7. Queen’s

In 1990, Elon Musk, seek­ing a bal­ance between rig­or­ous aca­d­e­mics and a vibrant social life, chose Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty in Kingston, Ontario, over Water­loo. At Queen’s, Musk was placed in an inter­na­tion­al themed dor­mi­to­ry where he met Navaid Farooq, form­ing his first mean­ing­ful friend­ship out­side his fam­i­ly. Both shar­ing inter­ests in com­put­er and board games, obscure his­to­ry, and sci­ence fic­tion, they quick­ly became close friends. Musk’s aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance was strong in sub­jects like Busi­ness, Eco­nom­ics, Cal­cu­lus, and Com­put­er Pro­gram­ming, although he had room for improve­ment in Account­ing, Span­ish, and Indus­tri­al Rela­tions, receiv­ing B’s in these areas. Despite this, Musk val­ued the col­lab­o­ra­tive and Socrat­ic learn­ing meth­ods he engaged in at Queen’s, which were prepara­to­ry for his future endeav­ors.

Musk was deeply engrossed in philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sions and strat­e­gy games, find­ing both an intel­lec­tu­al and strate­gic chal­lenge in the lat­ter. Games like Diplo­ma­cy and Civ­i­liza­tion allowed Musk to prac­tice his nego­ti­a­tion, strat­e­gy, and tac­ti­cal think­ing, which would lat­er become cen­tral to his busi­ness and inno­va­tion approach­es. His mas­tery in revers­ing engi­neer game log­ic show­cased his ana­lyt­i­cal prowess, evi­dent in a class project sim­u­la­tion game focused on busi­ness strat­e­gy.

The text also recounts how Elon and his broth­er Kim­bal lever­aged their curios­i­ty and net­work­ing skills to secure a sum­mer job with Peter Nichol­son, a top exec­u­tive at Sco­tia­bank, by lit­er­al­ly cold-call­ing indi­vid­u­als they found intrigu­ing from the news­pa­per. This ini­tia­tive not only demon­strat­ed their eager­ness to learn and con­nect with estab­lished pro­fes­sion­als but also result­ed in a sum­mer job offer for Elon in strate­gic plan­ning, direct­ly under Nichol­son, mark­ing an ear­ly for­ay into the world of busi­ness and strat­e­gy.

Elon Musk’s time at Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty was for­ma­tive, mix­ing aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments, the devel­op­ment of crit­i­cal social and intel­lec­tu­al rela­tion­ships, and the ear­ly demon­stra­tion of his dis­tinc­tive approach to learn­ing, prob­lem-solv­ing, and strate­gic think­ing. His exploits, from win­ning strat­e­gy games to secur­ing strate­gic intern­ships, laid the ground­work for his future entre­pre­neur­ial endeav­ors, high­light­ing a blend of intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty, strate­gic acu­men, and the abil­i­ty to lever­age con­nec­tions for prac­ti­cal oppor­tu­ni­ties.