here are 10 life lessons that i learned at stanford hi everybody and welcome back to my channel recently i graduated from stanford with a degree in computer science and a minor in classics currently i'm a master's student studying sustainability i graduate in 10 weeks which means my stanford career is almost over i feel like i've grown a lot over the past five years so i wanted to take this time to reflect on the 10 biggest lessons that i learned while at stanford lesson one you can learn about life in the classroom i thought school was all about academics you go to class you learn about computer science you learn how to code you learn how to do math but what i didn't realize is that in the classroom you can actually learn a lot about life and yourself for example the class where i feel like i learned the most actually was not a computer science class it was actually a classics class called exploring the new testament little did i know that it would actually change my life and this is because it forced me to view my religion christianity from a completely different lens i was used to being a christian and going to church and seeing the bible from that point of view but now i was taking a more historical and more scholarly lens i was asking questions and investigating things like who wrote the bible who put the bible together why did they write it the way that they did and it really reinvigorated interest in my faith after the class i had a different toolkit in which i could view the bible and study the bible and reading the bible has become a lot more interesting and fun for me and i feel like i take a lot more out of it than before so through this class i actually became a stronger christian and i learned more about my faith and i didn't realize that this could happen inside the classroom and not just at church lesson number two failure builds character so failure became a close friend while i was in college i failed tests i failed to get internships at big tech companies like all my friends and i failed to do as well as i wanted in my sport but actually not getting what i want and failing was actually the best thing that could have happened to me i look back and think imagine who i would be if i didn't experience this failure if i got everything that i wanted in life i definitely wouldn't be the person that i am today for example the summer after my junior year i was applying to all these big tech companies as a software engineer intern and i didn't get any of the positions so i ended up going to china through a stanford program with five other students and we did this engineering project in china where we created camera traps that could recognize animals in the chinese forest and i learned so much from this opportunity and i met one of my best friends there so if i had gotten my way and just worked at apple or facebook or something i definitely wouldn't have made that friend and i wouldn't have had those amazing experiences in china and i could definitely say that was one of the best summers of my life so although failure sucks sometimes it's the best thing for you lesson three don't waste time being someone you're not so as we all know a lot of people at stanford study computer science over half of the undergraduates major in it so i ended up majoring in computer science while i liked technology and thought coding was fascinating i tried so hard to be a software engineer like everybody i tried hard to really love coding and i tried to get those big software engineering internships but those opportunities never worked out and i actually really didn't like the idea of just sitting there and coding forever and ever near the end of my senior year i actually found the product management role and that's more of like a computer science with more of a business focus this fits so much better with my personality than being a software engineer that just wasn't me so i'm glad that i figured out that i didn't like software engineering and i didn't try to force myself into that role and instead tried to explore product management and have found something that i actually really like and can be good at lesson four how much you put in doesn't always correlate with how much you get out in high school how hard i worked usually correlated with how good my grade was if i studied a lot i get an a if i didn't i wouldn't but in college that's just not the case sometimes your absolute hardest isn't enough you can study as much as you want you can prepare for interviews you can do absolutely everything you could and you won't get the result that you wanted something i learned is that that is just life and this doesn't mean that you give up it just means that you either work harder or you choose to pivot because at a certain point you realize that when you're putting in so much effort and getting such a little reward it's not worth the effort anymore knowing this has led me to make some really pivotal decisions in my life and stop doing things that weren't rewarding to me lesson five allow yourself to wander so coming into college at 18 years old i had a plan i was going to be a bioengineering major and a film minor and i had all of my courses for the next four years planned out but as you guys probably know none of that panned out i ended up being a computer science major and a classic spiner and it ended up working for the best because i allowed myself to wander i allowed myself to explore so i checked out computer science classes i checked out some classics classes and i found out what worked for me and what i really enjoyed studying i feel like the world tells us that we need to have everything figured out but in reality i think it's a really important stage to wander and to explore and to discover what your interests are and not all who wander are lost just because you don't know where you'll be in five years doesn't mean you're lost it just means that you're still discovering what you want to 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slip into the thinking of like oh my gosh i'm getting so old i just think about like people who i look up to who are older than me and one of my role models as i'm sure you guys know is taylor swift she's currently 31 and she just dropped two albums folklore and evermore like basically right after each other and she's nominated for six grammys doing what she has done at 31 would not have been possible when she was 18. there's no way she had the lyrical maturity the connections or even the power with her record label to do what she just did it all came with time age and maturity i feel like a lot of times the world tells us that our youth is slipping away and we need to like cherish our youth but in reality getting older just opens up more opportunities to things that you can do instead of feeling like i'm aging now i've shifted my mindset to get really excited about the new opportunities that lie ahead of me lesson number seven don't put all of your eggs in one basket so at stanford i was a varsity athlete on the lightweight rowing team i joined when i was a freshman and i did really well and i excelled and i ended up going to nationals my first year and helping win a national championship i absolutely loved being an athlete and i really internalized being an athlete and i felt like it was my core identity especially in my first few years of college i would ride around campus with my athlete backpack that all the athletes wear i would pretty much always wear leggings and an athletic t-shirt that said stanford rowing i wouldn't wear normal regular clothes and i really invested most of my time into getting better at rowing but what i learned over time is that it's really not a good idea to tie your identity to one thing especially something that ends in four years the reason for this is that if you are so invested into just one thing you're bound to get disappointed at one point for me over time i didn't end up making boats that i wanted and it really took over my life and i would go to practice and if i had done something wrong i would go back to school and i would think about it all day and be like how can i get better this could never happen again i ended up prioritizing rowing over school in many occasions and this should never have been the case but it did happen and it wasn't until my senior year when i realized that i just shouldn't have so much care about this one thing and that i was letting it take over my life so i decided to take a step back mentally from rowing i decided to wear normal clothes around for the first time in all of my college years and i decided to focus a lot more in school and it really helped once i saw myself as more than an athlete and as a student and as a friend as well my life got so much better and i became a lot happier in the end i learned that it's never a good idea to obsess over one thing and let it take over your life lesson number eight reach out to people they're willing to help you so i was a pretty shy kid going into college and i didn't really like to ask for help because i felt like i didn't know if people wanted to help me but over time i realized that people are way more willing to help you than you realize you just have to reach out for example i got my dream ta position as a ta in a photography class just by reaching out to the professor and asking if i could have the position i feel like people myself included are so open to talking to you and giving you advice as long as you present yourself as somebody who's generally interested in learning from them people have dm'd me and i've hopped on zoomed calls with them to talk to them about college or product management and it's been really fun so i've learned that it's a really good idea just to reach out to somebody if you have a question or if you want to know more about their life the worst thing that they can say is no and the best thing that they could do is say yes and you'll get to know them and potentially be their friend so now i reach out to people all the time i'm not afraid to do this anymore so don't be shy go out and reach out to people lesson nine if you see something you don't like you can change it you have more power than you know so as a computer science student i witness a lot of things in the department that i didn't find super ideal for example the class sizes are huge you don't really get that personal connection with professors advising is almost non-existent and the lines and office hours are abnormally long they're about one hour long on average also i feel like there's so many resources but students don't really know what exists so they end up missing a lot of opportunities to do cool things so i had all these thoughts swirling around in my head so i ended up going to a computer science town hall and i kind of voiced some of these opinions i had about the computer science department i ended up connecting with the president of the cs department he was willing to support me if i wanted to help make the department better so i helped found the computer science undergraduate council and we started this awesome program called the cs undergraduate mentorship program which pairs an upperclassman with a freshman in a mentoring relationship the freshmen can ask the upperclassmen anything they want about classes internships and everything we had 80 people participate just this past fall quarter and it went really well and we're gonna run it again this winter quarter i feel really happy that i was able to like make some freshman's lives a little easier and help them navigate the really confusing computer science department and this all happened because i was willing to talk about my frustrations with the president and try to make things better so if you have the initiative to do something know that you are able to do something no matter if it's just sending an email or writing an essay or creating a petition or something even if you just take the first step you're on the way to creating some actual change you're never too young to impact people's lives lesson number ten adults are still figuring it out too so when i was a kid i really looked up to adults and i thought that they all had it figured out they all had their jobs they had houses they had money but as i've gotten older i've noticed that adults are still learning and still figuring it out as well there's no age that you hit where everything will suddenly make sense i don't think age inherently brings about stability i feel like you just get more used to instability and also the changes become less drastic for example when you're young and you're first starting a job it's like the newest thing ever but as you get older and you switch jobs here and there it doesn't become as dramatic when i was interning at reddit last summer i ended up randomly dming people and video chatting them and asking them about their lives and a lot of them had come to reddit not because they always knew that they wanted to work at reddit it was because they had just taken the opportunity as it came i spoke with someone who was a former teacher and now she is in tech nobody i talked to was like oh i knew i wanted to work at reddit since i was 10. and i think this is really relieving to me because it makes me feel like i don't have to have every single detail figured out for the next 10 years and i can just take things as they come and trust that it will all make sense looking back one day so those are some of the lessons that i've learned at stanford i'd love to hear from you what life lessons that you guys have learned whether in school or at work so please comment that down below also let me know if you like this kind of sit down reflective video i feel like you guys really liked the last video i did like this which was what i'm doing with my life after graduating so just let me know down in the comments below thank you everybody for watching i love you guys so much thank you for supporting me and i'll catch you in the next video