Would the history repeat itself?

Four years ago, when I was in my last year at UCLA, I had this friend who was just fucking around by skipping classes and midterms, sleeping in till afternoon, and simply not doing his work as he was supposed to do. After a couple quarters of sub 3.0 GPA, he withdrew himself from the school with only a quarter left to go before graduation.

Since I was a couple years older than him and had known him for a long time, I was at liberty to scold him and tell him what to do. I was especially upset with him since he used to be such an outstanding student before (he had something like 3.8 GPA going before he dropped out), and overnight he just decided that school was not his top priority.

So, one day, I decided to approach him and give him what he didnt want to hear in a plan, blunt fashion.

Me: "Hey, J (no, it's not the same "J" mentioned in Classynfun's blog), what are you gonna do? I see that you are fucking up a big time. Why don't you come back to school and finish your educatoin first?"

J: "Well, I dont know. My stocks are doing well. I still have some money left..."

Me: "Hey! What you are making at this stage of life is nothing compared to how much money you will make later! So just listen to me, and come back to school. Hold on, wait...you are not telling me something here. What is exactly your plan that you are not telling me right now?"

J: "Actually, now that we are really talking about this, I am thinking about investing in and managing a hotel. I've been thinking about this for some time."

Me: "What?! Buying a hotel? Are you outta of mind!? Do you know just how hard it is to buy a hotel? I mean, you just dont wake up in the morning and decide to buy a hotel overnight! You dont even have the money to buy a hotel in the first place! You first need some sort of concrete plan and capital to buy a hotel, not to mention the expertise in managing hotel!"

Fast-forward three years to the present time.

In spite of all those lecturing and pep-talk I gave to him on that day, he still has not gone back to school to finish his education. But what I didnt know at the time was that he was really in the process of buying a hotel with the capital provided by his father, a retired banker.

And currently he is looking for housing development opportunity someplace in Inland Empire area in Southern California.

(So, who's the dummy now?)

However, the funnier thing of this whole story is that that, yesterday, I had a chance to talk to him and listen to his own version of lecture on the current state of my life.

J: "Hey, man, what are you doing still in Korea? I know that you are teaching and all, but aren't you gonna come back to the States soon? What happened about going into real estate investment stuff you were talking about before. Why don't you come back to the States and start looking for some stuff you will have a future in?"

Me: "Well, I dont know. I am doing well here. I am not starving, and I actually enjoy this teaching profession..."

J: "Listen! I understand that you are enjoying what you are doing. But the important thing here is that, do you have a future in what you are doing? Will you be satisfied with what you are doing in 5, 10 years? So just listen to me, and come back home. Maybe you are not telling me something here. What do you wanna do? What is exactly your plan at this time?"

Me: "Actually, now that you brought it up, I am thinking about MBA programs, Wharton in particular. Believe it or not, I've been thinking about this for some time."

Me: "What?! Wharton? Oh, man, do you know just how hard it is to get into Wharton! I know soooo many people who applied to Wharton and got dinged with 750+ GMAT and 3.8 GPA!!! After all, you are only a teacher. You are just teaching kids right now. If you want to get into the top MBAs, you need to close transactions, not teach! I mean, you need to have some sort of a long-term plan to prepare for this kind of stuff. You first need to ace GMAT to compensate your low GPA, get recommendation from CEOs, blah.... You need to do.... you need this... you need that...blah, blah"

...............................................




I didnt get to hear what he was saying from that moment on, because much of it really sounded like music to me.