been a while

I’m not even sure what to write about, it’s been that long since I last blogged. School starts up again tomorrow, and I wanted to take this time to kind of reflect on the past summer as well as flesh out some thoughts for the coming semester.

I had a couple of ideas on what I wanted to blog about: one particular idea was back when many of the local bay area high schools had alumni writing open letters, exposing the school for certain things and demanding change. This coincided with the George Floyd protests as well with the flux of social media posts. I had a lot of research ready to go, some talking points, and…I’m not sure what happened. Just never found the motivation I guess, and, as time passed, I found less and less motivation. Perhaps this partly had to do with the fact that I had a mailing list, and the part of me that doesn’t like pushing out unpolished work provided that extra bit of resistance that ultimately led me to never writing the post. Perhaps the start of school will bring an extra surge of productivity, and I’ll write that post in the near future.

summer internship

Not going to lie, productivity took a massive plunge after my internship started. I never really felt like working after a long day of work, so I almost never did any work after my internship day ended. During my internship, I got in the bad habit of waking up really late, and then proceeding to do almost no work, especially towards the end of the internship. I still ended up getting a lot of (undeserved) praise and a full-time return offer, but for me personally, I was very unsatisfied with the level of productivity I was pushing at the end of the internship.

How I believe this cycle of procrastination went down was that I started having days where I didn’t have that much work anymore. Despite asking for more work from my manager, I never got any large tasks to motivate myself, and eventually I developed bad habits of never working during the day. I stopped my productivity walks in the middle of all this, especially with the fires going on, and my brain attributed my work desk as a spot of procrastation. Oof. Not a great combo.

Overall, my goal for this summer was to get a feel for how quant research would feel. Honestly, I think it will be fine (there are no major red flags, and the money is definitely nice). However, the remote nature of the internship means it was impossible for me to get a true feel for how a quant career would go.

upcoming plans

I’ve been spamming applications to all the quant firms that I’m interested in (that I’d rather work at over my current offer), and to be honest, it’s been really discouraging getting rejected. I feel pretty bad because I feel like I didn’t prep enough and I’m also inarguably choking under the pressure. I’m failing interviews I passed last year, making simple mental mistakes on problems that my middle school self probably had a shot at solving, just a really bad experience overall so far and I don’t know what I can do other than continue plugging along. Forcing myself to break my cycle of procrastination and prep even more is hard, especially when I feel like I’ve done almost all available prep already.

Classes start tomorrow, and I guess one of the first things I’ll have to see if I can balance my course load. My current plan is to graduate this coming year, and that comes with a pretty loaded schedule (definitely manageable, but definitely won’t be easy). There’s one class that’s an absolute must for me in terms of graduation requirements, but I’m still on the waitlist. Fingers crossed that I get off of it!

I also moved to NYC with some friends into an Airbnb. To be 100% honest, the setup isn’t quite as nice as back home, and my intent in moving here was to be more productive. So far, I’m not sure if there’s a huge difference and if it was worth it (I had to leave my puppy and baby turtle behind), but these are the cards I picked, so I guess I shall see how this semester goes. It will undoubtedly be an interesting experience––hopefully not an experience I will come to regret however.

goals

I think it’ll be interesting to write out a couple of goals for myself, and then read this a year later to see how I’ve done. I’ve done this kind of thing several times before, but it was always for a mandatory assignment by either a teacher or some sort of mentor. Anywho,

1) Get a quant internship that I’m happy with. What this means will be interesting, but this is the most pressing thing on my mind at the very present moment. I’m already sitting on a full time offer that I appreciate, but for some reason prestige plays a pretty big factor for me. I also want to be in an area where I have other friends, and I’m not sure if Radnor, PA does that for me.

2) Finish my graduation requirements without failing my classes, feeling like shit the whole time, and without any major mishaps. If I can pull this off, I’ll have a lot of flexibility in terms of choosing my masters, whether or not I work full time directly, and it’ll just be nice to have some sense of reward for my hard work. It’s a good goal to shoot for in the meantime while I figure out what I want my long term goals to be.

3) Get into Stanford CS Masters program. Honestly, rooming with Lucas at Stanford would be really fun. Looking forward to this experience, but, assuming that #2 is completed, more than happy doing a masters at Columbia with all my Columbia friends. *Don’t fail the GRE pls.

4) Stay healthy/fit throughout quarantine. Hopefully, my mental doesn’t go boom. Honestly a big part of why I moved out here, but not having natural lighting will be interesting. Also, school in general isn’t very conducive to good mental, and NYC is somewhat claustrophobic in general. Taking PE this semester, but hopefully I’ll figure out a good, sustainable workout routine for this upcoming semester.

5) Figure out long term goals. Ironic that this is my long term goal, but honestly, figuring out my long term goals is still a major part of my life todo list that still remains incomplete. Maybe this is one of those things that cannot be answered, BUT, knowing myself, I’m sure I’ll continue trying throughout the year.

6) Bond with friends/new people. With quarantine, social interactions are definitely decreased. Hopefully, future me will figure out a way to still interact with people and have fun.

7) Develop a good productivity system without being “that” guy. Maybe I’m already “that” guy, but I think there are a lot of ways that my procrastination/overall productivity can improve in healthy, nonobsessive ways. Figuring this out would be a huge boon.

8) Figure out what’s important to me. Honestly, I shit a lot on “hoop jumping,” but I myself know that prestige has a huge factor for me. I’ve taken it for granted for so long, and now that I’m at a point where I need to “hoop jump” again, I feel a little scared about what happens if I lose my prestige. I think what would help is if I pinpointed what was actually important to me.

9) STARTUP?? Alex if you a millionaire in a year I won’t be mad ngl. Also, I think this would be my dream scenario––be in a state of learning, lots of risk, high world impact, working with friends. Everything I want (except stability tbh). I’m at a weird state rn where I have the option to go guaranteed, but if something big enough comes along…I guess I’ll see where I stand a year from now :)