Looking Back On 2020
It finally came! As I looked at my Instagram and Twitter feeds, all I saw were messages talking about 2020 being the worst year of people’s lives. It seemed like everyone just wanted to forget 2020 and move on to the next year. For me, 2020 sounded like an opportunity to expand my work ethic and growth mindsets. It sounded like a chance to rekindle friendships and build stronger relationships with my friends and family. It was a chance to rethink everything that I thought I knew and start fresh!
Many individuals talk about the decreasing social interaction and how they were unable to talk to many of their friends, but I feel as though my friendships have only grown stronger through the projects that we’ve started working on! Through quarantine, my relationship with my family has also strengthened since we’ve had more time to spend with each other.
Not only that, but I feel as though this quarantine has taught me extremely important life lessons that I’ll remember forever. This quarantine was definitely a life-changing experience that I’ll never forget. Throughout this article, I’ll be discussing some main mindsets/ideas that I’ve developed this year! I’m excited to reflect on this year, so let’s get started!
Mindset #1: Opportunities are earned, not given.
In the beginning of this year, I was extremely narrow-minded on what my aspirations were; I mainly just focused on excelling in school and doing a few extracurriculars. With this mindset, I was limiting the amount of things that I could explore as I simply learned what the school curriculum taught. Not only did this make me unordinary but it also didn’t push me and force me to find what I’m interested in.
Enter COVID-19. My school dropped from being eight hours per day to a measly five hours per day in less than a week. Not to mention the removal of an hour of commute back and forth and the deletion of the mindless homework that we used to get constantly at in-person school.
I had so much extra time, but what do I do with it? Well, for the first month, I kind of didn’t do anything. I was kind of still trapped in the school mindset, riding on this amazing feeling of having all the time that I want to myself. I got EXTREMELY lazy to the point where I would wake up at 10 AM and slowly finish my schoolwork, sleeping at 6 or 7 PM. The only actual motivation that I had was getting high marks on my AP tests.
Then, TKS happened. I was scrolling through my Instagram feed one day, and I saw this high schooler that was giving a lecture at a conference to college students, PHDs, professors! I was mind boggled, and I immediately started to explore more to figure out how he was able to attain that opportunity.
I learned about all of these amazing high schoolers who were out there speaking at conferences and building amazing products. And what was I doing? Not doing any work, thinking that the opportunities will just come. It hit me: The reason that those high schoolers were like that is not because they were waiting for opportunities. They were working hard to make a difference and created opportunities for themselves.
I tried a little experiment to see how much time that I had in the day if I woke up at 6 AM and slept at 10 PM, just doing school work. I found that I had over eight hours. Eight hours wasted. Eight hours that could have been spent finding my passion, building my knowledge, getting opportunities. I knew that I needed to make a change.
So, the first thing that I did that day (after applying for TKS) was set a task list of what I wanted to get done by the end of summer. Then, I started to make action items for each task to get me to that final goal at the end. That was probably the best decision that I made throughout the entire year.
Before I knew it, I was taking on two research papers, studying to obtain an AWS cloud certification, starting a company, and working on multiple different projects. After making that task list, my priorities seemed clear-cut, and I felt that I knew exactly what I needed to do.
But, after a month into this process, I started to realize that my grades in school were slipping and that AP exams were coming right around the corner. I knew that there was a great possibility that I may burn out and that I would need to make a significant change.
By the way, if you are interested in TKS, check out this link! TKS is essentially an accelerator program for middle school and high school students for students to learn about emerging technologies and business mindsets and reach their full potential.
Mindset #2: Be more productive and intentional with your time. Manage it more effectively.
The steps towards effective time management honestly seem so simple, but they can make a profound impact on how your time is organized throughout the day. If you’re interested in learning more about my tips for time management, check out the link here!
By simply time blocking my schedule, freeing myself of distractions, and writing daily updates, I was able to make time for the things that I was interested in and also perform well in school. Although time blocking and writing daily updates may seem counterintuitive because they take more time out of your day, they significantly helped me in managing my time.
Note that it did take me a long time for me to find the right time management methods since each is personalized towards specific individuals. But, I believe that if you find that correct balance, then you’ll be seeing a lot more free time throughout your day!
I was happy that I was getting more done in my day, but I realized that I getting less and less motivated to do work everyday. I was surprised as to why I was lacking the motivation to complete projects and courses that I really wanted to work on. Then, it struck me: I wasn’t enjoying them at all. I was just forcing myself to finish it.
This was an important realization, and I knew that I needed to change something immediately. I knew that if I didn’t like the projects that I was working on, then I would simply be wasting my time. I thought to myself, “What are some things that I’m forcing myself to do, and what are some things that I genuinely love? How will these activities benefit and progress me further in the future”?
Along with this, I also compiled an Eisenhower matrix, prioritizing the urgent and important tasks first. I compiled a list, and I started phasing them out of my schedule. Sure, it was hard to do a few of them just because of the amount of effort that I put into it, but I knew that at the end, it would be worth it.
Luckily, at this point, I had started with TKS, so most of the stuff that I phased out was simply filled in with TKS. With TKS, I was exposed to a field of different emerging technologies so that I was able to learn how to be at the forefront of the main innovations of the future!
I started to learn about fields that I’ve never even heard about! TKS not only solidified my passion for artificial intelligence but it also taught me how to integrate my love for AI with my love for other emerging tech.
Mindset #3: Build projects that you’re passionate about!
For the better half of the last year, I’ve been building projects for not only building my knowledge but also exploring my passion and finding specific interests. I’m extremely excited about some of my projects going into the new year, and I’m proud to share some of them with you!
students x students
Looking back on 2020, I realized that none of my accomplishments would have been possible without a little push in the beginning. That little push guided me and allowed me to become a better version of myself.
Many middle schoolers and high schoolers don’t have that beginning push to guide them throughout their journey. So, I wanted to create a platform to provide a safe space for students to test out their ideas and explore what they are interested in.
With my brother and a few of my friends, we founded students x students, a Medium publication with the aim of providing a platform to uplift student voice and give them a greater confidence in their writing skills. Being high schoolers ourselves, we often didn’t see much opportunities for students to explore their writing capabilities, and we believe that this publication will allow for a secure place for students to post their content.
Our platform is “for students, by students”.
Our publication is just in the beginning steps, but I’m excited to see where this takes me! If you’re interested in empowering the younger generation of middle school and high school students, consider applying to be a contributor at our publication with this link!
Scholarr
High school is a scary experience. Within four years, you have to figure out what college you’re applying to, what to do for your extracurriculars, how to look for potential majors and interests, and more! At least for me, it was a steep learning curve to figure all of this out, and I feel as though I started too late. There is so much content on the internet that it becomes difficult to find opportunities to pursue given my specific interests.
I feel as though the COVID-19 situation has only exacerbated this problem as students are unable to actively search for existing pathways due to increasing school and familial workloads; additionally, it feels as though colleges are veering towards focusing much more on grades rather than extracurriculars.
Through our startup Neuralyte, my brother and I wanted to create a platform for students so that they can access recommended extracurriculars and other pertinent resources based on student interests so that students are able to find the programs that they are extremely passionate about and be more efficient in where they spend their time.
Both of these projects reflect my struggles in the past year and how I want individuals to not fall down the same traps that I fell under. If you have any further questions about either of these projects or want to see some additional projects I’ve been working on, please feel free to comment down below!
Bonus Mindset: Keep exploring, even when you think you’ve found your interest! Have too many interests instead of just one!
This year, I realized how much is there in the world to explore. Before junior year, I was limiting myself to just exploring projects in artificial intelligence and machine learning; I didn’t see the point of researching anything else because I thought that was the only thing that I would be interested in.
I was completely wrong. After joining TKS and being exposed to so many technologies, I realized that there is so much more to explore in the world and that I may find another interest in something else!
After learning about these exponential technologies, I found new interests in blockchain, quantum computing, and the internet of things. I saw that many of these fields had intersections in machine learning, so I started to integrate these concepts inside of my AI projects.
Intersecting AI with these other fields created revolutionary ideas that I never would have thought about before; it set me up to solve much more complex problems in fields that I wasn’t even thinking about! If you’re interested in learning more about why it’s important to have multiple interests, I suggest checking out this article here!
Final Thoughts
Looking back on this, I realized that 2020 was a pretty crazy ride that I’m glad I got to ride on. Without these hard experiences, I would have never been where I am today, and I would still be that same person that I was back in March. There’s so much that I discovered this year, in terms of personal growth and just my interests in overall.
Without 2020, I never would have explored my love for artificial intelligence, gotten to spend much more time with my family and my friends, and grown as an individual in overall.
I can already tell that 2021 will be an exciting year, and I’m glad to start on this journey! It will definitely be interesting, but I know that at the end, I’ll grow stronger and smarter.
Hi! I am a 16 year old currently interested in the fields of machine learning and biotechnology. If you are interested in seeing more of my content and what I publish, consider subscribing to my newsletter! See what it’s like here! Also, check out my LinkedIn and Github pages. If you’re interested about personal mindsets or just stuff in general, sign up for a chat using my Calendly.
