Something I care a lot about is surrounding myself with good people. That's easy to say because it's a cliché. This doesn't mean it's a bad thing but it does means I need to be intentional and specific about who I spend my time with. People is something that heavily sways many of my decisions: where I go to school. who I hang out with, who I look to for guidance. It's something that is worth putting significant thought and reflection into.
My view on what makes folks impressive has changed a lot over just the past eight or nine months. In fall quarter at Stanford, I was initially dismayed at the apparently "unimpressive" pool of peers that surrounded me. They seemed to be no more than ordinary high-schoolers, a far cry from the world class builders and thinkers I had expected. In hindsight, this was a flawed judgement for a couple reasons.
One, I had only encountered a small sample size. Less than 200 freshman were on campus at the time - roughly 10% of the incoming class of 2020. Second, I was judging people based on their previous achievements as goals. While this is certainly an indicator of impressiveness, it's not the most important one. The most exceptional people have a high rate of growth which means consistent, incremental improvement over time.
I was looking at the y-intercept instead of slope. You want to surround yourself with high delta people. Y-intercept is often influenced by a variety of factors. Slope is normally driven by the person themselves.
Instead of selecting for people who looked impressive on paper, it much more valuable to spend time with people who are introspective and curious. These types of people tend to have the highest slopes as they are good at determining their own next steps and working on interesting things. Even if they aren't impressive on paper now, they will be in the future. But even more importantly, kind, introspective people will ultimately make your life more enjoyable and help you truly live in the moment. Everything else will come with time.