[nluken]

While I'm sure the author enjoyed their experience, she doesn't really explain why we should prefer "speedrunning" to the traditional timeline. It gets you into the workforce earlier? She never even makes clear that she accomplished the second goal she lays out at the beginning of the piece. Nothing about her optimization-dictated academic path indicates a particularly "illegible" or "unusual" life. To me, it actually slots in quite nicely with the now widely emergent hustle culture.

Notably, she doesn't discuss other people or social interaction at all minus couchsurfing "random internet friends" (a telling description of people you're ostensibly close with). What makes "travel" and "adventures" better than, say, living in a tight knit community for a few years, making very close friends by virtue of repeated, consistent interaction? I probably could have compressed my schooling as well, but I developed as much as a person academically during that time in my life because I made friends with people who were different than me, and had different life goals, which changed my perspective significantly.

I would also note that it's probably too early for her to actually assess in full what she's gained from the experience. She was in undergrad at UVA in the fall of 2022, which would make her at most 22 and only one year out of school assuming a normal two semester academic calendar.