Adaptation
Growing up my family moved around every few years, which meant that I was the “new kid on the block” a handful of times. Every new school I entered required me to learn a new system, and most of the time I was the only brownie, which made my social-life a little more challenging. Being a child there was nothing I could do except learn to adapt. By the time we made our final move to San Antonio, Texas where I started middle school I was a pro! I threw myself into my schoolwork, and figured that over time I would make friends. I wasn’t particularly popular in middle school or high school, nor did I wish to seek the limelight. While my parents nudged me to focus on calculus and the sciences, I forced myself to join activities like debate and swim team that let me to break out of my shell, and push my physical limits.
During the course of my childhood I had to learn to adapt constantly, and then began to embrace and crave situations that forced me to do it. Unlike most of my friends from high school I chose to go to school out-of-state, which meant once again that I didn’t have any friends when I got to college and had to make new ones all over again. Then after college while everyone was getting jobs on the East Coast I made the long and lonesome trek out to the West Coast. Then I joined a startup with a few friends, but then left it to strike it out on my own, which brings us to present day.
Adaptation as defined by Wikipedia is the evolutionary process whereby a population becomes better suited to its habitat and important for an organism’s survival. But what does it take to adapt? For me its been the following:
1. A positive outlook on life and seeing the good in every situation. I can’t say my life has been a bed of roses. I certainly work a lot, and put a lot of effort into leading a good life, but I take do take it one day at a time and I’ve learned to be patient. I welcome challenges because its a chance for adventure, excitement, and growth. I also tend to see the good in people, because after all I’ve had a good life for the past 27 years, and no one has really tried to pull a fast one on me, but I’m also good at filtering out bad eggs 
2. Willingness to explore the world and try new things. Its easy to get stuck in a rut or become comfortable with the status quo after awhile. Thats usually when I know its time to change up my routine either with travel, meeting new people, or just reading a book that I wouldn’t normally be interested in.
3. Making friends and building a support system. Since moving to the area I’ve made friends in a lot of different channels: yoga, ski club, networking events, Spanish meet ups, and Stanford graduate classes. It took a lot of time and effort to build each relationship, and of course everyone and there mom was busy, but I didn’t let it stop me I just worked around their schedules.
Adapting is like software development, its a never ending process of building, testing, and re-factoring. Being agile leads to high quality code, so why not apply those same principles to life?
A very interesting article. You seem to share a lot of experiences that I have. (My father was army man which caused our family to jump around many, many times.)
It’s interesting to hear another persons thoughts on this type of childhood – some would say it was negative to our overall development, however I would disagree as it appears you do. The effect of moving, switching and consistently adapting to new situations/scenarios I believe has helped further me in my career and life. The social skills gained of having to continually re-integrate into different social circles (with different types of people) has been an undeniable benefit to me.
Hey! This sounds super similar to the story I tell people!
-Because of my dad being a diplomat, I’ve been a new kid on the block a lot too.
-I was born in Taiwan(till 2), went to South Africa(6 years), back to Taiwan (5 years), went to Kansas (4 years), went to Southern California for college(3 years), moved up to the bay area for startups (1 year) and am now in Vancouver.
-Whenever I move, I would always be the one who was behind in school, didn’t know the language, socially awkward(or inappropriate). I would work hard to catch up with everyone. Once I started to do well and established my network of friendships, I would be thrown into a new environment where I completely suck again. I joke around that I became an entrepreneur because I’ve been in the same area for so long(Socal) that I caught up with everything and needed to figure out how can I continue to struggle with my life, hahaha.
In high school, I also joined the debate and swim team (+orchestra, chess club, forensics etc). I took ESL, honors English, and debate at the same time!
Haha, I know we’re meeting soon, but saw your post through Twitter and just made me think, “LOL, someone stole my story.” so I had to comment
Hope all is well!
It will be great to meet up soon and share our experiences. And I’ve only been around the US, you’ve been all over the world! Your story is unique too, you should tell it
Change at a young age can be jarring, but as long as most of it is positive it should set you up to handle changes through your adult life. Can’t wait to hear about what your current life is like in London and Paris!