​Saahil Marfatia works as a sports research analyst specializing in AI analytics for sports teams and events. This makes perfect sense given Saahil’s lifelong love of football. But it’s Saahil’s next move that I’m most excited about, applying his skills in analytics outside the world of sports toward something brand new – politics. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
 
When you were 17, what did you want to be?
 
I always loved football. It was my favorite sport and I played a little bit of it in high school and middle school. But then I injured my knee, so that was it for playing. But I always wanted to go into sports when I grew up, which is why I started looking at coaching football. Sports was my number one thing. There wasn't a question in my mind.
 
It's interesting because growing up in an Indian family, there's a general sentiment that you need to work in either the medicine field or the engineering field. So when I said that I wanted to work in sports, they thought, "Oh he's just being a kid." And then I kept saying it through high school, and then I started telling them I was looking at sports management schools, and that's when they realized, "Oh my God, he's actually going to do this." So they tried to talk me out of it. But I was pretty dead set on doing it.
 
How did you decide to attend University of Colorado, Boulder?
 
I wanted to go to Oregon because they had a big sports management program and that's where Nike was founded. But my family was very STEM-focused, like I was saying before, and they convinced me that I should go to a school with more options which made sense. So in the end, I chose Colorado. It was interesting because it was the first time I was living by myself, so that was an adjustment for sure. The good thing was, I was getting challenged academically, which I loved. But the bad thing was, I didn't adjust to it well. The first year, my GPA was 1.6.
 
But I got past it. I got to be a volunteer football coach for the local high school in Boulder. It was fun to coach students, especially because they have to listen to you, which was amazing. The first year, we went six and six. The second year, we went undefeated and then lost in the championship game. So that was really fun.
 
How did you choose your major?
 
I originally went into economics because I thought it'd be a good transition to sports business. But economics was the wrong field. When I first learned economics, my sister taught me. She was very good at relating it to sports, and I got to learn economics through a sports prism. So I thought I loved economics when it was really just the prism I loved. Economics wasn't a field that I ended up enjoying.
 
I needed to choose a major, so I decided to look for something that comes more naturally to me. I thought about it, and I realized, "I love writing. I write all the time. That's my number one hobby.” So I switched to English literature my last couple of years and I did way better. I ended up with a 3.5 GPA, so that was a much better decision for me.
 
How did you get from college to where you are now?
 
I took an internship in New York City first. I had visited New York when I was a kid and I had always wanted to live there. I like cities where you can walk around and just kind of get lost. And I feel like it's easier to meet people, if that makes sense.
 
I worked for a sports memorabilia company there, and that was my first “this is not what you think it is” moment. I found out that they were faking autographs. And they told me one time to go buy a jersey at the store and then said it was a player worn jersey. So that was a moral quandary moment, and I left that internship two months later.
 
Then I moved to a job at a soccer academy. The European system is very different than the American system. They take their development of young athletes a lot more seriously. They time their practices to the tee, and they have set curriculums like it's a class. So that's what we did for American kids. I kind of took that job because I was just so desperate to get out of that other situation. But I ended up not enjoying it because a lot of it was customer service, and I realized that I’m not really a client person.
 
I ended up doing that for about two years, and then I needed to change something. I was sitting at this job, Monday to Saturday, averaging about 60 hours per week and just not making the money that I wanted to. At that time, my sister was working in analytics, and I'd call her from New York and I’d be three hours ahead of her but she would already be done with work. So I thought, “Maybe I need to look into this.”
 
I started teaching myself analytics and coding. I would work all day and then come home and do Coursera. And then on top of that, I decided to try to get into graduate school, so I started practicing for the GMAT. It was brutal because it was basically all day. I didn't go out, I just studied and worked.
 
In May of 2016, I got accepted into University of Central Florida’s dual degree MBA and sports program. I wasn't totally sure about UCF because a huge part of the program was focused on giving back to people and working with charities. My mindset was that I just wanted to study and get a good degree and I didn't want to do extra work.
 
We had an orientation and they took us to New Orleans to help rebuild houses in the Lower Ninth Ward because they still didn’t have houses after all those years. They took us on a tour and told us that they had just gotten their first grocery store last year. Before that, people had to walk on the side of a highway to get fresh groceries. And we listened to this guy tell a story about how he had his family up on the roof because the flooding had gotten all the way up into their house, and he had to sacrifice one of his family members to save the other six because the weight couldn't hold them all.
 
We were all kind of stunned by this story. And I noticed this plaque outside that read, "We want our country to love us as much as we love our country." After reading that and seeing all of that, I thought, "I don't think I want to do sports anymore."
 
So I changed my mindset at that point. I still ended up getting my MBA, but at the end of it I was thinking, “Instead of going for a sports job, maybe I should go for a political job." I still ended up getting a sports job because that was a condition of the MBA program, so that’s the company I'm currently working with doing sports analytics and marketing. But at the end of this year, I want to transition into politics.
 
Currently, what I do is look at social media. Anytime a sports event happens, everyone has a reaction on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. So I collect all their data, all the comments, and then I classify things. People generally liked this and this is what they liked about it. And people generally didn't like this, and this is what they didn't like about it, using specifically their words. Then I inform the client – the team, the organization - what they did and didn’t like.
 
And that's what I want to do in politics to help candidates or campaigns. The way I look at it is, polling is way off right now. I feel like if you're able to get through the muck of the bots, social media is the perfect way to actually gauge what people think. And you can tell how much people care because they tweet about it more. So you can tell how they’re going to vote most likely.
 
Looking back, what seems clear to you now?
 
I read this article about the role of automation in the future. They said if you go back to 1500, you have horses, no cars, and people use ships for their travel, no planes. If you go back to 1300, there are some differences, but not that big. That's 200 years but it’s not that different. But if you look at where we are right now -iPhones, laptops – and then go back 200 years from now, that’s such a big difference.
 
The reason for that is that technology is not progressing linearly, it's progressing exponentially. So it keeps getting faster and faster the more we innovate. What people don't realize is, if you take that concept and apply it to automation, it's not coming. It's here now. So as time progresses, the jobs that you think are quality jobs aren't going to be 30 or 40 years from now. And it's progressing at a rate that we'll never be able to predict because it’s exponential.
 
I feel like people are thinking, "I need to be employed," when they actually should be thinking, "Where am I going to be needed?” I would recommend getting some STEM education, like physics and computer science not because you should go into those fields, but so that you know what can be replicated and you understand those concepts.
 
I wish I had realized that there's a difference between having a job and having a quality job. If you look at countries in Scandinavia, there's this idea that there should be a balance between work and social life. I feel like most jobs in America don't have a concept of that unless you're in a field that's highly valued. Then they find a way to make it balanced. So I was always looking for a job, but I wasn't looking for a quality job, a job that was highly valued. And I wish I had thought about that when I was applying for jobs, because it would have made my path a lot easier. But then the path that I took made me who I am.

Molly Vita is a modern-age travel agent, creating custom itineraries and helping people travel like locals with the start-up Journy. But it's taken a few turns for Molly to find her way to a career that would allow her to do the thing she loves most: travel. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

When you were 17, what did you want to be?
 
I feel like I've changed my mind thousands of times. At one point, I wanted to be a physical therapist to help dancers and athletes. Then I thought I wanted to own my own dance studio. But when I was starting to apply for college, narrowing down majors, what I wanted to do was be a psychologist, specifically to help dancers struggling with eating disorders.
 
I started dancing when I was four years old. My mom threw me into class, just for something to do after school with my friends. But it wasn't until I started student teaching when I was 12 that I really, really fell in love with it. Being able to be that role model for younger dancers and have them look up to me was far more meaningful than any performance on stage, and that's when I realized that I wanted to make a future with it.
 
I started upping my own classes because the more styles that I took, the more styles I could teach. And I just wanted to be teaching as much as possible. My favorites were jazz, ballet, and lyrical. I didn’t really do tap or hip-hop, but I learned the basics so I could teach them. And I did acro for a little bit, which was a joke because I was not flexible enough to be an acrobat. So a little bit of everything.
 
Then, when I was 16, I developed an eating disorder. A lot of it probably had to do with the pressure I was putting on myself in dance. I was also running for my school’s track and cross-country teams. When I was going through treatment, I thought it was going to be something that I would carry with me forever, I thought there was no end in sight. So I wanted to be able to help others that were facing the same issues because I knew how it felt. I thought that I could help myself and others all at once if I went into psychology. And I've always been a people person, so it just seemed to make sense.
 
How did you decide to attend Florida Southern College?
 
My whole plan always was to get as far away from home as possible. My parents said that for my freshman year, I could either go to a state school or a community college, and if I went to a community college then I could transfer to a school in Florida or California, somewhere far. So I thought, "I'm going to do whatever it takes to get somewhere where there’s sun." So I went to community college for the first two years.  
 
I studied abroad in Italy for the summer, and the biggest tip I could give anyone is to study abroad in community college. The entire summer program cost community college prices, which was a game-changer. So I always tell people to look into that when considering community college.
​
After two years, I was debating between transferring to Florida Southern College or the University of Florida, two very different schools. I thought I wanted the traditional college experience that you see in the movies, but I realized that coming from a small town and a small community college, I'd rather be a big fish in a small pond. And I'm so grateful I did that, because I feel like I would have gotten lost in the shuffle at University of Florida.
 
You hear about how great networking is at the big schools, but you don't realize that the small schools, in my opinion, have better networking opportunities post-grad because everyone knows everyone. I still keep in touch will all my professors, and they're really looking to help you. Florida Southern also had a study abroad guarantee built into your tuition, and I knew I wanted to keep traveling as much as possible.
 
How did you choose your major?
 
I started out as a psychology major, but when I took my first psychology course in school, I wasn't in love with it. But I wasn't ready to close that door because that was the grand plan. When I studied abroad in Italy that year, I saw how traveling really allowed me to feel free for the first time in five years. So I realized - I already knew - I didn't like psychology and I didn't want to go through with it, that there were other ways to help myself and others without going down that path.
 
So I started thinking about what majors I was interested in that would allow me to travel. While I was studying abroad, I took an intercultural communication course, international marketing, and international business, so I decided to go more in that direction. When it came time to declare my major, I went into advertising and public relations, because I figured those were two things that I would be able to use no matter what field I ended up in and would allow me to travel and hopefully make my way back to Italy.
 
How did you get from college to where you are now?
 
While I was studying at Florida Southern, one of my professors came across an internship in New York City doing public relations for a professional dance company. Again, because it’s a small school, the professors fully know you, and this professor came to me because he knew that I was a dancer and a PR major and I was from New York and was looking to go back to New York after graduation. How incredible is that?
 
So I went up to New York and did this spring internship and spent a semester in New York City, my last semester of college. And while I was there, I applied for a job at CBS and somehow managed to get the job without knowing anyone.
 
I started as an advertising sales assistant, and even though it wasn't something that I was necessarily looking to do, I felt like I couldn't turn down a job with CBS. So I got into the office nine-to-five New York City lifestyle. I learned so much, and it was a great foundation for my professional career, and it obviously looked good on my resume. But after a while, I started to realize that sales wasn't something that I really wanted to do and I didn't like the lifestyle of it.
 
People think I'm crazy, but my life was working nine to five, then going to a Yankees game with clients and then going to a Boyz II Men concert, doing pretty much anything the clients wanted to do. At first, it was a lot of fun, but after a while it just became tiring. As someone with an eating disorder who cares a lot about health and wellness, it just started to feel unhealthy. And I wanted to travel the world, but I didn't have very many vacation days.  It just didn't make sense, as great an opportunity as it was.
 
Once I realized that it wasn't good for my physical and mental health, I wanted to figure out another route. One of my clients was opening a dance studio in my hometown on Long Island. I really needed to take care of my body, so I took a job with them. I was only planning on staying there for a couple of months, but almost a year and a half later, I was still working there. I really loved the culture and being surrounded by people with the same health and wellness mindset, and I felt like I was finally helping people that struggled with eating disorders and things like that.
 
But then I realized that I was still letting my eating disorder define me. I had always felt like I needed to find a way to make that my professional life, but really it's just something I went through. My life didn’t need to revolve around that. And the thing that had become really important to me was traveling. But everyone likes to travel, so I never thought that could be something that actually represents who I am.
 
I had been talking about being a digital nomad and traveling full time since I graduated college, and I thought, “What is holding me back?” So I started applying for only remote jobs and looking into visas. I started looking for jobs in September, by December I had a remote job, and by February I was traveling and working remotely. And here we are.
 
Now I'm working in the operations department for a travel start up called Journy. Journy is like the modern-age travel agent; you go on the website or the app and tell us where you're going, when you're going, who you're going with, kind of like a personality quiz. Then they send those answers to a trip expert like me, and I create a really customized, immersive itinerary for you. We try to make it more about really experiencing the city rather than just seeing the top tourist attractions.
 
The main part of my job is building itineraries, but I also help create destination guides and things like that for social media. They allow us to work remotely which is great and they give us a travel stipend to help with expenses and we get to utilize all the tour companies our clients use. I love my job because I'm able to help other people travel deeply instead of being tourists.
 
Looking back, what seems clear to you now?
 
My grandma said to me almost daily when I was growing up that everything happens for a reason. She was very religious and I think she meant it in a God's plan kind of way, but what I've realized over time is that, as always, she's right. I'm constantly trying to plan everything out, but if there's one thing I've learned, it’s that you can't.
 
Being a digital nomad, I feel like the best part about traveling is just coming across experiences, people, places that will totally change your plans. And that is kind of the beauty of it, so I'm trying to let myself go with the flow a little more. I want to go into this and just see where it takes me. And in the worst-case scenario, it's a learning and growing experience.
 
And I'm going to sound annoying when I say this, but really listen to your parents. I feel like everything my parents told me when I was 17, I just wanted to do the opposite, but take what they have to say and be open-minded.

​Long-time readers of this blog will know that I periodically work remotely so I can combine my work as a college counselor with my love of being in faraway places. Currently, I’m spending time in Sicily, eating pistachio gelato and  revising essays in the middle of an 18th century library. One of my favorite parts of working while traveling is meeting other digital nomads, many of whom spend the entire year abroad.
 
When I first started traveling and working remotely, I assumed that all the people I would meet would work as computer programmers. But I quickly learned that remote working is truly the next wave, and a wide range of jobs can be done from a distance. It also became clear to me that the digital nomad community frequently overlaps with the gig economy.  
 
The “gig economy” refers to the increase in people working either part-time or as freelancers. Last year, the Department of Labor estimated that 35% of US workers are independent contractors and that number is only expected to go up.
 
Like most things, the gig economy has positives and negatives. Proponents of this type of working point to the freedom and flexibility they have. They set their own hours and only take on projects that they choose. Satisfied gig workers claim that this flexibility allows them to more carefully cultivate a brand and do work that really matters to them.
 
But there are also downsides. Many gig workers do hourly and piecemeal jobs like driving for Lyft and Uber or shopping for groceries for Instacart. Critics say that these kinds of jobs rarely provide adequate compensation and move the burden of financial risk onto the individual workers rather than on the large corporation. And independent contractors generally don’t receive health insurance or retirement benefits, making it difficult for them to save money plan for the future.
 
Many experts believe the gig economy is here to stay, for better or worse. Fortunately, the way to thrive in a gig economy is not that different from the way to thrive professionally in general. Successful and happy freelancers point to a need for flexibility in both their types of work and in their roles on a given project. They also emphasize the value of finding work you feel enthusiastic about, whether for the creative satisfaction you get from it or for the lifestyle that work enables you to have. The only certainty is that the way we work will continue to change, and the best way to prepare for that is to stay engaged and adaptable. 

​Because I live in the Bay Area, near Silicon Valley, a lot of the students I work with have dreams of becoming entrepreneurs. Even if they don’t have a specific idea for a business they want to start, they know exactly what this career path will look like. Influenced by the Mark Zuckerbergs and Steve Jobses of the tech world, they picture themselves as wildly successful 20-somethings, working crazy hours and rolling in VC funding. The co-founder might change, the product might change, the hip and cool neighborhood where you’ll buy your first house might change, but one thing stays the same: your youth. There’s just something about massive success at such a young age that feels more impressive.
 
But there’s nothing about success that requires youth. In fact, inexperience might even work against you in some cases (ahem, Elizabeth Holmes). And the idea that you should give up if you haven’t found success by a certain point, is a little shortsighted. The premise of this blog is that it’s totally okay to not know exactly what you want to do with your life by the time you graduate high school; the other side of that coin is that not all success comes right away.
 
To illustrate that point, I looked up a few stories of people who found success in the second or even third act of their lives. The first story that caught my attention was about Peter Mark Roget, probably an unfamiliar name until you pair it with the word “thesaurus.” Roget’s Thesaurus was a staple of college student bookshelves before the internet, and it is the product of a hobby turned late-in-life career. Roget struggled with depression throughout his life and, as a way of managing his depression, liked to make lists. In particular, he liked to make and organize lists of words. After retiring at age 61 from his first career as a doctor, he devoted the last 30 years of his life to this thesaurus. Roget’s thesaurus was first published in 1852 when he was 73 years old, and it has been continuously in print ever since.
 
Another story that I was more familiar with is Martha Stewart’s evolution into the business mogul she is today. Stewart dabbled in modeling while in college and then spent some time working on Wall Street before starting her own catering business. When her husband’s company hired her to cater one of their events, she met the head of a publishing group who suggested that Martha write a cookbook. That first book, Entertaining, launched Stewart’s career, eventually growing into a magazine, a television show, and her own housewares line. Today, the name Martha Stewart is synonymous with high quality and good taste, but none of that happened until Stewart was in her 40s.  
 
Both Stewart and Roget found sensational success in the second half of their lives. That doesn’t mean that they weren’t doing anything before that - they had jobs and they were good at them. But the thing that would make them internationally celebrated took a little longer to develop. For both of them, their success was a product of the years they had each spent developing their skills and knowledge in that field. And it was only after that period of development that they were able to achieve such success.
 
As a culture, we tend to highlight the prodigies more than the diligent craftsmen, the hares instead of the tortoises. But there are people who find success in every decade of life. Ultimately, it’s not about when you succeed or even whether you receive acclaim at all. The important thing is that you do the work you care about as well as you can. The one thing that wunderkinds and late bloomers (and middle-bloomers for that matter) have in common is that they work hard to produce something extraordinary, which is something everyone can do.