It is hard to believe I have already been in L.A for six months already. Time truly does fly when you are having fun. For those that do not know I moved from D.C to L.A and I was not sure what to expect my thoughts before coming is that I would do my masters here and then move back to the East Coast which would be closer to family and old friends, but after these last six months here I cant imagine myself living anywhere else. Yes, the weather here is great and you cant beat being able to pick up and go to the beach anytime you want but those arent the reasons that L.A has quickly felt like home to me, quicker than D.C did for sure.
When people ask me what I like the most about L.A it would be the creative energy that I get from the folks that live here. As we all know L.A is synonymous with entertainment but we also have a growing tech scene here that folks affectionally refer to as Silicon Beach. For a person like me that is interested in both creating media & tech products there is literally no better place for me to be. I have met people here who are dancers & DJs and folks who want to be social entrepreneurs or solve the health challenges that people face globally. The diversity of the kind of people one meets in L.A cannot be understated.
USC has opened more doors for me and changed my perspective on certain things quicker than I thought. I went to a big state school for undergrad and coming to USC for my masters was definitely somewhat of a culture shock. USC being an elite private college the demographic makeup of the student body is very different than the ones I was used to back in Michigan. It being the norm that folks come from well off families and folks paying to have their names put above the urinals in the mens bathroom was just different for me. Seeing the type of money that is invested in the student experience has been interesting from seeing a ferris wheel on campus during Conquer (USC Vs UCLA football game week) or shopping at the $700M dollar USC Village that houses both a Target, Trader Joes and a gym strictly for USC students (and hopefully alum). I think the biggest thing for me was seeing the level of access that students/graduates of USC have. Not only for job opportunities but the kind of people you get to come into contact with just by going here. We have Paul Orfalea who is the founder of Kinkos as a professor here (also a USC Alum) Noam Wasserman who wrote the must read Founder’s Dilemmas book is my professor this semester and honestly one of my favorite professors I have ever had hands down. Graduates of schools such as HBS/Stanford/Penn etc are routinely speakers or lecturers here on campus which opens up our networks just by being their listeners or students.
One thing I have learned during my academic career is that I do not think the education one gets at a school is vastly different but the level of access one gets is.
Overall, coming to L.A has been better than I thought it would be and in such a short period of time. I am looking forward to how I can go about making L.A feel more like home and helping push the L.A tech scene forward.
Long L.A & Fight On!
