I recently developed what I would consider a healthy obsession with the poetry of Nayyirah Waheed. I’ve never been a poetry-reading person—making room only for the occasional Rumi—which is somewhat ironic since my first name (Ozan) is Turkish for poet. Yet, the simplicity of Waheed’s poems—and her healthy disregard for poetry’s traditional rules—struck a deep chord with me. Consider this one: “would you still want to travel to that country if you could not take a camera with y...| Ozan Varol
Back in 2010, I made a life-altering decision. At the time, I was a practicing lawyer at a litigation firm in San Francisco. I loved living in the Bay Area and working with a great group of lawyers, but I had grown tired of thinking of my life in six-minute billable increments. I began thinking about leaving the practice of law entirely and entering academia. I spent months agonizing over the decision, manufacturing every pro-and-con list imaginable, and consulting numerous people (who inevit...| Ozan Varol
But quitting? That’s reserved for the so-called faint-hearted—the ones who couldn’t hack it. “Winners never quit, and quitters never win,” as the bumper-sticker wisdom goes.| Ozan Varol