The title of this video is not clickbait and is a
question that requires more context to better answer.
What has driven me has always been this strong desire to have the biggest impact on the most
people as possible, while receiving the respect I think I deserve while doing so. This is why
I started making videos about my life. Instead of potentially volunteering my time to give talks in
front of relatively small groups of people, I can make videos that can potentially reach millions.
To this day, I feel very grateful to have started this YouTube journey,
and I'm very grateful for all of my almost 100,000 subscribers and 10 million views.
But as you all can see by how sporadic my posting schedule may seem,
YouTube is just one of the many responsibilities I have taken on in my life. I have had other
pillars in my life that have taken the form of school, work ventures, and my loved ones.
Ever since my freshman year at MIT, when I had my first intern stint at this large aerospace
corporation, I knew that my potential impact was far more than the marginal work I was providing
as an entry-level engineer. I was doing a full engineers worth of work during both my freshman
and sophomore summer intern stints, and that didn't sit well with me because I felt like
I still had so much more to learn and experience before I should be ready.
Frankly, I also felt small: like I was one of tens of thousands of employees where if something
happened to me at any given day, nothing would really happen. Business would resume as usual.
I'm not trying to bash corporate jobs because they provide millions of people with jobs and a sense
of security to live their lives and support their families. But for me, I'd trade that sense of
security and comfort for roles where I am critical to the progression of a company. I've been open to
pursue such paths even if this meant that I'd be working 7 days a week, have to mentally deal
with the uncertainty of startups, and have to take on the pressures of dynamic and young companies.
It's one thing to be open to such opportunities, and it's another
thing to actually put yourself in a position where these opportunities present themselves.
I have been privileged in the fact that I've had this YouTube channel to better market myself.
I have been privileged in the fact that my family can sustain themselves without me,
so that all of the risk I am taking on is my risk alone. And I have been privileged
in the fact that I was accepted into the most prestigious engineering school in the world.
However, I am also understanding of all of the sleepless nights that I spent studying,
learning a new skill, or fundamentally trying to figure out the direction I need to head towards in
life. To people on the outside looking in, it may look like good things just keep happening to me.
Although some of my success can be attributed to pure luck, I believe that the harder someone
works despite potential negative forces around, the luckier that person can become.
A lot of the time, people are motivated to work hard and achieve big things.
However, their interests and skills aren't focused enough to work towards anything. This
is why I stress for people to create realistic and palatable objectives like learning a new skill or
way of thinking. For those of you who are familiar with my channel, you know that I'm
a big advocate for a long-time channel sponsor of mine: Skillshare. Skillshare offers thousands of
inspiring classes for creative and curious people, on topics ranging from illustration and design,
to freelancing and entrepreneurship. They make sure to have classes for all experience levels,
which I personally really appreciate. Also, most classes are less than an hour total, and
they are made up of short lessons that fit into any schedule. I recommend productivity classes
in order to help you stay focus, and also any class that gets you acclimated with professional
creative tools like Photoshop or Premiere Pro. I personally am really interested in the class:
"DIY Product Photography: Style and Shoot Creative Stills" by the photographers at Mango Street Lab:
Rachel and Daniel. Everything is tailored for efficient learning, so there's no ads, and new
premium classes are launching all the time. This makes it really easy to stay focused and actually
work on new skills. And this is all less than $10 a month with an annual subscription, so I
cannot genuinely recommend Skillshare enough. The first 1000 of my subscribers to click the link in
the description will get a free trial of Premium Membership so you can explore your creativity.
When I was feeling small at this company back in my sophomore year of undergrad,
pursuing graduate school seemed like the next logical goal for myself. I had no interest in
startups because I didn't know much about them, and I had no clue about how they formed or worked.
To me, graduate school not only gave me time to think about what I wanted to do next,
but also would provide me the respect I desired to hopefully be offered higher
positions in companies. And after conducting research at Stanford during the summer of 2019,
I knew that I wanted to pursue my graduate studies at Stanford University.
So that same year, I applied. But even before I graduated from MIT, my life changed from
one brunch conversation with John Fanning during a random weekend in January of 2020.
It was that day when we discussed the concept that later became what we see as Deuce Drone today.
Deuce Drone changed my life in that it changed my outlook. I learned a ton of things about myself,
and learned a lot of new skills as well. With Timmy's much needed help by my side,
we were really able to build an MVP autonomous delivery drone system from scratch. From sourcing
the different components to sectioning off the project into palatable tasks, I genuinely
impressed myself with how much we were able to accomplish in a matter of months. I learned how to
source, interview, and hire people. I learned how to work with others in an extremely high pressure
environment, and I learned how to effectively talk to people with various backgrounds and
experiences to get my points across. Throughout this experience, I realized my worth and value,
and was subsequently able to effectively vouch for my worth in any compensation discussions.
Now fast forward to this past December, I've already been able to apply a lot of those skills
and insights to help another company navigate new and exciting terrain. The company is ChipBrain,
and we train empathy AI to detect emotional and conversational cues in text, voice, and video
calls. We have very exciting product applications for this tech, and for me it's just mind-blowing
that this aerospace engineer is now working with a company built on cutting-edge machine learning
and artificial intelligence technology. I've been able to apply my skills of starting projects from
scratch, working with other people in a high pressure environment, and just managing people
and tasks. There's a lot of exciting updates that I'll give about ChipBrain when the time comes,
but for now, it is growing very rapidly, and I love being part of the thrill of it all.
Today, I get to take ownership over certain projects and products,
which admittedly can be a lot for most people. But I shown myself that I thrive under pressure,
and I thrive when I focus on things that I am truly passionate about. I can now confidently
be in a room with very accomplished and smart individuals and not feel overshadowed or that I'm
any less than any of the others. I can now be the person talking in a room, and the whole room will
respectfully go silent as they listen intently to what it is I have to say. My opinions form company
action-plans, my ideas become new product features, and my input is indisputably very
valuable. These are feelings that I didn't think were possible for me as a 22 year old,
but they are feelings that I hope to never take for granted. Every hour of every day, I get to do
the things that inherently bring joy into my life. Where last quarter, I could not say the same.
I want to preface my comments about Stanford by saying that I don't hate school. There was enough
of a draw to Stanford that I did think that graduate school was the best option for me.
I love learning new things and I actually did enjoy learning new things in the context of
school. But for a lot of reasons that I went into in my Stanford Quarter in Review video,
right now simply isn't the right time for me to pursue more graduate studies. I thrive off of the
energy of others, and learn best when I get to do things in a collaborative environment.
The fact that everything was virtual, I was paying full tuition, Palo Alto living is expensive,
and I was inherently missing out on what I thought were once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, I
was feeling heavily inclined to at least pause my graduate studies at Stanford. At Stanford, a leave
of absence can be extended for up to two years, so I do have a decent amount of time to potentially
figure things out. The door to return to school has not been completely closed, but until then,
I'm going to continue to strive to have the biggest impact I possibly can on the world.
I'm of the train of thought that fundamentally, the goal in life should be to do what makes you
happy. If there are moments in your life where you're starting to question these
thoughts, you should take a step back and think why these questions came to be.
I'm not saying that every time something gets difficult, you should stop. Instead,
I'm saying that you should get down to the core of the issue and figure out why it is you dislike
what you are doing. If there are other options on the table, you should weigh those options against
your current ones, and if there are no options on the table, find the path to where there are.
Time is a person's most valuable resource because it cannot be taken back. I can't experience
Stanford and experience all of the things that I am right now all at once. There comes to be
certain major inflection points in life where you're going to have to make tough decisions.
And if it comes down to you having to step out of your comfort zone anyways,
it might as well be for something that you inherently care about.
Right now, I'm helping to change the delivery system as we know it with Deuce Drone,
and I'm helping to push empathy AI into mainstream society with ChipBrain.
I am now at the point where I don't just have the potential to change the world, I am beginning
to change it. And that's so incredibly exciting. I made this video to not simply explain why I
am not going to continue Stanford, but also help you all out if you're in a point in your life
where you feel as if what you're doing right now doesn’t make you happy. I've seen the scenario
happen over and over again with the people close to me where they know they are unhappy, but they
feel like they're already so invested in whatever it is they are doing, that they just endure the
unhappiness. No matter how much or how little you have invested in what you are doing, whether
it's your major in college, role at your job, or the entire industry you're working in, it is
always okay to evaluate what you want in life. Maybe working towards some broader goal will help
put into perspective that what you're doing now is part of that path. Or maybe in thinking about
your broader goals, you realize that this just isn't the path for you. Change can be extremely
unsettling and scary, but so is doing something that makes you unhappy on a day to day basis.
Regardless of your situation, maybe you can set a nice healthy goal to finish a Skillshare course,
then use your learning to cultivate some new skills. Maybe you can talk to your manager and see
if there are other roles you can potentially fill within a company. Simply talking your
thoughts and worries through with somebody that you trust may also be the only thing you need.
Strive to do what makes you happy. That's what I've done, and that's why at this very moment,
I am not attending Stanford University. I'll continue to document my journey through life, and
if you want to be part of that journey, I welcome you to subscribe and have the notification bell
clicked. As always, thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next one.