what a year. i would never have expected things to go the way they did, and yet life works itself out in mysterious ways. the following are some reflections on my year as unserious as possible.
my life has turned into me wanting to try and do the coolest thing possible at the time; and whatever i can do to make the best story. i'd consider myself to be a very systems oriented person, wake up everyday at 8, go to the gym, then work for 4 hours, then lunch, then more work. kind of a repetitive lifestyle, but it's the way i get the most possible things done.
in fact i'm writing this at 12 midnight when i should be going to bed.
but being at this school has helped to change me, my goals, and the things i truly do want out of my life.
one of my biggest "bets" with college isn't studying the right subject or trying to get the best grades, it's meeting and becoming friends with the right people. and not necessarily in a career-like networking way, but putting myself in rooms with people that make me happy. people that i won't regret spending hours with at night talking to or going on spontaneous adventures with.
a somewhat contrarian belief i have is that people > lectures. if you give me the option to spend time with a friend that i may not know in 5 years or sit in a 50 minute lecture about matrices and graph traversal algorithms, i'll take the former.
anyways
here's a public recap of things that happened to me:
september
- moved in, became friends with my roommates
- started classes (skipping class)
- realized i wanted to be in startups for sure
october
- failed my first midterm (linear algebra is no joke)
- met some of my closest friends in random places
- built phone agents
november
- turned 20 (finally not a teenager)
- bombed a system design + implementation interview (never using python again)
- went to santa monica for the first time
december
- realized i should start a startup club at ucla
- got to spend time with my family (and my dog)
january
- built site to track LA fires -> 1.5M requests in a day (a friend saw it floating around in a gc)
- started building RPA agents for insurance companies
- started said club (vest at ucla)
- lots of random investor dinners
february
- met a bunch of cool startup people in LA (at ucla, uci, usc)
- broke up with my girlfriend of 1.5 years (rip)
- went on a weekend trip to SD (swimming related)
- got my club a visit to the a16z office in santa monica (biggest fridge i've seen)
march
- started going out more
- met with a ton of random ucla students over lunch
- officially started at Browserbase
- had a weird medical scare (think this helped push me to do more cool stuff tho)
april
- started lifting again, and wanting to go to the gym everyday
- went to a ton of different beaches
- restructured the club (going to have to do this again, but you live and you learn)
- learning a ton about business growth and what it looks like to be at a legit company
may
- flew up to sf for a conference (just worked the whole time lol)
- visited a ton of company offices
- working on getting sundays to ucla (socratica)
- spending as much time doing "unproductive" things (spending most of my time with people)
june
- failed my finals
- putting people before
- getting ready for a huge launch (6/17)
i am looking forward to the summer, with all the things i have planned it should be super fun. but i do want to have emerged from the next 3 months as unrecognizable as possible.
some things i need to do next year to get the most out of the year:
- leave my room
for some reason i love being confined to the small space that is my desk. whether it be coding or watching videos, i find immense comfort behind monitors.
i need to make sure i'm going outside everyday and touching grass.
- need to join some clubs
the easiest and funnest way to meet more/new people. i did coincidentally start a club which i will be running still but i want to have friends outside of that.
- go to class
meeting more people, and ideally not failing would be great
- be more social
i won't let being an introvert stop me from making the most of my time here on earth
- just do the thing
talk is cheap. if think about doing something, then i should just do it. consequences are for future me to deal with.
hope this was an interesting read, probably more interesting to you if you know me personally.
always down for a conversation. shooters shoot: [email protected]