stanford

The transition to Stanford for grad school has definitely been in some ways what I expected, and in other ways, way different from what I expected.

One thing that I am pleased with is the quality of education itself. A significant reason in coming here to study AI was because of Stanford CS’s reputation—so far, it has lived up to it. One of the things that stands out to me is that there’s just a really nice/wide array of niche CS topics/classes—at Columbia (still a strong CS school), these types of classes were typically either not offered or not super well fleshed out. In my opinion, what makes the CS classes here nice is that typically these niche courses are taught by the leading expert in that topic, and there seems to be a high standard set for the overall quality of CS courses. At Columbia, often even when the course is taught by an expert in the field who cares about the class, they just aren’t the greatest teacher. It is my first quarter here, but I haven’t had that problem with the courses I’m in yet. The campus is super nice, the research projects/labs/people are all super great, and overall I think Stanford’s setup makes it a really good place to learn.

One thing that I kinda expected but didn’t fully grasp the reality of is how difficult transitioning in a social sense would be. Stanford’s grad housing is a lot more isolating than I expected, and I think I’m at like an awkward age/life stage where I’m a bit younger than most grad students while also being physically distant from the undergrads. From a school culture wise, it’s also not the most social campus/location in the world. It’s definitely a work in progress, and hopefully I’ll figure it out soon. It’s been easy to let the cons of coming here instead of staying at Columbia with all my friends overwhelm me, but thinking through all the reasons why I did choose to come and the nice things about this place that I’ve already experienced has helped my overall mental the past couple of days.

With this transition, something that’s definitely fallen by the wayside during school is my sleep schedule. At the start of the school year, I was still sleeping at around 10pm and waking up really early, but now my sleep schedule has shifted towards something closer to 3am-12pm. I didn’t really think of it as too much of a problem, which is why I let it get so bad, but after a particularly rough week, I started thinking more about what would help make me happier/enjoy my Stanford experience in a sustainable fashion.

intentionality

I signed a full-time offer for after I graduate, which, right before it happened, was something I really wanted. It is still a great thing, and I’m super happy/grateful that I have this opportunity secured. However, it has been weird for me now completing my masters degree because I weirdly have little purpose/motivation as classes themselves don’t really change anything for me life/career wise. I quickly went from being a morning person to not, and I had a rough couple of days of isolation/not much work to do. Classes are really interesting, but it does feel weird to be just taking classes mostly for fun. As far as things done for fun go, getting a masters degree is on the more productive end, but at the same time, I can’t really get over the mental block of knowing that I’m spending all this time and effort on something that doesn’t really change my life (I do think Stanford can change my life, but simply taking classes doesn’t). I’d rather be doing stuff that actually matters to me, and I haven’t quite figured that out yet. However, the other day I did determine that figuring out what I want to spend my time doing is my first order of business, and I should probably get on that before my mental goes boom.

I think a big reason behind my procrastination is this element of not finding huge meaning in my current work—classes/lectures have always been a low priority for me, but this is the first time in my life where I truly have nothing else to do and it’s heavily affecting my mental. I spent a lot of time thinking about this (it is actually such a weird problem to me)—I could use the time to pursue a new hobby, read more, hack more, explore more random stuff, workout, socialize, there’s a million things that I really do wanna explore/do. No matter what I eventually choose to do, I do want to make sure that this aspect of intentionality exists. I think what I truly consider productivity is less getting work done (I think at the end of the day, I’m always able to complete all my responsibilities), but rather an aspect of being able to make myself work and take breaks only when I intend to. This seems to be something that I have figured out in the past, but eventually I forget when I either enter a new environment or become too lazy/busy to focus on this (both of which occurred in this situation).

To help achieve this, there are a number of things that I want to try that I’ve successfully done before. First off, I think afternoons are just a really bad time to work—lunch food comas are real and sometimes there are just too many distractions/breaks in the day to truly get a focus flow in. To that end, I really do believe that becoming a morning person will help a lot—starting my day off with a consistent morning routine will help structure my day and give me that satisfaction of being able to be intentional with my time. Second, I’m going to utilize my to-do lists/calendars better. Right now, I have a nice morning schedule where I write down my responsibilities, but, by the end of the day, I do manage to get everything done, but it’s not that satisfying since I’m like pushing it off until right before I sleep (i.e. this blog post). I’ve never used calendars before since I’m really bad at sticking to the schedule, but since I’ve gotten the other two things down, this is the time to add in a third productive habit. I think adding multiple habits at a time is a mistake/makes it really hard to actually sustain the habit long-term, so these are the only things I’m going to try for now.

The last thing regards what I want to work on. As for hobbies, I haven’t really figured out anything that is something I can do every day and also isn’t screen-related. I was thinking about something creative related since that seems to be a common hobby people pick up—perhaps I’ll start studying reading/writing more seriously? I do have my keyboards, but I definitely can’t make that a regular thing because it gets so expensive. Alternatively, I could do something more sports related/take working out more seriously, which is also something I’m thinking about. Finally, the last thing that I’m weirdly passionate about is getting better at building product/learning random technologies. I think it would be really cool if by the end of my two years, I’m able to just hack random things/know a lot about various trending software/technologies. My only concern is that this hobby is quite in line with my actual work, and so I might just end up with too much screen time. In any case, this is a work in progress—any hobby suggestions would be appreciated.

Something that hits both of my earlier points would be to work on productivity tools for myself that I’ve never really been able to find. I really want to be able to passively track my progress when it comes to productivity over time, but there’s nothing really out there that is both easy to complete (you have to record a lot of information, which kinda defeats the purpose of sustainable habits imo) and also collects the data I want. I’m still in the midst of brainstorming, but if anyone has any suggestions/requests for features that they also would like in an app, let me know and I’ll try to add them. It would be pretty cool/rewarding to build a more social productivity app that a lot of my friends use.

My grades at this point don’t really matter beyond a completion (people have always told me this, but this is the first time I’ve genuinely felt it). Hopefully, I’ll be able to look back at grad school and get to say that I spent my time the way I intended to.