Each year we ask our classmates a straightforward, simple question taken from the lines of a poem by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Mary Oliver. We share with you intimate and candid responses to this question, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Concept and photography: Tony Deifell, MBA 2002.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
In my dad’s paper factory in Malabon City, Philippines, I spent hours being chased by dinosaurs.
I took a cardboard box, taped on an old clock, flipped an hourglass, pulled a plastic lever, and went back in time. Stationed beside a giant machine that devoured brown, gooey pulp and magically churned out reams of white paper, my eight-year-old self was convinced that anything could happen.
Then, as I grew up, the adventure faded away. I majored in business, wore a suit, and convinced myself that the only things I could build were models and slides. Day after day, I churned out the same thing: numbers and figures on white paper.
One year before HBS, without any coding experience, I stumbled into a data science startup. Confronted by a dark screen awaiting instructions, I felt like a kid in a factory, lost and out of place, yet giddy with excitement. My code was held together by sheer willpower and duct tape, but it didn’t matter: I was intoxicated by how each keystroke made something, anything, happen.
After two decades, I rediscovered what I had known at eight: the best adventures are the ones I build.
