Name: The Jailbroken Guide to the University
Author: Juan David Campolargo

That's the real degree. The rest is theatre.

Start small and see what happens.

Think back to your first week of college: everyone is new, curious, and excited to meet each other. You say hi to random people. You ask questions. You're open to learning everyone's story.

They are the most underused source of intelligence, creativity, and capability on campus.

Optimize for interestingness, and you can't go wrong.

Everyone feels awkward. Everyone overthinks. Everyone assumes someone else will make the first move.

If you genuinely want to influence things, skip the pretend politics and learn how the university actually operates, what they truly care about, and how to hold them accountable. Your best power isn't joining committees; it's your curiosity, your willingness to act boldly, and your readiness to make decisions without waiting for permission.

Safety is just another word for stagnation. Life isn't about avoiding failure. It's about allocating your risk intelligently.

Don't just optimize for stability, optimize for optionality.

But what about building something you love? Learning specific skills? Or even just the importance of following your curiosity and doing whatever the fuck you want while you're in college?

You do not have to wait for a formal research program to get involved in research.

You define your major, and more importantly, yourself.

College became a purpose you never consciously chose.

Everyone is waiting for an invite to something. Take the initiative.

Majors artificially divide reality. Your ambitions re-integrate it.

A campus should feel like a living marketplace of minds, not a set of isolated schedules.

If you are here, it's your system now.

The way appears after you decide to start.

Not everyone inside the university bureaucracy is against you. A lot of them secretly agree with you, or at least realize how hollow the system is.

If something keeps calling to you, there's a reason. Go find out.

A good conversation could change someone's temperature. You could watch them wake up in real time.

The best opportunities don't come from applying. They come from skipping competition entirely, finding your special gifts, and boldly asking for what you want.

In an ideal world, bureaucrats would simply do their jobs competently. Students could freely pursue their curiosity without endlessly fighting pointless bureaucratic battles.

People are rarely boring. What happens is that we rarely give them the chance to surprise us.

Most students don't realize creating your own major is even an option, and the university probably doesn't want you to know.

It's our way of reminding the university, and ourselves, that students are at their best when curiosity, not bureaucracy, leads the way.

Keep asking why until something itches so much that you have to scratch it. That itch is your compass. Follow it.

Students create useful tools, the university panics, issues a shutdown, and pretends they had the idea first. The reasons they give - security, branding, policy - are excuses. The reality is that bureaucracies prefer control over creativity.

Inspiration is perishable. That is the only way I know how to say it.

Good institutions create freedom. Bad institutions create closure.

To build a world worth inviting others into is not a soft or secondary ability.

First comes the story, then the slow work of making it visible to others. The story is what moves first.

Creation is the engine of learning, and philanthropy should fuel the engine, not decorate the garage.

A jailbroken person is not impulsively rebellious or senselessly defiant; rather, he sees the system's constructed nature clearly and uses this clarity as his source of freedom.

The project shows initiative and proves you can actually get shit done.

A university is an exchange rather than a hierarchy. Both sides should leave changed.

A summer is 90 days. 2,160 hours. 129,600 minutes. You could transform your entire life in that window.

Fall in love, or die trying.

Don't make it harder for her if the answer is no. Your job is not to convince her.

Real regrets come from avoiding responsibility. Fake regrets come from missing stimulation.

If you thought this book was about college, read it again.

Career fairs flatten people long before corporations do.

Your real goal in college should be to have a transcript so unique that it has never existed before in the entire history of your college.

Go to Quad Day, Homecoming Parade, and any other events. For Quad Day, it's supposedly only for RSOs, but fuck that, bring a table and set up shop (that's what I did for two years).

Student clubs should be the laboratories where a university's imagination goes to test itself.

The minute you suggest anything meaningful or challenging, you're shut down. It's the classic "catch-22" of bureaucracy: you're given responsibility without actual power, stuck in a system pretending to be open but designed to maintain the status quo.

Just go everywhere.

At the end of the day, what you want is an advisor with clout who isn't an NPC and who actually believes in you and your goals. That's what really matters. Play the game, but don't get played.

Find out who the most interesting professors are and what they're teaching, then take their classes officially, or just show up. Inspiration goes a long way, and as long as a professor has that spark within themselves, it won't matter what they're teaching.

Pay attention to what's said, what's repeated, and especially what's left unsaid.

Privately complaining, publicly conforming.

Don't stand on the sidewalk and clap for other people's lives. Use events as scaffolding to try things, meet people, and create interesting projects.

Jailbroken means casting off invisible chains that bind your spirit to systems designed by others. It is the awakening that comes when one realizes the walls of their prison are merely illusions maintained by collective agreement.

Just start the fucking thing.

When you show genuine curiosity, people naturally want to help you.

Work should be judged by what it forms in you and whom it serves.

If a breakthrough falls in the forest and nobody hears it, it did not happen.

Once you stop treating class as content delivery and start watching it as a room full of people, the dynamics become easier to see.

As an individual, you can't do jack-shit. Individuals don't exist at this place.

Clarity comes after action, not before it.

Treat the university not as a finished structure, but as raw material you can work with.

Rejection is simply information. It means the fit wasn't there, the timing wasn't right, or the desire wasn't mutual. That's not your failure.

They desperately wanted to cancel the event themselves, but legally couldn't, so now they were trying to wear me down and make me cancel voluntarily.

The things that truly change a mind and stay with you for decades are not skills. They are worlds: philosophy, mathematics, biology, physics, literature, art, history, computation, music, design, language, ideas.

Get inspired, trust yourself, and create things. Don't conform to what everyone around you is already doing.

The only thing holding us back is our own hesitation. The moment we stop asking for permission and start taking action is the moment things change.

Throughout history, the weirdest people with nothing to lose are the people who create innovation and bring about the biggest changes in our world.

Majors create categories. Classes create boundaries. Problems and interests create journeys.

Instead of clubs, work on your own projects. Have something you want to see in the world?

The student becomes an input. Learning becomes a side effect.

This manifesto is a reminder that things don't change unless people decide to change them. Bureaucracies are structured to make that feel harder than it is.

Find out who the most interesting professors are and what they're teaching, then take their classes officially, or just show up.

Obsession grips your soul, compels your focus, and guides your transformation. Curiosity propels you forward, constantly asking questions, endlessly exploring.

Oh, and by the way, skip research credit hours. They are Monopoly money. Fake currency to make you feel like you're earning something. You're not.

I believe in a world filled with interesting projects, things that give you energy and make you feel alive, not doing things you settle for because you're scared of falling behind.

The university is clay: malleable, contingent, shaped by the hands that hold it.

Knowledge, when inconvenient, tends to remain hidden.

Do the thing you want. Period.

You only need to do the 'normal' stuff if you're afraid to be different. The normal stuff is fine. But if all you do is normal, don't be surprised when you disappear into the normal pile.

People don't know this but professors want to hear what you want to learn so reach out!

If you work on problems you care about and create projects you find interesting, sooner rather than later, you may find yourself with the need to create a company.

Sure, your major matters. But who you spend your time with matters more.

Rather than making your struggle all about the problem, create a new frame of reference entirely. Don't let them dominate your conversations. Talk about your ideas, your projects, your plans, your future.

Thinking, planning, optimizing, and preparing can only take you so far. At some point, you have to enter life. Make mistakes. Fall in love. Embarrass yourself. Want things. Lose things.

Bureaucrats want nothing to happen.

Don't take bullshit classes to improve your GPA. Some Gen Eds are cool, but many of them are straight-up empty.

Follow your curiosity and create whatever you want.

Culture is malleable. You're not stuck with the story you're given. You can always write a better one.

But if you want to be great at what you do, like really fucking great, the kind of person who either ends up a billionaire or homeless because you're completely obsessed, if you're going to be someone who finds (or creates) the reason they're here on Earth, then your major doesn't matter.

In college, more than ever, you want free time to go to random talks, meet interesting people, try random experiments, read books, explore random classes, focus on your classes, create cool projects, and let serendipity happen.

If you don't ask, you don't get. Don't do the job of rejecting yourself before anyone else has the chance. Make them tell you no.

The purpose of life is to do things that make you feel fully alive and excited about living, and to rearrange your world so you can do more of what you actually care about.

Courses, professors, and credentials are tools. They are not the source of direction.

If someone else starts a project like that, maybe their grades drop. Maybe they get overwhelmed. Maybe it pulls them apart. But for you, it multiplied you.

Seriously, the best strategy is to NEVER, EVER APPLY.

Money should illuminate the system it enters, not disappear into it.

In college, I knew thousands of people, not because I was actively trying to "network," but because I was fully alive. I was constantly out in the world doing things.

We must build for ourselves.

Their strategy is simple: make things so frustrating, complicated, and impossible that you give up and cancel it yourself.

The app kept growing, but it was getting expensive to maintain. Audric was also busy building his own startup, and of course, the university bureaucracy didn't make things any easier.

The vision, not the effort, accounts for most of the difference.

Go uphill and see what you can learn.

The goal of your life is to figure out what you really want and who you really want to be.

The wall shifts the culture from performance to contribution. That's how progress happens.

Study things that don't change, so that when things change, you don't have to.

Many internships won't have you doing anything real. You're often stuck running a simulation of actual work: safe tasks, carefully scoped projects, and zero genuine responsibility.

Nothing compounds faster over time. Not salary. Not title. Not prestige.

Education is not a sequence of courses. It's a sequence of encounters with ideas, people, obstacles, failures, and breakthroughs.

Consistency creates connection.

If you don't have a plan for how to use the university, the university will use you.

A list of courses and letter grades cannot capture the reality of a fully alive mind.

Just hang out with whoever makes you most excited to be alive.

The result was a settlement, a name change, and a masterclass in how quickly institutional bureaucracy can turn your rocket ship into paperwork.

Then the University Library reached out asking if we could collaborate, they wanted to use the account to reach students about their own events, because the account had more reach than their entire communications apparatus.

Immediately after seeing the Whole University Catalog, I wanted to create something similar. In many ways, The Jailbroken Guide to the University is a modern version of the Whole University Catalog.

The professors must lead the university. Not the staff. Not the administrators. Faculty.

You don't need permission, a degree, or anyone's approval to start working on the things you genuinely care about. You can literally start right now.

Students are not liabilities.

But really... just hang out with whoever makes you most excited to be alive!

At the end of the day, it's all in people's imaginations. You control the narrative.

The riskiest thing in the world is not knowing what you want to do, so use your time to figure out what that is for you.

About two-thirds of romantic relationships were friends first. That's not a fun fact. That's how it usually happens, especially in university.

Friendships aren't built on interests alone. They're built on frequency.

Being large is a by-product of doing things well, not the measure of whether you are doing them right.

Classes end, roommates move, diplomas gather dust, but friends compound for decades.

A professor, then, is not merely a teacher. They are a constructor of worlds, an architect of attention, a catalyst of creation.

Young people rise to the level of trust they are given.

Use your power to serve, not to dominate.

A reminder that you, as a student, have more power than you realize.

This is why projects are the best way to form truly great friendships. Not through clubs, frats, or drunk parties, but by creating something meaningful together.

Some of the best opportunities out there are only known to professors and depend entirely on their recommendations.

But underneath the official campus is another campus: free food, hidden rooms, unused studios, open lectures, weird newsletters, pianos in corners, archives nobody visits, librarians waiting for someone curious enough to ask.

Support it. Fund it. Bring them in.

Students get busy with classes, projects, internships, or they graduate. Universities rely on this turnover. Some students stop pushing back out of fear; others simply run out of time. Either way, the system wins.

Choose based on who you want to become. Where you live determines your friends, and your friends determine your future.

But when you shut that down, you replace excitement and courage with fear and hesitation. Students learn to avoid risks instead of taking them.

If you never learn to be alone, you'll never truly know yourself.

But don't lie to yourself. You are not learning how to think just because you sat through a curriculum.

Only the naive try things the experienced have already given up on.

It creates restless individuals forever chasing superficial goals. True Jailbreaking demands a deeper freedom: the freedom not merely to do as you please, but to be moved, inspired, acted upon by genuine obsession, genuine curiosity, and genuine meaning.

"Interesting" is like love: you'll know it when you see it.

Go to class like you're an anthropologist. Observe first.

Weirdness is a proxy for innovation.

Bars aren't built for friendship. They're built for consumption.

Resist it. Become a magician instead. Become someone you admire, not someone others accept.

Your obsession means something, don't ignore it.

Real risk is getting to the end of college, realizing you never actually lived, and calling that safety.

Make the system work for you, not you for the system.

Don't wait for permission, just fucking do it!

I have friends who say yes to starting projects, running marathons, spontaneous road trips, and ideas that don't always make sense at first but somehow turn into good stories. Life around them feels like permanent green lights.

Make deliberate choices that honor your unique path rather than passively accepting the convenient but limiting story told by institutions. Live deliberately!

They will not come for you because you are dangerous. They will come for you because you are free.

At first, I answered honestly. I'd explain I created my own major or that I was still figuring it out. But after repeating that explanation a hundred times, I got bored and started making things up.

Fear makes leaders smaller. Fear makes institutions brittle.

That's what The Jailbroken Guide To The University is about: constantly questioning and confidently reinterpreting assumptions about reality at every level. I want you to master the invisible game that shapes our shared reality by learning how systems of expectation, incentive, and permission actually operate.

The best people I met in college were those who recognized me from my projects. I didn't seek them out; they found me.

You must create what you want to see.

The project. Why? It shows initiative and proves you can actually get shit done.

But if you can ask someone out, you can raise your hand in class, give a speech, talk to investors, and really do whatever you want.

Therefore, this guide should be treated as dangerous fiction. Any benefits you experience are cosmic coincidences. Any chaos you create is entirely your responsibility.

They count on your silence, busyness, and indifference. Give them attention. They expect compliance. Give them resistance. They assume your limits. Give them persistence.

Don't start fights, but do finish them.

So don't just play the game. Tilt the board, switch out the pieces, and scribble new rules in the margins.

Don't believe me? Try becoming a professor without a P.h.D.

Doing research doesn't make sense unless you have a meaningful reason behind it.

The point isn't what you choose to do. The point is you choose. Don't drift into a boring summer. Live deliberately.

Internships are the free trial of corporate labor.

The real question isn't about who gives permission. The question is who can actually stop you.

But so can anyone who creates real value, works on meaningful projects, or connects with people out of genuine curiosity.

Young people are not unfinished adults; they are fully human minds at the beginning of their arc.

Everyone wants you to conform. Don't. Your life depends on it.

We need a bureaucracy who understands its purpose clearly: to create a context where genuine learning, meaningful growth, and productive inquiry can happen.

Raising money really isn't as hard as you think.

But they fucked with the wrong person. Because I wasn't canceling jack-shit.

But you don't fix that with technology, you fix it with a cultural and social change.

Creation is introspection in its purest form.

Dating also isn't a separate activity you schedule twice a week. It grows out of shared time. Classes. Group chats. Study sessions. Dinners. Parties. Friends of friends showing up again and again.

In reality, it prevents you from discovering the knowledge you didn't know you cared about.

"Getting jailbroken" means seeing reality as it actually is, not the facade people try to impose on you.

You're not here to collect answers or outsource thinking to teachers. You're here to figure out which questions are worth asking.

A friend is someone who sees the gap between who you are and who you could be and refuses to ignore it.

Just go ahead and do it. Most of the time, people won't care.

This is when I realized Franz Kafka wrote nonfiction, not fiction.

Friends turn dating from an interview into something natural. People already trust you. They already know what you're like.

Have fun with it, and yes, create projects.

The second you start doing things to impress people, get invited somewhere, or prove you belong, you've already lost your soul.

Don't use busyness as a shield if what you actually mean is fear.

Do your own thinking, question the assumptions everyone takes for granted, and pick something that genuinely excites you.

Ignore prerequisites. They're fake.

Good friends start with common interests. Great friends are built by working together on projects.

The default is delay, risk review, another office, another form, and the hope that your enthusiasm evaporates before anyone has to decide.

A university doesn't revive itself by issuing mandates or policing student life. It revives itself by making aliveness unavoidable.

Money is not separate from the soul of the university.

Know clearly what you value enough to risk punishment for. Sometimes, conforming strategically (or at least appearing to conform) while remaining inwardly jailbroken can actually amplify your effectiveness.

Everyone at the university is here because of and for the students.

This was the beginning of a friendship and a mentorship that I deeply cherish. I even worked with him on a few research projects.

If there's someone you're interested in - romantically, professionally, or just because they seem cool - just reach out. Ask a question. Start a conversation.

If we don't know what we want, we don't go anywhere.

The moment we stop asking for permission and start taking action is the moment things change.

Be useful, and doors open on their own.

Create the opportunity and invite people yourself.

You'll never know everything. Learn while you're doing it.

Safety is just another word for stagnation.

"You must not only understand a system, but also be able to move through it in full trust of your knowledge and understanding."

Majors are a 19th-century industrial invention, conveyor belts for human beings.

Curiosity @ Illinois is surely about finding interesting classes. That's why we created it and how we used it. But it's also an example of what it looks like to give students the tools and the freedom to reclaim their education so they can decide for themselves what and how they want to learn.

What projects? Follow your curiosity. Create fun things. Whatever excites you.

Similar stories have happened at MIT, Stanford, Yale, and other universities. Students create useful tools, the university panics, issues a shutdown, and pretends they had the idea first.

They care when numbers become organized people, public attention, donor attention, faculty pressure, media interest, or a room full of students they can't politely pretend not to see.

If you don't ask, you don't get. Don't do the job of rejecting yourself before anyone else has the chance.

The University has not fulfilled its responsibility. It never taught me how to ask a question.

Great teachers matter way more than the subjects.

"I want" vs "I should" is the difference between doing a lot and feeling like you've done nothing, and living your life and feeling like you're truly living.

If you can ask someone out, you can do anything. You'll realize failure isn't so bad. Some people will say yes. Some will say no. Either way, you stop being ruled by imaginary rejection.

If we can't explain a fee in one sentence, we don't charge it.

You need a project and a small group of obsessed people.

Identify important problems, unresolved questions, and weird mysteries. Ask your mentors directly: "What should I read to actually understand this field?" Then do it.

If you know what you want, just ask for it. Most people are willing to help.

You think people wait around fulfilling prerequisites? No, they just go do the thing and figure it out as they go.

When you genuinely connect with others, you create a shared reality, and within that shared space, magic happens.

Frontiers, not departments. People gathered around problems, not majors. Communities, not bureaucratic units. Around questions, not checklists. Around ambition, not accreditation.

Inspiration goes a long way, and as long as a professor has that spark within themselves, it won't matter what they're teaching.

Invest in projects you care about (like a company you start), relationships that matter to you, and skills that compound over a lifetime.

Finishing doesn't make you qualified. It makes you compliant.

Learning is something you do, not something that's done to you.

Bet on yourself. Trust yourself.

A university's posture toward young people is its true philosophy.

I did this all the time, not just with bureaucrats, but with other students, professors, and even random people from the community. When you live by curiosity, you realize you can learn something from literally anyone.

To become jailbroken is to reclaim that quiet voice within you that knows your true desires.

College hands you a piece of paper. Your friends hand you your future.

You'll never know everything. Learn while you're doing it. And remember: you'll always be "unqualified" for things you haven't done.

Buildings constrain imagination to square footage. Humans expand it.

True freedom comes from choosing for yourself.

Don't have a printer or money? Find free printers on campus, or ask a friend who lives in an apartment to let you borrow their apartment complex's printer.

At its core, university bureaucracy is like any other organism, constantly evolving to protect itself.

Take classes that challenge you and work on fun projects, and if they ever lead to a startup, great. If not, that's also great. But don't fake it.

Education shouldn't end with a long list of reasons everything sucks. It should end with a sense of possibility.

Official values do not always align with how decisions are made.

Treats you as a mind in motion, not a product to be shaped or measured.

So take the damn risk now.

However, you won't find these people by explicitly trying to find them. Why? Because they don't give a fuck about meeting new people; they're busy working on their cool projects.

But don't get confused. Being young is your biggest advantage.

Boring jobs will disappear. Good.

For the love of your life, don't settle for pretend work.

When thinkers from different fields share space, time, and curiosity, the university becomes stronger, less brittle, and far more alive.

A university should be one of the holy places in the history of the human spirit, not a credential factory, not a bureaucratic maze, and not a four-year waiting room before you "start your real life."

In the end, all majors are imaginary. What actually matters are the things you created, the problems you solved, and the curiosity that dragged you into strange corners.

We think we go to college to find answers, but that's not true. You already have most of the answers you need inside you. College is really about exploring what questions matter to you.

What alarmed the system wasn't what was said, but that anyone could say it.

The big question that kept me up during college was: How do you wake people up? How do you get them to truly live - fearlessly, urgently, fully?

If I don't spend money, I don't need to make money.

Older people might know yesterday inside out, but young people - you, right now - can see tomorrow more clearly.

This was a middle finger to the system that combined the vibes of a hardcore science journal and Woodstock. It questioned what college was for and what students were actually allowed to do with it.

This is what university suppression often looks like: not loud or dramatic, but quiet, indirect, and exhausting.

It's not about the answers you get, but rather about the questions you learn to ask.

A university should be one of the holy places in the history of the human spirit, not a credential factory.

Attraction usually grows from familiarity, not a perfect first impression. You need to see someone in motion. How they talk. How they treat people. How they show up.

If you like someone, tell them. Don't play games. Don't wait around. It's not as bad as you think.

The right professor matters more than the perfect class.

It is about helping you understand how money systems actually work, so you can think clearly, ask better questions, and make your own informed choices.

The university system exists to be transformed, not merely navigated.

But the bigger takeaway is that when you sit in classes across campus, you will be reminded that the university isn't just one world. It's many.

You're refusing to create a universe with another person. You're refusing to enter a space outside fear, death, and time. You're refusing the chance to feel, even just briefly, that the world makes sense.

"The system isn't perfect but it works for most people." Then we wonder: Why restrict learning at all?

A university where every person is here for the students, not the other way around.

Success defined by conformity is not freedom. It is merely another form of captivity.

A prize replaces grade-seeking with problem-seeking. It shifts motivation from performance to contribution.

The weirder the question, the better. Make people uncomfortable.

And at the end of third year, I didn't do an internship. I stayed on campus and worked on my own projects instead.

If you see someone you like, tell them. Don't hesitate! Life is too short. Remember, you're dying. Every moment that passes is one moment closer to the end. Make it count.

If you need money but still want time to learn and work on projects, being an RA can be close to ideal. It covers two of the biggest expenses in life: food and housing.

Friendships of virtue require effort. They demand you look past surface-level convenience and fun, toward something tougher but infinitely more rewarding: genuine human connection.

A university should be a lighthouse, not a vault.

Everything is imaginary.

Be fully alive. Be unapologetically yourself. And above all, live a life so vivid, so authentically jailbroken, that it quietly gives others permission to do the same. Believe in yourself, and believe in other people so much that you make them believe in themselves.

Dorms are destiny.

If you really want meaningful friendships, if you truly want to belong somewhere, you can't let that fear drive you.

Curiosity propels you forward, constantly asking questions, endlessly exploring. When obsession and curiosity guide you, you jailbreak not to destroy systems, but to transcend them.

The machinery of higher education exists to serve your ambitions, not the other way around. Make the system work for you, not you for the system.

In the end, all majors are imaginary. What actually matters are the things you created, the problems you solved, and the curiosity that dragged you into strange corners no syllabus ever planned for.

You'll always regret silence more than rejection.

We should stop teaching people that life is one giant homework assignment with a rubric.

Juan David treated college less as something to complete and more as something to work on.

Summer is 90 days. 2,160 hours. 129,600 minutes. You could transform your entire life in that window.

That's not even arrogant. That's delusional and disrespectful to the world and to YOURSELF!

Fear rules the university bureaucracy.

Kill common knowledge. Once you do, they know you like them, and more importantly, they know that you know that they know that you like them.

Make something beautiful, meaningful, absurd, helpful, or just fun.

If you can't question something without risking your reputation, job, or funding, then it isn't science; it's something else.

The internet will do its magic. Don't wait.

It means being honest about what you want instead of defaulting to what's expected. It means acting, even imperfectly, instead of waiting.

It literally takes just one email to create significant change. Fucking send it.

Don't wait to get invited. You invite.

Bureaucrats will always frame it as if you need their permission, as if someone needs to let you pursue your own path. But that's not how life works.

This is how innovation dies quietly in universities: not with a scandal or a headline, but with a thousand small decisions that tell students, again and again, that trying is riskier than leaving things broken.

If you're doing anything interesting, you're going to piss off a few people including professors. It's a signal.

In a world where people apply to stuff like they're Mario hopping aimlessly into random green pipes, simply showing genuine interest already puts you way ahead.

Find the ones who are doing things for their own sake and make you feel alive.

That itch is your compass. Follow it.

A university that worships polished plans will get polished plans. A university that funds time, autonomy, and honest adversarial testing will get the future.

The default is not yes. The default is delay, risk review, another office, another form, and the hope that your enthusiasm evaporates before anyone has to decide.

Align 100, and you can make a big impact. Align 1,000, and you can start major projects.

A class is only one way of learning, and often the weakest.

Some of my favorite memories from college were watching people get jailbroken and, for the first time, take themselves seriously. Seeing students, professors, anyone really, suddenly recognize the possibilities that had been there all along.

Also, if you focus too much on finding a partner, you might end up pushing people away. The best relationships often happen when you are living an actual life, not scanning every room like a lonely hiring committee.

Want to know what's really happening behind the scenes? FOIA files are where it shows up.

Think of classes like a menu. You don't have to commit the moment you sit down.

The world is a conspiracy to make you conform.

Administrators do not always make decisions based on what best serves students or faculty. They make decisions based on what keeps donors happy, politicians quiet, and the university's public image shiny enough to attract more money.

Graduation is a moment. Being unreasonably alive is the mission.

Instead of clocking hours, he could spend his time learning skills, working on projects, or taking one of his curiosities seriously. His parents would be happier, and so would he, if he built something meaningful.

They call it "responsibility" and "strategy." But really, it's fear with better branding.

Ask questions. Learn for the sake of it.

You do not know better than a student what their life should become.

Go make the world more interesting, more beautiful, and radically more alive.

Use it to promote your projects, understand what people are like, what they need, and what they want. Ask questions, shitpost, and don't take it too seriously.

Traditional education is a rush to conformity.

Build a culture that attracts and keeps people who follow their curiosity and actually create things. You, more than anyone, can make sure that culture survives.

The system has become about conformity instead of creativity.

Ask about their path, how they ended up at the company, and what advice they'd give someone starting out. Go in genuinely curious and learn from their story.

Take the person, not the program.

They are your laboratory for bold experimentation and your canvas for curiosity.

College is really about exploring what questions matter to you.

But what is actually on trial is always the same thing: the source. The fact that what you made came from somewhere they cannot reach, cannot credential, cannot be the origin of.

Give students responsibility, agency, access, and the ability to make real decisions, and they will rise to it.

Don't maximize money. Maximize learning, interesting experiences, and excitement about life.

Silence is not a virtue. Hiding your work is not modesty.

People act as if college can transfer thinking skills the way a bank transfers money.

Curiosity @ Illinois is a step in that direction with the ultimate goal being to create a platform that offers the most advanced, sophisticated, and user-friendly experience for students.

If you want to learn, create your own projects.

These bureaucracies have every incentive to do absolutely nothing.

I even worked with him on a few research projects. Little did I know that, not long after, life would rhyme in a way I couldn't have imagined.

People don't give a shit how cool you think you are. They care about how you make them feel.

And you? Be alive. Be fully alive. Think for yourself. Follow your curiosity. Don't conform. Start projects. Explore. Start companies. Invite people. Create whatever you want. Write and share your ideas. Never stop asking questions. Be yourself. Make videos. Make movies. Make art. Just make whatever calls your heart. Drop out. Or don't. Study hard.

A campus full of interesting worlds makes them fully alive.

Rejection hurts, but inaction hurts more.

The point of education is to widen the field of vision before you narrow it.

A university is strongest when leaders are not afraid of students, and students have no reason to fear their leaders.

That's why The Jailbroken Guide to the University exists. First, to let you know, you don't have to conform.

A single student with $3,000 in discretionary project funding will produce more intellectual and cultural value than a $3 million atrium.

A university should not be a staircase. It should not teach you to wait your turn, collect credentials, and postpone the thing you actually want to do.

You don't win by out-arguing. You win by out-narrating.

This is how innovation dies quietly in universities: not with a scandal or a headline, but with a thousand small decisions.