Application Essay: Why I Went Back to School
Flipping the script on AI and aging. Looking back same mission, more urgency.
ShotgunIn March 2025, a business school application asked me to choose an existing data visualization and explain, in 250 words or less, what it means and why it matters to me.
I chose a chart about fear.
Here is what I wrote, unchanged.
This month, the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies published a survey of over 10,000 employed, self-employed, and unemployed American adults. This graph ranks common fears across each cohort. The study further highlights that only half of respondents prioritize their health despite expecting to work longer. In addition, 43% worry that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will make their skills obsolete before they are ready to retire. This raises a question: is the modern American Dream simply a safe retirement?
My own father shared these fears. He confronted them at age 70 when sudden brain cancer forced his bedridden retirement. As we navigated the healthcare system, his retirement dream, to visit all 50 states, seemed out of reach. However, ChatGPT devised a plan to bring the outstanding five to him. When he could no longer speak, it generated a page of the most-used English words he could physically point to. AI brought him joy and helped him live better in his final days.
John Adams said, "I must study politics and war, [so] that my children may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy." Fast forward nearly 250 years and we are fighting for a different independence: a dignified retirement where we honor elders while empowering future generations to lead. AI can help us achieve this. Let's start by changing the narrative.
Instead of fearing technological displacement, we should focus on AI's potential to enhance human well-being — empowering people around the world to work smarter, live better, and retire with optimism, not fear.
Looking back
Transamerica has since published its 26th Annual Survey. A year of extraordinary progress in AI later, the fear I was arguing against has not moved: 43% then, 46% now — a gap barely wider than the survey's own margin of error.
[Reflection to come — what's changed since March 2025, and why the pace still isn't fast enough.]
