The Jailbroken Guide to the University IS OUT NOW!!!

Hi there,

The Jailbroken Guide to the University has been published!!! I’ve been working on it for almost two years, and I’m so excited for you to read it!! I cannot wait to hear your thoughts.

What I’ll do now is talk about 1) why I wrote this book, 2) what the book is about, and 3) show you the table of contents.

WHY

College is the first place where conformity becomes sophisticated enough to look like freedom. You choose your major, your clubs, your internships, your “friend group,” etc.

But many of those choices have already been preloaded by prestige, fear, money, family, and what everyone around you calls “normal.”

When you question your choices, you will seriously start wondering whether you’re the “crazy” one. Just so we’re clear. You are not crazy. In a world of crazy people, the sane ones are considered “crazy.”

But for many people, this is the first step of a long series of small and seemingly harmless compromises with the end result of forgetting who you are and what you wanted to be.

You will get to college, and many interesting questions will arise, such as, What am I trying to do? and Who am I trying to be? If you answer them truthfully with bravery and humility, that’s as good a shot as you’ll get at a good life. If you don’t and repeatedly conform to what everyone else around you is doing, you will have a life that will never be yours.

That’s why The Jailbroken Guide to the University exists.

WHAT

I can describe what this book is about in three levels:

Level 1 — A guide to getting the most out of college.

Level 2 — A blueprint for students who want to stop serving the university system and start making it serve them using classes, resources, and credentials as tools for their own ambitions instead of following a prescribed path.

Level 3 — The Jailbroken Guide to the University is a movement to restore the university as a place of curiosity, courage, creation, and human aliveness, so students stop being processed by institutions and start moving civilization forward.

Will this book help you get the most out of college? Yes, no doubt about that. You will see the system clearly enough so that it stops hypnotizing you. You will recognize that classes, credentials, organizations, and institutions can be useful without being sacred. You will also realize that many of the walls around you are softer than they look: habits, incentives, prestige, bureaucracy, fear, and stories repeated so often they start to sound like laws of nature. When you see them clearly, you can move differently inside the institution.

Once you get a better understanding of how the university works, that is when your sense of possibility expands. You stop letting the university define the limits of your ambition and start using the machinery of higher education to serve your life, not the other way around.

Make the system work for you, not you for the system.

Lastly, The Jailbroken Guide to the University is a movement to restore the university as a place of curiosity, courage, creation, and human aliveness, so students stop being processed by institutions and start moving civilization forward.

I don’t know if you knew this, but the old world is dying (and it should die) while the new one has not fully been born yet.

The “safe” path is not that safe. The “prestigious” path is not that prestigious. The “normal” path is mostly a mass hallucination with tuition and parents nodding along. That is scary, yes, but it is also your opening and your great opportunity.

A lot of the old instructions for being a “young person” are breaking. The idea that you can simply pick a major, collect credentials like Pokémon cards, chase prestige, get a respectable job, and outsource the rest of your life to institutions was always a little insane. It just used to be easier to pretend it worked.

College isn’t useless. But college HAS TO BE USED DIFFERENTLY.

A university is a strange and powerful machine full of professors, classes, money, labs, libraries, clubs, dorms, alumni, buildings, bureaucrats, weirdos, parties, loopholes, and people who might change your life. Most students walk into that machine and let it define them. This book is for the students who want to learn how to use it without being used by it.

Because the future will not reward the person who is best at obeying instructions. It will reward the person who can think clearly, make friends, build things, find side doors, ask better questions, learn from reality, and remain alive when everyone else is becoming a resume with a pulse.

The Jailbroken Guide to the University is my attempt to help you practice that while you are still in college. It will not tell you exactly who to become, but it will sure as hell make you notice the walls around you, test which ones are fake, teach you how to walk through them, and build a life that is actually yours!!!

I wanted to share a vision of the university, and of the world, that is fully alive, without fear, and truly curious. I hope to turn you into a co-conspirator who can help make this vision a reality, because once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

The world is a lot more interesting, mysterious, and beautiful. There are always more options, and thinking about the future isn’t a nice thing to do, but something you must do. Why? Because you need to become the person you were meant to become. Forget comfort, mediocrity, or stability. Have you heard of greatness? Don’t let education become a replacement for thinking, or even worse, a replacement for having a vision for the future. Follow your own vision, enjoy who you already are, remain curious and ambitious about what you could be, and pursue your intrinsic obsessions.

Table of Contents

This is what awaits your soul… get ready!

The Jailbroken Guide to the University

• Introduction
• Jailbroken Minds
• WARNING: READ BEFORE PROCEEDING
• Definitions
• The 13 Commandments

PART 1: Secrets

• Chapter 1: What The University Does Not Want You To Know
• Chapter 2: College Hacks
• Chapter 3: How to Create Your Own Major
• Chapter 4: Where You Live Is Who You Become

PART 2: Academics

• Chapter 5: Classes
• Chapter 6: Professors
• Chapter 7: What To Study?

PART 3: Projects

• Chapter 8: Projects
• Chapter 9: Funding For Your Projects
• Chapter 10: Project Ideas
• Chapter 11: Projects I Worked On
• Chapter 12: How To Actually Get People To Care About Your Event, Project, Startup, Party, or RSO

PART 4: Research, Internships, and Jobs

• Chapter 13: Research
• Chapter 14: Internships
• Chapter 15: Jobs

PART 5: Social

• Chapter 16: How to Meet People
• Chapter 17: Friends vs “Friends”
• Chapter 18: Dating

PART 6: University Love

• Chapter 19: University Bureaucracy
• Chapter 20: Bureaucracy FAQ
• Chapter 21: University Suppression
• Chapter 22: A Vision for The University
• Chapter 23: University Philanthropy

PART 7: Becoming

• Chapter 24: Becoming a Person (Not a Student)
• Chapter 25: Things You Can Do With Your Life
• Chapter 26: walking on a college campus
• Chapter 27: Timeline of Juan David Campolargo

PART 8: Suggested Reading

• Suggested Reading

PART 9: The End

• Becoming Jailbroken

APPENDICES: If You’re Still Curious

• Appendix A: The Ultimate Campus Adventure

• Appendix B: Jailbroken People

• Appendix C: Narratives

• Appendix D: How to Succeed as an International Student

• Appendix E: How to Make, Save, and Invest Money in College

• Appendix F: Entrepreneurship

• Appendix G: Midwest Mentality

• Notes, Sources, and Rabbit Holes

• Acknowledgments

• Talk To You Soon!

And…

I couldn’t have done without a lot of people’s help and support. You know who you are. If you think that includes you, of course it does.

Get jailbroken,

Juan David Campolargo

P.S. I created a website for the book: books.juandavidcampolargo.com/jailbroken. You will find more details about the book, the appendix, and a few other surprises.