Meeting Half-a-dozen

Tanvir - Sadat - Shafayet

Today I sat down with six friends of Naqvi — Rayeed, Waysal, Faraz, Tanvir, Sadat, and Shafayet — for a long, wide-ranging conversation about how they should begin preparing themselves for their futures. It was the kind of meeting I have come to treasure over the years: young people at the threshold of their careers, full of questions they are only beginning to know how to ask. Rayeed, who comes from a business studies background, was particularly engaged, already thinking seriously and enthusiastically about how to move his profession forward. Shafayet, too, brought a real energy to the room, though his is the kind that comes tangled with worry. Since he will be leaving for the United States on the 4th of August, we agreed to meet again before he goes, and hopefully once more after — a tradition I hope continues with this group the way it has with so many others who have sat in this room before them. 

Much of what I offered them came from years of watching students find their way, often by paths no one could have predicted. I told them about a student who once struggled to write even a single coherent page, weak in reading, writing, and interaction, who went on to become a faculty member at a university. I told them about others who moved from one discipline entirely into another after their undergraduate years and thrived precisely because of that shift — one now pursuing doctoral work at Brown 9moving from mechanical engineering to oceanic research), another at Sheffield (moving from CSE to machine learning) and yet another who moved from economics to corporate financing and now want to pursue a career in architecture. These stories matter to me not as inspiration for its own sake but as evidence: the undergraduate years are not meant to lock a person into a single specialization forever. They are meant to build a foundation broad enough to stand on, whatever direction a person eventually chooses to walk in.

Rayeed - Waysal - Faraz

This became the heart of my conversation with Shafayet in particular. He is currently studying engineering, but his real passion has always been finance and business — he has been investing in the share market for some time now, with real success, enough to have bought his own car through it. And yet he carries a quiet fear that turning toward business or entrepreneurship would somehow betray his father's trust, and the investment his father has made in his engineering education. I told him plainly that this fear is misplaced. An undergraduate degree is not a life sentence to a single profession; it is a way of learning to think rigorously. If he carries strong engineering instincts into a business or entrepreneurial career, that is not a betrayal — it is an advantage few of his peers will have. He has been considering an MBA, and I told him I believe this is exactly the right next step for someone in his position. 

To all six of them, I tried to return again and again to a single idea: the most important thing a young person can do right now is find the sector they want to work in, and then build both their academics and their skills deliberately toward it. One of the best ways to do this is to begin writing — a research paper if they are ready for it, but even something smaller and more accessible is a start. I encouraged them to write short, plain-language essays on platforms like Medium, or to start a blog of their own, the way I have kept mine alive for the past thirteen or fourteen years now. I told them to keep something on GitHub, however modest, because a visible record of work speaks louder than a claim of interest ever will. And I was direct about LinkedIn: it matters, but only if the writing is genuinely their own. Platforms are increasingly able to detect AI-generated posts and flag them quietly to page owners, even if readers never see the flag — so the only real strategy is to write honestly, in their own voice, and to engage with people sincerely rather than performing engagement.

I also urged them toward mathematics and toward the newer technological tools reshaping every field they might enter, regardless of discipline. There are excellent free courses available now — from Google, from Andrew Ng, and from other serious educators — and there is no longer any real excuse for a curious student not to explore them. I asked them, too, to read this blog, not because I think it holds any special wisdom, but because thirteen years of writing about books, teaching, and the questions students bring me is itself a kind of case study in staying curious for the long haul. I look forward to sitting with this bunch again soon, and to watching where each of their particular paths leads.

There is so plenty much to work on that can NOT be done in just one sitting. So, let’s meet with clear agenda and get it done before your current semester is over.

Everyone is requested to bring a laptop - I can arrange one additional laptop if necessary. Prior to our meeting it would be great to have a CV including a plan for profession and a description of interests (academic, technical skill, hobbies both creative and recreational)