On Being a Mathcamp JC, 4X Video Games, and Finding Your Path in Life
In a typical strategy video game, you'll spend some time exploring, building up resources, and researching. If not for the attacks of your enemy, then the best strategy would be to pump all of your resources into collecting more resources or technological advances, because they build on one-another exponentially; having more resources means that you can pursue additional resources more aggressively, and having better technology allows you to expand faster and get more technology faster. In practice, though, this doesn't work out so well: if you neglect your military units, the output that actually *does* something and advances your goal of victory, then a good opponent will come in and take you over almost immediately.

This simplistic setting provides an interesting metaphor for how we live our lives, although, at least generally, without the Zerg Rush. In early life, we're focused on building our capacity for later achievement. We go to school, we strive to learn as much as possible about our surroundings, we figure out how to integrate with our peers. It's wisely said that learning is something you do life-long, but if we're brutally honest with ourselves, we do less learning as we grow older. We stop accumulating diplomas and start doing a job that produces a direct outcome --- financial support for us and our family. We start to derive more pleasure out of what is rather than what will be, as we start to recognize that the amount of time left to us is relatively finite. Our bodies and minds are, I think, built for this; getting good at a sport (and getting the necessary muscle memory) is harder as we grow older; our ability to learn languages or adapt to technology decreases over time; we tend to stop having life-altering realizations and settle down into stable lives --- and those who do not, broadly speaking, suffer for it.

The key, then, is understanding when to break from the sorts of activities that help you build towards your future --- such as going to school or doing internships --- and when you should move into the activities that are directly rewarding to you. By "directly rewarding," I mean lots of things: it might be achieving personal pleasure, it might be earning money to support yourself, it might be finding meaningful volunteer opportunities so that you can see your impact on the world. I've made my own choice about this recently, by leaving grad school to found a nonprofit. Ask me later how that worked out for me.

Over the centuries, the time at which we shift from the first phase (building up for later achievement) to the second phase (actually achieving things) has grown later and later. That's not surprising: as we live longer (as we expect some reprieve from the Zerg Rush), we should expect that it's in our benefit spending more time building up our resources before we fully make use of them.

The interesting thing about Mathcamp JCing is that it's a unique opportunity to begin contributing to life earlier than you normally might. When someone goes to college, it's an investment in the future. Mathcamp JCing is too, on many levels --- from JCing, you learn a lot about yourself, about how you grew up, and how to work in professional groups and make large-scale events happen --- but the real benefit of being a Mathcamp JC is that you get to make an incredibly meaningful contribution to the world, one that you can feel on a visceral level. Military units in a 4X game are an end unto themselves; so is JCing, and it's one of the very few such things that one ever encounters in college. There are lots of opportunities to prepare for your future in college, from REUs to internships, but being able to feel a significant contribution is a rare thing, and something like being a JC (or, say, spending a summer building houses in Guatamala or teaching in Uganda) is one of those things that, after a certain point, you can't do. Yes, that's right: being a Mathcamp JC is doing a Zerg Rush on life.

This whole discussion --- although spurred by thoughts about JCing --- is actually not meant to persuade anyone to be a JC or not be a JC, nor is it meant to inspire more applications or pining for camp. Rather, it's meant to bring up the value of making a substantial contribution to the world, be it through being a Mathcamp JC, or running a Splash (errr... go do that!), or doing any number of things that get you out there right away. Because unlike in Starcraft, when you get out there and you really make a difference, you're building *yourself* for the future; not through money, or happiness, or any of that, but through an understanding of yourself, the world, your character, and what you feel is important.