The Tuftonian Dream: Baby showers and superpowers

When you were young, you maybe had a dream. You were going to fly to the moon, pass EC 5, cure cancer. Then you grew up. You cut your hair, chose your major, changed your outlook. You changed a lot, but did you change your dream?

Last week, sophomore Timi Dayo-Kayode watched a video for his Introduction to Cognitive and Brain Sciences class. One scene depicted a bustling city at night, with hurried little people scurrying about and swirling into an indistinct blur. Granted, Timi was watching the video at twice its standard speed, but he never wants to feel like a blip on a busy screen. His eyes convey an urgent fire as he states, at half his standard speed, “I want to have a real meaning.”

Timi grew up in Nigeria, where from the age of five he realized that he wanted to work in the magical realm of technology, but because the field of software programming is almost alien and inaccessible in Nigeria, he didn’t really discover his particular passion until one night when he was 16. His family had recently immigrated to the United States, and as he sat in his darkened living room watching "The Internship," he experienced a eureka moment. In the movie, the protagonist approaches a whiteboard and confidently writes lines of programming code, and Timi’s future instantly coalesced into sharper focus. He explains, “I was like, ‘Holy s---!  This is interesting.’  I have a phone, an app, a Facebook, but I never thought about how that app got there. Seeing [that code] blew my mind.”

He spent the next month and a half feverishly learning everything he could about programming and over the course of his senior year he hopped from hackathon to hackathon as quickly as he could get reimbursed for his previous trip. He arrived at Tufts as a determined computer science major, but now he says, “I don’t see myself ever using my degree.” He recognizes the possibility of “working for a corporation and making like six figures out of college,” but his dream has taken a more philanthropic turn. At Tufts, Timi splits his time between completing his homework and promoting his nascent startup company, which aims to help tech companies diversify their workforce. This year, Timi has pitched his plan to a number of potential investors, and their excitement fuels him through long nights of laborious brainstorming, mounds of Comp 40 homework and limited sleep. “Maybe I do actually know what I’m doing,” he thinks. “It’s like a pregnant woman and her baby shower — everyone is excited for what’s to come.”

Like any entrepreneur, Timi wants his startup to be impactful, and he wants to harness his influence for noble causes. Some heroes wear capes, and some go back to Nigeria to “establish some kind of tech school for the youth.” According to Timi, “some people just go to work, get groceries, feed the dog, rinse and repeat.” Clearly, he does not want to be one of those people. In Timi’s opinion, “the access to tech gives you some kind of superpower. It changes nations. It changes everything.”