So I was reading my two previous posts, and I realized how terrible everything sounds. It’s just all so terrible. I swear I don’t sound like that in real life. So I’m going to tone down the edginess and try to be a little more authentic.
I actually debated taking down the previous two posts. But I realized that implies that all the posts from then on are going to be better. And I don’t think I can reach that standard. I’m pretty sure all my writing sucks right now. But I’m going to keep on writing until it gets better.
Anyways, back on topic. Let’s talk about college.
—
My first semester of college has officially come and gone, and it’s a little strange to think that I’m an eighth of the way through my college experience. It kind of feels like it happened too fast, and yet when I think back, so many different things occurred. I suppose that’s the best possible ending, and it probably means that I lived my first semester to its fullest.
A friend asked me the other day how I would describe my first semester. I don’t think he meant for me to answer in one word, but I thought it would be succinct and poetic if I answered with one word. And after thinking about it, I said tumultuous. I don’t mean to imply that it was angst-ridden, though it sometimes was. What I meant is that my semester was incredibly full of both ups and downs, and that it couldn’t be described simply.
I don’t think it’s possible to describe my first semester in one word. I gained an unprecedented level of independence, put together the first pieces of my identity, and began developing a model of how the world works. I met a humongous variety of people. Honestly, my first semester could probably fit into a whole series of blogposts, but I’ve decided to condense my experience into one humongous post anyways.
—
Near the end of high school, my default conversation starter became “so how are feeling about college starting soon?” I don’t remember any of the specific responses anymore because what I really wanted to talk about wasn’t how they felt about college, but how excited I was for college, and boy was I excited. I think I partially saw high school as a series of regrets in the end. I could’ve made more friends rather than sticking with the same people I’d always been friends with. I could’ve grinded Olympiads to be more academically accomplished. I could’ve matured faster and began working on figuring out my identity sooner.
I saw college as a new beginning, an opportunity to do things again the right way. I wanted to be a social butterfly, a stark contrast from the relatively unknown wallflower I’d been throughout high school. I would get an internship starting freshman summer, and get a good job by the end of college. I would be an academic weapon who got perfect grades.
And I felt like all of these goals were easily in reach. I’d been working on my social skills for the last two years of high school, and honestly I had always been a decent speaker. My part-time job did wonders for my confidence, and I really felt like I could be the popular, extroverted kid. I’d been self-studying coding for a little bit by then, and I thought I was pretty good for someone just entering college. Technically, through my high school, I had three years of coding experience. I thought I would breeze through my classes. Also, my high school also just handed me an internship and I also nepotismed my way into a summer internship. So I thought my resume was pretty good. My goals didn’t feel like dreams, because dreams are impossible. My goals felt grounded and doable.
There’s this way to frame your thoughts with time travel that I think about sometimes. I used to always think about how if I traveled back in time, I would fix everything in my life. I would regularly exercise, self-study three hours a day, never waste time again. And by the time I reached my current age, I would be a drastically improved person. But you can reframe this as viewing your present self as a time-travelled version of your future self, meaning that you should start doing the changes you would do if you travelled back in time now. And that’s similar to the framework as to how I viewed college, where I had a fresh opportunity to become this perfect person. For my high school self, it was too late to become this genius extrovert, but for my college self, it would be easy as long as I tried.
—
I definitely overestimated my coding skills. I knew I wasn’t the best at coding, but my brief online research (mostly Reddit) told me that there were tons of people who entered college without any coding experience at all. And I thought I would at least be above average. But of the people I’ve met here, I’m definitely bottom 10%.
So classes were harder than I expected. But that doesn’t mean they were actually difficult. In the end, I was only taking 13 credit hours total. 15 is the average, with 12 as the minimum and 18 as the max. I was taking 4 classes, of which only two were technicals. The technical classes were actually pretty tough, but I leaned pretty hard on my friends for help, and I got through it okay. My other two classes were essentially jokes, at least in terms of academic integrity. Every single exam was virtual, and thus I’m pretty sure I cheated on every one.
(I’m actually sort of ashamed of my cheating now. I had a friend talk to me about academic integrity, and I realized that by cheating I’m being unfair to everyone who actually follows the system. I even debated turning myself in at some point.)
I’m pretty sure I put in less effort into my academics than everyone else I know. I cared very little for my grades this semester. I was putting most of my effort into my social life. I skipped about half of my lectures, and the ones I did go to, I only went for the friends in those classes. I would never actually pay attention in class.
See, most people studied for finals well before the final. I didn’t. For me, when I studied, I’d basically never seen the content before, and sometimes I would be learning a couple week’s of content the day before in 8-hour cramming sessions. For my Discrete Math final I pulled off a 20-hour study session to learn an entire’s semester worth of content in an all-nighter. (To be fair, not all the content was completely brand-new, since we had to learn content throughout the semester for exams.)
We have these fairly high-workload biweekly CS projects. They’re called Machine Projects, or MPs. For most people they’re about 10 hours of work. There are some impressive CS folk who’ve been programming for years who can pull them off in like 3 hours. But these projects would take at least 20 hours for me. You’re supposed to work on them slowly over the two weeks they’re assigned. There’s extra credit if you submit the assignment a week early. I never got the extra credit.
—
I got through the first few MPs with significant help from friends. Eventually, I felt bad for leaning on them so hard, and I tried to do one by myself. This ended with me submitting late, which appalled the academic perfectionist in me. The grade for an MP, if submitted late, was automatically capped at 67%. This would be crippling to my grade, but luckily the class offered a no-questions-asked late waiver. This should’ve been a reminder that my current work-style, which was waiting until the last day and cramming it all, was unsustainable.
But then the same thing happened again, and I had to use another late waiver. And then it happened again, and this time there was no late waivers, and my grade took a significant hit. Somehow, this was not enough of a reminder to kick my studying habits into gear, and I still procrastinated everything.
The late waivers completely waived the lateness of the assignment, regardless of how late it was. And for the MP that I didn’t do, my grade would be a 67% regardless of when I ultimately submitted it. So I had no incentive to complete any of my backlogged assignments. And this meant that at some point at the end of the semester I had 4 MPs due. 2 of them were late-waivered, 1 was simply late and would thus be capped at a 67%, and there was a newly-assigned MP to finish.
I think my most impressive academic feat this semester was completing all 4 MPs in the span of 4 or so days. (Though I did make liberal use of ChatGPT.) I got an A in the class, so I never got punished for my poor time-management. Perhaps my time management wasn’t even poor, considering that everything got done in the end.
—
At some point, about half-way through the semester, I suffered from severe burnout. I could write an entire blogpost about this too. But it was mostly due to a combination of stretching myself too thin socially and not having a reliable network of close friends I could rely on. I was also a little angsty about romance (God I was so silly). During this period, I was jittery and angsty. I went to sleep later and later (and my sleep schedule was already horrendous, which I’ll write about in a moment). And I would buy Flamin’ Hots from the vending machine at absurd hours as a coping mechanism. I spent way too much money on vending machines this semester.
—
Before this semester I could probably count the number of times I stayed up past 5 AM on one hand, and those were all for academic reasons. After this semester, it’s probably about a couple dozen. And most of those were for no good reason. My sleep schedule just kept on getting worse from the beginning of the semester. I think my overall average sleep time was probably 5-6 AM, and I regularly woke up at 2 PM. I began to go back to my dorm when the sun started coming up, and when I woke up the sun had already set. At some point I promised myself that I wouldn’t let this happen again. It then happened about another dozen times.
I pulled like a dozen all-nighters this semester for a mixture of academic and social reasons. I can now conclusively say that all-nighters are overrated. Academically, they compromise your sleep and you will be in a significantly worse state for the exam. And socially, they’re kind of pointless. The social bonding of an all-nighter is the same between sleeping at 5 AM and not sleeping at all, but an all-nighter destroys your health.
My horrendous sleep schedule can probably be attributed to taking advantage of my newfound independence. But with great independence comes with great responsibility. And I don’t think I fulfilled my responsibility at all.
In high school, I almost always ate 3 meals a day. My parents would make me breakfast every morning, even if it was just a sausage patty and milk. In college, most people have 2 meals a day, usually skipping breakfast. I sometimes went days where I wouldn’t eat any meals, only a party-size bag of barbecue chips that I bought using Dining Dollars. I think I ate more chips and candy this semester than any other similarly-lengthed period of my life. I’m pretty sure I developed cavities, if the toothaches I now sporadically have are any indication.
I also should’ve cleaned more often. I didn’t do laundry enough, and my clothes piles would get enormous. I only washed my sheets once this semester (oops), and they had a tinge of smell by the end. And my room had a strange smell about halfway through the semester. I’d meant to buy a vacuum and deep-clean my room, but I never got around to it.
—
The reason I cared so little about my grades and health was because I was investing all my time and effort into socializing. I was doing my best to spread out and make as many friends as possible. I tried to stay in my dorm as little as possible and always be doing something with someone. For the first month or so, I don’t think there was an hour that went by where I wasn’t with someone else.
Making friends in college was initially pretty easy. I never had to reach out or even put myself out there. I kind of just went to the welcome week events and people almost always approached me first. All I had to do was respond enthusiastically and make conversation, and it was pretty smooth sailing from there. In classes, I just had to greet the people next to me, and it would basically always lead to a conversation. And then I made one or two friends through clubs. And even then, I didn’t approach new people in clubs. I just saw people I recognized in the clubs, usually from classes or a welcome week event, and I’d say hi. I would also encourage other people to go to clubs with me. Although I didn’t reach out to anyone, I said yes to nearly any hangout. I became a yes-man — and agreed to basically anything.
In a way, it’s kind of a snowball effect. If you don’t make friends in the beginning, it gets progressively harder to make friends, and you might actually have to reach out and approach new people. But I guess I got lucky and people approached me during welcome week and I had some high school friends coming in with me. I could make friends through their friends and so on, and I had sort of a jumping pad.
One trick that I used though to make friends was to always wave and greet someone I knew if I saw them, regardless of how close we were at that moment. Even if I only met this somebody for 5 minutes before, I’d wave and say hi. I think this was what got me the most friends in the end. Most people meet a lot of people and then proceed to lose touch. And then it would be sort of strange to reach out after that. But because I kept on waving, I kind of renewed the bond, regardless of how weak it was. And because I avoided my dorm like the plague, I was often in a public space, and I would see a lot of people, and thus wave to a lot of people.
The amount of people I would wave to became a little absurd halfway through the semester, and I would find myself saying hi to maybe a dozen people every time I ate dinner. People would notice and teasingly call me popular. But I don’t really think so. It was more an illusion of popularity that implied I was close to many people when in reality I barely knew most of whom I waved at.
—
Most of what I learned this semester wasn’t from school itself, but from the people I met and stories I heard. I think what I learned is probably common sense to a lot of people. But I grew up in a pretty isolated bubble of mostly high-achieving Asians who had similar backgrounds, so I was fairly naive.
I learned that people could be homophobic. I knew homophobia existed in theory before college, but I’d never really seen it, so I implicitly believed that it only existed on the edges of Twitter and Facebook. But one of the first groups of friends I interacted with were actually homophobic, which was a little bit of a culture shock to my politically correct world. They weren’t too explicit with it, but they would sprinkle in gay jokes and make fun of “zesty” people. And then they started openly talking about how they couldn’t help hating gay people because of their background and how they grew up.
They’re not bad people. Some of them were good, genuine people — outside of the homophobia that is. They were kind, friendly, and thoughtful. But it just kind of made me uncomfortable so I slowly started cutting off ties with them. I’m good friends with a good amount of LGBT folks, and I felt I was almost betraying them.
One of the people from that homophobic friend group once started a conversation with me saying that he had a controversial opinion. I told him to go ahead. He said I don’t like gay people. I didn’t really know what to say. I didn’t want to alienate him, but also I didn’t want to give any form of agreement. So I responded with I don’t think that’s a controversial opinion. And I’m pretty ashamed that I responded like that. I should be standing up for my friends, for acceptance and tolerance. But if you put me in that situation again, I don’t know if I would respond any differently.
Another thing I learned that I briefly mentioned is how I learned that cheating is bad. I learned this from a group of Christian people I made friends with. I learned that religious people were normal people too, though I already knew that because I was raised religious. But it’s good to have confirmation.
I initially thought that the Christian people were the only people I would vibe with. Like me, they didn’t curse often, if at all. And they valued kindness and did lots of morality signaling. And I still do really like them. Thing is, I don’t they like me very much. I cheated pretty blatantly on my exams in front of them. And then, worst of all, I tried to justify my actions to them. That’s my fault, really. Also, I sometimes party, and I don’t think they’re that into that either.
I met this person whose love language is so different from what I’m used to. They would insist on me wearing my jacket if I went outside, and that I should get enough sleep. They would help me get medicine if I got sick if I asked, and would empathize with bad tests. They blatantly showed affection, but not with direct admissions of affection but indirect signs of care.
There was this other person who claimed to approach life carefree. They had fun in conversation and weren’t afraid to make any kind of joke. But at the same time they actually did care about the world and were willing to talk about philosophical topics. Whenever I felt angsty this semester, I would sometimes talk to this person, and they would almost always just listen. I actually really liked this person. They were so cool. I don’t even know how to describe it.
I met this other person who literally scrolled Instagram Reels all day. They claimed to spend most of the day braindead. They also claimed to be a super-introvert. At the same time this person produces the funnest conversations, and he’s also one of the best competitive programmers I know. At least from the outside, he appears to be happier than anyone else here.
—
Ultimately, I think I ended the semester with a good amount of friends. People come and go, and the people I thought I might be close friends with at the start of the semester ended up drifting away. And I became unexpectedly close with people I didn’t realize I would become friends with.
The biggest mistake I made socially was not reaching out more. I’m not used to asking people to do things. I’m afraid of being annoying, or asking someone to hang out who actually doesn’t like me. It’s easy to say yes to a hangout, because you know they enjoy your presence. Otherwise, it’s not guaranteed that they even want to see you again. So I never reached out to people to do things and only responded to people.
I think this led to a point halfway through the semester where I felt like I had no friends. Or at least no close ones. I had a bunch of acquaintances, but nobody i could ask to do things, because I never asked people to do things. And people stopped asking me to do things after I was sick for a month and said no to many things. And because people thought I was popular, it made me feel even worse.
But also, I think everyone goes through a moment of distress during the beginning of college like this. I think it’s natural that after transitioning away from your support network and entering a new environment where you have initially have no one you can lean on and really open up to can make anyone prone to angst.
In the end, I found a good group of people. I’m good friends with four or five people. like they wouldn’t even be classified as college friends anymore. I think they could be classified as actual friends. And I’m like medium friends — somewhere between acquaintance and good friend — with a good amount of people, thanks to my saying hi to everyone. I’m not to worried about my situation socially.
—
I really tried to put myself outside of my comfort zone this year. Specifically, I went out to parties. I tried alcohol. I tried weed. It’s all overrated, in my opinion. But it can be fun. I don’t think I’ll do it much more.
Like the third time I drank I drank way too much and threw up four times. That wasn’t good. But I kinda did that intentionally because I wanted to be a little wild. I don’t think I’d do that again. The first two times I tried weed I didn’t feel anything. But on the third I tried way too much and ended up high as balls for like 8 hours. That was totally worth it though, and it completely changed my view on life.
But again, I don’t think I’ll try it much more. It was mostly seeing what was the big deal, and now I’m pretty happy knowing what the deal is. It’s fun, but I think I can have just as much fun off them.
—
I think I grew a lot as a person this semester. I’m starting to enjoy the identity I’m crafting for myself. I think the main thing that made me change was talking to a ton of people deeply. But those kinds of conversations are kinda burdensome and high-effort, so I wouldn’t actually regret it a little. You need to be closer friends with people first before you do that. But I think it really helped me grow as a person. But I never talked that deeply with my high school friends, mostly because it felt strange to change the dynamic we had for years. So I kind of put an emotional burden on my not-as-close friends at college.
But I’ve found things that I value, things that motivate me, and the kind of person I am. And I’m pretty satisfied with it.
—
1. Don’t pull all-nighters. They’re supremely overrated.
2. Put yourself out there. Okay, everyone says this. I’m going to be a bit more specific. On the first few days of school, go to welcome week events. Say hi to people and introduce yourself with your major and ask what theirs is. Make conversation. Get their number. Ask them to go to club introduction meetings with you. And then ask them to eat dinner with you. Pick up other people as you go around. Initiate the forming of group chats.
3. You’re not going to vibe with some people. College is big. You don’t need to stick with them. There’s plenty of other people to make friends with.
4. Say hi to everyone you know no matter how little you know them. Trust me, this works. It works even better if you smile while you say hi.
5. You’re probably going to experience moments of angst. Different people cope with it different ways. You’re probably going to end up venting to a high school friend or something. I’m going to warn you that you should be aware that you’re kind of trauma dumping when you’re doing this. I’m not stopping you, but you should realize what’s happening.
6. Deep conversations are good for connecting on a more emotional level with someone. But you also can’t take it back after you’ve done this. Be careful who you have deep conversations with. You might regret being so vulnerable later. Remember that most people don’t make that many deep friends the first semester.
7. Everything you feel, someone else probably felt too. You’re not that special.
8. In the end, you will become who you will end up becoming anyways. Just remember that it’ll all turn out fine. At least, it most likely will.
9. There is no meaning of life. If you’re wondering why you should keep pushing yourself to do work, just pick a purpose and pursue it.
10. You only truly believe something after experiencing it yourself. So experience more things.
11. You’re just a teenager. Remember that things don’t matter as much they seem.
12. Eat fruit.