"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
We have all got a version of this question and while some may have certainty, many do not. Learning from her own struggles in attempting to answer this question, 18-year-old Hannah Ahn created YCompass, a platform to help students make more informed decisions about their future.
It's not her first project to help students pave a smoother path beyond school as she is also the co-founder of Yakka.
We chat with Hannah about how she set up Yakka and YCompass and how students can find their own path without feeling the pressure of doing what parents or teachers think they should do.
The Top of the Class podcast is powered by Crimson Education. If you're aiming for top US, UK or European universities and want to learn about the application process and which unis would suit you best, Click here to request a free and private meeting with an Academic Advisor in your area.
Do you have a story you'd like to share with the world? We invite student listeners to fill in this form to be considered for the show. You can also contact the hosts on Twitter!
Host's Notes:
Hannah is a great example of working on a solution to a problem that millions of students around the world are facing. Her insights into the entrepreneurial side of what it takes to start an organisation and her student-to-student advice is well worth a listen!
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
We have all got a version of this question and while some may have certainty, many do not. Learning from her own struggles in attempting to answer this question, 18-year-old Hannah Ahn created YCompass, a platform to help students make more informed decisions about their future.
It's not her first project to help students pave a smoother path beyond school as she is also the co-founder of Yakka.
We chat with Hannah about how she set up Yakka and YCompass and how students can find their own path without feeling the pressure of doing what parents or teachers think they should do.
The Top of the Class podcast is powered by Crimson Education. If you're aiming for top US, UK or European universities and want to learn about the application process and which unis would suit you best, Click here to request a free and private meeting with an Academic Advisor in your area.
Do you have a story you'd like to share with the world? We invite student listeners to fill in this form to be considered for the show. You can also contact the hosts on Twitter!
Host's Notes:
Hannah is a great example of working on a solution to a problem that millions of students around the world are facing. Her insights into the entrepreneurial side of what it takes to start an organisation and her student-to-student advice is well worth a listen!
Hello, and welcome to the Top of the Class podcast. I'm your host Alex cork. And in this episode, I chat with Australian student Hannah Ahn. At 18 years of age, Hannah is the founder of y compass, a platform designed to help you make more informed decisions about the future. We chat all about the changing workforce, and the importance of being okay with not knowing what you want to do after high school. Let's chat with Hannah Ahn. Hannah, tell us a little bit about yourself, perhaps your age and where you are calling in from today.
Hannah Ahn:So I'm Hannah, I'm 18 years old, and I am calling in from Sydney, Australia. So I am a recent high school graduate. So I graduated last year. And I'm currently taking a gap year at the moment. So my gap year I've done a few things such as interned at a company called Canva. So they're a large startup company in Australia. And also I've started an email newsletter called YCompass, which is focused on getting young people to figure out more about what they're passionate about, and what kind of careers they want to pursue in the future, and how that achieves their own film it. So we provide things such as like job opportunities, and careers advice, and also information on new and upcoming industries that you can kind of get excited about and learn more about. During high school. I also started my own company cardiaca, which connected high school students to quality work experience opportunities, and I was also heavily involved in extracurriculars, such as being co captain and also doing a lot of different things in my community. Also going along with the challenges of being in final year of school. So yeah.
Podcast Host:Wow. Yeah. So it's been a busy last couple of years for you. That's awesome about the Canva internship. But I think we're we're really looking to talk about is your work in the career space, because I think for young students right now, people who are in year 9, 10, 11, 12, or that kind of 14 to 18 age range, I think a lot of people are a little bit stressed about what the future of employment looks like, particularly post COVID and online world. And I saw some documentaries recently, where a lot of arts students were, you know, stressing because they were thinking, Well, does the world really need art students at the moment? Yeah, it's quite a stressful time for a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons. But I think it's fantastic that someone who is I guess, the youth, right, an 18 year old, yeah, is feeling as though that they can have a say in that career space. Because so often in the careers conversation, it's usually teenagers taking advice from people who are significantly older, who have been there before and done that before. But now the world is changing so fast that even someone who is you know, 10 or 15 years older, may have had a very different experience in a career path than someone who is a teenager now. So can you talk to us a little bit about what made you get more heavily involved in the careers and decision making space? And why that's so important for teenagers to be really involved with?
Hannah Ahn:Yeah, for sure. Um, so I guess what kind of involved me in this space was really just my own kind of questioning and confusion on what I wanted to do. After high school, I felt that what I was like what I was learning during school, wasn't that relevant, and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with what I was being taught in classes. And so I kind of had this whole thought where I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do in the future. And I just kind of dove into going to a lot of events and figuring out and talking to a lot of people and trying to get advice from different places to figure it out and kind of set my own, I guess, compass. But what I wanted to do in the future. So me going to the entire experience, I felt that, like similar to what you've said before, Alex, just in terms of the whole frustration, where it's like a lot of this advice I'm getting from much older people who give me kind of things like, Oh, just do whatever you're passionate about, and all these kind of generic kind of pieces of advice, which may be helpful to some people, but also for me at that stage didn't really help me in my journey. So I felt that the current advice that was getting, particularly from places like careers advisors and websites on career weren't that helpful. And I thought we could do something better to actually get people a better careers, education, and also think more about their future. And the reason why I think that's just so important is because, well, it's kind of you spent 80,000 hours of your life working. You might as well make the most of it, do something you enjoy. And I felt that I also knew a lot of people who were in jobs that they weren't enjoying, they weren't getting a lot of fulfillment and I thought what can we do to change this?
Podcast Host:I really love how you reflected I guess and didn't take phas value the advice of do something you're passionate about because that is so often what teenagers are told. It's just me like just Follow your own path, just, you know, follow your heart and this kind of stuff. When you heard that kind of advice, what was your reaction to it? And how did you feel when people were telling you? Oh, hang out? Like, don't stress? Yeah, do something you love? Like, what was your emotional response to that?
Hannah Ahn:Um, I think for me, when I first got that advice, initially, it was kind of like, well, I don't know what that is, right? I haven't explored enough. I don't know what my passion is. And kind of, to some extent, was a bit disempowering in that all these people are telling me do something you're passionate about, but I didn't know. But this kind of Oh, my do this. I'm, like, I guess put on a pedestal I do have passion was for myself. And it was hard to kind of figure that out. And it just kind of led to even more confusion. So I think that kind of advice really empowered me. And I think a lot of people also when they hear that advice, it's quite confusing. It doesn't necessarily help them in any direction to what they want to do.
Podcast Host:Yeah, so it is empowering is I guess, not the way that you want high school students to feel when they're looking at their career path. So yeah, what are you trying to do with YCompass? What kind of advice are you providing in that newsletter that you think is different from the more generic Find your passion type of advice?
Hannah Ahn:Yeah. So I think, why can't this kind of an underlying theme or idea that we come up and try to push forward is that career fulfillment doesn't come from doing something you're passionate about, like, sure a lot of people do find passion, like, some kind of passion that they can pursue as a career. But for the vast majority of people, that's a bit hard to come by, and also even harder to get paid for. And so I think what we kind of tried to push forward is this idea that group filament comes from having high expertise in a field, and also being able to make an impact. So I guess without bias, we try to push that forward. And also, so that's through our careers advice newsletter, so we send out three different letters a week. And we also have our emerging industries kind of thing. So it's like, you also can't find your passion or things that you're interested in, if you're not exploring different things. So we try to educate, we try to inform people of like new and interesting problem spaces that are arising, that people should be paying attention to. And maybe hopefully, something will click, and they'll kind of deep dive into one of these areas. And then last of all, we also have our kind of job opportunities and opportunities that people can kind of find things that they're interested in and get employment and explore what type of work is like,
Podcast Host:One thing that I want to go back to what you said was, you didn't see what you were learning in school, and how that could be relevant to the careers that you might be interested in, in the future. And I think that disconnect is such a, you know, that's not just you, that's a lot of people. I remember sitting in math class being like, why are we learning this? And my math teacher? That's like, Where am I use this? I think it was like, you know, something to do with tangents, and circuito, or whatever it was,
Hannah Ahn:Yeah,
Podcast Host:It's like, well, if you want to be a maths teacher, you can use this, like it was so narrow, right? And it just didn't seem to have any relevance to the world or the interest that I particularly had. So what do you think students should be doing when they're at school and they might be good at subjects, but they still haven't found their passion. How important do you think it is to keep looking outside of that school bubble? and outside of the subjects per se, and more kind of real life applications of subject might have?
Hannah Ahn:I think your example with the whole math class, so real, they're just saying, you said like, I literally remember asking my teacher like, Why weren't learning Pythagoras theorem? And they're like, Oh, well, if you want to be an architect, blah, blah, blah. But to be frank, no one no class probably is studying architecture or anything, right? So I think in terms of your question, just like how people should go about finding, like, I guess, careers that they're interested in, I definitely think the outside of the classroom is your best bet. Of course, there are areas where maybe you're interested in biology, like what you're learning in biology is relevant during school. But most of the time, that's not necessarily the case. And I guess the reason why that is, is just because schools don't necessarily, at least from my experience, teach it in a way that shows relevance to what's happening in the now like, what's the newest tech, what's happening in the news and all this sort of stuff? So I think in terms of exploration, I think I'd really urge students to see what type of things on the internet engaged them and interest them, what type of areas, maybe in tech, or in policy or anything like that, because I guess, like you can find anything you would want to know, if you just do a quick Google search. And I think just like dive into your curiosity, right. So if you're interested in tech, what type of areas and tech other, which kind of, I guess, make you pay the most attention to and just like, start from there, like see if there are any events New Year, whether that be online and see if there are any experts that you can talk to in that space, or even just students that are studying that because like just reaching out and having the initiative to kind of explore outside of school is gonna put you in a better position to know more about the things that you're interested in and see, this is something I actually want to work in.
Podcast Host:Yeah, I think a lot of students get kind of trapped in that school bubble. And they see only what's around them in the classroom and what their classmates are interested in. And it can be quite limiting in some respects, where I've seen other students who have gone way beyond school and they don't even think of themselves as a student anymore. They say, Oh, I'm a researcher, like I chatted to one student on episode two, who was a medical researcher. She's 15. Yeah. And she's gone. She's like, yeah, I go to school. But first and foremost, I'm a medical researcher or an innovator. And so it's that kind of mindset. And that kind of mindset really pushes the boundaries of school. And it goes very, very far beyond that, which I think is a very good advice. And there's obviously some great communities online, whether that be on LinkedIn, or some other student communities where there are like 14 year olds looking at AI, and there are other students looking at machine learning. And I think a lot of students kind of think, Oh, that's a university thing, or that's like a professional career thing. Obviously, like you started a company, or you started yakka, when you're in year 10, was it?
Hannah Ahn:Ah, yes, so, round year 10 or 11.
Podcast Host:yes. So what was that experience? Like? Because that's, I guess, one of the things we're talking about, right, where you could have the idea, but just sit on the idea, because you think, Oh, well, I'm only in year 10. I'll wait until a couple years later, before I actually go out and make this a reality. But what made you kind of take that idea to reality when you were only 10.
Hannah Ahn:Um, so I guess what made me push that idea into reality is just kind of the realization that the barriers to starting something, having initiative or working on something you care about is a lot lower nowadays. And the reason being is just because if you have an idea whenever you can set up like a website for it, and probably like an hour, two hours, for free. And so I think I just had that realization, and also that, I guess, the thought that if I wanted to do something that I gained a lot of fulfillment out, or I cared about, no one else was gonna force that upon me. And I had to kind of make that happened myself, it's kind of like the idea that, like, no one is gonna really save me through this, and there's no teacher, there's no one who's gonna help me kind of go through this process on this, I have the initiative to start it. And like, that's just kind of, I think, something I've realized, like, it's just like eating off the university, no one is going to push you to do something that you really care about. So I think that's what made me involved. And also just like the idea of having a problem in the community that I really wanted to solve. Because if I didn't have the initiative, then no one else would also solve that problem. So I think that's kind of what urged me to start. Yeah. So yeah,
Podcast Host:Talk to me about that timeline between the idea and the website launch. So if you let's take Yakka for the example here, you're in year 10, which in Australia is the typical year where students go and do work experience, they go spend a week or so at a company doing filing or some other menial task, and hopefully they find a little bit, you know, they're working with a company where they're not just doing menial tasks. And I think that was the purpose of Yakka. Right, like to find purpose for meaningful work experience experiences. Is that the Yeah, premise? Right. And so it's obviously very relative to you or relevant to you just talk me through I guess, like, you've got the idea. What kind of research did you do? Who did you speak to? And what kind of decisions did you have to make before you were like, yep, this is something I really want to do, and actually no publish a website for.
Hannah Ahn:So I guess kind of the whole process was, when I was in year 10. I did work experience and I thought it was menial, I thought it was kind of crap. And I was just copying code the entire day, because I was at a software gaming kind of company. And so from that, I was like, well, this is like, really shit. So I kind of reached out to my friends and I started interviewing them. I was like, Hey, you did work experience? What did you think you didn't do at the expense? Why didn't you do it experience and I kind of did like a whole, I guess, problem diagnosis, see what was going on in the community, at least the student community at that moment. And then I also found someone who was really passionate about working on the problem as well. And so we kind of came together. And we're like, Okay, so this is problem, how can we go about solving it because we realize, like often talking to about 40 other students that they either found it really hard to find work experience, or the work experience they did. They were, like you said they were just filing papers, or they were buying coffee or something. And so what we did was, well, we kind of had the idea initially as like a student internship thing, rather than a work experience. But then we realized it was more about businesses like finding any value or finding ways to get value out of it. And that was only from reaching out to different companies and talking about their experiences as maybe like a CEO or an HR manager or whatever.
Podcast Host:Yeah, like people who have actually hosted work experience students before, which I have done as well. So I'm interested in your thought process of how you got the company's point of view as well. So talk to me a little bit more about that then how you went about Reaching out to them?
Hannah Ahn:Um, yeah, so I guess initially it was kind of I was talking to a lot of business owners that I knew personally as to why they didn't take work on work experience students. And I guess it was a lot of commonality in that. They found it hard to organize or when they did get work experience students over they weren't better not to do the students themselves or the businesses. And so it wasn't like a win win situation was more like just a flat out lose lose situation, right? Yeah. So we kind of was like, then I guess in terms of making my experience better, we need to provide some kind of framework that's like the conclusion Me and bhagavathy, my co founder came to. So after that, we kind of, I guess, brainstormed a lot of different models for how we can make work experience more meaningful for students, and also the employer. Because if the employees weren't getting any value of it, then they had no incentive to actually take on students. So that's kind of the whole process that we went about. And we kind of landed on this idea that in order to give students and businesses value, give a student like a problem, like a business problem for them to solve. That way, they're practicing some enterprise skills. So they're actually researching into the problem to try to devise a solution. And then they also get to pitch it back to I guess, maybe a board or the business of the last day of their work experience. So it's kind of just an intensive process for them to figure out and I guess, practice some entrepreneurial skills, in terms of how they can solve this business problem. And this is like, very applicable to when you're working as well. And at the end of it, we found that when we talked to a few employers, they got a lot of ideas. And they thought that the things that the students came up with were quite innovative and pretty interesting solutions. So yeah,
Podcast Host:okay, so it was creating that framework, what kind of framework does I mean, not to say you weren't a brilliant student already in your 10? But what kind of frameworks or ideas in terms of structuring work experience at a young Hana put together with egg about your name? Is that right? Yeah. And you put these frameworks together? Did you kind of bounce those ideas off anybody or like any other teachers get involved or career advisors potential?
Hannah Ahn:So I guess the main people that got involved in building our framework was, we actually tested a few before we landed on the thing that I just talked about, and we test it out what if like, a student shattered, like the CEO, or some team member in a business, and we actually test it out, we got some a student and a business to go through that process. And we realized at the end of it, we still had the problem where students business, they didn't really know what to do. And the student either just got bored throughout the entire week in the business was just like, well, now I just have this one student that I don't know. So we've tested out those models. And then we just kind of got some feedback and discussion with that business who went through that process. And realize, we need to find ways to facilitate the process more, give a bit more guidance, which is why we landed on the whole thing on giving a student a problem, a business problem to solve, and also trying to implement workshops in between the week. So how they can actually learn more about pitching or devising a solution to a problem and researching more of that problem. So yeah.
Podcast Host:Yeah, I think that's super relevant. And I think for our listeners around the world, if they don't have a structured where he experienced week, I think these lessons are still very applicable, particularly if they're looking to get, you know, whether it be a summer job or something like that, or a, you know, volunteer internship, whatever it might be within their high school experience. And that's like a highly sought after thing, right? You know, like as an extra curricular to be able to say that you spent a week or two weeks or whatever it might be, like a pretty legit company is like a big feather in your cap for a high school student. And I think one of the things that I experienced on my side, as someone who did have students come and work with me as it were, he experienced student number one, I always found that like, if a student knew about the company first, it was always a massive class, and you think that's a given, but some students rocked up and literally didn't know the first thing about what it is the company did or what Crimson did, yeah. And I was like, well, this is gonna be a long way, right? Whereas I had other kids come in, and we're like, bang, I've been following you guys on social media, like, I know exactly what you guys do. I know the areas that I think I can help you in. Like, yeah, let's chat, right. And then so in the first day or so, we were establishing you know, what this student or what value the student could provide within that first week, I guess, kind of we kind of came along to that idea as well. That's Yakkers framework, which is the student was asked to solve a business problem. And so like I had students work on, you know, what kind of presentation Do you think students would like to hear? I mean, you're that target market, right? 16, 17 year old who's about to go into university? We're talking about US, UK universities, and students like oh, yeah, well, I think students would really want to hear this, this and this. And I had students put together entire presentations and entire events that do really well. Right? Yeah, yeah. But it was like giving them I also think there's something to be said for companies who are looking to take on students for internships or for work experience, that you've got to give them some kind of legit responsibility. If they're just filing or coding or, you know, data entry, that kind of stuff, they're going to get bored. But if you like, involve them in some kind of level of responsibility, that certainly elevates the student's interest in what they're doing. And they're giving away like, oh, gosh, I feel like a staff member already. Right. You know, they really loved it, it was yes. And we ended up continuing some of those relationships ended up hiring one of the year 10s for like a six month period. So how did you get yakka? out to the public? And how did you roll it out to you know, schools and students and businesses.
Hannah Ahn:So kind of, I guess, initially, we tapped into our network in that we asked people who are now in school, to see if they'd be interested in the Work Experience Program. And then we also did a lot of social media and reached out via that kind of, as well as that we reached out to a lot of credit advisors. So we saw that we asked like, friends from other schools, if we could get in touch with their increase advisors. And so we have this whole kind of List of careers advisors that we could kind of reach out to about these, like experience opportunities. So I guess in terms of just finding our resources, finding, like the key people that would be able to kind of spread it spread that network effect in terms of sharing our business. Yeah.
Podcast Host:What about that experience and being involved in yakka, as that influenced what you're doing and why compass now, because you're continuing, you could have left the kind of that Korea space, obviously, like, you're still interested in how Korea is evolve, and how students come to that decision and their kind of transition from high school to university and beyond into employment. So how has that been a continuing journey for you, like is yakka, the first piece of that puzzle, and then it continues on or the two unrelated.
Unknown:So I definitely see it as kind of the first piece of the puzzle, just like a prototype in getting to learn more about this whole career space is going like taking a gap year, I still kept in touch with a lot of my friends in high school who have gone into university. And I've just definitely seen that the problem is so much like so prevalent, if not more in university. So I guess that's kind of what inspired me to keep pursuing this kind of like venture into the Christmas, just because I guess how I see it is that if people aren't doing things that they care about, or working in this space, I guess, we're kind of just seeing like a misallocation of, I guess, like you could call it resources or just like people not doing the things that I care about, we're just going to have like a massive effect on just economically. And they're like individually as well as people live in their own fulfillment and mental health. So I guess I kind of just explore more on like, how this problem is essentially becoming like bigger, particularly with COVID. And I guess that's what like, kept me going in terms of working in the creative space.
Podcast Host:What's been the initial response to YCompass?
Unknown:So I think the initial response has been pretty good in that. I think, what I found that a lot of people during high school, even though they have careers advisor and all that, and just from talking to some of my friends and people that have subscribed, that I don't actually know, they've been getting a lot of value from it in terms of getting advice that they've never heard before, or had been really helpful in terms of their career journey, whether that be through networking, or finding the things that they care about, and things that they want to work on. And that sort of stuff. And also just job opportunities and places that they can work.
Podcast Host:Do you think students put themselves under a lot of pressure, or they get pressure from external sources, whether they be parents or other friends or career advisors, those kind of people to make a decision, rather than to embrace, I guess, the indecision? Because I always find that students put themselves in a box or they point themselves in the direction just to say that they are, you know, that they do have direction. Yeah. And he kind of like gets people off their back. They're like, I'm gonna study medicine, you know, okay. Yeah, it's like, that's awesome. And internally, the kids like, I don't know why I'm saying this to people, but I'm just saying it right to kind of get people off my back. I think it's kind of like a very cultural thing more broadly. But is that something that you tried address in, in YCompass at all? Or is that something that you've found is an issue that people I guess, are worried about embracing the indecision?
Hannah Ahn:So I guess, as of yet, in our newsletters, we haven't like, immediately addressed that kind of point. It is something that I definitely realized. In fact, I wrote like an entire blog post about it on my own personal website. And just like the whole idea that I think the whole question of like, what do you want to do in the future? What do you want to do when you grow up? I think it's a completely relevant and in my opinion, like, I guess, this empowering question as well, in that, I do definitely agree that people do feel this rush, oh, I gotta find a job or find some kind of work by the age of like 18 or 21, or some arbitrary number. Whereas that's not necessarily the case. And I think it's something that I definitely want to address in the future with like, on this, it's just that like, sitting in that uncertainty, can actually be quite serendipitous, in that you get to explore more, and you're not necessarily trapped by this one idea that you decided you wanted to be when you're 16 or something.
Podcast Host:Yeah, I think that's a very, very important point. For students who are getting that question, and who do feel that pressure to make a decision? What advice would you give them?
Hannah Ahn:Yeah, kind of what I would advise them is that you don't have to feel this pressure to specialize or pick your major or your degree at your current age. because realistically, you probably haven't explored a lot of the different things out there that you might be more interested in, or that piques your curiosity. So I think what I'd recommend them to do is kind of think of, I guess, the next five or 10 years, just like a period to explore, become a generalist, like figure out the different things that are available that interests you learn more about them? What are the fields that you can learn in those fields? And what are the things that just generally you want to spend time on? and spend time on those things, right? And don't feel this need to have to specialize? And just like deep dive into this one thing for the rest of your life? Because you're probably not going to enjoy that.
Podcast Host:And what advice would you give to parents? I think this is like an A very important part of this conversation is Yeah, parents are often saying, hey, you're going to become a, or what are you going to be done, they're either like pre determining what their child's going to do. Yeah. Or they are strongly encouraging their child to pick a path. And I feel like parents kind of give themselves a bit of a gold star once their child has chosen a path. And until, right, the parents feel this pressure, sometimes just as much as the child, which I think is wrong, you know, I think I think parents shouldn't feel that pressure and shouldn't put that pressure or hand that burden over to their child to make a decision. You know, I think parents would love to say, Oh, my child studying law, my child studying medicine, like they love to have that kind of kudos moment among their friends as well. Right. And I think that kind of continues the cycle of this pressure. So what role can parents play to help their child to really be okay, with the opportunities that come with having no decision as yet?
Hannah Ahn:Yeah, I can definitely feel you in terms of like, the whole parent thing, just like, on my own hands. And just like a lot of my own friends, as well. So kind of what I'd say and like, this is my one like, fluffy piece of advice I have, like, another piece of advice is like, I really just trust the process. I know, it's quite ambiguous, and things are unclear and uncertain for your child and for yourself. But really, just like trust that your child will be able to kind of explore and get into something that they care about, or something that, I guess provides them with, like, financial stability, or these sort of things. Um, I guess the other thing I would say is for parents, really just like the whole economy, and the whole world is really just changing. I think, in the next, like 1020 years, we're really going to see is that, like, we're shifting to like a, like, a greater economy and be like, there's going to be great advancements in tech and all that. So I think it's like giving your child the option of not necessarily like funneling them into, say, engineering, law or medicine, because I think there's like the top three, yes, um, like, in the future, we're going to see a lot of occupations that have never existed before. Yeah. And if you give your child the opportunity to explore these different things, you might actually come to a better outcome than these traditional pathways. In fact, it could be said that these traditional pathways, even things like accounting, are going to become more and more obsolete in the future. So it's just keeping those kind of changes in the future in mind.
Podcast Host:What did your parents want you to do?
Hannah Ahn:I just remember probably when I was eight, sitting around the dinner table, or whatever, we had to do show and tell and I was I Oh, come on firefighter, like, so cool. That was just because across the street, it was like a fire station. But my mom was like, No, don't do that. Hannah, you should totally become a lawyer. And I was like, oh, what's the lawyer and they're like, Oh, well, they help people and like, that's kind of the way that she sold it to me. And so for the next few years, I was just kind of set on this path. I'm going to do well. And I guess just kind of learning more about the other things that I was interested like, I started doing programming I started doing all this other stuff like design. I was like, Look, praying for me.
Podcast Host:Yeah, no, that's so what what is for you now? Have you chosen? Or have you? Like, where are you at in your own kind of decision making process for your career? not putting any pressure on you? Of course, yeah, you have to have an idea. Yeah, I think I always say to students, it's better to leave more doors open then to close doors off. But has your decision making process going, you're on a gap year, you've spent some time in Canva? You've started up two different organizations yakka. And why campus? So there's a lot of different strings to your bow at the moment, like you've done some really cool stuff, and you have some great skills and expertise. And where do you think that leads you personally?
Hannah Ahn:Yeah, um, so I guess where I see myself in the future is I just constantly want to be a creator, whether that be content, so through this newsletter, and potentially want to kind of evolve it into video, and potentially podcasting as well. And just like a lot of different formats. So I constantly want to be experimenting with that. So that's one part of me, like I just constantly want to be creating, I think as well as I want to keep my focus with design and project management and working with a team and potentially coding, as I'm learning that at the moment, they're trying to become more technical. And so I see myself potentially like building a startup or company, it could be in the creative space, also very interested in education and environment. And more recently, just because I've been on my gap year, I've just been doing a lot more research into things like AI. So I think that's kind of just the what I'm interested in, moving forward in the future. I think at the moment, though, it's more about seeing if I can go to campus and seeing where that takes me as a creator and potentially doubted the future.
Podcast Host:Who's your student community at this point? I mean, you're you're doing a gap year. And I know that some people do and some people don't. But I'm guessing most of your friends from high school have already started uni. So what kind of community Do you have around you right now? I mean, they say that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with? Yeah, and you're a creator? Are you around other people who are doing similar things kind of like investigating AI or creating cool content and doing all these kinds of different fun, awesome things?
Hannah Ahn:I think this is great question, because I think just for anyone, like totally agree that you are the sum of i guess the five people around you. And I have been trying to reach out to a lot of people that are interested in this space, what they've been working on education, or AI or tech projects in general. So I guess I like to keep those kind of people in my community. And I've, while I've had friends from high school, I still, of course, keep in touch with them. I've been trying to explore like, reach out to people on LinkedIn and try to grow my community in those spaces.
Podcast Host:Yeah, I know, there's a LinkedIn is a rich source of students. If I think if people have been listening to my other episodes, this comes up fairly often, actually, where young people are on LinkedIn, is that the best way that students get in contact with you is through LinkedIn.
Hannah Ahn:Ah, yeah, for sure. So LinkedIn, also, Hammond has a website, you can reach me on my personal email as well. So yeah, we'll be in the show notes. And if students want to sign up to y campus, how do they do that? Yep. So to sign up to like compass, you just need to go to y compass.io. And there'll be an email sign up from there. And then we'll be sending three emails a week.
Podcast Host:Great. And what what should they expect to learn as a result of those three emails?
Unknown:So I guess what you should expect is we'll be sending curated careers advice, so the best career advice that we can find on the web, just so you can learn more about how to find things that you're passionate about, and also advance your own career. And also, we'll be sending through Friday, find sir, our job opportunities, internship opportunities, and different events and interesting things that you should kind of be kept in the loop about. And we'll also be sharing our whole industry is making waves segment, which is new and upcoming things in tech problem areas that you can kind of explore and learn more about, and see if that's potentially a career area for you.
Podcast Host:Well, maybe this podcast episode will even make it into one of the YCompass newsletters. It's been awesome to chat and I think it's really interesting to explore. And I think it's so relevant to so many students who do feel that kind of deep uncertainty with what their future looks like that there's a lot of different opportunities out there that are waiting for students, so it's best to kind of keep your eyes and options open as well. But it's been awesome having you on the show, Hannah, thank you so much for joining, and I'm sure students would love to connect with you on LinkedIn, and the y campus newsletter as well.
Hannah Ahn:Yeah, thanks for having me, Alex, that was really nice chatting about this and I hope people find a bit more serendipity, I guess, in their whole careers journey, I guess.