I was asked to write a letter of recommendation for one of my peers as he is applying to graduate school at Northwestern University. I was surprised and honored by the request. I hope that posting this on my blog doesn’t offend the subject of this letter. But more importantly, I hope my contribution will help his cause. My letter:
Dear Sir or Madam:
I am writing this letter of recommendation on behalf of Jesse Young whom I have known both professionally and personally for the last eight years. Mr. Young is a remarkable and sensational candidate for a graduate degree at the Medill School at Northwestern University. In words slightly more biased but all the more meaningful, I believe that Mr. Young is unequivocally the quintessence of whom Medill University seeks in every imaginable capacity. He has a profound and professional understanding of programming while also maintaining a deeply rooted love for journalism. He has a very obvious respect and true appreciation for traditional media, but a recognizable fascination with using his skills to build applications that will seamlessly bridge the transition to new media.
I attended school with Mr. Young at the University of California, Berkeley. I pursued areas of interest in the liberal arts while he slaved away with Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences. The disparity between our educational path choices eventually became the driving force behind uniting us as partners in various projects and companies over the next 8 years.
We founded our first company together in our senior year of college called “The Heel Press” (www.heelpress.com). Mr. Young was the sole developer on the project and together we worked to build the company conceptually from the ground up. Our vision, which was eventually executed successfully, was to create an online space for creative writers to share their work with the world while also having the opportunity to network with and learn from other like-minded creatives.
As our user base was growing, so was the debate over the status of traditional print media. Was it dying? Was it already dead? Mr. Young made it his passion to be very much a part of that conversation. He became noticeably well versed on all layers of the argument and I became a first hand witness to the revelation of a skilled engineer trapped in a journalist’s body.
Jesse wanted to be the publisher of beautiful and original content. He wanted to connect talented people to other talented people. He wanted people to read incredible work. He wanted to inspire others to create incredible work. Mr. Young was able to accomplish all those things because he is a goal-oriented leader who approaches his vision with the perfect balance of passion and efficiency. It was a very meaningful journey and Mr. Young was an indispensable contributor to the development of a platform that enabled conversations across the globe.
Business models, ideas, concepts, visions, and projections, all of these, are susceptible to variability as time goes on and the landscape changes. However, I can say with greatest stroke of confidence that the leadership, discipline, organization, focus, and passion that Mr. Young brings to the table in the mission to be extraordinary has never changed and will likely never change. He possesses an unwavering devotion to his craft and his most outstanding talent above all others previously described is undoubtedly his hunger to create something remarkable and noteworthy to share with the world.
On a more personal level, Jesse and I have spent hours talking about Philip Roth’s American Pastoral or Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex. AnythingHaruki Murakami will keep us going for hours. We even had the pleasure of seeing Murakami speak in person (goosebumps flourishing from start to finish).
Jesse is impassioned and fascinated by the wondrous opportunities of HTML 5. But in the next breadth, one can only notice his fascination with the different business models used by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal as the debate continues in the newspaper industry.
Even to this day, one of my fondest memories with Jesse is attending a small talk by Paul Graham in a not so crowded UC Berkeley classroom as Graham shared his inspiring perspective on the world of startups.
I can say, Sir or Madam, with utmost sincerity and conviction that Jesse Young is the most notable programmer/journalist hybrid I know. He will be a wonderful addition to the Medill School at Northwestern University.
Sincerely,
His friend. His past business partner. His hopeful future business partner.
-Nick Miller
Posted at 10:01pm and tagged with: letter, nonfiction, thoughts,.
1,929 notes