Gish Jen: “Finding Your Own Narrative”

The bardo teachings encourage us to face reality so we can live in a way that’s authentic to who we are. After you graduated from Harvard, you went to business school but dropped out. Did you wake up one day and realize, this isn’t for me? When I finished college, I thought, “I really need to do something,” so I applied to business school. I can’t believe they took me, because I was the least business-oriented person to ever set foot in Stanford Business School. As soon as I got there, I knew I was in the wrong place. Everyone was concerned about things I didn’t care about. By the second trimester, I’d stopped going to class. I was taking writing classes instead and read one hundred novels that year. 

During my time at Stanford, I went to a funeral for the first time and realized, “Oh, my god! We’re all going to die!” I was going to die, and if I didn’t try to become a writer, I would lie on my deathbed asking myself, “Why did I not try to become a writer?” You can’t lie on your deathbed with regret of that order.

Read the interview here.