It’s now been almost two years since graduating from Stanford, and I wanted to carve out a post to reflect deeply on how well I spent my time there, now with the benefit of hindsight, and with the additional goal of informing my future self to bias towards activities that matter longer term. There a variety of ways to measure quality of time, but the core aspects that I’ve grown to appreciate can be broadly categorized within: social life, health, career, and academics¹.

Since at any given time, I found myself optimizing between these categories simultaneously, I’ll present a quarter by quarter rating of each with some brief commentary and use (*) to highlight particularly high quality experiences or activities.

Fall 2017

Rating:

Social Life: 6/10
Health: 5/10
Academics/Career: 7/10

Coursework (20): Econ 1, CS 106X, Math 113*, Freshman Writing Seminar (ESF)

Adjusting to Stanford was fairly difficult my first quarter. As a natural introvert and lifetime cynic, finding social groups outside of dorm activities or in clubs was tough, and I ended up having large blocks of free time by myself which was undesirable.

Highlights:

Despite mostly restricting social life to my dorm, I’ve met many of my closest lifetime friends there
Engaging philosophical discussions with dormmates which helped solidify awareness of my own lack of understanding and consistency

Mistakes:

Not taking the standard Math/Physics courses to meet other freshman
Not joining non pre-professional clubs (like sports, etc.) to meet friends
Not finding a consistent fun physical activity to engage with people in (does Ping Pong count?)

Winter 2018

Rating:

Social Life: 9/10
Health: 8/10
Academics/Career: 7/10

Coursework (22): Math 62CM*, CS 161, CS 107, CS 43, CS 22, PHIL 120

Highlights:

My friendships within the dorm community expanded and deepened significantly
Taking Math 62CM, significantly developed my abstract reasoning skills, and also introduced me to a lot of friends from the Math major community

Mistakes:

Didn’t touch grass enough (a recurring mistake throughout most of my collegiate experience)
Naively thought socializing a lot meant drinking a lot. This was mostly corrected in future quarters, but is one of the first examples of “Ryan is a sheeple”

Spring 2018

Rating:

Social Life: 2/10
Health: 3/10
Academics/Career: 10/10

Coursework (22): Math 120, Math 147, Physics 65, CS 166*, CS231N*, CS142

One of my goals throughout freshman year was to find my intellectual/productive limits, which I aimed to accomplish by upping my course load difficulty each quarter until I broke. This quarter was by far my most taxing and difficult throughout college, due to the quantity of work and my own lacking academic maturity, which firmly had me reach the goal of breaking. Most of my memories from this quarter are whirlwinds of psetting in the dark on limited sleep with friends or alone, with little sunlight or external social activity outside of the first week of classes.

Highlights:

Deepened relations with close friends in the Math and CS communities, and finally met the Physics kids in the honors sequence which was nice
Found my academic limits, learned a ton of cool material, and drank the firehose of knowledge with the highest density of intellectually fun classes I’ve taken at Stanford
Realized pretty clearly, that being a great theory PhD in Math was out of the question – the classmates in my twelve student Differential Topology course somehow self-selected quite strong that quarter, to the point where I felt talent-wise near the bottom quartile of the class. This was a great wake-up call looking back (at the time, was quite upset), as it really helped me bias towards more realistic paths

Mistakes:

Didn’t touch grass enough or see the sun in beautiful Spring weather
Didn’t give myself enough free time to relax and reflect which had mental health tolls

Summer 2018

Rating:

Social Life: 8/10
Health: 9/10
Academics/Career: 4/10

Internship: Worked at a tech startup (now defunct) as a SWE intern with one of my closest friends. I did a hybrid internship, commuting for a week at a time between home in SoCal and Redwood City (staying at my friend’s place). This was a great, non-demanding summer, where I really got the chance to relax outside, review material and learn new things for fun, and hang with friends.

Highlights:

Sun, grass, friends

Mistakes:

During my later years in school, I sometimes would regret not taking the more prestigious quant internship offer I had, as I really felt like it would have made recruiting much less stressful/difficult in future years. It’s not totally clear if this was a mistake or not now, but I do think it would have helped me bias my exploration a bit better

Fall 2018

Rating:

Social Life: 6/10
Health: 5/10
Academics/Career: 9/10

Coursework (22): Math 171, Math 220, Physics 110, CS 221, EE 263, Sophomore Writing Seminar (PWR 2)

Another fairly academic quarter, where I tried to bias more towards applied subjects (Physics and EE), after realizing in Spring that competition in pure theory subjects was brutal. Notably, this was the last quarter I took at Stanford where I was primarily invested in academics – school took less of a priority after I realized math/physics PhD wasn’t necessarily the route I wanted, and actively engaged more in social life, and light exploration of several other academic fields/career choices.

Highlights:

Sophomore year I became roommates with my best friend from Freshman year in my dorm, and our friendship has continually been a highlight of my life

Mistakes:

I really wanted a study abroad experience in Asia without losing out on being at campus during the school year with friends. So I tried to only apply for internships in China/Singapore/Japan but didn’t have any luck. Being a bit narrow here was short sighted and added unneeded stress later on
Not touching grass or seeing the sun enough

Winter 2019

Rating:

Social Life: 9/10
Health: 8/10
Academics/Career: 5/10

Coursework (15): Math 121, Physics 230*, EE 364A*, CS 255, ENGLISH 146A

After realizing my health had suffered during the past Fall/Spring, I decided to take a lighter course load. This proved to be a great decision, and I enjoyed spending the free time socializing with my roommate and other friends. At this point, I also took some of that free time and joined my first club, Christian Intervarsity (IV), where I met a lot of phenomenal people and friends I’ve still kept in touch with. Coincidentally, the courses I took ended up being very high quality, with Physics 230 being my favorite individual course at Stanford, and EE 364A being one of the most useful applied courses taken.

Highlights:

Phenomenal teachers and interesting coursework
Backgammon, poker, fun reading, and board games with my social communities
Roommate and I secured quant internships in London together at the same firm (purposefully!). Another instance of “Ryan is a sheeple”, as I really only pursued quant since some smarter friends of mine were doing it and I wanted to be cool like them

Mistakes:

Not a significant amount of physical activity/grass touching

Spring 2019

Rating:

Social Life: 8/10
Health: 8/10
Academics/Career: 2/10

Coursework (19): Physics 231, CS 272, CS 199, CS 224U, CS 229*

This quarter had a ton of free time which I spent socializing and meeting new people – which has had pretty high returns on my current social life quality. Started my first ever relationship, which I learned a ton about myself from.

Highlights:

Free time, touching grass, sunlight, meeting new people, and getting more involved in the IV club
Got top score on CS229 final (out of like 600+ people) which was my first topper at Stanford. This truly doesn’t matter (like most clout things lol), except it proved useful as a signal when reaching out to Stanford profs to ask to join their lab as an undergrad researcher later on (some profs would ghost me from my resume, and then I’d reach out again a couple months later with this listed, and they’d suddenly want to talk to me about it explicitly). Leaving this here only to remind myself that sometimes, people care about/weight random things more than you’d expect, and learning what those are can be difficult a priori

Mistakes:

Pretty much all of the classes outside of CS229 were bullshit, which I knew. After the easier Winter had me happier, I leaned a bit too far into the realm of fooling myself with useless classes and stopped learning for the most part this quarter.
Did independent Research with Anshul Kundaje’s lab (CS199), which was a terrible choice (Anshul is great though). I had never done research before, and without any mentorship or really solid genomics background, ended up mostly doing wasted work

Summer 2019

Rating:

Social Life: 6/10
Health: 7/10
Academics/Career: 7/10

Internship: Quant Trading in London with my roommate and continued part-time research in Genomics.

Highlights:

Learned a lot during my internship with data science skills and stats
Read a lot of interesting books in Neuroscience/Computational Biology etc. (thought for a hot sec I should be a doctor to help the world…but that’s not my skill set I’ve realized). Abbot’s Theoretical Neuroscience* was a phenomenal read in particular

Mistakes:

Between work, research, and reading I didn’t spend a lot of time traveling around London or exploring the city as much as I should have. This has been a major regret (when else will I be living there for multiple straight months?)

Fall 2019

Rating:

Social Life: 9/10
Health: 7/10
Academics/Career: 5/10

Coursework (20): CS 273B, CS 330, CS 279, ECON 180*, Math 230A*, CS 199

I continued to lean into the idea of working in Biotech or going to Med School, by exploring some of the computational aspects of genomics/biology/chemistry. This was a really clear example of fruitful exploration, as by the end of the quarter I was fairly well convinced that this wasn’t the right path for me – this may change over time though, and I’m still intellectually curious about the space!

Highlights:

Had a fantastic dorm group, with tons of friends (from diverse groups) also drawing into Crothers Hall by happy coincidence. My roommate and I stayed together again after sharing a place in London which was a great cornerstone of my daily social interactions
Weekly poker games with a large dorm group, and almost daily card games with friends and my roommate in my room
Secured an internship at QuantCo, which in theme, I really wanted as an opportunity to explore industry applications of ML in healthcare with cool people

Mistakes:

Ended up quitting my independent research at end of quarter after realizing it wasn’t super rewarding/fruitful. I should have quit sooner (back in Spring) or positioned myself in a better position to learn.
My standard policy of optimizing social life by not attending lectures much really hurt me this quarter, as my game theory class had a lot of interactive material which I missed out on, and missed out on opportunities to meet and join new friend groups through that
Over prioritized my relationship sometimes, instead of expanding/deepening other social circles. This one was pretty hard for me to see until now

Winter 2020

Rating:

Social Life: 6/10
Health: 6/10
Academics/Career: 5/10

Coursework (17): CS 259Q, CS 224N, CS 261*, Math 143, Phil 151

The first 8 weeks were pre-covid, and consisted of a lot of fun continuation of the themes in Fall, including the increased emphasis on social life.

Highlights:

To support career exploration, I wanted to get experiences with industry research in Fintech, ML in academia, and big tech (since “Ryan is a sheeple”, and saw grass that a significant percent of other Stanford sheeple were grazing on)

Mistakes:

Should have shorted S&P in March lol
Not touching grass, seeing sunlight

Spring 2020

Rating:

Social Life: 1/10
Health: 2/10
Academics/Career: 9/10

Coursework (21): Math 228, EE 180*, CS 110, CS 399, Music 25, German 101

Internship: Wealthfront*

Research : RL Research with Dorsa*

Realizing Covid was going to crush any hope of an on-campus experience, I hunkered down and decided to go pretty hard on my work. In hindsight, I really should have taken it easier as I was not in a great mental state (along with everyone else isolated during covid), and really owe it to my family for helping support me throughout.

Luckily, I finally hit the jackpot in terms of mentorship, and my intern manager at Wealthfront was phenomenal despite the pandemic disruptions, and had a really engaging, cool project. Likewise, for my second attempt at academic research I joined a new project in Dorsa’s lab focused on pure RL, and this time I prioritized mentorship and a good team which dramatically improved my experience and output.

Highlights:

Great internship and research projects in terms of both intellectual engagement and mentorship
Fantastic family support during the stressful pandemic

Mistakes:

Everything was pass fail, so spending too much time on classes I didn’t care about was bad EV. Should have done Wealthfront part-time as I got pretty time-crunched once classes and research picked up
Not touching grass, seeing sunlight, seeing friends, eating well
Not actively showing enough appreciation and gratitude to family during this unique time

Summer 2020

Rating:

Social Life: 7/10
Health: 7/10
Academics/Career: 5/10

Internship: QuantCo

Research: Continued RL Research with Dorsa*

In summer, I prioritized hanging out (socially distanced) with friends, or in organized online gatherings with some consistency. Remote internship ended up being not very time intensive, which I took advantage of to spend more time with research and playing outside.

Highlights:

Great research project and team (wrapped up project end of summer), and chill internship
Saw Sunlight, touched grass, walked dog, played games with fam

Mistakes:

Between Spring and Summer, lost contact with a lot of friends and acquaintances (who I wanted to get to know better!) in the virtual transition. I think crossing the chasm and reaching out to people directly would have been very rewarding longer term

Fall 2020

Rating:

Social Life: 5/10
Health: 4/10
Academics/Career: 3/10

Coursework (12): Math 116, Math 215A*, Physics 330, Physics 170

Internship: FB

Lived with some friends in a house during a virtual quarter to try and make the best of quarantine. My memories of this time are very physically dark, as the house had very few windows and we rarely went outside (stayed in a bad neighborhood) and were concerned about Covid. At this point, I had enough to graduate with the Bachelor and Coterm, but for lack of motivation to go and work, decided to just stick it out and play essentially through Spring with the rest of my house/classmates – I think staying was potentially one of the best decisions I made during Stanford, as leaving during Covid would have really stifled any opportunity to rekindle relationships.

Highlights:

Learned the research I did with Dorsa’s lab won CoRL 2020². This was truly pure luck on my part and I’m extremely fortunate to have been part of the team and project by chance. I really enjoyed the accolade, but realize that (1) I wasn’t super passionate about the material during the research process (was still reasonably fun though); (2) Most times, similar effort won’t be recognized; to try and correct my cognitive bias and update away from doing an AI PhD based on this
Great friends and some of the most interesting classes I got the chance to take – I really liked learning about topology/quantum stuff despite not learning the material very solidly

Mistakes:

Had a terrible team/internship at FB and quit halfway through – should have quit earlier
Extremely low motivation, with lots of free time (hanging with the same 6 people in a house 24/7…), lead to lots of time wasters like TV/Video Games. In part, I think low motivation contributed to me mostly recruiting for quant instead of aiming for something more unique/ambitious (yet another “Ryan is a sheeple” example)
Not touching grass, seeing sunlight, eating healthily or learning to cook…

Winter 2021

Rating:

Social Life: 8/10
Health: 7/10
Academics/Career: 6/10

Coursework (24): Math 236, Physics 220, Physics 113, EE 276*, CS 228, Applied Physics 228, Music 19A

Continued living mostly with the same group plus some other friends in a safer, cheaper location out of state where we could afford a bigger place. Hung out and went outside to hike and eat out more as quarantine restrictions relaxed slowly which drastically improved quality of life. Because I was feeling pretty lethargic from all of my video games and free time in Fall, I decided to go a bit harder on coursework – this backfired halfway through the quarter, as I got really pulled into the whole GME saga and ended up spending a majority of my time learning about finance, staring at flashy charts, reading options theory and textbooks, and other dumb things (classic “Ryan is a sheeple” example).

Highlights:

Got much closer with my housemates through engaging outdoor activities and shared interests compared with my Fall experience. Learned to barely cook, which was fun
Settled on QR at Vatic Labs as my post-graduation job
I had never actually prioritized grades in my academics, and instead prioritized marginal value per effort and breadth/exploration for understanding my interests (my life is often characterized as fleeing from boredom/ennui). Knowing that this would likely be my last rigorous quarter at Stanford, I challenged myself to get as high of a GPA as I could for the quarter which I was proud to semi-succeed at

Mistakes:

Lost money on GME, and spent way too much time looking into dumb finance stuff
Struggled dealing with house conflicts that inevitably arise in group houses. My dorm roommate was not apart of either Fall/Winter house, and our great relationship had never really been stressed living together in the same way that the group house could at times

Spring 2021

Rating:

Social Life: 12/10
Health: 12/10
Academics/Career: 2/10

Coursework (12): EE 378C, Math 159, Math 215C*, Stats 375

Senior Spring was my victory lap quarter with school finally brought back on campus. With no academic or work requirements left, I heavily prioritized social life and outdoor activities. This quarter is likely the most vibrant and happiest I’ve ever been.

Highlights:

I really really loved playing Spikeball with friends, and for 1-2 hours on average every day was my go-to social activity throughout the perfect Spring weather. I also scheduled daily meals and hangouts with everyone I possibly could that remained on campus
Started a habit of taking photos and videos of fun activities in the moment, with the goal of just saving to view for later (I don’t post on social media much). The photos and videos from Senior Spring are things I still view and enjoy, and I’ve kept this up post-grad as one of my favorite ongoing habits

Mistakes:

Mostly none :). Probably could have spent more effort learning material from courses, as they really were quite interesting, but didn’t edge out competing interests for time

Conclusions

After writing and reflecting on the above, I think it’s pretty clear to me that there are certain patterns that have held up in terms of improving health and happiness. Some obvious ones are the frequency of social interaction, the quality and intellectual engagement of academic course loads, and having solid teams and mentorship to work with.

Some that seem obvious now but clearly were not in retrospect include the quantity of time spent outdoors and the consistency of physical activity. Clearly, I was hanging out with friends and playing games quite a bit, but why didn’t I do those activities outside? Smh.

There are also some things I spent a lot of energy on that, given my current path, seem wasted, but weren’t quite so clear at the time. I spent a solid few quarters on genomics research and learning computational approaches in biology/chemistry, which I’ll likely never use. But, these types of things, I suppose, are only clear in hindsight. Between my FB internship and genomics research, I realize that quitting was certainly the right move, but in the future, it might be better to bias even more towards quitting earlier³. Likewise, I now realize that classes/internships which I expected to be fluff in advance… usually were, in fact, wastes of time (surprising, right?). And the only thing I got out of it was deceiving myself, unfortunately. Finally, recognizing now that herd mentality and paths of least resistance are more of a force in my life than I originally thought, and that I should actively try to combat these biases in how I currently allocate my time and in my plans for the future.

Taking this time to write down thoughts and self-reflect in itself has been quite rewarding, and I hope anyone who reads this may find it as insightful for themselves in terms of approaches to replicate or avoid, as I have.

Footnotes

Courses can be looked up here by number if you’re curious ↩
Best Paper announcement ↩
Ben Kuhn has a great article on optimal control and stopping times in the context of startup options, which illustrates the advantages quitting confers. Generally, quitting earlier than you’d think, is likely closer to the optimal route (at least for myself!) ↩