Professors of the Jungle

Phil Knight is the founder of Nike 👟

Words from his excellent book, Shoe Dog…

It’s always a happy occasion to be walking a campus, but also bracing, because while I find students today much smarter and more competent than in my time, I also find them far more pessimistic. Occasionally they ask in dismay: “Where is the U.S. going? Where is the world going?” Or: “Where are the new entrepreneurs?” Or: “Are we doomed as a society to a worse future for our children?” 

I tell them about the devastated Japan I saw in 1962. I tell them about the rubble and ruins that somehow gave birth to wise men like Hayami and Ito and Sumeragi. I tell them about the untapped resources, natural and human, that the world has at its disposal, the abundant ways and means to solve its many crises. All we have to do, I tell the students, is work and study, study and work, hard as we can. 

Put another way: We must all be professors of the jungle.

Think of “the jungle” as whatever mess you’re going through. It’s a tough place to exist, but there are always untapped resources there at your disposal.

Work and study, and keep your eyes peeled for those opportunities 👀

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