Back when I graduated high-school, I made a digital “yearbook” — a simple web-app that let classmates leave messages for each other. I got some nice notes which are still stored at ~/dropbox/notes/nice-notes.txt. Note that I don’t know why this is called a yearbook but whatever. I really enjoy receiving and writing such notes (specs below), so I am using my graduation from college as an excuse to create yearbookv2 --- a high tech endeavor to facilitate sending and receiving such messages (it will be a google form).
If you are interested in leaving a yearbook message for Alek, please use the following form:
- tinyurl.com/alek-yearbookv2
Here are some ideas of things I’d be excited about in a yearbook note:
- Reflections on shared experiences
- e.g., “that one time when you said/did X, really changed my perspective”
- or “I enjoyed when we Y”
- Reflection on the counterfactual where you didn’t know Alek --- are you different in some interesting way bc of interaction with Alek?
- Interesting questions. eg:
- a fun tcs question
- life strategy questions. eg how should you balance “getting other people’s advice” and “thinking for yourself / not just being socially pressured into doing things or just playing a role”
- questions that are action relevant for you
- I love interesting questions!
- Deep insights about life. eg a blog post-esque thing that you wrote
- Be creative. Just write whatever you want.