Sophomore Year in Review

It has been a year since I transferred from China to the University of Minnesota. A brand new year, and a fresh start. I call it adjusting, but really it involved a lot of testing the waters, hesitating, and second-guessing.

On the surface I might look like one of the “doing fine” people:

• competed in ACM and won a gold medal at the regional contest;
• landed an internship offer at an AI startup;
• kept a 4.0 GPA.

But I know what is hiding behind that: playing it safe, being lazy, and a fair amount of avoidance.

Looking back, I have been too conservative — afraid of failure, honestly. I sent out maybe a dozen internship applications, got an offer from an AI startup I liked, and then just stopped applying. I told myself I was only a sophomore, still adjusting to the US, not competitive enough, so I barely touched big tech (which is really just dodging the anxiety).

In hindsight, plenty of people no stronger than me landed good opportunities. I could have been much more proactive, much bolder. I realized I was optimizing for “don’t make mistakes” rather than “do the best I can”.

After the ACM regional qualifier, the time I spent training kept shrinking. Every week I was “kind of busy”, but looking back I don’t know what with. My level is probably around where I was in eighth grade (first prize in the NOIP senior division) — not terrible, but far off what it used to be.

As for CS coursework, honestly, because of my contest background a lot of it felt like review with a bit of extension on top.

My exam scores were fine too: on courses where the average was in the sixties or seventies I could get full marks or close to it without much effort. (By the end of the algorithms and data structures course a TA called me out and asked why I was even taking it — there was no need.)

I couldn’t even be bothered to attend many lectures. The grades were there, but apart from a nice GPA there wasn’t much I had actually learned. There is plenty I want to learn, and yet I never sit down and learn it.

For next semester I deliberately signed up for two graduate courses — reinforcement learning and nonlinear optimization — plus operations research and other cross-disciplinary material, hoping to get out of my comfort zone and force myself back from grade-farming to actual learning.

That said, there was real gain this year too.

My horizons got a lot wider 👀

I met a lot of extremely impressive people this year, and got humbled repeatedly:

• I met the legendary alum Jeff Dean. Very approachable in person, a great talk, and I even got a photo with him;
• I got to know many upperclassmen working at Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, and others;
• one senior published at a top conference, got into a direct PhD program at Columbia, converted an Apple internship into a return offer, and won gold at the ACM regional — a clean sweep;
• a freshman swept quant internships at Two Sigma, Citadel, and similar firms;
• someone in my own year has an IOI silver medal on the national team, and happened to be the TA for my algorithms and data structures course (slightly absurd);
• my ACM teammates swept offers from Meta and Amazon. One of them is my age and has already graduated as a senior, doing physics, math, and competitive programming at the same time.

Back at my university in China I could probably scrape into the top 1 (though the school wasn’t great, and I’ve cut ties with that). Here I am maybe top 10% at best.

I came to see that I am nowhere near working hard enough, and nowhere near giving it my all.

My life skills improved quite a bit this year too:

• to save money I learned to study recipes, buy groceries, and cook (blame the lack of cheap delivery apps here);
• for my health I started going to the gym and kept at it. I am in much better shape than I was in China, and I didn’t get sick once all year (eating my own cooking probably helped);
• sharing an off-campus apartment with friends, I slowly learned to manage my time, my sleep schedule (still a mess), and everyday chores.

There is still the occasional anxiety and exhaustion, but I have undeniably become more independent — no longer someone who can only solve problems, but someone starting to think about and plan his own future, living his own life.

Socially, this year was also quite different from China:

• playing cards and Avalon with new friends, just hanging out;
• invited by an American friend to my first family steak dinner — warm and completely novel to me;
• going to the zoo with friends and roommates, watching an NBA game, doing hot pot in the apartment.

I am still on the introverted side, but I really am more willing to open up than before, and I have met a lot more people and ways of living.

I also received a lot of help from upperclassmen and friends this year. They shared their experience with coursework, research, and internships, and sometimes just with keeping a level head. Some of them I don’t know that well, and they still made time to patiently answer my questions.

Gradually I started doing what I can for younger students and friends in return. Sometimes it’s coursework, sometimes it’s just listening to them complain about things, lol.

This year I met a lot of people, saw a lot of things, and saw some of my own limits. I am probably not short on ability and I didn’t start from a bad place, and maybe I am growing — but I am truly nowhere near hard-working enough, and nowhere near ambitious enough. This year I maintained results that look good without building anything substantial. I haven’t had a bad time, but I know that what actually decides the future is not a perfect GPA or a contest medal. It’s how I spend my time every day, whether I keep seeking out challenges, whether I can control the part of me that wants to slack off and avoid things, and whether I put my hours into what actually builds my core ability. For the coming year I want to try being more proactive, braver, and to go deeper.

I hope my next review has fewer regrets and more of that quiet “I really did give it everything”.