Advice from an expert: how to become president (of your class)

In response to a  question posted on Quora.com about advice that students going to college don’t get but should one response in particular stood out. Ching Ho is not what people immediately think of as a typical student leader of highest ranked small liberal arts school in the US.

For those looking for smart, irreverent, and pragmatically honest and useful advice about what to do to establish an identity in college, the following words will do very well indeed.

(For those who might get offended at things depicted or said on any HBO series, please stop reading now.)

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Background:  Williams College Class of 2003, economics & psychology major, student body president.

“Climb high, climb far; your goal the sky, your aim the star.” - The inscription on Hopkins Gate at Williams College

I was excited to get out of Binghamton - a gloomy, depressing, black hole of an area called "The Armpit of New York."  I was ambitious, motivated and ready to be the big fish in a beautiful small pond of just 2000 distinguished students, all here to attend the #1 undergraduate ranked college for six years running (Forbes, US News & World Report).  When we arrived on campus, my freshman adviser asked our dorm who wanted to represent us in freshman council. 10 out of 16 raised their hands and with those odds, I knew I could not distinguish myself by taking the traditional path.

No matter what you do, do it better than anybody else.  Back in high school, I went to a YMCA and witnessed an energetic silver haired fox in his seventies swing around a beautiful gal wrapped in a swishy polkadot dress.  I wanted to be like him, so I learned to swing dance, and learned it well.  Take heed, gentlemen: beautiful girls crave a man who will show them off on the dance floor, who can make the masses part so those same masses can gawk at her to reaffirm her beauty – so learn to swing dance.

So back at Williams, I convinced the director of the dance program to let me teach a swing class for PE credit.  Soon enough, I had outcompeted all the other PE classes and had more students than I could handle.  We instructed a quarter of the campus in swing dance, enough to justify $26,000 in club funding.  I remember at one masquerade ball, I lit the perimeter on fire, dressed my large black friends in Sailormoon masks, bowties & tuxedos (while equipping them with nunchukus for security), painted myself shimmery silver head to toe, bought loads of top-shelf alcohol and had half the campus lined up waiting to get in.

Don't be useless.  Will another keg party really do you any good?  A charismatic football player once told me, “Ching, I did a study of College Council presidents and they earn one million dollars more than the average Williams student.”  That sealed it – I was  like, “Fuck yeah, I’m gonna do me that.”  Now my highly respected opponent was pedigreed to the ninth degree and predestined to be the next president – he was roman-numeraled “Mayo Shattuck the IV,” his father (Mr. Shattuck the Third) was CEO of Deutsch Bank...

Develop the most amazing version of yourself.  If ever there's a time to experiment with your identity, this is it. As student body president, I gave speeches in a beautiful cathedral to the incoming freshman class.  My dear friend Mr. Drew Newman and I reorganized social life on campus and convinced the Dean to let us commandeer three buses up to Montreal where all the freshmen could drink and get to see things that no freshman should ever see. We commissioned a fiberglass cow-on-wheels that dispensed beer out of its udders and named him “Moo-rty” after our college president Morty.  We even endeavored to be artistic, bringing 3D seventies’ porn to the theater (line out that door, too - more girls than guys).  I became a winter study teacher and taught a credited cooking class.  On the serious side, I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, fixed the food on campus, helped redesign the new student center, achieved a magna cum-laude 3.7 GPA, and had multiple high powered job offers by senior year.  

Don't worry too much about your GPA.  Learn, absorb practical knowledge, and do well; but the marginal difference between a 3.5 and a 3.8 GPA will require disproportionate all-consuming effort and steal all your free time and turn you into a hermit.  Stand out from the robotic consensus with thoughtful solutions.  I remember in business class, we were discussing how the inventor of the cotton gin (a billion dollar invention) didn’t make any money because everyone stole his idea & commoditized it.  My solution was a small army of rifled guards and 24-7  dormitory style housing for the factory workers.  The professor loved that idea and professed me his most brilliant student.  Later the class hottie came up to me and said, “Ching, you’re destined to be successful, I just feel it.”

Ching Ho

So, my advice to incoming students:

·       Get out of your comfort zone and seek out different friends & unique learning experiences.

·       Whatever you do, do it better than other people. Leverage that to the max.

·       Don't focus too heavily on your GPA (but minimum 3.0)

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I would like to thank Ching Ho for giving me permission to post his words here. For some, these words may come as a shock, but then for some who have been through college or university, these same words may seem like something they wish they had heard. There is not one correct path through an education. For some, getting involved in leadership positions, learning to be creatively entertaining, and still managing to be a star student is a great path to success.

Ching Ho undermines lots of stereotypes with his words and deeds. It is one reason he is living a life that values innovative approaches to career and life. Other entries on this blog have outlined different innovative approaches. But the common thread through many of the words here is that education is about exploration, imagination, and also the human interaction that comes from approaching life with passion, commitment, and a view that seeks new horizons.