There is more to life than problem sets

For this whole winter trimester so far, I’ve basically just been spending all my time on problem sets, using the occasional free hour to (unproductively) relax, and feeling guilty whenever I’m not working on problem sets because of the possible implications on my grades, even if it’s to self-reflect like this or work on CMM. Whenever I tell my non-Caltech friends about this endless cycle of grinding and guilt and academic all-nighters, they get really concerned, which I didn’t understand because it was just part of the culture; just what everyone did — until I actually went outside.

Although I had to work extremely hard on problem sets in the preceding days, going to ICMT this past weekend was definitely worth it. For the chance to see my friends, but especially to see what goes on beyond the walls of Caltech; outside the tiny little box of problem sets. It seems like many of my friends at other colleges are now into industry, like quant/cryptography/software engineering, or learning about AI, or keeping up with the latest news and having an idea of how things are all tied together — all of which are not problem sets. And there was also New York City to see; all sorts of different people walking around and working on many things that are likely not problem sets. I realized that by isolating myself in my tiny world of problem sets, (which I don’t understand that well anyway because there are too many of them to have time to understand all), I’m blocking out all of this.

I’m in a room with no windows. Actually, being in the dark is not a rare occurrence for me. Throughout my life, there have been things which I’ve been clueless about yet kinda just accepted it. The one that comes to mind first right now is AI, because I honestly can’t even picture what the AI researchers do — it’s all sort of a different language that goes over my head. But in the past there have been many other things that I’ve been clueless about yet just didn’t really care — advanced non-geometry olympiad topics, computer programming, physics and chemistry, quant, Chinese, etc. If I’m nervous about something, then I often think to myself that I wish I could never know it, as if that oblivion would be more comforting than the truth. However, I don’t think this is very good — I’d like to be able to follow along in conversations, and understand what’s happening around me. I think the same thing might be happening right now — I’m currently in the dark about what opportunities even exist in life (with maybe the exception of math research) — and haven’t really made a move yet to change this.

I thought that copying the most cracked Caltech students by taking a lot of hard classes would make me more cracked, but it actually backfired because taking too many hard classes actually just means you end up learning each of them only partially. I really needed to finally realize that I didn’t have to be the best, or one of the best — something that had been ingrained in me since middle school. It took 2 years after high school to finally believe, and I think something that really helped — sort of the last straw — was the fact that I did pretty sub-optimally on Putnam this year, 1 point off from top 200. I think this caused me to reevaluate my mindset and finally switch to one centered around fun and self-improvement, rather than competition and “trying to be among the best”. I can finally go through life like I did in 6th grade again, simply exploring and having fun, rather than high school in which I felt a ton of pressure to perform well in very specific things and uphold others’ expectations. I’m free.

I think I am in a very exploratory phase of life right now (although I hope to find my way soon — something that I’m genuinely passionate about — because this passion looks good on other people, and it would be nice to hit the gas and go somewhere soon). Given how unsure I am about my future plans, I think it makes sense for me to do a little more exploring during these last few precious years of college — that is, actually escaping that box of problem sets and opening my mind to what else there is, and not worrying about what other Caltech students will think of me.