Chapter
1
The North Star
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” - Nelson Mandela
At the core of solving any problem is a burning desire to do so. This all-consuming feeling that compels you and drives you forward is known as your animus. Without an animus, you are left without the motivation to go through the chaos of a problem, to have an obsession to harness and propel you forward (Bilyeu, 2019). Your animus is what lays at the heart of your mission, and your purpose in life is to fulfill that mission.
To understand this concept I will share with you my animus. Oftentimes an animus is born out of a wrong in the world that you feel burdened to correct. It’s a problem you feel you NEED to correct and makes you livid inside that it is not getting the proper attention. For me, that problem was education.
To help understand my motivations, let me paint a picture off my journey through the current education system. I was the first in my family to go to a university. Being the son of a single mother, living in a trailer park, and watching many role models battle with drugs, incarceration, or attempted suicide, I was striving for a better life. Despite what the statistics would have you believe, I absolutely loved learning. There was something about being curious, challenging myself, and gaining knowledge about the world around me that left me intoxicated. I worked hard my entire scholastic career achieving 4.0’s and student achievements to ensure I made it into college.
However, when I got there and started checking off boxes it felt as if I was having this love beat out me. I was no longer doing this for myself but rather to just make sure I could pay the bills once I left, including the crippling debt I was racking up. I spent 5 years obtaining an accredited Masters Of Architecture, but felt there was something missing from my time spent. Struggling for my first job, I was excited to put my knowledge to good use and start making an impact. I wanted to start making a real difference. Originally motivated by creating a better world, I was drawn to how architectural spaces solved problems positively affecting how people lived.
Fast forward three years, I found myself trembling at my desk, huge architectural drawings with glaring red lines scattered around, staring at my reflection in the black monitors. Feeling like someone had poured concrete down my throat, I asked myself, “Is this all there is to life? Is this what I had worked so hard for…?”
"IS THIS ALL THERE IS TO LIFE? IS THIS WHAT I HAD WORKED SO HARD FOR…?"
I became depressed about my life and enraged that I had just spent a huge chunk of it supposedly working towards something much more fulfilling. I felt like my only purpose was to grind behind a desk all day, be too exhausted to want to do anything after being in traffic on the way home, and do it all again tomorrow. This feeling of unfulfillment, a lack of solving impactful challenges, and missing a purpose was my initial motivation for pursuing answers to questions about higher education. I started asking why I had not felt passionate or prepared for life after college. I decided to return to something that had long been forgotten, my love for learning, and found myself in the bookstore picking up my first book about entrepreneurship, the 4 Hour Work Week. This curiosity sparked me to radically transform my life through self education and experience my own evolution.
During this time, I also began noticing some other factors of my life I was less than pleased with. Despite going to the gym I was reaching upwards of 200lbs, sheepish to take my shirt off, and experiencing immobilizing gut pain. I would soon learn about nutrition, wellness, and what I was experiencing was dysbiosis in my microbiome and a leaky gut. Again, I found myself angry that something as fundamental as feeding our body, we were not taught anything about.
I had just gotten married recently and although we were not screaming at each other, I felt a disconnection with the woman I vowed to spend my life with. I started to learn how to effectively communicate in a relationship from spoken to body language, the dynamics of feminine and masculine polarity, and building a life together. Here I started asking questions around why if we are supposed to interact with other humans everyday, we are not given the skills to do so.
I would spend many nights awake, roughly getting a few hours of sleep, as my mind raced with thoughts. Aside from learning the proper way to sleep (which is far from obvious), I began learning meditation, self reflection, and understanding one’s own presence. Frustrating as it is, we are never given the tools to understand who we are.
I began to ask that if we had not learned even the fundamentals of being a human, what else had our education lacked? If we were supposed to make an impact on this world, how would we ever be able to do so without having the tools we need? And how are we supposed to even know what impact we want to make if we don’t even know ourselves?
"HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO EVEN KNOW WHAT IMPACT WE WANT TO MAKE IF WE DONT EVEN KNOW OURSELVES?"
That’s when I started noticing it not only in my own life, but in the lives of every person around me. Simultaneously, the challenges the world faces keep growing, from climate change to global pandemics (as I write this we are currently in month 2 of quarantine during COVID-19), and yet we have so many wandering without a purpose.
Powerful questions are used to unlock your animus. One such question is “What are you willing to die for?” With any worthy pursuit, there will be struggles, resistance, and straight-up failure during your pursuit. It’s inevitable. However, when you are willing to not only suffer for your cause, but die for it, it confirms you are all in. It assures your conscience and everyone else that you’re committed to serving the bigger mission until the end.
I can tell you that if I spent my entire life attempting to liberate everyone’s mind so they no longer suffered in agony due to ignorance, so they may live a purposeful and fulfilling life and positively moved themselves and the world around them forward, and ultimately I died before ever realizing this, whether today or 80 years from now, it would be a life well lived.
MY QUESTION TO YOU: WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO DIE FOR?
EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD REQUIRES EVOLUTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL
Why: We believe that evolution of the world requires evolution of the individual.
How: We evolve an individual by liberating and educating their mind with the belief, willpower, & skills to change their life & discover a fulfilling purpose to change the lives of those around them by solving the world’s greatest challenges.
What: We are building a student first online university that matches purpose to meta skills to change the world.
Because we know that we can not effectively serve every type of student in the beginning, nor should we, we must focus our efforts to those who would most benefit from the Evolve education and in consequence create an even greater impact on the world.
Anya Kamenetz calls them the edupunk: the liberated independent learner at the center of a web of intellectual resources supported by community and practiced based learning (Kamenetz, 2010). We want our students to feel like they are designing their own university, empowered to create their own customized program of education aligned with their purpose.
"THE EDUPUNK: THE LIBERATED INDEPENDENT LEARNER AT THE CENTER OF A WEB OF INTELLECTUAL RESOURCES SUPPORTED BY COMMUNITY AND PRACTICED BASED LEARNING."
Michael B Horn, author of Choosing College, describes five jobs to be done for students (Horn; Moesta, 2019).
The “Jobs To Be Done” for students are as follows:
Based on his research, our primary focus are those who wish “to step it up” or “to extend themselves”. These students operate under the mentality of, “when I am ready, understand myself and yearn to accomplish something meaningful, I want to attend college so I can challenge myself, pursue a clear concrete vision, and earn practical experience and skills necessary to execute that vision.”
The qualities of these student may be as follows:
However not every student who applies will match this job state so we have several mechanisms to move them from the other jobs to this one so they will get the most value from the Evolve experience. For those in the “help me get into my best school”, we work with each student during admissions to understand what their motivations and skills are to see if we are the best fit for them. If we aren’t, then we help them find the best school for them. We don’t offer a resemblance of the classic college experience, but instead one that is far more effective, focused, personalized, robust, and affordable compared to traditional college experiences. For those in the “help me do what’s expected of me” and the “help me get away” jobs, we recognize these students are just looking to check a box of going to college and don’t yet understand who they are or what they want in life. So through our coaching admissions process, we help uncover this for them. If we feel they are a strong candidate for Evolve, yet are having trouble discovering their animus and vision for their life, we send them through a year long gap program. When they begin to understand and discover animus, they can move into the “help me extend myself” job to fulfill that mission. For those in the “help me step it up” role, our life long learning and free educational content can help them change, revisit, and reskill as necessary throughout their life and pursue the clear vision of what they want.
"WHAT IS NEEDED IS AN INSTITUTION THAT SERVES THE NON TRADITIONAL, MULTIDIMENSIONAL DIVERSE STUDENT."
Being as our model radically goes against the traditional model, our students are not the imagined traditional norm of someone who begins college immediately after high school, enrolls full time, lives on campus, is financially supported, and is ready for college. There are plenty of institutions serving these students. What is needed for the majority of students, is an institution that serves the non traditional, multidimensional diverse student.
Our students may have the following dimensions:
Danielle Dreamer
Danielle is 20 years old. She has always wanted to make a positive change in this chaotic world. After having someone in her family sold into human trafficking she has had a passion to help survivors heal by taking down offenders. She has diligently done tons of hours of self-education with options like PluralSight, Coursera, and Udemy and online books so she can one day start an organization. However she is struggling to put the pieces together and could use guidance, support, and connections to help realize her vision. She thinks college may help, but does not like the current options because they lack real world experience and clear skills that are applicable to real world problems. Her biggest fear of college is that the degree is useless and she just put herself into extreme amounts of debt to get it.
Pain: Affording access to guidance, resources, & networks
Desires: “I want to impact the world.”
Fears: “A useless degree with mountains of debt.”
Adam Advancer
Adam Advancer is 27, married, and has a son. He has been working in graphic design for the last 5 years but his skills have become outdated. He has contemplated returning to college but their is no room for error in his life and managing being a great student, employee, and father proves challenging. He desires to advance his career by getting new skills in UX design and use them for good, where he can better someone’s life in some way through a product, experience, or solution. He wants to get quality education in the field that he is passionate for at a reasonable price point. He feels $100,000 on education is a significant investment and the ROI better be damn good. Success looks like monetary growth, becoming debt free, changing the world for the better, enriching the lives of those around him.
Pain: Managing a career, parenting, marriage and school.
Desires: “Real world applicable skills to reach my goals.”
Fears: “Failing and wasting time and money.”
We hold students as our number one shareholder in Evolve. Without them the university would not exist. So it is important we outline the promises we commit to fulfilling for those students.
Our overall promise is as follows:
WE WILL HELP THE MOST DRIVEN STUDENTS DISCOVER THEMSELVES, THEIR PURPOSE, & EQUIP THEM WITH THE TOOLS NECESSARY TO REACH SELF ACTUALIZATION THROUGH SOLVING THE GREATEST CHALLENGES OF OUR TIME.
Students are leaving college unprepared for life after graduation, both personally and professionally, and are ill equipped for an ever changing, highly complex world. From students to employers, they believe the skills that they are receiving are not adequate for the demands of society now and in the future. Furthermore, students feel as though key things they should know as a human and productive member of society are left out from the curriculum.
We promise to prepare our students for life after graduation, personally and professionally, by equipping them with intellectual tools & practical skills they can use to adapt to a changing world and achieve their goals.
Sometimes when students attend college, they are doing so out of a desire to check off a box, take the next logical step after high school, or fulfill the wants of their parents or society. As a result, these students are unaware of who they are, what they want in life, and have not explored their own passions. When a student attends college for a degree with hopes of just getting a good job or making their parents happy, this often leads to unfulfillment after graduation, not making the most of their time in college, and feeling a lack of purpose.
We promise to provide personalized attention to every student to aid them in self discovery and life fulfillment by developing curriculum aligned with their passions, goals, and purpose.
A common complaint with education is knowledge being rooted too much in theory and not enough application in real world contexts, problems, and bigger questions. Students question whether their degree and what they are learning applicable to the real world. How can we expect our students to succeed in the world after college if they have never been asked to apply their learning to problems outside the classroom?
We promise to root education in real world contexts and issues consequential to society, focusing not only knowledge acquisition, but mastery and application of that knowledge.
Finally, the cost of college has risen far beyond it’s return on investment, leaving many students with debilitating debt upon graduation. Institutions have become extremely bloated with services that do not directly aid in the students learning and drive the cost through the roof. Weight of the bill for education has also not been equally distributed among its beneficiaries, leaving families and students to foot most of the bill.
We promise to operate with lean principles and focus tuition only on services that directly benefit a students learning in order to create radically affordable education. It should cost no more than the price of a laptop, internet connection, and a leased residence.
Knowledge For All
Solutions can come from anyone, anywhere regardless of any demographic. For this reason, the access to knowledge should be available to all. It is the foundation upon which humanity thrives, both individually and as a collective. There should be as minimal barriers to knowledge as possible.
Purpose Driven
We strive to discover and develop passions, interests, and a sense of purpose among all individuals. These purposes are both meaningful to the self and consequential to the world. We must be the change we seek in the world and our actions are in alignment with our purpose. We are ambitious and not afraid of the size of our goals. We seek not just momentary happiness, but long term fulfillment.
Extreme Ownership
In order to solve the world’s greatest challenges, we must move past who is to blame. We take ownership of problems and hold ourselves responsible for creating a solution. We look at the world and say “This is my problem and I am dedicated to discovering and executing the best solution for it.” We take responsibility for our own actions and the effects our decisions have on others. We are self starters, intrinsically motivated, and take responsibility and direction of our own lives and learning.
Question The Status Quo
We do not accept things as they are without questioning their principles. We believe there is a better way and refuse to settle for the status quo. We challenge ourselves and others conventional thinking, seeking novel & innovative solutions when necessary. We are both philosophers and practitioners, asking life’s biggest questions to help us all live prosperous & passionate lives. We help unlock others from the matrix.
Nurturing Curiosity
We are deeply curious about ourselves and the world. Even when we think we have a full comprehension of something we do not stop remaining curious about it. We act with the notion that the more we know, the less we truly understand. Yet we balance this by creating things and testing our understanding while simultaneously helping others to understand.
Fostering Evolution
We believe that every person has the ability to change, adapt, and grow. From the individual to the world at large, everything can be positively changed. We understand that as individuals & groups of individuals we can act as change agents in our own lives and the lives of others. We are ambitious and not afraid of the size of the goal or the necessary changes to reach it. We do not avoid pain or discomfort and instead build grit and resilience. Starting from an understanding of the self, we look for opportunities to improve, striving to excel and reach our full potential.
Cut Through The Bullshit
Radical Candor, transparency, and integrity. We are real and raw about ourselves and the realities of the world while addressing others with heartfelt emotion. We seek open and honest dialogue and feedback of our strengths and weaknesses. We impart only accurate information with genuine sincerity and avoid hiding or being artificial. We openly share our visions for the world even when faced with adversity.
Entrepreneur's Mindset
The ability to question something in the world and create something to answer that question is crucial. We foster an entrepreneurial mindset in all, whether they become entrepreneurs or not. We are here to make a positive difference in society, as well as make a profit.
Deeply Human
We act with the understanding that we are each dependent upon another and thus responsible for each other and future generations. The human animal was made to be in tribes. We want to foster a community that unites us as a human race and impacts us all positively. We act with care, consideration, and openness to others cultures, perspectives, and ideas. We use emotional intelligence to create deep, meaningful relationships. We understand human psychology, neuroscience, and motivations and seek to meet people where they are.
Only Execution Matters
Knowledge is only potential power. We focus on mastery on knowledge and skill acquisition in order to have utility in the world. One must apply the knowledge in order to make real change and progress forward. We are not concerned with how much you know, but rather that you get the results you seek in life.
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