A Note at 21

21… wow it doesnt even feel real to say. If I were to tell myself at the beginning of high school that I would be where I am today I would think it was some delutional lucid dream. Which makes me think, is it better to be delusional and aim for the stars, because if you miss you’ll end up on the moon, or is “delusion” just what belief looks like before the world catches up? Maybe the difference between delusion and vision is just time and persistence.

Within the past 2 years I think ive changed imensly as a person and obviously trending toward an upward trajectory. I saw a tweet recently that looks like this:

In game theory, you don’t judge a strategy by one move but by how it performs over repeated play. A single day can feel chaotic. You can do everything right and still lose, and that’s just variance. If you zoom in too much, life starts to look unstable because short-term outcomes are noisy and emotional.

But over repeated games, expected value begins to show. Small edges compound, you slowly cut negative patterns and double down on what works, and the randomness starts to average out. From up close it feels messy, but from far away it looks almost linear.

I keep reminding myself that life moves more like a sine wave. Every high comes with a low of similar magnitude. But when you zoom out, the pattern starts to make more sense. The fluctuations are still there, but they stop defining the whole picture. What once felt chaotic starts looking structured, even directional. You begin to see how far you’ve actually come from where you started. Maybe the goal isn’t to eliminate the waves, but to grow through them until, over time, the trajectory looks almost linear.

I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved so far, and it’s honestly been a crazy speedrun over the past year.

I built and shipped two products from scratch, one with hundreds of active users every day. A small win, but meaningful for a first time around. It reminded me that progress isn’t always clean, sometimes you just keep taking shots until one lands. Julie, a desktop AI assistant and short-horizon computer-use agent, and RLC Dev, essentially LeetCode for electrical engineering with 3,500+ submissions, 300+ questions, and 150+ active monthly users. None of it happened overnight. And more than the stack or tools, I learned what I actually enjoy building. What feels energizing. Along the way I started understanding the macros too, marketing, presentation, and what it really means to build something end-to-end.

I also published two papers at conferences with work featured in IEEE Xplore. The pursuit of learning never really stops, it just accelerates in the age of AI. Approaching things from first principles compounds quietly. One project, on reinforcement learning for autonomous microgrid management, even caught interest from Hydro One and Hydro Quebec for potential use in future microgrids. Moments like that make the late nights feel real.

I helped build HackerFab from 0 to 1. Being out of my comfort zone never felt more rewarding. It was something I got to own in a space where I had no right calling myself an expert. The people I met through it opened doors I couldn’t have imagined. Every no from an investor slowly reframed itself as momentum instead of rejection. If it wasn’t for the failures the team and I ran into, the quantum qubit direction would have never even been considered. I’ve spoken in front of hundreds of people, fought my fear of public speaking, asked for money to fund a dream we believed in, and tried to do it our way instead of defaulting to the safe path.

If there’s one specific realization this year gave me, it’s how fast things can actually change. A year sounds long until you live through one intentionally. The version of me from 12 months ago would not recognize a lot of my current life. That compression of growth is probably the most surreal milestone of all.

This part is a bit of a tangent, but still surreal to think about. I might have had a shot at Nvidia.

The year between third and fourth year is our co-op year, and most people at UofT end up at places like AMD, Qualcomm, Cerebras, or Altera. Incredible companies, but I would’ve called myself delusional if I thought I’d have interest from even half of them. Last year I applied to nearly 300 roles, basically anything that would take me. This year felt completely different. Around 60 applications turned into about 10 interviews. One in six which is insnae to think about. I eventually signed with Qualcomm in late October and was genuinely excited.

About two weeks later, Groq reached out with a hardware role for the following year. The catch was the double-signing dilemma and that it was mostly remote, which I didn’t want after the summer. So Qualcomm felt like the right call. Then not even a week later, Groq got acquired by Nvidia. Over the following weeks, people started migrating over, and even interns who lost their offers ended up at Nvidia.

I’m not disappointed because there was no way I could’ve known. But it reminded me how much timing shapes outcomes. Sometimes things align, sometimes they don’t. At the end of the day this isn't the destination, it is merely just a stepping stone and “just another job” after all.

And that’s okay. You just keep moving forward and keep reaching higher each time.

I think this feeling is canon for a lot of people in their 20s, the feeling of being lost, especially when it comes down to what you want to do in the future. Being brutally honest, this feeling hit me like a truck. The uncertainty wasn’t loud, it was constant. It kept nudging me in the background like something I couldn’t shake off. It was more than just not knowing what the future held, it was not knowing what my purpose was, or even what actually makes me happy.

I kept attacking this question like there was some finite answer. My reasoning was simple, if I could just answer it, I could focus for the next couple of months and work toward it. Minimize noise. Cut distractions. Just execute. But over time I realized I was going about this completely wrong.

For the longest time, I thought happiness and success were synonymous and inclusive, like you couldn’t have one without the other. That if you became successful, happiness would follow automatically. I was wrong.

Months of soul searching, contemplation, and reflection later, I’ve slowly started building a framework for myself. Not something perfect or fully formed, but something that helps me move forward without needing everything figured out.

A big part of it is compounding. Small, consistent effort matters more than intensity. Even when I don’t feel like it, showing up for 30 minutes a day adds up. Some of my biggest shifts didn’t come from massive breakthroughs, they came from boring consistency. Going to the gym when I didn’t want to. Writing when no one was reading. Building things that only a handful of people saw at first. The returns weren’t obvious in the moment, but over time they stacked in ways you can’t fake.

I’ve also learned to value boredom. I’ve been more intentional about silence and disconnection. I deleted social apps off my phone and only check them on my computer because I realized I was consuming far more than I was producing. On commutes, I try not to fill every second with music or scrolling. Some of my clearest thoughts have come from just staring out a window with nothing happening. There’s something about boredom that creates space. Creativity needs quiet more than stimulation.

Another shift has been saying yes more. Not blindly, but leaning toward action instead of hesitation. A lot of the best things in my life came from moments where I could’ve easily said no. Sending the message. Showing up to the thing alone. Starting projects before I felt ready. Most opportunities don’t arrive polished, they show up messy and uncertain. Taking more swings just increases the chances that something unexpected works.

And more than anything, I’ve learned to rely on people. Keeping a tight circle of friends and family who genuinely care, people who pull me back to earth when my head gets too loud. There have been moments where things didn’t go to plan and I started overthinking everything, and it was usually a conversation with someone close that brought clarity back. Having people who remind you who you are when you forget matters more than any framework ever could

The world is a massive place and there is so much to see and explore. This last year I got a small glimpse of it by going to SF for the first time with my brother. It reminded me how much is out there beyond the small bubble you get used to. That feeling has been sitting with me ever since. It made me want to travel more, to see things firsthand instead of just reading or watching from a distance. There’s something about stepping into unfamiliar places that expands your perspective in a way nothing else really can.

It also made me want to get back into capturing things again. Slowing down and documenting moments, especially through photography and creating. The world is going to keep changing and evolving whether we notice it or not, but the memories we choose to hold onto don’t fade the same way. That trip felt surreal in a quiet way, like one of those snapshots that stays vivid no matter how much time passes. And it reminded me that maybe part of growing up is learning to notice those moments while you’re still inside them, and making the effort to keep them.

Some moments of joy from the past 12 months 🙂

I dont know what the future holds yet, but this next section is for my future self in 1 year and 10 years respectively.