How Elon Musk worked hard at university and his love story at the time

Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and now the world’s third-richest man according to Forbes. This is the second episode of the article series on the life of Real-life Tony Stark which talks about his time in university, how he worked hard to survive at that time and his relationships at that time. If you missed the 1st episode of him on How Elon Musk became “Real-Life Tony Stark” – Childhood of Elon Musk. We suggest you first go through it and come here. Then let’s move to today’s topic.

Migration to Canada 

Elon had a childhood dream of migrating to the USA. “I remember thinking and seeing that America is where great things are possible, more than any other country in the world.” Musk stated his desire of migrating to the USA. Musk arrived in Canada in 1989 when he was 17 against his father’s wishes. Because he knew it’s easy to move to the USA from Canada. He obtained Canadian passport through his Canadian mother.

Musk enrolled with Queen’s University, Kingston in 1989. “I had a great time at Queen’s, it was fun and interesting. I’d call them formative years,” he remembered his 2 years in Canadian university. Musk said he learned how to work collaboratively with smart people and to use the Socratic method to achieve commonality of purpose in his years there. That Socratic method helped him to start SpaceX and build rockets without having formal education on rocket science by working with engineers.

Migration to the USA

Elon left Canada and move to the United States in 1992. Then he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with two degrees there. BS in Physics and Economics degree from its Wharton college. After that Elon was accepted to doctoral studies in energy physics and material sciences at Stanford University in California. But only after 2 days, Elon decided to drop out and join the internet boom. He teamed up with his brother Kimbal Musk and started a startup, Zip 2.

How Elon worked hard in college life and odd jobs has done by Elon Musk

You all know how Elon works tirelessly these days to succeed in his dream of creating a civilization on Mars. He worked on massive projects from clean energy to Space exploration. How he got the intensity to done all these things. The reason is he worked hard since his childhood and had to face adversity. This didn’t change for him while in university also. He got to Queen’s University with only $2,000 in his hand. So, he had to work hard to find coins for his education. He used to work on his mom’s cousin’s farm in Saskatchewan & a lumber mill in Vancouver. In that jobs, he had to shovel grain bins and cutting logs with a chainsaw.

Not only that, he had to do some other odd jobs too. He did a cleaning job in a lumber mill which he had to clean out the boiler room. And after that, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley while he was at the University of Pennsylvania in 1994. One at “Pinnacle Research Institute”, which researched electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage. And other at startup based on Palo Alto, “Rocket Science Games”. After graduation, he tried to get a job at Netscape. But he never received a response from them.

At the time of him in Pennsylvania, he rented a large and cheap frat house near the campus. It had 10 bedrooms. The roommates transformed the house into a nightclub on weekends to raise money to pay the rent. They charged 5 dollars for one and they had as many as 500 people in one night. According to Elon, it helped them to cover the rent of one month from one night. Likewise, we can see his entrepreneurial spirit since then when it comes to paying the rent also. But still, after he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, he had over $100,000 student debts. Indeed, he couldn’t afford a second PC for his startup. But he never gives up and succeeded in that business venture also.

Relationships and love story of Elon in university life

Did you know why Elon has chosen Queen’s University for his studies? Yeah, it’s mostly because of the academic excellence of the university. But there is some other reason that seems interesting. Once he was going to select the University of Waterloo. But he ended up at Queen’s University because of this reason. “I was going to do physics and engineering at Waterloo, but then I visited the campus … and, you may not want to print this, but there didn’t seem to be any girls there! So, I visited Queen’s, and there were girls there. I didn’t want to spend my undergraduate time with a bunch of dudes”. Like so, he preferred Queen’s University because of girls.

In Queen’s University, Elon maybe had more girlfriends more than one. “I was not the only woman he pursued”, Justine Musk said. Justine is more famously known as his girlfriend at university. Justine Musk is Canadian, now a world-famous author, who offers TED Talks on regular basis.

Two first met at a party. They became familiar with each other by seeing them more often in university. Maybe, Elon had a crush on her. So, Elon wanted to meet her and invited her out for ice cream. At that time, Justine was recovering from a difficult case of first love with an older man. So, she was really upset and not interested to go out with Elon. As a result, Justine first accepted, but then blew him off with a note on her room’s door and went to the student center. “Several hours later, my head bent over my Spanish text in an overheated room in the student center, I heard a polite cough behind me. Elon was smiling awkwardly, two chocolate-chip ice cream cones dripping down his hands”, Justine said. Elon is a man who takes no for an answer as stated by her.

After Elon’s time at Queens University, he left Canada for the USA. But still, after the transfer, he kept sending roses to her. Likewise, they separated physically, but not in the hearts. When Elon returns to Queen’s to visit his friends and relatives, they used to meet each other and having some dinner. Once, Justine pointed out a bookshelf and said “One day I want my own books to go right there.” And Elon encouraged and credited her as she has fire in her soul and that Elon has seen her as more likely him. Elon loved her more than anyone at the time.

But after Justine’s graduation, they have gone separate ways and taught ESL in Japan for a year. Then she did get back to Canada and did a bartending job and worked on her novel. But after some time, he received a call from Elon. At the time Elon graduated and had moved to Silicon Valley. After that one call, Justine flew to their and had some time together. We can see how vastly Justine has missed him. “I felt that he was my own private Alexander the Great” Justine stated how she felt him. Thus, Elon married her in 2000. The marriage went successfully for 8 years until they split unfortunately in 2008 which is the year Elon went so close to getting bankrupt. Two had 5 sons, including twins and triplets.

So, we discussed more than enough about Elon’s time in university and his relationship with Justine Musk. We think it’s enough for today. If you missed our first article on Elon’s life, How Elon Musk became “Real-Life Tony Stark” – Childhood of Elon Musk, you had missed some interesting things about his childhood. If you think we are good enough with Elon’s biographical series, subscribe to Inventho and our Facebook page to get a notification when we publish the next episode on Elon’s life.