What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World

by Tina Seelig

Book Overview

A revised and updated edition of the international bestsellerInspiring readers all over the globe to reimagine their future, this revised and updated edition of What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0062047418
• ISBN13: 9780062047410
• Release Date: October 2010
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.5" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Has nothing to do with your 20's

As a 23 year old woman living in 2020 I was looking for a book to read by an older well seasoned woman who has lives through her 20's giving me tips and tricks on how to survive my 20's or even topics on fiances and maybe even tips on credit. This book was the complete opposite. Tina Seeling speaks about her professional time spent at Stanford University and how she taught her students and colleagues different ways on how to turn a negative into a positive and how to make money by looking at situations from a different point of view. Seeling continuously repeated herself in each chapter just giving you different examples. Overall, although the book wasn't what I expected, I continued to read until the end. As a book nerd that I am, I would definitely not read this book again and I probably wouldn't recommend it to a friend.

Great book. Very inspirational

This book is filled with action-packed advice and great stories about taking the leap and about character traits entrepreneurs must develop. Very inspirational read for entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs of all ages.

Inspiring and compelling writing

As a would be entrepreneur and a young woman in her twenties, I found that this book made me rethink many preceonceived ideas. The book provided a unique perspective on how to navigate young careers and spurred me on to think and read more about entrepreneurship. I ended up buying 2 more copies of the book to give to my 19 year old sister and my college roommate! I find the author's blog equally inspiring and hope to see more of her writing in the near future.

Perfect Book for Aspiring Entrepreneurs ... Not Just for 20 Year-Olds!

I just finished reading Dr. Tina Seelig's book and want to share how her insights have inspired me. I've followed Dr. Seelig's podcasts via the Stanford Technology Ventures (STVP) program (go to Stanford on iTunes U), where I first listened to her "What I Wish I Knew When I was 20" lecture. I found myself listening to it several times over, and I was ecstatic to hear that she was going to be publishing a book of the same name. Much to my satisfaction, in her book, Dr. Seelig explored in further depth a lot of the themes from her talk. In particular, I find her lesson that "you don't have to wait to be anointed" strikes a chord with me personally. I'm a not-so-recent Stanford graduate who has recently experienced some setbacks in my academic and career pursuits and has found the inspiration from Tina's writing to keep going. I also found that the book does a great job, through its storytelling aspect, of describing the profile of a successful entrepreneur (willing to take risks, open to learning/meeting people) as well as the fact that opportunities for creative solutions to big problems are all around us . . . there's no excuse not to innovate! So . . . I am grateful to Dr. Seelig for encouraging us to innovate and make our place in the world, and I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to do the same.

Can't Wait to Innovate!

Reorient your brain and body to creativity and innovation! This book will make you want to become an innovator so bad. I'm a 20-year-old Stanford sophomore who learned what Tina wished she had known when she was 20. As a freshman, I took her class "Creativity & Innovation," mainly offered for graduate students. When, on the first day, Tina said "Creativity can be learned," I was skeptical. I simply thought her class would be no different from typical college classes with competitive individuals, problem sets, and grade curves. The class was given the first assignment to come up with the best and the worst business ideas. My teammates and I were enthusiastic about developing fantastic ideas and scribbled total nonsense for the bad ideas when the time was running out. I was baffled, however, when Tina ripped up all sheets of paper with the good ideas and gave us the bad idea submitted by another team. The idea was "selling used hypodermic needles." We laughed out loud at how terrible it was until three seconds later when we all turned silent and questioned, "Wait, is this really the worst idea?" We ended up coming up with a really clever plan that involved selling used needles to doctors who need small tissue and blood samples for their experiments. We even felt as if we could start selling used needles right away! Besides learning that it is always worthwhile to question our assumptions, my classmates and I were no longer competitors but awesome business partners! Tina taught us that there are no bad ideas and how to redefine problems in different ways. In following assignments we got to redesign the cover for a large national magazine (and they even used our idea!); I got to try on a 3-carat diamond ring in a private salon at Tiffany's as part of a study on consumer experiences; and we set up the entire frozen yogurt shop into the classroom as part a class project on innovative companies. Unlike other books of the sort, Tina's book avoids ambiguous principles embellished with fancy words but rather suggests ready-to-go strategies that you can implement in your daily life right away. Furthermore, she gives you good examples, that stimulate you and give you the nerve for action. You will end up being an active "doer" after reading this book. (For instance, I employed her methods to reinvent my messy closet!) I'm truly happy that now the whole world can share her insights on creativity and innovation. Her book is a "crash" course, yet a very thorough, inspirational guide on how to change yourself and the world! I hope you all share the special excitement that I had while learning from her. Although I love the title, as you read this book you will see that it is never too late and there's no time to hesitate to become innovative.