Growing up, I was relentlessly encouraged to excel. From my first steps into the “academic realm” - if one can even grace first grade with such a title—I was conditioned to equate my worth with my report card. Being a naturally curious child, I succeeded, though likely less due to innate brilliance and more because of a deep-seated thirst for achievement.

My parents were the children of immigrants who had been stripped of their own educational opportunities. One grandparent survived the horrors of Auschwitz; the others endured similarly harrowing circumstances during the war. In their homes, education wasn’t a luxury—it was an impossibility. Consequently, my parents grew up with little academic guidance, eventually finding themselves in blue-collar roles that left them feeling financially precarious.

Determined to break this cycle, they enacted a domestic policy centered on academic excellence. “Study hard, so you won’t end up like us” was the recurring mantra that my sisters and I deeply internalized. The results were undeniable: I spent five years in the “real” academia, earning a Master’s in Computer Science, while my sister obtained her PhD in nutrition science and now heads her own clinic. Yet, in this pursuit of the “Gold Standard” of degrees, there was a glaring omission. Social pursuits and athletic achievements were treated as secondary-distractions lagging far behind the primary objective of a high GPA and a prestigious diploma.

Entering adulthood as an individual optimized for a singular objective revealed significant drawbacks, most notably a certain social inaptitude. While I may never have been a “social butterfly,” I’ve come to realize that professional success is rarely a solo performance. Looking around my field today, I see that the most accomplished scientists and SW developers aren’t always the ones with the highest IQ or the cleanest and most efficient code. Rather, they are the ones capable of forging cohesive groups from diverse, brilliant individuals and navigating them through complex challenges. Raw intelligence is merely a single piece of a much larger puzzle; interpersonal dexterity is often the more valuable asset.

This realization hovered in the periphery of my mind for years, only moving to the forefront when David Baker—the preeminent figure of my own scientific domain, protein design—was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024. Having followed his trajectory from a modest lab at the University of Washington to the helm of a massive institute that has spun out dozens of startups, I’ve watched him orchestrate one of the most prolific scientific ecosystems in the world. Within the Institute for Protein Design, a legion of PhD students, post-docs, and staff scientists are dismantling barriers that were considered pure science fiction only a decade ago. While David is undoubtedly a genius, his Nobel Prize is more than a tribute to his individual intellect; it is a profound testament to his ability to mentor, foster a community of brilliant minds, and manifest a collective vision through the power of human connection.

Now, as a parent in the age of AI, I find my perspective shifting. We are witnessing the total commoditization of knowledge—a process started by Google and accelerated to its logical conclusion by LLMs like OpenAI’s. In a world where intellectual expertise is available via a prompt, the “academic-only” incentive feels outdated. While my wife and I still value academic rigor, our emphasis has migrated. We now prioritize social involvement and emotional intelligence. Discussions around our dinner table often revolve around social dynamics and conflict resolution. I try to mentor them in these areas, even if I am still learning them myself. If the trajectory of AI continues, the most vital skill for the next generation won’t be the ability to store facts and even to solve technical problems, but the ability to lead. Building genuine human connections is the final frontier where AI still falters—and it is where the leaders of tomorrow will truly distinguish themselves.