During my time at the early college program I went to, I was surrounded by 400 other students who were equally as passionate as I am. And it was upsetting to see that one of the biggest problems among the student body was simply paying for tuition. Many of my friends took out massive loans to pay off their private school tuition, and many more who were never able to attend the early college program because of its steep costs.

Yes - paying for college tuition is obviously a widespread problem. But when we're talking about accelerated students who are highly likely to take leading roles in improving science, education, and society in ways we can't even predict, I think we need to funnel more resources into seeing their dreams take shape. It's not to say that I don't care about students who come from poorer backgrounds, because I do. And so does pretty much every non-profit organization that aids education. But when the vast majority of the world's leading thinkers and doers come from such a narrow margin of people, I think it's a shame that we're not providing them with more educational and monetary resources. From the non-profit perspective, these already smart students seemingly need help the least, when in fact they're in a position that deserves resources the most.

During my first week attending Simon's Rock, the Early College, I sat beside representatives from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They were curious about the mission of the college, but also on why and how the students ended up there. All of my peers and I would tell them a similar message: we went to college early because we felt educationally neglected in high school; not because we were rocket scientists or baby geniuses. Having a "good" educational system doesn't seem acceptable to me, because it's settling for mediocrity while not accounting for crucial edge cases. Highly intelligent individuals are being screwed over when placed in decent yet boring academic environment among not-so-motivated peers. It's an insanely high opportunity cost to leave America's brightest students behind in standard high schools. And as I mentioned earlier, transferring to a private school is rarely an option for the typical accelerated student. Many of my peers at Simon's Rock wouldn't have been able to come if it hadn't been for scholarships, including my first roommate. That scholarship money is seen as a way to help her fund her education when in reality, it's an investment in her ability to do amazing things for the world. While we're yet to see the extent of her contributions to the world, I'm pretty certain that we'll one day realize how incredibly efficient and effective her scholarship money was spent. The underlying problem, however, is much deeper. "Investing" into the education of accelerated students isn't particularly complex, but identifying worthy individuals is a non-trivial problem, because they don't even realize their own potential. There are plenty of smart and accelerated students in high school, but having them realize that there's an opportunity for more has been a a huge struggle for Simon's Rock. Truly smart individuals are humble and tend to underrate their own abilities. The parents also underrate their abilities, and I think this is partly because their parental attitude is what led to their child being able to excel in the first place. Many capable students don't ultimately go into early college because they don't think they're smart enough, and those who do often have trouble getting the necessary financial support to go: thus leaving them behind in half-assed "accelerated" high school programs. Pity. I suppose that it makes sense that most educational non-profits are focusing their energy on poor public schools: the problems are clear, many of the solutions are evident, and it's a cause that's easy to gather support for. Yet it's these smart and already accelerated students who are usually creating the solutions to these problems. Treating these accelerated students as "bonus points" in our pursuit to reform education simply doesn't make sense because they're the long-term solution to our world's problems. Hopefully one day, we'll see more and more early college programs forming that provide their students with theoretically infinite resources and support to help them achieve their goals and dreams.

Back in the fall, I was talking to Cal Newport about an upcoming book he's writing, and came to realize that the exciting things from my life came my mere desire to do fun things; not from my "selfish" attempt to actually further my career. As a student, I felt that my job was to do anything and everything to grow as an individual, and attending class was far from efficient in achieving that task.

I don't usually enjoy blogging about my "personal life", but I thought it'd be nice to do something different. Many of you have asked me to give a more personal touch to my blog, so here it is: a short list of some cool things that happened to me this year, and the incredible people I have to thank:

- Just a year ago on May 17, I graduated from Simon's Rock, the Early College, with my Associates Degree. I first went to Simon's Rock to leave the boredom of high school, and to get a jump start on my career. If it wasn't for my freshman-year roommate insisting on going to Berkeley one day, I'm not sure if I'd follow in her footsteps.

- Over the summer, I landed a gig at PBwiki (now PBworks.com) as a summer web developer, and had the time of my life. The founder, David Weekly, has since become a close friend and adviser for my current company. If it wasn't for a referral from a blog reader, I wouldn't have landed that incredible opportunity.

- In my first week as a student at Berkeley, and in the first Discrete Mathematics class, I met a cool guy named Andy. We were the only first-year students, and the TA told us that we'd better make friends if we planned on surviving the class. Fast forward a few months, and he'd eventually become my best friend and co-founder for internshipIN and our latest company, Indinero. If it wasn't for the blunt TA, I'd still be looking for that perfect partner.

- In February, I went to my first TED Conference in Long Beach, CA. In the 5 days I spent there, I grew more as a person that I ever have before. If it wasn't for meeting a random TEDster on the beaches of Jamaica, I'd never have gotten an invitation to go.

- In April, my company landed a $35k grant from Lightspeed Venture Partners. If it wasn't for a random emailing from Berkeley Alumni who told us (and other students here) about the summer program, we'd still be looking for money.

This past year has been filled with incredible serendipity, and the excitement in my life is more-or-less fueled by it. None of these fantastic things happened by directly looking for them, but rather by putting myself in the the right place to be exposed to the right people. Most of the great things on my list stem from having gone to Simon's Rock, and by living as exciting a life as I possibly could. And If it wasn't for high school being so crappy, I wouldn't have had the motivation to apply to college early.

Human life is so dynamic that there's no good way to plan for good things. People ask me all the time, "how did you get invited to the TED Conference?" And the only honest answer I could give is "by living the most exciting life that I possibly can." People are always focused on achieving the next logical step in their education or career, but that often prevents them from doing exciting things that would indirectly get them closer to achieving eventual success.

For example -- As a high school student, if I actually cared about going to college, I'd focus day and night on my school work. But by following my philosophy of "living the most exciting life possible," schoolwork failed to meet my criteria. So I did the most exciting thing I possibly could do, and that was to start a company. One year later, I got into college. And the admissions people looked specifically at my botched attempt to run a company while attending school, and accepted me half way through my 2nd year of high school.

Sure, my theory of life doesn't always work to further your career, but at least it promises you this: You'll grow tremendously as an individual, and live an exhilarating life. And if you have just that, I can guarantee you eventual success.

Ok... fine.. I'll admit it: Very frequently, I write a blog post about something that I dislike or expect to dislike. Several days later, I would then write about the same topic and have a much more positive opinion. Harvard Model United Nations just so happens to be one of these things.

After all, I've been to over 30 conferences now. I've only paid for two of them. Therefore, who could blame me for having such high expectations on what is a good conference versus a bad conference? Of all the events I've been to this year, I'll probably place Harvard Model United Nations in my top 5 list for all conferences I've been to. Impressive!

The first question is, what makes an event better than the others? The speakers, the topics, the food, the atmosphere? Wrong! The quality of the attendees takes precedence over everything. If there are good speakers, you could probably read their interviews on the interwebs. If there are amazing topics at the conference, I'm sure that any average joe could probably find it in the local book store. But people are different - in order to make lasting connections/friendships or whatever you'd like to call them, you must physically be present at the event.

Next, what is considered to be a high-caliber conference attendee? You could look at this from many different perspectives. Firstly, no sales people, and absolutely none of those silly network marketers! If you're paying hundreds/thousands of dollars to go to a conference, (I'm not one of them!) then you probably expect the sales people to be completely rid of. A good conference attendee may not necessarily be a wealthy celebrity. In fact, these people may be so popular that they'll want nothing to do with you. That's why it helps to have invite-only events. In the example of Harvard Model United Nations, only undergrads from colleges came. There was no application from attendees, but the expectations of a "Harvard" conference weeded out the lazy kids who didn't really care about debating and negotiating on world issues. As you may have read, I recently got accepted into TED - often described as a "group of remarkable people that gather to exchange ideas of incalculable value". The incredible value from this conference comes from the fact that most TEDsters are of such a high-caliber. This is the precise reason why invite-only groups are of such high value. Events such as TED don't only want smart people - they want attendees who are open to helping others with their interests and aspirations. And at the Harvard Model United Nations, there was no option to sit passively in the back. Sure, many people did it, but plenty more motivated students sat in the front and played an active role in the committee sessions.

Picture of me and my fellow "early-college" classmates at Harvard Model U.N. I'm the Asian down below if you couldn't guess that much.

Conferences need to manage the work-play relationship. For example, having too many workshops and/or keynote speakers can be boring! When I first wrote about the Harvard Model United Nation Conference, I mentioned how I saw plenty of people falling asleep at the opening ceremony. The basic idea is simple: bring in a charismatic keynote speaker or don't bring one at all! My opinions are controversial, but I hold my belief that a boring keynote speaker will do nothing but help set a *boring* attitude to the rest of the conference. This means that the conference had a rocky start, but quickly picked up pace when the attendees were thrown into action. After the committee sessions ended, the conference organizers threw cocktail parties, delegate dances, and more! Of course, the attendees threw their own private parties that nobody can know about. Whoops.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. Great people, great work-play balance, and all of the other good things that go along with having a grade A event. (minus the super boring keynote speaker) Don't be misled: Sure, this was a kiddie conference and I'm still one of them, but it seems essential that any good event must bring in quality people who are engaged in both learning and helping fellow attendees. Harvard Model United Nations, TED, and any "un-conference" are particular good at achieving this.

Plenty more to come! I can't wait to report on Northern Voice 2008.

PS - I wore formal attire throughout the conference. First time ever. Now THATs impressive!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Eli Pariser, the founder of MoveOn.org, came to speak at my college today! Ends up that he was once a student here at Simon's Rock, the Early College. Like the rest of us, he finished with a 4 year degree before he turned 20, and had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. Lucky enough, I was given the chance to introduce him to the audience :)

It was funny to hear that he interviewed here as a theater major and ran the school magazine that I cut funding on. Somehow, he shifted from being a liberal arts theater geek into being a leader of a huge non-profit. How did that happen? Completely accidentally. He didn't sit down with a few friends and decide to start a non-profit. He was a techie and set up an online petition calling for a non-military response to 9/11. Within a few weeks, half a million people signed the petition. By November, he was asked to join what is now MoveOn.org.

I found it especially interesting that he said:

"It's not all about a candidate. It's also a movement... Change cannot just be done by a president."

That goes to show that Americans (and organizations) love placing responsibility and blame on one person. Our president sucks not only because he's an inefficient leader, but also because he has an inadequate team. Whether or not you agree with his policies deserves a whole different argument, but it can be seen that he's failed at being the "CEO" of our country. If we want true change to happen, we can't just elect a new president. People who truly believe in an objective must continue to work with a leader to accomplish its necessary goals.

Image of Pariser with students in Simon's Rock College's Formal Lounge. Credit to Ryan Shepherd

We read about Eli Pariser in the news quite often. I've seen his name mentioned in Valleywag, the NY Times, and CNN dozens of times. Many people hate him and MoveOn.org for their views on politics. So I asked him, "how do you deal with people shit talking you all the time?" It comes down to fulfilling an objective. He isn't on this planet to be liked. He's working for a specific cause. I then asked whether or not he believes all press is good press. "OF COURSE NOT!" The point of having press for MoveOn.org is to spark discussion and to get the press going back and forth about those discussions. Looking at this from a marketing perspective, you're definitely getting 10X what you paid for when you spark the right questions. When the press continues to mention you over and over again for a question you asked or discussion you sparked, you're getting free coverage.

How about getting people to join a movement? He took psychology here at Simon's Rock with the same professor I took psychology class, and he was quick to mention cognitive dissonance and the "foot in the door technique."

"By making someone sign a petition, they're not just signing their name on a piece of paper. They're identifying themselves with a certain issue. They sign a petition, they volunteer, and they move up the ladder. A successful movement involves matriculating people up that ladder. It sometimes gets tricky because leaders need a balance between moving followers up the ladder VS finding a bigger base of supporters"

Does this quote remind you of anything? Running a business, duh! Back when I ran a dedicated server hosting business, my co-founders and I had to find the right balance between growth and maintenance. When to focus on current customers and when to focus on finding new customers. It's always an on-going conflict, and that's where staff recruiting comes in!

On another note, Pariser made a huge emphasis on listening to your followers. Take into account everything they say and let them help you lead. If he had it his way, he'd be running a site that did only what he wanted, but that would be impractical and inefficient. Even as a leader, you continue to learn.

Of course, Pariser hasn't had a perfect streak. We all hear about how he is the executive director at MoveOn.org, but he tried leading tens of other projects that didn't go anywhere. It's almost as if the press frames his life story as something that grew overnight. He developed as a person and he learned how to lead by managing many different campus projects, activities, and events.

I think it's safe to say that he's doing pretty well for himself... putting his personal finances aside, Eli Pariser is leading a project that has over 3 million members, that has raised over $100M, and is super passionate about the cause he's fighting for a cause he believes in.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.