The Ambition Project

A guest post by Jason Brennan

I was fascinated to hear about Jason Brennan’s class assignments for his “Ambition” class. Reprinted with his kind permission. I doubt that the average U.S. college student would actually follow through with any of these challenges, but they’d be great for a school like UATX!

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In my first year seminar course Ambition, in addition to their other work, students will need to complete four of the following assignments, including at least one starred project. Two of these I got from Jess Flanigan at Richmond.

1. The Failure Project

Select an activity you find intriguing, but which you are bad at and expect to fail at if you attempt it. (For instance, if you are a bad singer, sing karaoke in public. Or if you are a bad athlete, play pick-up basketball.) This week, try doing it for at least 30 minutes, ideally in public where others can see you fail or perform badly. How did it make you feel? How did others react to you? What did you learn about yourself? Will you keep doing it until you get better?

2. The Impossible Day Project

Pick a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday that you have a lot of free time. Email or call five people (e.g., friend, coworker, fellow athlete, professor, boyfriend, parent) and give them permission to make demands of your time. Tell them, “Please ask me to do something this Saturday that would genuinely help you.” You can tell them it’s for class if they think it’s weird. Don’t coordinate and don’t let them know you have four other people to help that day. Don’t place any limits on the time they can demand of you for that one day. All five activities must be scheduled for the same day.

Now decide what to do. Whom did you disappoint? Why? Whose interests counted? Could everyone be satisfied? Did you treat everyone equally? Should you have?

3. The Rejection Project

Ask three people for something you genuinely want from them and which genuinely matters to you, but which they are reasonably (but not certainly) likely to refuse. For instance, ask for a discount at a store, ask to shadow someone for a day to learn from them, ask to sit in on a meeting you aren’t invited to, ask someone out on a date (without “talking” via the phone first—pretend it’s the 1990s), etc. Did anyone say yes? When they said no, how did they respond? What did you learn from rejection?

4. The Gratitude Project

Identify three people who made your current success possible but whom you have never properly thanked. Thank each one of them personally, not via text or email. If you cannot see them in person, you must instead do so via phone so they can hear your voice.

Reflect: Why hadn’t you thanked them before? How did they react? Did expressing gratitude change your relationship?

5. The Just Say No Project

Pick one day during which you will be awake and interacting with other people. For that entire day, say no to every optional request that you do not genuinely want to do. (Of course, continue to meet your real obligations—to family, work, school, and existing commitments.)

Pay attention to how it feels to set a boundary—and how other people actually respond. At the end of the day, reflect: Which “no” was hardest to say? What did you learn about yourself?

6. The Pointless Project

Spend 90 minutes counting blades of grass or grains of sand in some quiet place. Do not talk to anyone, listen to music, or do anything else other than count. Use your phone to record the entire 90 minutes of counting. Write a reflection about what this taught you.

7. The Reputation Project

Write down a short summary of what you believe your reputation is among some group of people you care about or whom you at least need to work with. (Examples: Teammates, family, people in your dorm, people in this class.) Now, find some reliable way to check if your view of your reputation is correct or not. For instance, ask a trusted friend to show people the summary and to take notes about whether people agree. Or set up an anonymous poll.

8. The Trading Project

Select an item worth approximately $1 USD, such as a candy bar. Over the course of a week, try to sell or trade that object for items of higher value. Trade each new object in turn and try to end up with the highest value object or most amount of money you can, just from trading. The current record is $360—can you beat that?

Note: You cannot add something to the objects to increase their value. For instance, don’t offer to tutor someone in calculus II if they buy your candy bar. Don’t tell them you are raising money for charity. Don’t threaten to be mean to them for a week if they don’t trade.

Note also: The monetary value must be something we can easily establish from retail websites and the like; you cannot, for instance, just say you personally value some ten-cent item at $1 million.