Part 1: The world doesn’t owe you anything.

2. It’s never too late.

One of my good friends is beautiful and brilliant (and I’m not just saying that because she’s my friend). Not only is she so gorgeous that a well-known, national brand wanted her as a model, she’s also one of the smartest people I know.

A couple of years ago, after working her ass off in a prestigious pre-law program, she was accepted to Stanford Law School and we were all so very proud of her.

That’s when she announced she would be attending culinary school instead.

Say what?

She then explained to me that food was, and always has been, her passion. The only reason she had pursued law school was to land a stable, respected, well-paying job so that she can save enough money to follow this passion.

“Then I thought…why should I wait? Why not now?”

Fast forward a few months, when she was well into her studies in culinary school. It’s tough work, she said. And undoubtedly very intimidating and quite scary to have made such a change. However, she radiated with happiness and I knew she had made the right choice.

She explained to me that her class was full of these types of people. Hedge fund managers. IT guys. Even stay at home moms. All who had realized that it’s never too late to pursue your passion.

To be realistic, not everyone can make a living from their passions. However, just pursuing it as a side job or even as a hobby can do wonders for your health and happiness.

My father is a great artist and won numerous awards in his younger days. However, his family was so poor that he had to drop out of high school to help ends meet. There was no glimmer of hope for art school at all.

Decades later, he has started to draw again. He doesn’t have time to do much, but when he does I can see the calm fulfillment in his eyes.

My mother has always admired pottery. So last year she decided to take up pottery classes at the local Korean community center. Some of the pieces she makes are so ugly that I don’t know what to say to her when she proudly shows them to me. But I can’t deny that they make her happy.

There are always a million reasons not to do something. But are they so cumbersome that you cannot live a happy, fulfilled life?

Next up… 3. Make the best of it.

My office is right upstairs from Madison Square Garden and believe it or not, many schools hold their commencement ceremonies at the Garden. In the past week, I have come downstairs many times to a sea of gowns, caps, and proud families. And I expect this to continue for the next few weeks, just as it has in the previous years.

Graduation season is upon us, my friends.

Last week the mental_floss Blog posted an article called 7 Memorable Commencement Addresses and I read each word (and watched each video) with much respect. What great sources of inspiration! Can you imagine how awesome would it have been to have had Steve Jobs come speak at your commencement?

(The article mentions that Bill Nye is the speaker at Johns Hopkins this year. How come they didn’t have any cool speakers like him when I was still around?)

Now I’m only 27 and I admit I can still be a fool when it comes to the matters of life. However, after contemplating these famous speeches, I began to think about what I would say to this year’s graduates, if given the chance…

1. The world doesn’t owe you anything.

So many people receive their diplomas from top tier universities and expect the world to turn in their favor. They expect multiple job offers, signing bonuses, and six figure salaries.

Even if their demands are not as high, I still read many stories of recent grads who are genuinely surprised that companies are not rolling out the red carpet for them. In fact, they’re actually…*gasp* having trouble finding jobs.

There have been much talk of the “entitlement generation” in the past few years. HR reps at various companies are being re-trained to deal with the new generation of recent graduates who want all the perks without having the pay the dues.

I do not mean to sound harsh, but consider the following three words: life ain’t easy.

You gotta work for what you want.

Unless they were incredibly lucky, the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of successful people had to work their asses off in order to get to where they are.

One of my favorite quotes is from an episode of the NBC show Scrubs, where Dr. Kelso gives this piece of advice to a young lady who is looking for the easy way out: “Nothing in this world worth having comes easy.”

Consider a man who made $200 million through a lottery drawing. Now picture another man who was able to save $1 million for retirement through years of working at a job paying just $30k a year.

It’s a no brainer that the majority of people would choose the $200 million over $1 million. And it’s obvious that most people would choose to get the $200 million through pure luck and chance, rather than the $1 million over years of saving and hard work.

But when you think about it, the man who saved the $1 million will most likely treasure and appreciate his money more than the $200 million lottery man.

Think about it.

This isn’t meant to put a damper on your hopes and aspirations. The next piece of advice is more optimistic: 2. It’s never too late.

A few days ago, LifeClever posted an articled called Portfolio Day might make you cry, but it’s worth it. I suddenly had a flashback…

As mentioned in my “About” page, I once was a very serious artist who was hell-bent on attending a good art program at one of the nation’s top art schools (RISD, Cooper Union, UCLA, Art Institute of Chicago, and MICA were my top choices). During the summer between my junior and senior years in high school, I was a regular fixture at my art studio, attending portfolio class every weekday from 12pm-3pm. I would often stay overtime to finish up and discuss my work and options with my beloved instructor.

Most art programs require 10-20 pieces demonstrating a student’s technical and creative abilities. I’m not sure about others, but my pieces often took 20+ hours from inception to completion, and I had 17 pieces in my portfolio…you do the math. I still remember the moment when my art teacher handed me the slides of my completed work and I nearly cried from joy.

I was ready to start applying to the said schools. But first, I had to go woo the top dogs at a National Portfolio Day:

National Portfolio Day is an event specifically for visual artists and designers. It is an opportunity for those who wish to pursue an education in the visual and related arts to meet with representatives from colleges accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. Representatives will be available to review your artwork, discuss their programs and answer questions about professional careers in art. High school students, parents, teachers, guidance counselors and college transfer students are encouraged to attend.

Unlike the AIGA Portfolio Day mentioned by LifeClever, National Portfolio Day is sponsored by the NPDA and is targeted for high school students and college transfer students.

National portfolio day @CCA by kenichi.tanaka at Flickr

All high school students interested in attending an art school are HIGHLY encouraged to attend a National Portfolio Day.

I talked to some older friends who gave me tips:

1. Get there early!
2. Scope out the list of schools attending beforehand and choose 3-5. You will most likely only have time to attend 3, since the lines for the more popular schools can get VERY long.
3. Bring food, drinks, and a friend or two who can keep you entertained and hold your place in line when you have to pee.
4. Never, EVER leave your portfolio unattended.

I was not able to attend the portfolio day held in NY due to scheduling reasons, so my parents and I woke up at 5am one Sunday morning to drive down to Philadelphia.

Unfortunately, Cooper Union and UCLA were not attending this particular portfolio day. So I narrowed my list down to RISD, Art Institute of Chicago, MICA, and Carnegie Mellon. My friends were correct – the lines were ridiculous! I think my parents and I waited 2-3 hours for each school.

I remember being a big miffed that RISD had only sent one associate professor and some students. Being the top art school in the nation, they were a bit snobby and frankly, treated me as if I were just a number.

I also remember how the rep for Carnegie Mellon was very patient and extremely nice…and even made me blush a few times by the comments he made on some of my pieces.

My overall impression of National Portfolio Day was a bit overwhelming. I had never quite realized how popular and competitive the art world is…and I was discouraged by the blasé response I’d gotten from some of my top choice schools.

However, the experience was not without benefits because few weeks later, I received a letter from Carnegie Mellon. I had made such a great impression on Portfolio Day that if I could provide an official transcript confirming a GPA of 3.0 or higher, I would be admitted with no questions. No essay on my application or anything like that! They even offered a very handsome scholarship.

In the end, I was accepted to some of the top art programs in the country…but I decided to go another direction. This decision will be the topic of a future post.

One of the many blogs I subscribe to is Get Rich Slowly, a personal finance site written by a man who was successfully able to dig himself out of major debt and want to help others do the same. Today, he posted a link to Don To Earth, a “blog written by a 93-year-old-man. There’s more to wealth than money. Health, long life, and happiness are more important, in my book. This is awesome.”

Fascinated, I checked out Don’s blog. Don is the third oldest blogger in the world. His entries are filled with wisdom and advice that can only come with age. Some of them are downright bittersweet, and a few even brought tears to my eyes.

And reading his blog just reaffirmed something…

I’ve been having a lot of conversations with friends these days about work, money, and lifestyles. I personally think that I make a pretty decent wage for my age and profession. However, I work in NYC, where you can’t even buy a nice one-bedroom apartment for $1 million. Next to all the finance people and lawyers whose first-year salaries reach $150k, I don’t make much at all.

However, I work in a field I love. Although it can be a bitch waking up every morning, I actually enjoy my time at work. I only work 35 hours a week and in my first year, I’m eligible for 41 days off (counting vacations, holidays, and sick leave) and 45 days starting the second year. And when I calculate how much I earn per hour, I actually make more than my peers who have the $100,000+ salaries but work 60+ hours a week. Now how many people can say that?

Jigg wrote an entry about this a while back, asking if you had the choice to make $150,000 a year working 120 hours a week, or to make $50,000 a year working 40 hours a week, which would you choose? I would definitely choose the latter, not because I don’t want the extra cash (who wouldn’t?) but because I like my personal time. I want to spend time with my loved ones, read good books, and work on the 10 different side projects I always have going on at any given time. There’s always more money to be made, but you can never buy more time.

In contrast, a lot of my friends are willing to work the extra hours knowing that there is extra cash at the end of the road. I applaud them for their discipline because I could never do that. Years down the road, they’d probably be multimillionaires, living the high life. However, I’m content with a middle-class life with the occasional luxuries.

Which would you pick?

Yesterday I read an article which was linked on Slashdot. It caught my attention because I’m still in the process of paving a career path. In the midst of researching and reading up on the myriad of options that are available for recent grads who are still trying to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives, I have come across several articles of this nature. This segment in particular struck me:

Years ago if you put in long hours and worked hard for a company, you were rewarded with gradual promotions, longer vacations, medical insurance, and a healthy retirement plan. Most people expected to work 20 years or more at one company. Today to get ahead and save for a reasonable retirement, workers often must hop from company to company to get a promotion. Hard work and dedication to a job well done are no longer seen as ways to protect a job. Everyone is expendable, thanks to many employers’ short-term, economic goals. And there’s no incentive to work long hours. It won’t likely pay off for the worker in the long run.

This reminded me of two movies. The first, In Good Company, where Dennis Quaid plays an experienced, loyal employee who is replaced by a younger, less experienced worker due to a company takeover. An article I read last week asked the question “Why does your boss seem so stupid?” One of the reasons it gave was that nowadays, managers and leaders are hired externally. So, in a sense, the employees in the lower positions end up having to train their own bosses.

The second movie I thought of is Office Space, particularly the scene where Ron Livingston’s character Peter goes through an assessment, or, as the movie put it, “being interviewed for their own jobs”:

Peter: You see Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.

Bob: Don’t… don’t care?

Peter: It’s a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don’t see another dime, so where’s the motivation? And here’s another thing, I have eight different bosses right now.

Bob: Eight?

Peter: Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

Reading this, you can see how the movie Office Space became such a hit among those who work the corporate life.

So what was the purpose of this entry? I’m not sure. Everything I’ve written above makes me a bit sad. But this is the way things are done these days, and I know I must accept it if I am to make it in today’s corporate world.