Think there isn’t life outside of high school? Well, Freedom graduate Jeff Bishop proved that state of mind wrong with his recent feat of making the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the field of energy. Jeff Bishop graduated in 2000 from Freedom. “I think it’s safe to say…I was very dorky,” he said in a January interview. From Freedom, he traveled all the way to Houston, TX to study electrical engineering at Rice University. It’s not his work in electrical engineering, however, that put him on the map. Nowadays, Bishop puts his time and effort into renewable energy. His contributions to the field are what got him on Forbes’ list in the first place. Bishop currently works in state-based government affairs. Specifically, he works on getting policies and regulations in place for renewable energy on a state level. One particular project of Bishop’s put him in sub-Saharan Africa in order to research places where renewable energy efforts failed and why. Uganda, Botswana, Morocco, Turkey and Spain are just a few of the places on Bishop’s growing list of travels. This line of work wasn’t something Bishop particularly sought out to do from an early age. During his senior year of high school, he interned at a local network company that, unfortunately, went from a multi-billion dollar company to nothing during his time there. Although the company wasn’t a positive success story, Bishop said that was at least the first time his eyes truly opened as to what was out there. So what’s the key to success? Bishop says “time-management.” On average, he spends 50 to 60 hours at a full time job, 15 to 20 hours a week on planes, five to 10 hours working on his master’s degree on the weekends and some time working on the board of directors for a few non-profit agencies, all on top of having a social life. “If you don’t have time-management, something is going to drop,” Bishop said. Every day Bishop goes into work, he makes a to-do list. He puts the things he doesn’t want to do at the top of the list and does those things first. Then, he turns off his phone, gets off his e-mail and starts working. In addition to good time-management skills, Bishop says success is a combination of luck and hard work. “Luck tends to appear when you work hard,” Bishop said. As of Jan. 2, Bishop resides in Chicago where he attends the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Before that, he was flying from Houston to Chicago and back again every weekend just to take the classes he needs to get his master’s degree. Bishop said that as lame as it may sound, he is very excited to start the two classes he will be taking next because he’s learning about something that’s completely useful. Bishop encourages current high school students to read frequently. “It’s amazing how often books I read in high school come up now,” he said. Bishop also says that having a basic mastery of a language is very important. He didn’t take Spanish in high school, which is something he regrets because he has since had to take it in college. Taking Spanish earlier also would have helped him when he traveled to Spain. Advice he gives to soon-to-be college students is to not go to the big school-sponsored college visits, but rather an independent one during a weekday. It helps you see what the school will truly be like. Keeping your grades up in college is probably one of the most important things you can do, though. Bishop said that when he was interviewing for jobs they sat down and thoroughly checked his academic records. The interviewers asked him things such as, “Why is this grade low? What happened this semester?”