Open Access And Other Top Six Things To Do Now To Prepare: Fill & Download for Free

My mother had a part-time job as a church secretary during the late 60s and early 70s, and was tasked with creating the weekly programs handed out at the services on Sundays. The bulletins were printed on 8.5x11 paper that was ordered from religious supply companies, and had a nice 5 x 8 color image printed on one side so that when they were folded in half the program would have an attractive cover image. To populate the inside of the program Mom would type a mimeograph stencil, which looked like this (only shorter, for letter sized pages)....and then she would run the program paper through the mimeograph machine, which looked like this:She would have to type it in a landscape orientation, of course, so that the text inside the folded program would be readable, so she had a typewriter with an extra wide carriage. Mimeograph stencils were just that, stencils, a translucent waxy top page over an opaque backing that provided stability for typing or freehand drawing with a stylus. The typewriter key or stylus onto the stencil would carve away enough of the waxy coating that ink could penetrate those areas when the stencil was stretched over the drum of the mimeograph machine. When you made a mistake typing on a stencil, you painted over the error with a clear liquid that filled in the gaps of the waxy coating, and after it dried you could make your correction. Mimeographs typically printed with black ink and should not be confused with ditto machines, which printed in purple. Ditto machines, which looked like this...were a little simpler and cheaper to operate, and were used by teachers to create classroom materials all through my public school education, from 1962-1973. Ditto masters were thick white glossy top sheets attached to thick purple backing sheets. When you wrote or typed on a ditto master the purple ink on the inside of the backing sheet would adhere to the back of the white top sheet. If you made a mistake you could use thin paper tape to cover it on the back of the white top sheet and type or write over it again, or you could use a single edge razor blade to shave the mistake off the back of the white top sheet, then type or write over it.I myself got my first full-time corporate office job about ten years later, in 1979, at Major League Baseball, and worked there for ten years, during which time I used a lot of other technology that is now mostly unheard of.I remember using the fax precursor that was called a Qwip machine.There was an 11" long rotating drum that opened up slightly so a standard US sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper could be clamped into it lengthwise. It was attached to an acoustic coupler designed to hold an old Western Electric style telephone handset, which was also attached to the device.If you wanted to send a facsimile copy of a document to someone else you would pick up the handset attached to your Qwip machine and call the phone number associated with the Qwip handset on the other end. If they didn't answer, you were out of luck. If they did answer you would tell them you had a document to send and how many pages it was. You would ask them if they preferred six minutes per page (standard resolution, which was still pretty grainy) or three minutes per page (grainier yet). You would then clamp your original onto the drum of your unit while on the other end the recipient would clamp into his or her drum a sheet of special thick glossy thermal paper. Once the papers were clamped in you would confirm by voice that the other side was ready and then each of you would put your handsets into the acoustic couplers. The sender's machine would begin to whine, the recipient's would whine in return (like the old dialup modem handshakes), and the transmission would begin. On the sender's end a stylus/needle would scan the original document from top to bottom as it rotated on the drum, looking for text or other dark pixels to transmit. On the recipient's end the stylus/needle would literally burn the image received into the thermal paper, which would emit a distinctive odor.After the page finished both humans would pick up their handsets out of their acoustic couplers and discuss the quality of the transmission. "Did it come through OK?" If not, they might re-send it. If it did, then they would repeat the process for Page 2, if there was a Page 2. And Page 3, and onward, always doing the voice check between pages.When Federal Express first started up, in addition to their air courier services, they had a near-monopoly on the first generation of plain paper fax machines. It was possible to take a thick document to a Federal Express office and have it transmitted within minutes to another Federal Express office hundreds or thousands of miles away, where the intended recipient could come and pick it up (or have Federal Express deliver it to them). As the prices of plain paper fax machines came down and more offices had them, this part of Federal Express' business evaporated, and today very few people remember it. (I remember sending at least one document this way.)When I went to work for the American League in 1980 I was given an office that included a Western Union TWX machine (close cousin of the better known Telex machines).You could dial up another TWX machine directly or you could use a paper tape with one or more stored addresses on it to contact other TWX users (in my case, the other MLB offices and clubs). You could type your message live or record your message on paper tape (which was quicker and allowed correction of errors). I learned to cut and read paper tapes. I could look at a paper tape and tell you if it was an address tape or a message tape, and if it was an American League address tape or an all-clubs message tape (this was more trivial than it sounds: not only was the all-clubs tape twice as long, it began with ATL BRAVES instead of ORIOLES BAL and so just by looking at a few lines of the tape I could easily tell the difference).The one in my office had a clear plastic foam-dampened hood over it, similar to the one in this image, which was intended to reduce the noisiness when the device was operating.It was basically useless and I always referred to it as the "Cone of Silence" for that reason.My job with the American League included daily waiver transactions and publication of a daily bulletin. During spring training I used the TWX machine (because the clubs carried their TWX machines with them to Florida and Arizona), but during the rest of the year I did this using an IBM Mag Card 1 terminal, basically a hopped-up Selectric, and pre-stored my content on reusable 50-line magnetic cards that fed into a reader attached to the typewriter.By 1986 when I was out of law school and working in the MLB Commissioner's Office, we had a sponsorship deal with IBM and there was some kind of mainframe in an air-conditioned room. The secretaries all had terminals on their desks, where they used word processing software to prepare our correspondence, contracts, etc. I startled my secretary Eileen by asking her to teach me how to do basic word processing / editing tasks on her terminal, but I found it very useful. She left at 5:30 and I was routinely there for at least another hour or two (and the Federal Express office a block away was open till 8). I could often get documents done, printed, and out the door instead of waiting for her to come in and follow my handwritten edits in the morning.I did use a Dictaphone during this period of my life, mostly for correspondence and to go through a to-do list of things I wanted Eileen to help me accomplish the next day. She came in at 8:30 and I came in at 9:30, so she could get a good head start on me this way. Usually I would do this in the evenings. I would speak into a little handheld unit that contained a microcassette, and leave the cassette in my outbox. Eileen would then play it back on a unit that looked like this (note the foot pedal, so Eileen could play/pause with her foot, keeping both hands on the keyboard typing):In 1989 I went to work for an agency called ProServ that represented athletes. At ProServ I had access to a Dictaphone but again found that the professional staff had no access to computers or other technology. The secretaries and assistants did have terminals where they did word processing and had a primitive form of email or IM that communicated only among terminal owners. I found this out because several of them got in trouble for sending some very mocking messages about the corporate leadership, not knowing that anyone else could see them.Within a year or three I had a Macintosh at home and began agitating at the office for a computer that would allow me to do more work hands-on, editing my own documents instead of marking them up with ink and waiting for an assistant to do it. No lawyer or professional at ProServ had ever had a computer on his or her desk, but after a little while they relented, and my modern era of office work began.

I am an MBA student from one of the top five institutes in India. I am not going to give you tangential information that everybody is going to give you anyway. Lets get to the point.Not everybody gets placed :If you open up a newspaper and see 100% placements in IIM-XYZ, you are being fooled. About 20% of students get placed in top jobs with fat pay packages or jobs that lured you initially towards an MBA. About 30% get average jobs with average pay packages. About 30% are pushed into jobs that they don’t want because there aren’t enough openings available or they aren’t good in communication. Rest 20% get jobs which are not fit for MBA graduates or they remain unplaced. The placement teams simply ask them to drop out of placements so the numbers remain decent. They are given a chance to sit for placements the succeeding year in return for the favor.Note 1: By fat pay packages I mean Fixed component of salary exceeding 18 lakh per year. By average pay packages I mean Fixed component of salary exceeding 12 lakh per year.Note 2: I am not even talking about lower ranked IIMs and new IIMs. The situation is not any better there also.Salary you see is not salary MBA candidates get:MBA CTCs are way different than engineering CTCs- even more bloated. There is a fixed component which everybody gets every month. It is comparatively a smaller part of what you see as a fat CTC being advertised in newspapers. Other components are variable salary that depends on performance, ESOPs (stock ownership) which one gets in 3 to 5 years, one time joining bonus which can be as large as 5 lakh, one time year end bonus etc. So when somebody says his CTC in 35 lakh, ask what he is getting next month.Placement teams in MBA institutes literally rule two years even in terms of their own placements:Now if you can work decently hard, this is where you want to be if you want best returns from your MBA. Two years of cramming and being a Gold medalist in an IIM is not going to give you enough returns as a member of a placement team in an IIM. This includes perks ranging from best jobs, attendance concessions, free food, opportunities to penalize your batch-mates among others. Sounds too ridiculous to be true? Unfortunately it is true. And whatever placement teams do on campus doesn’t go out. Nobody has the right to question their decisions. That’s why you haven’t heard about it ever.A little background on placement teams in MBA institutes: This could be the most shady part of your MBA. Like in every top college, placements don't come under the responsibilities of professors. They simply don’t care. The deans and all do care because they want good placement so as to keep the rankings high. So, the placements come under a placement adviser ( a professor) and a placement team - a group of 10 students selected/ elected from current MBA students. The selection/ election criteria is different for different institutes. In some institutes one team takes care of each placement session for two years and in others different placement teams are selected/elected to take care of different placement sessions. The placement teams have power to decide on placement activities, maintaining relations and communication with companies, and nobody can question what they do. The process is so secretive that placement team members are not allowed to even talk about anything remotely related to placements with anyone.Coming back to how it can help you professionally? Nobody exactly know but there are speculations that they make sure they have good enough relations with companies to guarantee their own placements. The result - placement team members are the first ones to get placed in the best of companies with the best of profiles. Nobody questions them. Mind you it’s not necessary that they would be academically brilliant. Many of them have below average CVs. Yes, they have to work hard but only during placements for a week or so.I guess now you get the idea where you want to be when you get into your MBA program.MBA is not only about academics:I have seen gold medalists and course toppers being placed in average companies. They all know their shit. However, MBA is different in this regard. People are looking for good communicators. Nobody comes into IIMs for a back-office job. Your academic performance is just one of the criteria for your CV to get selected from many CVs that your placement team may give to companies. After that it’s your performance in GDs and Interviews. A CGPA of 10 can’t save a bad interview. In engineering, a good coding session can save bad communication skills. In MBA, communication skills and performance under stress is of utmost importance.MBA placement is going to be the most stressful days of your lives:Do you remember those times when the Australian cricket team was headed by Ricky Ponting? Their batting line up was impeccable. We used to look at that line up and think even if we get Gilchrist and Hayden out, we have Ponting. Even if he goes to spin, we have Symonds and everybody else. Everybody is goddamned awesome and can hit sixes.Coming back to our own story, long back somebody got this brilliant idea to pack up placements in 3–4 days and brag about it in media. Now every top institute does it. Companies are okay with it as it takes less of their time. The result is that in those 3–4 days companies keep on coming every hour. Students are expected to be present in dedicated placement rooms throughout the day in formal attire. It is possible that at the same time an institute placement team is catering to 4 or 5 different companies. GDs and interviews keep on happening throughout the day, students keep getting interview calls, and they are being judged every hour. At times they get 30 minutes to read about the company and what they are offering. And in that mess you keep hearing names of the hires when a company decides to leave. It is tiring as hell. And one keeps on seeing tens of Symonds and Haydens in the room even when a Ponting gets placed. And this keeps on happening all throughout the day for 12 or 14 or 16 freaking hours.And what do we get out of this mess? An opportunity to brag about how we completed those placements in 3 days. Such a small number sounds a little impossible right? It is. Like every other sh*t we have a tweak for it also. It is called a ‘pre-placement’ process. So the placement team calls as many elite companies as they like in a pre- placement process and they don't count pre-placement days in actual placement. So when you see the news that an institute has completed its placements in one day, you are simply being fooled.Ragging happen in IIMs - although officially:Yeah, you heard that right. IIMs are pretty delusional places. They preach something and act exactly opposite of it. So let's get straight to the culprits. These people are the senior batch students and placement teams. They scream at you, call you words, harass you, penalize you, make you do hours of wastefully stuff and do everything they deem fit in the name of preparing you for the future and for placements. And this is all known to the faculty; perhaps they may not know the extent of it. I have experienced that although they preach that they are doing a holy duty, they do get their sadist fun out of it. And they also do it for their own sake. So prospective students should be ready for sleepless nights and busy days.The best way to network is to join a club, a team or a group:Let's get this straight - IIM students are not among the best in more or less any of the extracurricular activities. Any university cricket team will beat any IIM cricket team any day of the year. So the best bet you can get out these clubs is what we call as networking. Networking is nothing but an acknowledgement of give and take relationships. It has nothing to do with friendships - which are anyway non existent in IIMs. When you network it simply means that the other person gets to know what can be your use to him, and you know what can be his use to you, and of-course you exchange small talks every now and then. It is also an acknowledgement of future politics that can be played together. These networks help immensely in other clubs/ teams’ selections, corporate competitions, placements and CV point collection. Winning a corporate competition is of great value as it shines on a CV which helps in placements, and you get hefty prize moolah. Many of these competition winners get direct Pre-placement offers and Pre-placement interviews. Worth a shot, Isn’t it? Now I need to write something about CV points. I'll write about it in next edit.So, how can these clubs help you in placements? Because they give you titles like 'President', 'Secretary' etc. And they give you immense opportunities to do wasteful stuff in the name of institute branding and placements. Anything that give you these titles shine on CVs. If these titles come from academic societies like Marketing society, Consulting society etc., they shine more. So, if interested in doing some extra activities, students must look forward to join these clubs which have such aforementioned titles.The strongest single sheet of paper you will ever see will be your CV:Students spend months to collect what they call as CV points. Every action of theirs has a thought of how it would look on a CV. Anything which makes a CV stand out is gold. These CVs actually go to companies that visit campus and they select CVs which they like. So, consequently if you don’t have a good CV you would not be selected for interviews and GDs. Even inside interview rooms most of the talk is centered around your CV and it plays a huge role in your selection. There is a concept of a ‘perfect-balanced’ CV. It means that the CV has good amount of academic merit, good amount of numbers, decent amount of positions of responsibility, decent amount of extra-curricular activities, and some amount of CV points that make you stand out, for example, winning a corporate competition.“You need years of experience to do an MBA” is a false statement, at least in India:Actually, there are many jobs in IIMs cut out for freshers. Most of the sales & marketing companies prefer freshers over experienced candidates. It includes high paying jobs like Marketing in HUL and P&G. Many companies even set the maximum limit of experience as 2 years as an eligibility criteria. In many other jobs also freshers are allowed to participate. The problem crops up when there are too many freshers in the batch, and that seldom happens.The same qualifies for people who have too many years of experience(greater than four years). There are a fixed no. of jobs for such candidates also and too many of them can create a problem. In fact many of older students of the batch find themselves unemployable during placements.So the best case scenario for non-marketing jobs would be 2 years of experience, and the best case scenario for marketing jobs would be 0–2 years of experience.Note: I have written this solely for the Indian context and for normal MBA students. There are always exceptions and Einsteins.PS: I went anonymous on this as we - as students - are not supposed to reveal the information that I have revealed. But I decided to do it anyway so that people who are not well informed get a better picture of things. I have seen that some students who come from better backgrounds already have access to such information from their friends and relatives. So, it all makes the playing field uneven.I am not sure who this dude is who has claimed in the comments section to have written this answer. I am not going to reveal my or my institute's identity under any circumstances.People who have been in the placement teams and reaped fruits of it are going to negate this answer with all their might. I have learned to ignore them. They have their reasons.So, people who don't believe this or questions the credibility have all the right to do so. However, the content speaks for itself.As far as I am concerned, I am not at all frustrated. I just stated facts. I got a pretty decent job, and currently I don't deserve more. So this answer has been written very calmly.

Well, I could just tell you to go read my answer to whether it's possible for someone to become Batman. That answer is extremely detailed and goes into step-by-step explanations of what you'd have to do, and how long you'd have to do it, to even begin to try to become something as close to the real-world equivalent of Batman as is probably possible. And I do highly recommend you go read that answer, if you haven't already.Or I could save you the trouble of reading that answer (but no, seriously, do go read it) by saying "You can't, don't waste your time trying because it's not possible and too many people spend life chasing and/or otherwise fantasizing about unrealistic goals and expectations to the point of neglecting developing realistic, healthy goals and expectations in life. Young people already tend to have less fully matured (in a literal sense) realistic expectations and experiences in life, and are more inclined to internalize certain of the less helpful, less realistic sets of expectations and self-images and worldviews sold to them via unhelpful media that's explicitly out to exploit people through those unrealistic expectations and so on."But that's taking the question far too seriously and cynically, because nobody is asking how to become Batman just to hear an old dude grumping about getting over idealistic daydreaming about being a superhero and facing the hard cold facts of Batmanless life. This is a question seeking some fun discussion, and so again I have to say "go read my other answer first, then come back and read the rest of this answer."So, go read it......okay, you're back. That was fast. I'm almost inclined to believe you DIDN'T read it at all, and just skipped right on down to this next sentence. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what you did. What's that? Oh, you read it previously, so you don't need to read it now? Suuuure you did. Well, if that's the case, then why did you ask me how to become Batman in THIS question? Gotcha, didn't I? You didn't really read that other answer after all! Now go read it, already, and then come back here when you're done.(...You better not be cheating this time...)Now then, I've dashed your hopes and you hate me. I realize that, it's what I do sometimes. But I'm about to make it up to you. What I'm going to do is, I'm putting aside my "face the facts" hat, and going to just go ahead and divulge the real secrets to becoming Batman after all.You're 16 years old [note: this answer was originally written when the question included mention of the asker's age, and sought advice for how to start preparing as a teenager for eventually becoming Batman]? Time to get cracking. First up, look online to find the best-rated Judo, Aikido, and Karate classes in your area. See how much they cost, and make a schedule for yourself that allows you to manage taking all of those classes on a regular basis, so that you go to each one every week (meaning three classes per week, one for each). Meanwhile, in the rest of your free time, begin endurance-running, weight lifting, push-ups, sit-ups, other strength-training exercises (I won't give you a detailed exercise regimen, you can find this online yourself since you want to be the world's greatest detective! just make sure it's strenuous strength and endurance-building exercise), and Yoga -- spend two hours every single day on these things, and slowly increase the amount of time to incorporate exerices into your day whenever possible (I'll explain this more later below).To pay for all of this, use Kickstarter to post a request for people to fund your study of each individual class you take -- meaning one Kickstarter campaign for Judo, a separate one for Aikido, etc -- and tell them how important these classes are to you and that you cannot afford them because you're too young to work full time and your parents cannot pay for it either. Do NOT mention that you are doing this to become Batman. You might think that would be a good way to convince more people to give you money -- IT'S NOT, and part of becoming Batman involves not letting everyone know that you're planning to become Batman. (Note: The fact you asked this question publicly kind of dramatically goes against this rule, but that ship has already sailed my friend, so good luck with that -- I'm just hear to tell you about what to do from this point forward.) You really have to put time into thinking about this, writing out different ideas and plans for your "please give me money" video, and selling yourself and your desperate, helpless need for money to take classes that will help you defend yourself and so on. Make it good, because you need at least one of these videos to work. If they don't, wait the necessary amount of time and then post a new one asking for money again as soon as the site allows you to do so. Keep this up, as long as it takes to get money flowing.Meanwhile, sign up for any credit cards available to you. Plus, get a job, specifically something that doesn't involve sitting around on your butt. It should be a job that gives you hands-on experience with electronics, skilled labor in other words; or something involving a lot of manual labor, lifting and carrying things for long periods of time. Be sure you wear proper back braces, use proper lifting techniques, and wear all other necessary safety equipment to avoid injury.Don't buy fun things for yourself. No more spending time or money at movies, or running around with friends, or dating. You want to be Batman? COMMIT to it. Your whole life will revolve around this from now on, you will do nothing that isn't feeding the goal of becoming Batman. That attitude is, itself, part of being Batman, so get used to it.So, work and save every penny while acquiring as much credit as you possibly can. Sell anything of value you own that might decrease in value over time, and put that money into savings as well. Open a bank account with the highest interest return you can find. Meanwhile, ask your parents for money any time you can do so and expect to get any from them -- don't spend it on anything, just obtain it and put it into your savings. You should also be getting some money for those Kickstarter campaigns at some point, too.At the point you have enough money to pay for a month of martial arts classes, sign up and start taking them all as explained earlier. Hopefully you can talk your parents into paying for one classes regularly, your Kickstarter will fund at least one other class, and then your work will pay for a third one.Work out, practice your martial arts, read books on your martial arts, and do Yoga in your spare time. Focus all of your free time on developing your body and your meditation and your understanding of the marital arts. Besides those things, you should only be going to school and going to work. You'll need to slowly increase your caloric intake, to 3,000 calories per day (with lots and lots of protein) and then 4,000 calories per day. Your exercise should increase in intensity and duration and the weight you use etc -- and do it every chance you get, so if you are reading a book on martial arts you could be doing push-ups with the book under your face, for example; if you're waiting for the bus to school you can be doing push-ups or sit-ups; if you are in study hall or riding home sitting down, you can be doing stomach vacuums. Use any opportunity to add a few seconds or minutes of exercise to your day.This is a good time to start changing your sleep schedule. You will do this over a period of the next two years, so this is a relatively slow process. The way it works is, for now you use the regular 8 hours of sleep at night. But then, after you get into a comfortable rhythm with your work and exercise etc, you need to adjust to sleeping 3 1/2 hours at night plus taking a 20 minute nap in the day (during your lunch break at school, find a teacher who lets you use their room for this) and then a 90 minute nap when you first get home from your martial arts class each day. After about 6 months of this, you will switch to sleeping 4 1/2 hours at night and taking two 20 minute naps during the day, which you'll do for another 6 months. Then, you will go to 3 1/2 hours at night plus three 20 minute naps, and will do this for 6 months. Finally, you will switch to 1 1/2 hours of sleep at night plus four 20 minute naps, doing this for 6 more months.Keep all of that up, working and getting money and credit anywhere you can, and doing your martial arts classes, until you are 18 years old. Two years of this intense focus should mean you're ready for the next step.At 18, you should be graduated from high school. Great, more free time to focus on becoming Batman! Live at home with your parents as long as you can, to save money and get free room and board plus free food -- if and when they eventually start asking for you to help pay your way, put it off as long as possible, make excuses, sweet-talk them, and if necessary because they are too insistant then finally negotiate to get the lowest possible payment agreement with them. Then of course pay late, pay half when you can get away with convincing them to take the other half later, whatever it takes to save your money and avoid spending a dime you don't absolutely have to spend. Remember, if you have to be deceiving, that's okay, because your life will soon revolve around being Batman and Batman has no time for personal relationships.Plus, you can't let your family know what you're really up to, so you have to make excuses for why you are supposedly out looking for a job or doing low-paying work etc, to cover for your real job and your increasingly extensive training. Again, Batman lies to everybody about what he's real doing in his spare time, so get used to it and get GOOD at it. The greater good demands it! That's what Batman would say, anyway.So, as an adult who is 18, you can work 40 hours a week, so I recommend getting a job selling shoes on commission at a department store with a good commission rate. You think this sounds crazy, but you need to develop a good ability to judge people and tell what they want, how to find them what they want, and how to convince them that what you found is indeed what they want. You need to get fast, get aggressive, get confident, and most of all GET MONEY. I worked commission shoe sales back when minimum wage was $3.35 an hour, and I averaged $18 an hour because if you came into my area for shoes I was selling you so many g**damn shoes you'd need to grow ten more feet to ever get use out of all of them, and I'd sell you ever accessory you can possibly imagine goes with shoes because I CAN SELL SOME G**DAMN SHOES, BUDDY. My point is, yeah, shoes are easy to understand and easy to get good at, and if you work commission you can make pretty good money at it. 40 hours a week at $18/hr is more than $700 per week, if you can talk your boss into working you 40 hours -- and if you're a good salesman, then guess who can talk their boss into anything they WANT? (The answer is "you," by the way.) That's not gonna make you rich, but for an 18 year old that's a decent way to start adulthood.But hey, obviously if you can get a job paying more than that, then by all means do it -- just make sure it's one that doesn't involve selling illegal substances or othewise being a criminal, since you're about to be Batman and the only laws you are allowed to break are the ones about vigilantism, assault, carrying weapons in public, breaking and entering if you think someone is suspicious, and other such things related to taking the law into your own hands.But besides your 40 hr/week job, keep your time free. Don't go to college, or have any friends, or have a love life, or visit your family for anything other than free meals, free room and board, and borrowing money. All of your remaining time besides your job will be spent on exercise, reading about your martial arts and exercise, Yoga, and -- here it comes -- increasing your training to include MORE martial arts and other classes.That's right, you are now going to start taking additional classes, studying Jujitsu, Muay Thai, and Parkour. So find classes and do some more Kickstarter campaigns, borrow money, keep getting credit cards, and so on. If possible, go to the bank you've been using for the last couple of years and apply for a loan of several thousand dollars to cover the costs of the marital arts classes, and then make your loan payments the best way possible (pay them at the last possible time allowed, and if possible pay it with a credit card so that the minimum monthly payments are further decreased -- you want to postpone spending much moeny, trust me, you'll see why shortly).Now your free time should be pretty full, with classes in Judo, Aikido, Karate, Jujitsu, Muay Thai, and Parkour. Have one class of each of these every week.By this point, you've gone though your slow change in sleep cycles, remember, and at 18 you will have ended your 6 months on the 1.5 hours of sleep at night plus four 20 minute naps. So, with these new added classes, it is time of the switch to a new sleep schedule -- take four 30 minute naps a day, meaning one nap every six hours. You will be sleeping a total of two hours per day, giving you 22 waking hours. This is hard, but people have proven able to do it. Will there be side effects of all this insane change to your sleep schedule? Of course, and some people suffer severe side-effects or just cannot maintain it. But if you are going to be Batman, you have to be the kind of person who CAN maintain it. If you can't, then frankly that throws the whole "being Batman" thing out the window!You should be working 40 hours per week, taking 6-10 hours of training classes every week (martial arts plus Parkour), and exercising (by this point in time) at least 28 hours per week (at least four hours per day). Guess what? That leaves you with nearly 11 hours per day, lazy-bones! Sure, figure probably an hour per day is for eating food, plus maybe 30 minutes to prepare food, plus maybe 30 minutes of total bathroom time for using the toilet plus showering (oh yeah, you need to keep your hair buzz-cut like the military to save time and money, and learn to shower fast to conserve time as well). That knocks it down to 9 hours left in your day, of which we will just be generous and give you two hours of "getting around from place to place, like work and classes," so now it's 7 hours of time to fill each day. You probably will have some unexpected stuff come up, so we'll let you have 30 minutes for "incidentals" and then another 30 minutes to put in time talking to your family so they don't disown you and kick you out. So, 6 hours left now. What to do, what to do...?Oh! I know! More training! Time to start sharpening up those detective skills, by signing up for classes to get your private investigator's license. Will this cost money? You bet. Does that mean more Kickstarter campaigns? Yep. And in the mean time, go online and look for all the free information you can find about investigative techniques for P.I.'s and detectives, go to the library to get non-fiction books on the topics, and study your butt off. Spend a good 3 hours every day reading on these topics and attending whatever classes you need to take to get that P.I. license.With your remaining 3 hours per day, you will start your secret life. What this involves is picking a new name, a new "look" and "style," and going thrift store shopping for clothing and glasses and wigs to supplement this new alternate "you" you've created.This is a persona you are creating to go out around town and look into things that are outside of your normal life. You are experimenting with learning to act, learning to perform, learning to take bigger risks by going outside of your comfort zone to places you don't normally go. This is NOT a time to get into criminal stuff, that isn't what this stage is about yet. This is training, this is learning, so you build this new persona and use it to practice and get really great at taking on a new identity and approaching different kinds of people and going to places you would normally never go. It will expand your horizons and expose you to all manner of interesting new things you'd otherwise never see. One time, go stay at a homeless shelter to see what it's like, walk around all day without going inside anywhere and ask people for spare change and dress accordingly. Another day, go to a rough bar and drink sodas without any alcohol (but get it in a regular bar glass so it looks like you're drinking rum and coke or whatever), and just watch people and how they interact and what the atmosphere is like. Go be a hipster one day, a rightwing conservative another day, and so on. Spend a day in a poor neighborhood, spend a day in a rich neighborhood, spend a day as a tourist, spend a day as a blind person. And so on.Learn to enjoy this, to slip into your performances every day, always something new at first, but eventually you are going to create a specific new "persona." Spend time thinking up a life story for this new person, the places they've been, what they like and dislike, and build it out of things you really know a lot about but that are different from your own life and opinions and tastes. Never, ever overlap what this new "you" does or where the new "you" goes etc with your real self. Make this a new person who supposedly has a separate life from your own. Do NOT try to get fake IDs or anything like that, all you'd do is risk drawing attention to yourself and going to jail for something stupid. Just create the persona, and live it for three hours each day. What does this new person like to eat -- something different than your own favorite food, and pick a few "favorite" places for this persona. What music do they like -- not what you mostly like, but something very different. What jobs did they work -- not things you spend any significant time doing, but pick things that are simple and easy to find out about and visit the places they supposedly worked to see the layout and some people who work there so you can mention those folks and what they are like etc, little details that fill in the story. Learn this stuff, and take it with you in your mind and really let yourself perform the role and become this person.Some day, you'll start using this persona to get information, to go into places you cannot be seen going, and so on. So put time into it and be careful, do not risk this persona in any dumb ways or take it too far, just do the exercise here like any other training you're doing and perfect it and become great at it.Two years of this will take you to 20 years of age, and you'll be pretty damn good at martial arts and detective training, plus have a very well-developed second persona. You are exercising constantly, in top physical shape and strong and fast and powerful. You should also have saved up some money, too, after all these years of getting Kickstarter and loans and borrowing and avoiding paying for anything while living at home with your family and putting every spare penny into your savings account.Time to sign up for some college courses. Take your ACT and score above a 23, which I think is enough to get you free tuition to most state colleges for a basic course load 12-18 hours per semester, and there is usually a bit of money left over to help pay your books -- and shop at the used bookstore, every campus has one so don't buy new books!Sign up for classes, and ignore anything not specific to your goal -- that means only take classes in criminal justice related to gangs, organized crime, drug trade, law enforcement training, any FBI seminars, that sort of thing. Plus, add in sociology and psychology courses -- take the basic stuff because you need a foundation of understanding for the later classes, but then focus on courses in abnormal psychology, and anything related to crime or deviations and disorders. Sign up for any Judo, Karate, etc classes, too, just for the added training time and use of the gym. You aren't getting a degree, you are just targeting the classes you most need, and remember that any classes with a prerequisite should still let you "audit" the course (meaning you take the class like everyone else, but don't get credit for it towards your degree and don't get a grade or anything -- which is fine, you don't care, you just want the knowledge, this isn't about a degree). Talk with your professors after class and around campus, pick their brains and delve into specifics and details and conversations about crime, criminals, law enforcement, criminal psychology, and get recommendations for other classes or just other people/professors/whomever to talk to or books to read etc. Note who are the best students in class and get to know them, ask to study with them, and ask for their recommendations as well.These courses will necessitate making more time in your schedule. Go ahead and stop your Judo, Aikido, Karate, and Parkour classes, and fold those studies into your remaining martial arts and exercise time (which needs to always be intensifying and increasing to push your limits during the time spent on those things). Also during this time, you won't have to do your P.I. studies etc since you're studying in college and should've gained your P.I. license anyway.Start asking for ride-alongs with the police, getting to know the neighborhoods and how crime works, how to spot street crime or suspicious behavior, where certain kinds of crime are most prevalent in which areas, and so on. Also, if you can get any time in internships with law enforcement agencies -- local, county, state, or federal -- take those opportunities, and be sure to always ask for internships or just any opportunity to participate and learn hands-on/eyes-on/whatever from professionals. Start studying Spanish in your spare time, too. Take classes in it at college if and when it won't interfere with your other studies.Now your "new persona" can start to put your knowledge to some better use. Start going to places that are known hangouts of criminals, not literally a crack den or such things but rather public bars, restaurants, clubs, and so on. Be there, watch and listen but don't be obvious and don't get nosy. Don't ask questions, just be there and become a face they are used to seeing around so you start to blend into the crowd and background. Be familiar even though you aren't talking to them or involved in anything that's going on. Don't take any notes, don't record anything, don't try to do anything other than sit at the bar/tables by yourself drinking and eating, listening to music, make smalltalk with the servers and bar tenders, that kind of casual thing. You want to notice the faces you see regularly, the ones who know one another, the ones conducting business there. If anyone from the criminal gangs tries to engage you or ask you questions, play totally innocent and remember you're just a person having food and drinks and relaxing after a day's work. What work? Well, just looking for work actually, you're out of work but used to work at this and that place -- remember your background details -- and aren't doing anything now. Don't try to play coy or tough with them, keep it simple and remember you're just a regular dude trying to have a normal night. Don't leave in a hurry, but if you've been approached in a suspicious manner then finish your drink/food, pay your tab, and leave. The goal is to NOT get noticed, remember, and NOT draw attention, and NOT engage them here. The goal is to blend in so they forget you're there, so you can watch and learn.This will be your life for about four years, so by the time you reach 24 years of age you will be in top physical shape, excellent at many martial arts and Parkour, meditative and able to control your breathing and relaxation, have a well-developed alternate persona, have a P.I. license with plenty of knowledge of investigation, and the equivalent knowledge of a degree in law enforcement and sociology, as well as practical hands-on experience for several years around the city with police, feds, and whatnot. And you'll have saved a lot of money and driven your parents/siblings half-crazy.Time for a vacation! Go to Mexico. Specifically, go to Chiapas and spend your time in the rainforest and in cinotes, zip-lining and rappelling and swimming and diving. Climb mountains and hike in jungles. Go during the end of the rainy season, so you can experience a few different climates and do outdoor activities in the rain and in the sun, in the heat and in the cold. Don't stay in nice hotels or resorts, stay in the cheapest places you can find right in the jungle. Don't bring cell phones or computers, bring a single duffle bag with a few days worth of clothing, toothbrush, and a water bottle. You want to go off the grid and expose yourself to the elements, put yourself into a totally different environment where you are living day to day as much in the wilderness as possible. This experience is a way to relax but also push yourself in a new environment. You'll still do your exercises and practice your martial arts while you're there, of course, but you can put them to a less intense schedule -- dial it back to a couple of hours a day practicing martial arts, and an hour of exercise in the morning when you wake up and an hour at night. Spend two weeks doing this, and what you'll want to do is work your way through Southern Mexico and cross the border to Guatemala, on foot as much as possible, and fly back to the U.S. from Guatemala.This next part is going to be hard, but you need to do it anyway. Sign up for the military for a four-year engagement. Don't reenlist afterward, just do a four-year tour of duty that includes combat zones. You need to learn what combat is like, how to survive it, how to develop muscle memory in crisis situations, and get access to supplies that might come in handy in your future, so to speak. Go into the Army Rangers, with your skills and training and schooling this shouldn't be a problem. Commit to being an obsessive soldier, training in your spare time and pushing yourself to the limits of your endurance -- but don't get brainwashed or become politicized, that's the worst thing that could happen if you want to be Batman. You are using this strictly as a final opportunity to hone your skills in a war zone setting, that's all it is, more training for your future as Batman, so take it that way. When your time is up, walk away and don't look back.You'll now be 28 years old, and almost ready to take up the mantle as Batman. Your final step is to make sure your P.I. license is in order,Now your ready to take a big step. Go shopping, and pay cash. You will be getting expensive stuff here, so be prepared for a hefty pricetag. You'll need to go to gun shows, look at army surplus stores and "soldier of fortune" type places -- even look online in forums for people who want to guy and sell and trade this stuff etc, too. The point is, find it from folks where you can pay cash.Get this:Shirts That Stop BulletsAnd this (it will be readily available by the time you are 24 years old):BAE Systems Liquid Body ArmorAnd this:TacPro™ from SafeGuard ARMOR™And this (the page is in French, but I use it b/c of the many images demonstrating what Quadguard V is (about 5 lbs of segmented body armor for arms and legs, or 9 lbs for the full body suit):QuadgardYou will be fitting all this together into your main bat-suit. You'll wear the shirt under the liquid armor and/or TacPro armor (the liquid armor will be very light and thin), and then add Quadgard for your arms and legs. The total weight of all of this armor will be less than 10 lbs over your entire body. It will get hot, though. So you'll have to stay hydrated and only go out at night (but that's the plan anyway).You will have to color all of this black, of course. And you'll add jump-boots (steel-toed combat boots, and you can find some with steel plates in the soles too if you get an old enough set from the 1970s, I believe). Get insulated (against electrical shock) gloves. Add some knee-guards and elbow pads from a sporting goods store. Then use another of those bulletproof shirts as the starting material for a mask -- this won't be as cool and fancy as the suit in the films and comics, obviously, but you need to be as well-protected as possible for what you're embarking on, so use the bottom half of the shirt to start your mask. Don't leave a large open space for the whole lower-half of your face, that's absurd, just cover your whole face and include holes for your nostrils and eyes, and a wide slit for your mouth. Wear detachable Gargoyle light-yellow sunglasses lenses on the inside of the mask to cover your eyes (Gargoyle lenses are partially "bulletproof"). Add the ears out of whatever material you want, it doesn't matter of course.Your cape needs to be no longer than knee-length, to avoid tripping. A cape has advantages and disadvantages -- it's good for waving and spreading out to distract and make it harder for an enemy to see where your body really is in the dark, it can be used to wrap around an enemy's head and blind or suffocate them, and it adds an added "fear" factor to your appearance. However, it can be grabbed and used to jerk you around in a fight, it can get caught in a door or on top of a fence when you're trying to climb over, and if you wear it a lot your DNA might get on it and then a piece of the cape gets torn off somewhere and is used to identify you. My advice is, carry the cape with you and only put it on when you aren't climbing things or in a fight with multiple people.You'll also want high-quality ninja-style throwing stars (forget the bat-shaped ones, that's crazy), a couple of Tasers, some pepper spray, nightvision goggles, lock picks, a police baton, knives, mini-flashlight, a small first-aid kit, ear plugs, nose plugs, a gas mask, tactical thunder B grenades, a blow-gun with small darts, a lighter, and some M80 firecrackers. Get a military style belt with lots of pouches, plus a leg pouch, and keep these items in the pouch. Get a small lightweight backpack for the remaining items and your cape.Then go buy a police scanner. And maps of the city. And rappelling rope and harnesses. And a dirt bike (motorcycle, in case it's not clear) that you paint black. And recording devices. And home surveillance cameras. And a private "drone" remote controlled vehicle (these are about a foot across, are silent, and have camera mounts, you can get them for a few hundred bucks now). Get a plain black car, something ordinary and simple but sturdy and dependable -- you'll be welding a large, heavy pointed steel fender to the front, for ramming purposes, and buy extra body armor to attach to the inside of the doors and trunk. Keep additional belts pre-packed with your basic materials in the trunk, extra backpacks, wigs and changes of regular clothing, water bottles, a larger first-aid kit, more listening devices and camera equipment, and your drone. The car will be your vehicle for getting to your "patrol location."This is a good time to get back to the finances for a moment. You want to charge things to credit cards in everyday life as much as possible, and always make the minimum monthly payments, pay late if you can do so without incurring additional fees, and so on. You're pushing off your debt into the future and relying on credit and loans to fund the opening stages of your crimefighting adventures -- you'll get money later that makes up for it, trust me.You will now start to collect information from people you know in the police department, at the bars and clubs etc you frequent in your alternate personality, from your own notes around the city and at the clubs etc, and from studying crime reports and news articles -- the goal is to figure out where to fly your drone to watch and spot criminal gang activities, identifying where they do their illicit business. During daylight hours, you'll dress as a repair man and go to spots near these locations of illicit criminal activity, and hide your surveillance cameras and recording equipment. You'll then collect more information about planned criminal activities. With all of this data, you will pick and choose targets of opportunity to focus your efforts on, to disrupt the gangs and their activities and take them down a few at a time. Then you'll plan to hit their buildings -- crack dens, meeting houses, that sort of smaller thing, by creating diversions that draw the members outside so you can sneak in and take down whomever is inside, then depart before the others return, taking any drugs and cash readily available to pick up -- you'll destroy the drugs, keep the cash. Leave behind a few flash-bangs to surprise them and cover your escape at first, then using your weapons to take down anyone pursuing you.For these missions, you'll be using your dirt bike to get within a few blocks and then sneak up on foot the rest of the way, so make it bback to your mike and get out of there fast when you're done. The bike is just to get you the one mile or so from your target to the pre-arranged drop-off location......which is a place you can ditch the bike and hide it overnight, to retrieve it in the morning, while you then leave in your car that has been driven there from the garage to pick you up. Who drove it there?Robin did.Because if you want to be Batman, you have to have a Robin. You need a sidekick, someone to assist you, and that someone will be doing the same training you've done, basically. They don't even have to be younger than you, you can be the same age or they can be older -- you are Batman because you're the one who is clearly the absolute best at this, and who recruited the other person to help you on this lifelong mission. You and Robin will share a small apartment, and will save and combine all your money (you'll get a signing bonus from the military, too).You'll drop the bike off beforehand, then go home and change into bat-gear, and Robin will then drive you that night back to the bike's location. You'll ride the bike over to the target area, do the mission, then ride back and leave the bike. You'll get back into the car and Robin will drive you both out of there.Sometimes, as you get more intense in your missions, you'll drive the car straight up to a hideout or den of criminals, crash through the front door (make sure it's a regular house first) and jump out with flash-bangs and weapons using full military-style raid techniques. Target places where you'll grab a lot of drugs to destroy and a lot of cash lying around, and where you won't face a huge number of foes. Also target corrupt officials and corporations for raiding for information that will bring them down -- those will be much closer to "supervillains" than anything else you'll face, aside from organized crime. All the while, you'll be getting cash that you liberate from the criminals, remember, so use that to fund your crimefighting.Meanwhile, also use the police scanner to catch crimes in progress -- you'll try to spend your nights in areas with the highest violent crime rates. You'll also try to figure out some way of identifying the names of sexual offenders and where they might be located, and then question them intently about where to catch sex offenders, who and what and where the real-life forcible sex trade and online trade/selling of material with victims can be located. Use them to connect you to others in that vile world, and take them down one by one while following the trail whever possible to the next target to bring down. If you somehow manage to find a lot of the names of these folks and where to locate them, you can pick out the ones involved in sexual assaults and watch them and wait for them to attempt other crimes and then bring them down with extreme prejudice, too. You just have to manage to locate some method of tracking them down, but you're a brilliant detective now so you can probably manage this somehow.Try to reach out to make friends with cops who seem inclined to approve of what you're doing. Send anonymous letters to them and leave them tips about criminal activity, tell them when shipments or other things are happening, let them get busts and credit for the work, and provide information to help with their investigations when you can. Develop a reputation of being helpful to them.This is as close to being Batman as you will realistically get. It will be hard, it will be insane, and you will have to dedicate your entire life to this while knowing you'll end up dead or arrested -- just like I warned you in that other answer that I know you read in detail and thought about deeply. But you will say "I was, for one shining period of time, Batman!"No, don't actually do this, it's ridiculous and crazy. It won't work and it's nuts. Seriously, don't even think about doing any of this. Go have a normal life and don't try to be Batman. Ever. This isn't real advice, fun's over. Put the mask down and step away!!