my new thoughts on how to find friend groups + live my college life and some life updates!

a quest to be more intentional (sparkle edition)

When I initially went to Estonia I had a bunch of specific things outlined to do—an AI paper, some commits to the local lab repository, and maybe in the down time have a couple conversations.

Looking back... I probably only achieved one of those things (a couple very interesting conversations). During Estonia I ended up getting extremely distracted with people. Whether or not this is good is yet to be determined, but still the goals of being "productive" were not achieved.

How can I orient my life towards being productive and creating the things that I want?

Keeping Estonia as the example, I feel like my time then was highlighted by consumption. I consumed media constantly (albeit very useful media). Whether it was reading documentation of some random new framework like MLX or diving deep into The Three Body Problem, they all felt relatively productive. At the end though, I really didn't have much to show for it. I would even classify some unorthodox activities under consumption. Talking to people felt like indulging myself, making funny forts, going on hikes, all of them were consuming new experiences.

One thing to note though, is that these are in fact necessary for creation. Without inspiration it is extremely hard to create new projects. Talking to people is extremely important to spurring our ideas BUT it isn't actually productive. This is an extremely important distinction to make because so many people get lost in it. One can friend-maxx and experience-maxx all you want but without anything to show it's extremely hard to actually do real things.

Creation on the other hand for me tends to happen in isolation. Thinking back to school and my time skew then, I was almost alone at home for the entire day. This not only got me making really cool projects, it forced me to. To pass time I had to do something, and obviously it had to be making something really cool.

Recently, Estonia apart, I feel like college + the summer + adult life has felt like a rush. Getting to experience so much with new people is awesome, with the benefit of actually feeling super productive. In reality though... you aren't productive. Talking to people and creating cool memories is not actually equivalent to creating. Its great inspiration of course but it often leads people in a false sense of security—go through the day to day, meet that new person, attend that other club, do the homework assignment—but at the end it doesn't achieve your end goals. 

Obviously isolating yourself probably isn't the solution, everyone needs some place for inspiration. Whether its reading more papers in the field or random substacks, consumption is an important part of creation. On the other hand consuming too much is detrimental. You lull yourself into feeling productive while not actually doing anything.

For me at least, the solution is school. Well not literally, but partitioning my time similar to how high school was. During high school I spent literally half the day at home with nothing to do. What did I do during that downtime? Unlike college I didn't have the ability (or didn't want to) hang out constantly. Instead I just sat, read, worked, and was bored.

Even now, by partitioning some time (on the magnitude of days, not hours) to doing nothing, I feel like I've been able to become more productive in a sense. Some key aspects of this "down-time" are that:

You can't be surrounded with friends/do other things. This not only lowers your battery but gives you that "fake productivity" feeling.

Be bored. Boredom is awesome. Controlling your attention is a huge part of this—its only a matter of time before you start making something. I might get lost in watching the coolest youtube video or lwhiteistening to a podcast but at the end if I just stay bored & not interact, I have to make SOMETHING. Whether its tinkering with an AI model or cooking, something is going to come out of it.

No music. I know this seems really weird but I find this awkwardly helpful. Whenever I listen to music my mind is enveloped into the sounds and I absolutely love every second. The problem is though that now my downtime, walking between classes, going on the bus, going on long walks, is taken over by processing music. Oh the artist said this... what does it mean? how could it be interpreted? OO cool new riff here. By engaging in silence, it really forces your mind to focus on itself and build on ideas—especially on walks.

This is a little messy but I feel like those were my main takeaways from Estonia and in general thinking about how I work. I'm definitely in an awkward point in life where I want to not only be productive, but also meaningful with what I do. Theres definitely a difference in finishing all your school homework in 3 hours vs spending 3 hours creating a fun app or mini project—and I definitely prefer the latter. Being bored is especially hard in school, because it always feels like there's something more to do—homework, friends, more homework, practice for classes, etc. 

(now that I'm done writing this, I'll probably take a minute to be bored and continue to try and hack away on trying to read x86_64 assembly)

some thoughts about how people create and thoughts from estonia

So so many things to catch you up on. I really can’t think of any way to write this in an interesting way that could be unique, so I’ll just do a quick stream of thought. 

I’ll start off with a quick summary of the year and then like probably some things that I think are different about me than you. So the summary:

(okay this ended up being longer than expected so I’ll include my advice to past neel first then the summary)

So ummm… that was a long summary. So what would I say to the 2022 version of me? A lesson learned throughout the year?

There’s no such thing as favorites. Let me rephrase this a bit though, there definitely is such a thing as a favorite for most people, but ideally there shouldn’t be favorites.

Favorite foods, favorite colleges, favorite places to sleep, sure you can have them but most importantly—do they contribute to your happiness? Sure you can wish for them as much as you want and strive towards them, but usually favorites tend to make the present more dull. A favorite food for example might make the food you’re currently eating more dull; A favorite bed might make the bed you have at college a little less comfortable; A favorite toy makes the time you spend without it just a little more dull.

By embracing everything you see—whether it's the taste of a unique dish or a fresh scene—that should be your favorite at that moment. By devoting 100% of your time to the present, whatever is literally in front of your face, you can learn to enjoy more things in your life. Instead of dreaming about the time you were in the perfect place, with the perfect scenery, you should notice what makes the scenery you’re looking at perfect. All things are subjective, and anything could be your favorite.

People, places, things, they’re all infinitely complex beneath seemingly simple exteriors. There are so many things to actually enjoy about anything, yet people almost always just look at the first couple layers. If you love stable ground, enjoy the instability of shaky ground; if you love the sunny sky, maybe look at some rain clouds; favorites can either limit your possibilities or make you not realize what's literally in front of you.

Of course I’m not saying you shouldn’t have goals or want to do anything, or have preferences in what you want to do in life. All I’m trying to say to 2023 Neel is that favorites aren’t usually all they’re made out to be. I can like and enjoy programming, but I don’t necessarily need to feel compelled to do it 24/7. Same with research and same with messing around with friends. I might want to do something like have an impact on AI research, but I don’t think that necessarily counts as a favorite, maybe a meta-favorite?

I think this meshes with my long term goal of being able to do more of what I’m interested in—whatever it may be (hence why I absolutely love AI & CS as interdisciplinary tools). By not having any favorites, you can learn to enjoy the present moment.

Instead of sticking to a compass or any other of your favorite navigation tools… maybe use a sextant?

P.S: Here's a cool little wrapped site for my locations this year: https://neel-wrapped.vercel.app! I aggregate locations on my website so this is a cool visual that I thought would be fun.

P.P.S: Honestly I don’t know what to put here, I just really like the idea of putting lots of post scripts.

P.P.P.S: LMK any book recs you might have or any comments or anything you want to talk about! I’m always free and would love to hear how terrible or amazing my takes are (maybe you could be the reason I add a P.P.P.P.S about how terrible this advice is!)

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(said summary, some parts left out, its a lot...)

Submitted all my apps! Was slightly stressed out about where I would go but it was mostly fine. I honestly didn’t care too much about where I would go, mostly if I would go to the same schools as my friends. I knew this would be unlikely but it would still be fun. Worked on refining my independent research project idea and ran a couple tests to see if it would work.

Hung out with a lot more people now that I had time! It was honestly super fun compared to the rest of the year.

Presented at my first research conference! AAAI23 was honestly a blast where I got to try living by myself for the first time, and it was amazing. I did groceries, got lots of ice cream, had fun with friends, and just vibed in Washington DC. Of course the coolest part was the research (got pretty deep into federated learning/RL here, honestly the papers were the coolest), and meeting new people to talk to! I felt satisfied after this conference thinking I made full use of my time there to further my goals of 1) getting to know more people in the field 2) checking out if my ideas were interesting to people in the field. Met a very cool S and K.

TREEHACKS!!! This was honestly even more fun than I thought it would be. I made a lot of friends and got my first intro to a lot of new communities that I hadn’t interacted with! Shoutout to W, J, C, & V for super cool late night conversations (can’t say they were violently productive though), but I feel like they were hilarious. Got closer to K which was great and I feel like I finally got to see what he thought about life & different issues. Made a cool thing on the side too https://devpost.com/software/accessize

Birthday!!! Had a really cool birthday party that combined a lot of people from a lot of different places. It turned out really good and I’m glad I turned 18.

SO this was definitely the month of rejections. It hit pretty hard at the moment but now I guess it doesn’t? Maybe I’m also tricking myself into thinking that I’m in this mindset, honestly I’m not too sure. It was hard at the moment because there are mainly two downsides. The biggest one being friends—I’ve interacted with a certain subset of people throughout most of my life that would be going to more “prestigious” colleges (or “more prestigious”, I honestly don’t think the more qualifier would work because prestige can’t be quantitative), and I wouldn’t be able to interact with them in person day to day. Ideally I guess the best part of college would be meeting new people, but it just sounds much easier in the moment to say “yeah! me and my friends will live together for 4 years and just do fun things!” rather than “i’ll be on my own for 4+ years where there's a high probability i’ll make more, better, friends!”.

I finished up my independent research and qualified for the International Science Fair in March! It was my first time qualifying through the county, so it was honestly cooler to have people locally recognize my work and I feel like I got the best of both worlds here.

Factoring in the coolness from my research and the uncoolness (subjective still) of college rejections, I think I’d rate the month below average for a solid:

THE MONTH OF FUN EXCURSIONS—prom, suzume, new york, going to LA for debate tournaments, and so much more.

Met E for the first time and that was super cool! I also got to see a lot of people at random events as everyone was visiting colleges across the US, so that helped a lot with coping with the month before. Visited UCLA for the first time and though it wasn’t love at first sight it seemed like a place with lots of fun things to do (whether there IS a place without fun things to do is up for debate…). I met a ton of cool people there, and they were all amazing, so it made me much happier about my decision!

Overall a good month, I worked on my research a little more to make the paper & presentation, but honestly not a super productive month. School was going great and I didn’t have to stress for classes almost at all which was great.

Okay, key events in this month were probably ISEF, Angelhacks, and just generally going out a lot more.

I feel like my outings increased exponentially throughout the year, which honestly is how my ideal second semester senior year would go. 

Many iconic moments at ISEF, I honestly think the people were what carried it here though. In 2022 it was mainly focused on trying really hard and constantly practicing, but this year was a lot more chill. I talked with a lot more people, went out and explored Dallas! I loved going through random parts with other participants in the night and going on fun excursions. Definitely a net positive experience.

~~AngelHacks! Happened! Yes! And it was so fun! we had swords and many cool things.~~

AngelHacks was honestly an extremely fun experiment. We got to test out how a completely non-competitive hackathon would be—and I think it was a success! If the goal of a hackathon is to educate people, I think the current hackathon format is NOT the way to go here. I’ll probably write something on this later but humor is a much better incentive than large prizes, especially for people learning how to hack.

You want to cultivate a mini caring environment with low stakes prizes—swords, slime, a hundred packs of ramen—rather than high value prizes. This way people can take risks, more people get a reward, and it's an environment where people can explore their creativity/feel less downside to just learning something new. The vibes also become much better + more collaborative than other hackathons.

I think overall I went on a ton of walks this month and I loved it—thanks to everyone who went deep into the hills or any random park with me!

I think this is the month where the nostalgia definitely started to hit me. Before I didn’t really care too much about school or missing everyone—but “memetics” prevails once again. Surrounded by people reminiscing over their childhood and remembering the past, I could feel myself also looking fondly on random events I had done while younger. With everyone getting super nostalgic about their highschool career, I wanted to just get up and do more things to make it more memorable.

Graduation was amazing, very very fun, honestly nothing to complain about here. I loved the vibes and felt everyone was just enjoying themselves and the time.

After lots of hanging out, fun, and shenanigans, Calhacks rolled around! This was super fun because not only did I get to reconnect with people, I got to build something that’s been on my mind for a while—https://devpost.com/software/caddy-92l74v—and work with someone I’ve wanted to work with E, which I’ve wanted to do for a while. I found it super therapeutic, Calhacks was definitely up there in my memorable hackathons because of the deep conversations and overall just fun vibes.

MORE HANGING OUT. Lots of excursions and other things—highlights here are definitely spontaneous trips to SF and random hikes in the hills. 

New Hampshire: WOW I have never been so surprised to see the dark before. This had to be the first time I’ve seen the dark up close before. Truly not being able to see anything is and continues to be extremely scary. Met cool people though and that’s all that matters—https://notebook.neelr.dev/stories/kairos. The highlight definitely had to be my late night conversations with P and trying to build a compiler in Haskell.

Boston: This was super fun, I got to see C again! Boston is honestly a cool place to be, I love the architecture and just thinking about the history that happened there. Met a ton of cool people here and got another glimpse of what it would be like to be with your friends for extended periods of time (queue Japan…)

Cavetown: BEST CONCERT EVER! I love Cavetown and BoyWithUke so much, definitely the best concert of the year. The vocals, having Ricky Montgomery notice me was definitely the highlight though.

Vermont: I would probably define this as a blast from the past. A little context, I went to Vermont on the Outernet! It was an outdoors hackathon where people literally went camping for a hackathon. This had been my dream setting for a hackathon, and it honestly went amazing. I enjoyed being a participant, eating marshmallows, and sitting around a fire with people programming! Interacting with people just coming into the hacking community (as someone who’s been here for 5+ years), was super inspiring and reminded me a lot of how I used to be. (nostalgia +100 but also inspiration +80). Tested out a couple cool things with NeRFs and tried to build a text => 3d reconstruction pipeline and 3d printed a (pretty cursed) orpheus!

I feel like in this month particularly so much happened. Spending time with family was amazing, getting to explore Japan and honestly take in the amazing views/culture is the highlight of my year. Getting to just relax with family, explore random places, and see interesting things is amazing and something I might not get often afterwards—so I’m super grateful for that. Tried an onsen, lots of matcha, petted a deer, and talked to random people on the train!

The second half was spent with friends in Hakuba, honestly a crazy experience by itself. I didn’t meet too many new people, but of the new people I met, all of them were amazing. Getting to know U, D, & Y more was insightful because each had a unique story that I honestly related to so much. I was much more open (probably because of the crazy environment shift), which allowed me to have deeper/more meaningful conversations overall.

THIS IS PROBABLY the best environment I could ask for. Hakuba was in the middle of nowhere, with a 7/11 closeby to get amazing food, a forest behind to explore, and friends everywhere to talk to. The only changes I would make are 1) less humidity and 2) bigger hallways (spacious spaces are cool too).

Getting the gang back together w/ R & C was amazing, spending time in Tokyo was fun especially just enjoying the scenery. It really showed me a glimpse of what it would be like to just live in a small apartment with all your friends, and how enjoyable that life would actually be. 

Top highlights of Japan 2nd half (deserves a full bullet list just for itself)

Running around Tokyo station with C trying to find a place to put our bags

Walking around the house in Hakuba finding random (slightly creepy very Ghibli-esque) shrines deep in the woods and wondering if I’ll actually be able to find my way back

Wireheading D and quizzing him to try and see if he gets embarrassed

Late night conversations and hot tubs (even though it was hot and humid outside)

Rooming with R and still sleeping at completely different hours that barely overlapped

I worked on trying to classify EEG signals here, but honestly I got derailed 24/7 from messing around rather than doing actual work.

This was honestly a month full of flights too. Orientation was amazing where I met so many new people and went on amazing walks—super fun and met my roommate today! Going immediately from Japan to LAX though was pretty jarring, but still fun.

Davidson was a really cool weekend overall—met up with new friends and saw C again, had tacos with Bob Davidson where he asked a lot of hard hitting questions. Honestly the whole experience was a blast, but also not exactly what I thought it would be. After Japan it felt a little watered down?

Inbound to UCLA!!! Saying goodbye to everyone was definitely a challenge, but afterwards I spent the first weeks in UCLA in December. Met V, C, P, A, S, A and so many people I can’t introduce them all. Played a scavenger hunt game that was interesting and many many sidequests (redacted for “brevity”).

Built a bot to get concert tickets for Bruin Bash! Worked relatively well and secured floor tickets (was fun)

Attended lots of club meetings trying to get integrated into the UCLA lifestyle

Set up the infamous rope ladder in my room because room service was too slow

Got my dorm floor to be super social which is fun!

Met so many people and did so many serendipitous things…

One super big highlight I would point out here is classes vs fun. First quarter I took ridiculously easy classes—an introduction to programming (oh my days…), philosophy, and math. This way I could audit cooler and maybe more advanced classes like grad level reinforcement learning and parallel computing. This was really fun in general, made school more low stakes, and gave me breathing room to just have fun and let things happen. This was around the time I submitted my paper to NeurIPS for fun, and just relaxed after getting into college!

maybe favorite is just a word i shouldn't use as often

YAY, The school year is over! Online school was quite interesting, especially with my first AP tests, as well as managing to organize myself efficiently. Mainly my qualms with online school is only the "non-socialness" of it all, but I love the freedom it provides with learning, and the ability to review anything you need, without having to search for it. It definitely blurs the line between school and homework a lot, in addition to almost constant screen time (night shift 24/7 ganggg). I don't really feel the stress of taking 3 AP classes, but they all made finals season a lot harder with almost constant studying (hopefully I did well).

Looking back I think there are quite a few ways I could improve this year, but most of all I think that my main problem was staying concentrated. In a world full of distractions, being forced to be online 24/7 is fun, but also takes a lot from your productivity. I've tried to combat this in multiple ways, from just decluttering my digital space, to chucking my phone away. Either way, hopefully next year with in person school this won't be a problem. Another thing I want to do better with is taking more opportunities. I sometimes reject some because I don't have enough time, but almost always regret it, so this year i hope to accept more of them.

Now in the summer I have quite a few things going on, from a large scale data science internship, to taking 61A at Berkeley. My goals for over the summer would be just to create cool programming projects, hopefully something related to AI and circuits! Also I want to try posting bi-weekly (2 times a week) in my notebook for fun!

I'll just list out my achievements this school year for fun, and so I don't forget:

1st place Conrad Challenge, and Diversity Award

Good of Humanity Award DV Research Paper Competition

All A's second semester, and both semesters for only AP's

Qualified to NSDA National Debate Tournament (record TBD)

TeachAids Internship, and created CoviDB for Kids (2.4k+ hits)

USACO Silver (just tried it out of the blue, may study for it next year)

Hosted our Hack Club online with 30+ members and had fun

Learned Rust (been on my bucket list for so long, it has to make it lol)

Contributed a significant change to a large github repo, the Github CLI

Helped with Summer of Making, and Scrapbook for HackClub!

What are some things I could do better, things I liked, and my plans for summer!

#reflection

a quest to be more intentional (sparkle edition)

Creation Consumption and Productivity

my "favorite" year recapped!

End Of School Reflection

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a quest to be more intentional (sparkle edition)

Creation Consumption and Productivity

my "favorite" year recapped!

End Of School Reflection

#reflection