Motivated Mondays (Or, Other Princetonians are Writing Books and Becoming Millionaires... Et Tu?)

So it's Monday night and we're feeling the back-to-Princeton grind. Fall's third week has started, Lawnparties is far behind us and we can't even fall back on "But it's only September!" as an excuse to avoid work anymore. Tonight I lingered over dinner until a friend got up, pushed her chair back and said "I'm going to start my thesis." WHAT? Yeah, okay, this is real.For anyone out there struggling to find motivation this evening, UPC has got the book for you. It's fresh off the (Kindle) presses today and has a gold star title:Singapore's Lost Son: How I Made it from Drop-Out to Millionaire Princeton PhDWhoa. Yes. Inspiring enough for you?We haven't gotten our hands on a copy yet, but the intro and summary are enticement enough. According to the Amazon description, this is the story of one Dr. Kaiwen Leong, a lecturer at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and former postdoc here (PhD and MA in Economics, 2011) who was once "a boy with a simple dream -- to become a man." He started out rough as a high school dropout, but eventually worked hard, got a bunch of prestigious degrees and made millions somewhere along the way. It's like a Horatio Alger story, but based in Singapore.The book was also co-authored by two current undergrads, Edward Choi '14 and Elaine Leong '13. How is that possible, you ask? How do people on this campus have time to write JPs and theses, participate in 1982374 clubs, and casually co-author books on the side? Stop. Don't ask. Watch this tearjerking book-promo-video. Get a copy of Dr. Leong's book. Check out the laudatory quotes from Shirley T. Figure out why you're not yet a millionaire or author or boy-to-man hero. Then go and have the most productive Monday evening ever! Happy October, y'all.