Recently, I’ve forayed into music production. Specifically, DJing. I’ve always been the “music guy” in my circle of friends, casually claiming the title of “DJ” at parties. Developing an ear for how people react to different forms of music and studying the psychology behind it, it was appropriate to learn DJing beyond clicking tracks on iTunes.

The “DJ” is different things to different people: The radio DJ, or Disc Jockey, plays records, chats about songs, and engages in an open dialogue with his listeners. The wedding/bar-mitzvah DJ is an MC and party host, rather than the guy who plays the music. The DJ/producer (the type I am studying) expresses himself solely through sound. The DJ/producer mixes, scratches and blends records, using the turntables as an embodiment for instrumentation.

The DJ/producer is the most technical of the DJs, and requires a basic understanding of music theory. The tool-set of the DJ/producer includes, at minimum, two turntables and a mixer. The turntables play the records and the mixer controls which record(s) protrudes from the speakers at which volume, and with what quantities of treble and bass.

Learning to DJ is like learning an instrument. The process has dragged painful nostalgia of when I first picked up a guitar, and the frustration of training my hands and ears congruently. The ear training feels foreign, even to a regular music listener:

1.) Count the number of beats.
2.) Mentally organize the beats into packets of bars.
3.) Choose the perfect cue, mix and drop points.

The steps need to be processed simultaneously, which the hands then react to.

When I DJ, it feels like I’m training exotic areas of my brain. It’s taken months of practice to regularize tasks that I remember appearing simple when I was an outsider. Consider record mixing, one of the most basic maneuvers of a DJ:

1.) Choose two tracks within an overlapping 10-12 BPM range.
2.) Play one track while cueing the other.
3.) Adjust the pitch so the tracks have matching BPM.
4.) Prepare the cued track for the mix.
5.) Drop the cued track on the first beat of the bar.
6.) Repeat.

The goal should be to have two separate tracks that sound like a single track: A unique-to-the-DJ, live, remixed song.

The DJ can take a rock-and-roll track, transition to a hip-hop track, and then again to an electronic track, all while making it sound like the song never changed. The DJ allows his audience to enjoy the ambiance of social environment with his sounds serving as a backdrop to the social interaction. In a room of music, the DJ is in control.

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The Ronettes’ Be My Baby is the most sonically pleasing song I’ve ever listened to. It’s an instant mood-enhancer.

At one point in my life, I would have told you Allen Iverson was my role model. While I still respect him for certain accomplishments, a turning point of maturity forced me to realign what a role model was and who was worth having as one.

At the close of adolescence, my role models became within reach. These role models, only an email away, included those doing a more professional, lucrative transformation of what I was doing or wanted to be doing in business.

After a period of time, I realized my role models and I were on the same track, just a few laps ahead. I wondered if I could just run a little faster…

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What happens when role models become peers?

You could seek new role models. There is something intriguing about constantly admiring someone so out of reach that the opportunity of rubbing shoulders is unlikely. The fairytale distance can be seductive and equally motivational in reaching big, ambitious goals. Within the same argument, others might claim that if a role model can realistically become a peer, you aren’t reaching high enough. Who wants to join the club that will accept them as a member, anyway?

You could remain a disciple to your role model, making him feel comfortably superior. While from an outsider’s perspective it may seem that you’ve reached an intellectual limit, there may be more to gain by appearing less aggressive than him. If you aren’t explicitly running ahead of the role model, his guard is down. The dilemma is that without a power strategy, there is a ceiling. With awareness and manipulation of the superiority complex, you are still controlling the chess board.

Finally, you could ignore the level playing field and approach the situation with your arms swinging. Maybe this is what we’re all fighting for: to box in the same ring as our idols. Fuck making friends, just stiff arm them to the end zone.

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The standard four-year college plan and budding entrepreneurial skill set have always had a complicated relationship. While some entrepreneurs skip or drop out of college to start a venture, other academic institutions have taken the opportunity to teach entrepreneurial coursework. Starting a venture without a college education in entrepreneurship is feasible, as most factors in the startup process are serendipitous.

Students are ignorant to the amount of control they have over coursework. While certain foundational courses are required by the university, in my experience there has been a buffer of flexibility regarding the courses a student takes and how the credits are earned. With the right combination of courses, students can essentially create their own major. Although my major was labeled “finance,” a large batch of credits I received came from starting my business and working the right faculty and departments to document and vouch for my progress. Plus, figuring out loopholes in the university and exploiting them to your advantage is an experience relevant to being an entrepreneur in itself.

Throw an event:

Affiliating yourself with the relevant social circle can be beneficial in learning and practicing entrepreneurship. Organizing an event or conference with a group of entrepreneurs from a specific industry can be helpful in identifying the local community for that industry at your university. As an event organizer, not only will you have a chance to interact with the majority of attendees, but you’ll be viewed as a connector between them.

Work for a startup:

A hurdle small companies face is executing with limited resources, including people, time and money. Most early stage businesses would be thrilled for a competent assistant to help with business development, marketing, or, if you have the skill set, engineering. The issue with hiring interns, even remote interns, is gauging that an investment of time by the company will be less than the amount of time and / or wealth created by the presence of the intern. This is important to reference for your inquiry.

Find the engineers:

Engineers are the guts to the web presence of any company. Websites and business applications often go wrong for two reasons: 1) the initial idea was lousy to begin with, and the most common, 2) the idea wasn’t properly communicated to the engineers. The easiest way to communicate with engineers is to learn their language. Find them, hang out, collaborate and possibly sit in on a class or two to learn programming methodologies. You will meet again.

Take random classes:

Entrepreneurs are versatile individuals eager to learn new ideas and concepts to prepare for future endeavors. Starting any project, either on your own or internal to another company, requires knowledge outside of industry. This includes, for example, legal, writing, public speaking and marketing. College is an ideal setting for learning skill sets outside of your major. It only requires you to attend a class that isn’t yours. If the class is large enough, or if the professor doesn’t mind, it’s wise to take advantage of.

Teach a course:

Information acquisition, with the intent to know more than your competitors, is a skill set of an entrepreneur. Teaching a course, specifically a subject matter related to your industry of choice, can be a practice round for educating your future organization and stakeholders. It not only requires you to become a semi-expert on a specific topic, but it forces you to disperse information to a collection of peers who will be graded on their understanding. This is most easily done as a teaching assistant, but could also be organized independently if you can find a group of peers who are diligent to show up to your class every week.

Infiltrate the MBA program:

Most schools with MBA programs, and even some select undergraduate programs, offer an early stage venture capital course. In my experience, these courses simulate a portion of the fundraising due diligence process between entrepreneurs and investors. The startups trade their time for the opportunity be researched by the students with the assistance of a professor with a background in venture capital. In my specific case, I was able to compete with other startups in the course for a potential seed round of funding at the end.

Leverage your professors:

The professors worth taking, if you have the luxury of choosing, are the ones who are veterans of industry. Meaning, professors who have at one point in their career taken the painful path of entrepreneurship and can provide mentorship while you are at the university or enrolled in their course. I’d recommend seeking them and using them as a resource in and outside of the classroom. They’ll be willing to provide support, because at one point, someone did the same for them.

Write for your newspaper:

Part of the entrepreneurial process can involve becoming a thought leader locally. Most college newspapers have a small business section that covers local businesses. College newspapers are enthusiastic to publish stories about their students, and most students like reading about their peers. Contributing to your college paper’s business column is a great incentive to learn about local entrepreneurs while contributing to the university community.

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Entrepreneurship isn’t a choice. It’s a set of skills every student of life needs to be equipped with. And, these skills will only improve with maturity, practice and discipline. The activities I described above can act as entrepreneurial entry points for a career, but don’t necessarily transform you into an entrepreneur. Remember: there is no blueprint. All things considered, there’s no better way to learn entrepreneurship than to start a company. If you don’t need the practice, why not start as a student?

Entrepreneurs are the backbone of industry. They are the risk takers willing to bet their “jobs” on what they believe in. Entrepreneurs leverage limited resources to solve big problems. With the current state of unemployment, there aren’t jobs waiting for students upon graduation. Students may have to create their own jobs, simply because they have no other choice.

Entrepreneurs don’t just talk about starting things; they take action. The beauty of acquiring an entrepreneurial skill set is that it’s beneficial regardless of your field and interest. The above suggestions are meant to be interpretative while displaying the practicality of starting anything. You don’t have to be running a startup to be an entrepreneur; you just need to leading something.

While the argument against academic applicability may be valid, it brings up a bigger, more important question regarding the conception that an ordinary, steady “real world” actually exists. I hear comparisons to “real world” behavior everyday, probably because I work in technology, but I’m certain there is no rational basis for the claim.

Here are three reasons why:

1. Popular culture tells us we’ll meet a companion, get married, have kids and live happily ever after. Then, you read about two separately married college professors discussing stick shifts and leftover chicken over email, proving their adultery to the public’s disgust.

2. Corporate America lectures that we’ll have steady jobs, friendly coworkers and a healthy work environment. Then, you hear about the drugs, alcoholism and general debauchery that takes place the minute a suited worker breaks free from the office only to smile and “act professionally” the next morning in the coffee room.

3. Parents giddily send their adolescent children off to a university after graduating from high school. Then, you learn a large aspect of the college experience is about being cool, impressing peers and generally ignoring your long-term future. That’s why ages 15 – 24 are only 14% of the US population, but account for 29% of the costs of motor vehicle accidents.

I could go on. It only takes a few minutes of browsing the web on any given day to pull more examples.

Sure. What you don’t understand you can make mean anything. But, I don’t think my examples are just specific cases; they are the real world. They aren’t anomalies either. They speak louder for reality than we may think, or, that any of us are brave enough to admit.

What is this so called utopian “real world” referred to so often? What if we all tore off the masks and dropped the acts? Would the world collapse, or has it already?

Reflecting on my years in college, I’ve determined that the only rule is that there are no rules, regardless of what any authority figure will preach to you. Education is a certainty for survival, but the choice of educational medium should be subjective.

I’ve taken a moment to look over my shoulder and piece together the wisdom I’ve learned during college, which may come off academic-based, but is cross-applicable depending on the educational platform you choose.

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Respectfully challenge individuals you aren’t supposed to. It breeds respects. Authority is typically an illusion. The easiest people to attack and challenge include our peers and those younger and less developed than us, which results in nothing substantial. The battles worth fighting are with those that don’t expect it. Academia can prove to be a very narrow focuses environment, and there’s a good chance you know things your professors don’t. Whether you “win” or “lose” is irrelevant. It’s the fight that counts.

The most valuable advice derives from those who don’t rely on you. The quickest people to give you advice are those that have the self-interest to do so, including your parents and close friends. Advice is typically preliminary to a thought or action of change, and people are scared of change. Why? Because change can alter the power distribution in any relationship. The best advice is unbiased advice, especially when your choice of action won’t have an immediate effect on the person who’s giving it.

Lifestyle balance is crucial, even if it doesn’t rest in the middle. The over achievers will always think the slackers don’t have enough discipline, and the slackers will always think the over achievers don’t have enough fun. That’s completely besides the point. A combination of both is crucial, while progress in one always stimulates the other. To think the paradigm of work and play lies in the middle is foolish, and probably unproductive. Choose what works for you.

Let your passion, drive or craft be your identity, not your school / major / GPA. The sooner you can introduce yourself without using the same criteria every other college student uses, the better. The only time I was ever impressed by this is when I met the Stanford grad who double majored in physics and mathematics, which happened to be what the student lived and died for. A college major might give you validation, but a professional hobby gives you purpose. When you grasp that identity, you’ll standout from the condensed masses.

Justifying your hustle is subjective. Working in between the lines is what’s differential. Everyone does their “job.” Everyone goes to classes. We all are creatures of habit feeling especially safe with repetitive starts and ends of the work day. However, I’ve found that the true hustlers, strivers and leaders, are the ones who practice when the game ends. If you’re doing it right, you won’t notice the game ever ended. Don’t mistake hard work for intelligence, but don’t discount it either.

Benchmarking can be discouraging if it’s based solely on micro-communities. The easiest way to be discouraged is by benchmarking your own personal progress based on homogeneous micro-communities. If you’re a college student and you engage with blogs by other college students, there’s a good chance their lives are going to seem a lot more exciting and enlightening than yours. Remember that everyone highlights their highs and discounts their lows. And, being interesting and worldly is often subjective. If you start writing publicly, you’ll seem just as interesting.

Make experimentation a habit, with both people and subject matter. Routine is too easy, both with who we interact with and with the subject matter we dive into habitually. Active curiosity allows for more experimental learning, where you’ll run into interesting people and subjects simply because it wasn’t planned. Getting in the habit of experimentation can lead to initial discomfort, but eventually results in excitement.

Strengths and skills can prove to be temperamental. Massage your weaknesses. A piece of advice I’ve given students is that if you’re more right brained (random, intuitive, “big picture”) to take courses that are left-brained focused (analytical, rational, “little pieces”), and vice versa. While I believe we need both to succeed (with arguably more right-brain), we’re more likely to engage in activities outside of classes that our strengths are inclined too. Massaging our lows, or focusing on our weak side in a more structured setting like class, is an easy way to improve.

Inspiration is unique to the individual.  Treat your craft as a working portrait. A useful exercise of mine in battling artistic blocks is to simply engage with a medium that is completely unrelated to the medium I’m working with. If I’m having difficulty writing, I’ll look at art or music videos. Finding inspiration to create anything can be burdensome if it’s forced. The best way to let it flow is to not focus on it. Inspiration is an art of its own. Treat it like one.

Experience reigns over theory.  Simplicity reigns over complexity. The best way to learn is to do. No amount of theoretical classroom work will ever replace actively entering a field of work (unless your field is research). This is one arena of the formal education sector that is lacking. Simple experience of practicality of what we learn in the actual field will always be more effective than performing complex, and often irrelevant, lab experiments

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If there is one practice that wraps all of these concepts up, it’s the ability to reflect. No one piece of advice, including mine, will be the key to educational success. But, the ability to reflect on your own experience, especially failures, is a stepping stone to getting there.