For a long time I wondered about what kind of professional life I wanted. It's a very important choice because it determines a big part of your lifestyle. I saw two paths:

• A "day job" doing whatever I can do (programming mostly), which would take place during office hours and which main role would be to pay the bills to allow me doing whatever I'd like during the rest of the time.
• A job that would also be my life, in the sense that it wouldn't start or stop at some point in the day, and that the job itself would be whatever I want to do. I'm talking about being a researcher. You can't stop thinking, so you can't stop doing research.

At some point I've decided/discovered that I wouldn't be happy with the first choice, I'm simply not that kind of person. I'm not meant to have a boss.

Then came another idea which directly fall into the second category: launch a startup. I would create my job and do something I choose, and I know from readings that launching a startup is also a full time activity. I'm not talking about office hours kind of full time, I'm talking about twenty-four hours a day kind of full time.

Now I'm a fourth year university student (which is the undergrad year in the US but the first of the two grad years before PhD in France) and I don't know which one to choose: should I launch my startup or go for an academic career?

Of course the easy and realistic answer to my question is: finish your studies, do a PhD, start an academic career and when your research brings you an awesome and marketable idea, launch your startup.

But that means maybe launching a startup almost ten years from now, at least. And I must admit that some times I want to live the startup adventure right now, without waiting. When I want that, I'm never stopped by the lack of startup ideas, I already have plenty of that. What's missing is the courage to jump and go for it without knowing what happens if it fails, because I haven't finished my studies yet. That's a horrible feeling. People of my generation, at least in France (Europe?), have a lot of pressure about this. We feel like any wrong move will lead us to life-long unemployment and misery. I'm of course exaggerating a little, but you get the idea.

I would like to think that this pressure is stupid and that I should live in the moment and go for adventure, I'm young and I'll have time to get back from any potential failure. But I can't help it, inside me, I know it's unreasonable. And to be honest, if I was able to really, deeply think like that, I'm not even sure I'd be launching a startup, I rather might leave my computer, write texts and poems, and start a hip-hop/reggae band...