the next several years I received more information about actuarial college programs than I wanted.
· I took 6 advanced placement (AP) college-level courses my senior year of high school including calculus, physics, and statistics. I was accepted early decision into the engineering program at the University of Virginia. I graduated high school near the top of my class (out of 400+ students) with a 4.1 GPA.
College:
· Due to my parents financial struggles, I completely financed my undergraduate education on my own through student loans, full-time jobs during breaks (summer, winter, and spring breaks), and part-time jobs during the school year. I consistently worked double shifts at Domino's Pizza whenever I was home including Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, and spring break.
· I was the first person my current best friend ever met at UVA during summer orientation. I met most of my current closest friends during orientation weekend at UVA.
· In college, I was vice-president of my first-year dormitory. My dorm was named "Balz" for some inexplicable reason. So I was the VP of Balz.
· The first semester of my second year I struggled with my engineering course work. I was burned out because I took 12 credit hours during summer school. I had no money because I used it to pay for summer school, which depleted my savings. I was paid $6.10 an hour to wear a gaudy tuxedo vest and bow-tie while working as a shift leader at Hollywood Video, which often involved working the late shift from 6pm-2am. This often lead me to pull all-nighters studying after I got home from work. I had to ride my bike 2 miles to and from work (rain, cold, or shine), then someone stole my bike. My diet that semester mainly consisted oatmeal, leftover dinner scraps from my housemates, and a giant bag of peppermints someone had given me. It was nearly halfway through the semester before I could afford to purchase all my books for my classes, I was borrowing other people's books to study and do homework. This was my first real instance of self-doubt in my life because I was not sure if I had what it took to be an engineer.
· I made a several changes to improve my performance. I decided I would be in bed by midnight and get at least 8 hours of sleep a night. I scheduled all of my classes for the mornings so I could complete all my assignments in the afternoon. I read the books and completed the homework before it was assigned in class, therefore I could use class time to discuss my questions. I changed my job and became a waiter, which significantly improved my income and provided free meals. These steps significantly improved my health and performance for the rest of school.
· I completed my first marathon my third year of college. I ran the Baltimore Marathon in 3:52:51 and finished 55 out of 155 in my age group and 955 out of 3492 overall.
· I had my third life-altering epiphany while I was in college: I love learning! Learning is a skill that needs to be developed like public speaking or shooting a basketball. In high school I just memorized my way to an easy A. The engineering school actually required analytical thinking and thoughtful application of theory. Once I learned how to learn, I found that I loved it. I began to take as many courses as I could manage. I would often begin the semester with 21 credit hours, then I would drop a class or two and focus on the classes I liked most. This would make a 15 or 18 credit hour semester seem much easier compared to 21 credits.
· I began working as a research assistant studying the relationship between offshore floating structure dynamic motions and mooring line tensions using wavelet transforms.
· I never pictured myself wanting to go to graduate school until I began my undergraduate research.
· The most important thing I learned from my undergraduate research was it is vital to keep a research journal to record all your ideas, research, conclusions, etc. A research journal helped me focus my research efforts and track my progress. I would review my journal with my research advisor once a week, and then develop research goals for the following week. When it came time to write my thesis, I simply used my journals as an outline. I still have those journals on my book shelf.
· I graduated UVA with Bachelor's of Science in Mechanical Engineering. I completed 141 credit hours of course work, when only 120 credits were required for graduation. I averaged a 3.7 GPA for the 32 credit hours I took during my fourth year of school.
Graduate School:
· I scored a 780/800 on the quantitative portion and was in the 98th percentile for the analytical writing portion of the graduate record exam (GRE). I was accepted to the UVA graduate engineering program on a full research stipend. I was working at one of the leading automobile safety and biomechanics research labs in the world.
· On the first day at the lab, my research advisor told me I would be developing a model for the lateral force-deflection characteristics of the human thorax and determine the viscoelastic contributions of the superficial soft tissue (muscle and skin), the thoracic cage (ribs), and the internal viscera (organs). He told me my budget, gave me a 6 month deadline, and wished me luck. I had to perform an extensive literature review, design and build and test rig, develop an experimental procedure, and analyze the experimental data.
· During my first week of graduate research, I was urinated on by a large pig during an experiment. It was not the last time that I would experience porcine urination during my graduate school tenure.
· When you dissect a pig using a cauterizing scalpel, it smells like bacon.
· When I first began modeling the mechanical behavior of the kidney, I left a liver specimen in a lukewarm bath overnight not knowing it would slow cook the organ. The next morning the entire lab smelled like cooked liver.
· I have an incredible appreciation for the complexity and elegant design of the human body.
· I have seen and held a smoker's lung. It is unbelievable how anyone can breathe under those conditions and it is the reason I will never begin smoking for the rest of my life.
· I was fortunate enough to make some extra money being an ultrasound model for medical students. Each student would use a portable ultrasound machine to inspect my heart, aorta, kidneys, and bladder. The pay was good, but the ultrasound gel gets all over the place.
· I completed my second marathon during graduate school. I finished the Chicago Marathon in 4:35:34 and finished 19866 out of 33082 finishers. The next day my girlfriend of two years broke up with me. I guess I should have run faster.
· Here are the most important things I learned in graduate school. An exceptional mentor can make a world of difference in performance. Creating checklists helps standardize procedures and reduces errors in performance. If you don't know something, then go out there and figure it out.
· I had my fourth life-altering epiphany in graduate school: I can learn anything that can be taught, and everyone makes mistakes. Just because you are old, experienced, ridiculously intelligent, or have a Masters or PhD does not always make you right. You are either right or wrong based on whether you are right or wrong. I have worked and interacted with some of the brightest minds in the world, and even they make mistakes and were wrong at times.
· I picked the most challenging professors I knew for my Master's thesis review board. I was absolutely roasted by my board, but it ultimately made my thesis substantially better.
· I completed graduate school with a 3.74 cumulative GPA and I had been published 11 times.
Chicago:
· After school I moved to Chicago. At the time I did not have a job in Chicago, I did not have any family in Chicago, I did not have any friends in Chicago, and I only had a small amount of savings that I scrounged together from my graduate stipend. Despite all these factors, I knew it was the right city for me so I went anyways. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made.
· I found an apartment in Wrigleyville. I got a great job as a structural analyst for a firm that designs farming and construction equipment. I began making friends.
· I lived in an apartment about 100 yards from the left field bleachers of historic Wrigley Field. I could hear the crowd cheer through my window before the pitch was even thrown on the television.
· I broke and dislocated my right ankle playing basketball in a recreational league. My physical therapist initially had concerns I would not be able to heal completely. After four months of extensive physical therapy, I began martial arts.
· I completed the Men's Health Chicago Urbanathlon, which was a 11.5 mile race throughout the city that involved several obstacles such as monkey bars, military hurdles, and wall climbs. The best part was running up and down the upper tier steps in Soldier Field. I finished the race in 1:45:10 finishing 771 out of 2252 finishers.
· I completed the Chicago Rock 'N' Roll Half Marathon in 1:56:32 finishing 3192 out of 18934 finishers.
· I first became interested in trading after my first year of working. I finally had some disposable income for the first time in my life and wondered how to invest it. I knew that the stocks yielded on average between 8-10% a year. I knew there had to be a way to make a better return. When searching my company stock on Google finance, I came across a blog that had mentioned my stock. That blog was StockBee written by Pradeep Bonde. His posts were insightful and made me realize that higher returns were achievable.
· I had my fifth life-altering epiphany: Everyone can always do better. Because of this belief, I have realized that I will never be content because I know I can always do better. Contentment is a state of mind for those people who are satisfied with the way things are and do not wish to change. I have come to understand that it does not matter what the task is, or how talented you are, or how much experience you have, you can always improve. I live a performance lifestyle and I am always trying to become better at everything I do. Whether it is finding a better way to assemble newspapers, finding a more efficient driving route home from work, being more patient/understanding in a relationship, or finding a better return on your money, I always try to improve. If I am bad at something, I will get better. If I am good at something, I will get better. Even if I was the best in the world, I would try to get better. It all started with wanting to make my life better in middle school, then knowing I could be a better runner and swimmer in high school, then improving my collegiate academic performance. It is something that has become a part of every aspect of my life.
· I love trading, martial arts, and running because your performance is completely dependent on the effort you invest in the task. These passions provide an endless challenge and the pursuit of excellence is entirely about the journey, it is not a destination.
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