The school I attended for elementary and junior high was small. 

We had two classes per grade, with ~20 students in each. Forty to fifty students in each grade.

In each grade there were a range of achievement levels. 

Most people simply wanted to get through school. Some hated it. And some of us enjoyed it.

But even if you did enjoy it, you didn’t make a big deal about it. That was the smart social move. You got through your work, did well and kept your head down. You accepted that most other people didn't care much about learning.

But Grade 7 science fair changed my perspective.

The science fair was an annual occurrence in junior high. There were three levels: the school fair, the regional fair, and the national fair. 

If you did well at your school, you went to the regional fair. From there, several winners represented the province at the national fair. 

The regional winners met each other for a weekend before the national fair.

And then the national fair took place somewhere in Canada over the course of 7-10 days.

In Grade 7, I made it to the national fair in Vancouver.

It was kind of accidental. I wanted to do well, but I didn’t know much about the national fair. It just kind of happened.

But the group of people I would meet changed my perception of learning forever.

For the first time, I met people from all over the province, and the country, who loved science. They loved learning.

It might seem a strange realization, but it wasn’t obvious to me at the time.

There were all kinds of other people out there who loved learning. It was normal.

I’d go on to attend two more national science fairs through junior high and high school. 

But the first one was enough. 

The first one showed me what it was like to be surrounded by others who loved to learn, to get better, to be curious, and to explore.

I've looked for those people ever since.

Many of the people I grew up with didn’t travel on a plane until their late teens.

Thankfully, I wasn’t one of them.

I grew up in Nova Scotia—a beautiful place.

Ocean, beaches, lakes, plenty of wilderness. 

Just outside a small town, the kind where everyone knows everyone else.

What it lacked was diversity. 

Diversity in jobs, people, backgrounds. Different perspectives.

I did, however, get the opportunity to travel.

My parents made it a priority to take trips each year. Different places in Canada, the Maritimes, the Northeast US. 

We took longer trips every few years—the West Coast, Europe, Belize.

I was privileged to have the opportunity to do so.

Those trips showed me big cities, different cultures, poverty, homelessness, wealth, diversity. 

Most of all, they stoked my desire for more travel, one that I indulged as I went off to university and in my post-university years.

I may not have had the diversity around me that many did growing up.

But I did have the opportunity to get glimpses, which led to me wanting more.

Travel is a privilege. But one well worth the price.

When you look back at your education, certain teachers stand out.

Some were quirky. Some shared your interests. 

Others you developed relationships with outside the classroom through sports or extra-curricular activities.

But rarely does a particular part of what you learned stand out. At least for me.

I do often think about one.

I took history in high school. Some kind of history is mandatory, but it’s often Canadian history. 

I studied history as part of the International Baccalaureate program, which meant most of what we studied was international history.

But it wasn’t the history itself that I remembered.

It was one exercise in particular.

In this exercise, we read a piece of source material—usually not more than 5 or so pages—and wrote a summary. An assessment of the material.

The key part: it had to be less than half a page. Less than 150 words or so.

It was memorable because it was the first time we had to write less.

It was the first time I had to think carefully about the sentences that were worthy of taking up space.

It was also the opposite of every other piece of writing I’d done in school. 

Those all had word maximums, and as a result, encouraged padding and flowery writing.

As I’ve got back to writing, in both a personal and professional context, I think back to those exercises:

Does this sentence need to be here?

When I graduated high school, I knew I wanted to study engineering.

Choosing a university was difficult—I had good offers from a few, and friends going to some of them.

In the end I chose McGill, in large part because the idea of living in Montreal was appealing. 

Queen’s was the runner-up, and Kingston didn’t attract me as much, though I’m sure I would have enjoyed either.

I knew I wanted to study engineering for a couple reasons.

The first reason was that the subjects I enjoyed most were math and physics.

The second, and larger reason, was science fair.

My favourite projects followed a pattern: 

1. Find a problem, 

2. Use physics to come up with a solution,

3. Build and test prototypes.

Those projects were the highlights of my education.

Who builds things in the real world? Engineers.

And I wanted to build things.

Memory is unreliable.

So I’d be lying if I said I knew exactly how it happened.

But at some point during the final couple years of my university degree, I became fascinated with the world of startups.

I went to a couple talks. One by LP Maurice from Busbud, who I’d get to know better later. One from a startup developing fitness monitors built into clothing.

I also went to an event called Startup Open House. It was the first event that year, but it would grow to other cities.

I toured some offices and spoke with some founders. I saw the newly-opened Shopify office—in hindsight, I should have applied there…

But there was a book which led me into that world as well—The 4-Hour Workweek.

I’d followed Tim Ferriss for some time. His posts about fitness and diet had intrigued me, and I’d read The 4-Hour Body.

The book is ultimately about divorcing your income and your time. Finding ways to generate income that don’t depend only on the time you put in.

It’s also about testing fast. Figuring out ways to gauge interest in startup or product ideas without spending huge amounts of time or money.

I’d go on to read a lot more books about startups. The Lean Startup, Disciplined Entrepreneurship—they all preach data-driven, iterative approaches to building startups.

But The 4-Hour Workweek was the book that propelled me into that world.

And divorcing my income and time is a goal I’m still pursuing to this day.