Our civilization is undergoing huge and mostly harmful changes, but our formerly elite institutions no longer prize serious and unconventional thinking about how to make the future better. They’ve succumbed to a kind of nihilism: with the exception of wokeness, the most interesting new ideas and technologies haven’t come from academia in at least a generation. But without smart new ideas, we won’t have the social frameworks or physical innovations that could allow us to overcome our flawed status quo. I came to UATX because I believe that this university could be a place to develop the radical new ideas we need. I also came here because I believe great societies need great elites, and that existing institutions are failing to produce them.
I loved Professor Jonathan Yudelman’s class on Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy. Most people associate the term “Machiavellian” with a conniving willingness to do anything to achieve one’s ends. But Machiavelli’s philosophy was much more sophisticated and complex than that. For example: while Machiavelli is often thought of as an advisor to autocrats, he was personally a republican. More broadly, as Professor Yudelman demonstrated, Machiavelli helped catalyze many of the most important intellectual innovations of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and is therefore useful to understanding the evolution of Western political thinking. I also found Machiavelli’s insights into the internal workings of republics and how societies are reshaped to remain trenchant and keenly valuable.
When I came to UATX, I was really bullish on the quality of the academics and the mission — and I thought my classmates would be great too. But I dramatically underestimated just how smart, dynamic, and thoughtful they’d be. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say I think there’s a higher density of truly unusual talent here than any other university in the country.
This summer, I’m interning at the venture capital fund 8VC, where I’m working on the defense investment team.
Because Austin is younger, newer, and smaller, it feels less stratified. There seem to be more opportunities to meet truly amazing people here than there are in larger cities with potentially greater absolute pools of talent.
