Hyper Island: a student reflection.
Some quick notes:
I’m Vala. A student of the Business Developer (Blended Learning) program in Sweden. All thoughts are my own and are a reflection on my first 3 month experience with Hyper Island (referred to as HI through this text). This is more for my own reflection but thought it may be of use to others on the internet aswell :)
🤔 Initial question asked to myself: What have I observed in HI through these past 3 months?
Caring.
Just day two into my interaction with representatives from HI I remember noticing just how caring everyone seemed. I initially shrugged it off to ‘Oh, it must be that this individual cares so much.’. Then it was another, and another and then another aswell. It stirred a strange mix of emotions in myself: overwhelming-ness (which then turned into longing), skepticism (which then turned into acceptance) and a little ego triggering (which then turned into adoption). It’s funny how you can have people that you have never met before be rooting for you, wanting you to be the most authentic version of yourself and wanting you to feel like you belong all at the same time.
Diversity.
I have been working for a while now. Through my experience, I have not encountered a single organization, company or institution that doesn’t use the word diversity as a part of its core message/offering. In my 3 months at HI I have never even heard the word uttered (apart from us students ourselves), and let me tell you, there is a lot of diversity. In my class alone we are from 10+ different nationalities, we have an age range of students from 20 to 52, and let’s just say I’ve never had to consider my gender in any discussion whatsoever.
Enthusiasm.
My job right before starting HI has been in the startup world for which I am fortunate for having experienced many of the perks of being around smart, life loving and ambitious people. A lot of overlaps with the HI world. One thing that stands out to me as a red thread at HI is the sheer enthusiasm in individuals associated with it, enthusiasm that one can go as far as to call a hunger. Enthusiasm for knowledge, for new ideas, for sharing, for listening, for making adult life fun. Since when did we stop learning by actually doing things? Since when did we stop playing games and jumping up and down to get energized in the middle of a long working day? Maybe it’s because of this that both the startup world and the HI world are Darwinistic in the sense that only the tough, adaptable and best actually survive — therefore producing exceptional results.
Impact.
Something I’ve been thinking about for a while is: how do you have scalable impact on humans? Not a whole-species approach but an individual-centric approach. Be that through a business, a charity, a school, a group of individuals. I think that the machine that HI has built is a perfect example of that. They have identified that what this world needs is more authentic and self-driven people. They don’t care if, after this, you go on to become a doctor, an entrepreneur, a gardener or a stay at home parent. They want to give you the tools to be able to tackle the world head on as well as yourself. This is how this ‘machine’ ends up generating self-led, accountable individuals who then insert themselves into all walks of life.
Nature vs. Nurture.
As an individual you go into this machine called HI thinking to yourself ‘La-di-da-di-da life is wonderful, I’m wonderful.’, and then you get hit with this weird combination of introspection & essence questioning coupled with space & safety. I don’t think the world necessarily needs more rich/smart/successful people, we need more passionate people having the guts to do what they want to do. Then we need different environments in place that will nurture the crap out of that passion. Environments that will water it, shower it with love and most importantly stretch it.
If you’re not ready to be questioning yourself and your drivers on a daily basis then don’t bother joining HI as a student or as an employee. Honestly. You’ll probably end up doing yourself more harm than good. Not to mention you’ll be wasting the time of other individuals that are there for precisely all I have mentioned above.
See ya in 3 months 👋
