Loophole No. 1
For my Bachelor’s degree at KIT Karlsruhe, the curriculum was set for the first three semesters. After that, you could pick whatever you wanted within a certain structure.
Of these basic studies, the 3rd semester was the toughest. We had seven exams to pass:
- Business Administration and Management Science C
- Foundations of Informatics II (which covered a lot of complex stuff, like Turing machines, etc.)
- Introduction to Operations Research I, II (which covered two semesters in one exam)
- Electrical Engineering I (which I have no clue of till this day)
- Introduction to Engineering Mechanics I: Statics and Strength of Materials
- Mathematics III (which was my cut-off point for math with Fourier transformations etc.)
- Statistics II (which was another cut-off point for math with crazy induction theorems)
Worse yet, stats was scheduled for a Saturday, informatics the Monday after, and so on. I could see shit hitting the fan from a mile away, and so when the semester started, I checked something:
Do you have to take all these exams in order?
The answer from the student council was no, you don’t. So instead of walking straight into an open fire, I switched my schedule around. I pushed out informatics, statistics and put maths on a slightly later date and instead added:
- Knowledge Management
- Automotive Engineering I
That was the first time I took a real loophole in my career. As a result, I passed all six of my initial exams, and then took math a month later. However, I failed that one. Which brings me to…
Loophole No. 2
After failing the tough math exam and getting cold feet when stats rolled around a month later, I was left with the two toughest exams of the degree when I went abroad to the US in the fall of 2012.
I was enrolled at the engineering department and once I saw UMASSD had classes in maths and stats covering similar topics, I asked myself:
Do you have to take these exams at KIT?
I wrote an email to my math professor and he said I could replace his math exam with two classes from UMASS. Same for the stats one. Woop woop!
So instead of racking my brain with horrible equations, I learned some really practical stuff, because in one class, we used Excel a lot…
…and in another we had to make an accompanying blog.
Thanks to this loophole, I outsourced the toughest part of my degree and was exposed to what would later become my tools of the trade for the first time.
In that class I also first heard about The 4-Hour Workweek and The Lean Startup.
Once you first learn such things are possible, it’s hard to turn back. In the years after coming back, I have:
- Split my thesis into two parts, so I could take an awesome internship.
- Taken a one-year break between degrees to start working, which turned into two years.
- Hacked every exam, assignment and class since starting my Master’s.
It feels a little like getting the loophole upgrade in Lego Racers a lot.
Now you might say: Wait a minute, those won’t work for everyone! To that I say:
You’re exactly right.
One of the most fascinating traits of Steve Jobs, described by his team, was jokingly called his reality distortion field, or RDF for short. Bud Tribble, part of Steve’s Macintosh team, originally borrowed the term from Star Trek.
It was a running gag, but it just might have been his most important skill.
Once Steve decided that something should happen, he would bend reality to his will until it came true.
This even extended to everyone around him. His RDF is how he could inspire a sleepless team of engineers to work another 10 hours on Macintosh fonts, because it would be the greatest computer in the world.
I think that’s the biggest thing you should know about loopholes in life. You don’t have to look for them. You can create them. Make your own.
And here’s the best thing: You never know where they take you. Who knows? You might end up in wonderland.
Warp speed ahead!
