I'm a student at Harvard, and actually, just a few weeks ago, I wrapped up my freshman year there.

Since then, I've been taking a little bit of time to reflect on what I've learned, and I decided to make a video on it.

So these were the top five things that I learned during my freshman year at Harvard.

First Lesson School doesn't matter that much to me.

At least it sounds a little bit absurd for a Harvard student to say that school doesn't matter that much.

I mean, obviously, I've cared a lot about school, and I continue to care a lot about school.

But the way that I got to this realization was about halfway through the school year.

I was doing an exercise where I wrote down the top five things that I spend the most time on in my top five values.

And then for each of the things that I spent the most time on, I just tried to see how many of my values it actually enriched.

And so, for me at the time, school was the number one thing that I was spending my time on and yet of my values.

It enriched the least of the top five.

Things like making YouTube videos enrich far more of my values.

And so I made a conscious effort to shift my energy away from school and towards other things.

See, don't get me wrong like I still care about school and I still tried in school.

But the 80 20 rule really does apply.

That is, I can do 20% of the school work and get 80% of the reward.

Maybe not that extreme, but pretty close.

And so I decided to do that instead of aiming for hundreds and all of my things I aimed for, you know, high eighties low nineties, and as a result, I was able to free up so much time on my schedule for things like making YouTube videos and extracurriculars.

And I was a happy and arguably more successful person.

Because of the second lesson.

Prioritizing time is hard, especially if you want to be happy.

So I mean, I've always known that balancing time is hard, but I hadn't really experienced it in practice until the past year.

See, previous to this, I didn't really have to dedicate that much time to school or tax or correctly is that much?

I had a lot more free time, but in the past year, my extracurriculars have been probably 30 to 40 hours a week and about the same a school.

So on average week, I'm looking at 60 to 80 hours of commitment.

And then you think about okay, how many hours?

Other, actually, in a week.

And I try and sleep a fair bit because I feel like I'm not really a normal person.

If I don't try and get 8 to 9 hours of sleep, that's like 63 hours gone in a week of 168.

So and you're looking at, what, 20 hours?

25.

But I'm gonna spend about 21 of them eating.

So I have, like, four hours left, and I mean, it's not in math, obviously.

But the reality is I didn't have that much free time.

And if I want to do all the things that give me joy and enjoyment in my life, then I need you to get really good at balancing time.

So it was doable.

I did it for a year, but it was tough and over the year actually developed a few methods for balancing.

This time I'm gonna make entire videos about this later.

But the main the main way that I did this was using my growth book, which, if you haven't seen before, it's a notebook that I created.

I put on Amazon.

It's now sold out, and I've ordered more and they're coming in.

So stay tuned for that.

If you want to be updated when you come in, you make sure you don't miss out.

Make sure you subscribe to the newsletter.

But, yeah, I treated this method of daily planning, and it really did enrich my life like a lot.

So that was That was a huge lesson for me to learn.

This year was howto had a plot my days efficiently so that I get maximum enjoyment out of that.

I'm the happiest person that I could possibly be.

The third lesson.

I want to help people with my life.

So if you ask me at the beginning of the year what my life goal was, I don't think I could tell you.

And while I'm still not sure now, things feel a little bit more defined.

See, I realize that with YouTube.

What really got me going.

It was less the money in the views and the subscribers those air Nice don't get me wrong, but what really kept me motivated?

What kept me posting videos week after week was the people, the human impacts that some my videos had, and I found myself drawn to make more of those videos more but self improvement in growth.

It's something that I really deeply care about, that I'm realizing a lot of people care about and that I can use my privilege because I've been very lucky in my life, incredibly lucky, And I can use that luck to the benefit of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people.

And to me, that's just a really worthy purpose.

And it's something that's driving me right now, so that feels a little bit like I have a purpose in life, like my purpose is to help us.

Many people become as amazing as they can be, and to be able to say that is a huge blessing, and I'm just incredibly grateful.

So if you want to follow along on that journey, feel free to subscribe because the way that I'm doing that right now is YouTube, but I'm not sure what the future of it will look like.

I just know that I'm really excited for whatever it might hold.

The fourth lesson.

I love weird and diverse courses and knowledge.

So first semester this year I took a weird course.

I took a Zen Buddhism course.

It was called Zen and the Art of Living, and it was a seminar that had 12 people in it and then the professor and it was passed fail, so we didn't have to worry about grades.

And as a computer science major, it's super weird for me to be able to take courses like that.

Like usually at least, ah, universities in Canada.

If you're a computer science major, your courses, they're pretty much set out for you.

You don't really have that many electives, but for me, half of my courses were electives this year, and that's gonna continue into future years.

And that's kind of the nature of a liberal arts education.

And I didn't really understand that or appreciate that until this year.

But what I'm starting to learn from taking these weird courses like the Zen course, but also like the psychologist success and failure and two semesters of Swedish learning from that and also learning from reading a book a week This year, I'm 25 ish books in I really appreciate diverse Thought.

I like reading about different things and learning about different things and trying to pull, you know, elements from psychology and computer science and, you know, religion, pulling things all together, trying to create some kind of cohesive world view.

To me, that's what's really exciting right now in academics, and and it's what's really keeping me going in school.

And as I move forward, that lesson is just going Thio inform the courses that I decide to take.

So I think I'm gonna be making an effort to take diverse courses courses that I wouldn't have necessarily considered because I really do appreciate that complexity that it brings to my world in the fifth and final lesson is that Harvard isn't great.

But if people are one thing that I didn't know before the past year, and one thing that I think a lot of people don't know is that as a school, Harvard honestly isn't that great.

I mean, the classes very similar to most other university classes.

The food, you know, very similar.

The dorm rooms.

Very similar.

The buildings.

Very similar.

Obviously a lot of these things.

They're nice and they're beautiful, and I still appreciate them hugely.

But, you know, looking at universities like Rice University, for example, beautiful campus as well.

You know, you're gonna get a similar a similar experience there.

What makes Harvard special?

It's the people.

And I think a lot of people don't really understand this.

See, the saying that you are the average of the five people closest to you is really true.

I mean, it takes it community to bring a person up if you're surrounded by exceptional and inspirational people.

And it's not that hard to become exceptional and inspired yourself.

And so at Harvard, this becomes pretty easy because everyone there is exceptional and inspirational in some way.

Or maybe not everyone.

But I would say, you know, 60 to 80% which is much higher than at most other universities.

The nice thing about this lesson is that it doesn't just apply to Harvard.

See if you're trying to become exceptional.

If you're trying to become inspired.

Then you can find a community of similar people.

You can find friends and maybe even family, that are people that will bring you to that next level.

You can surround yourself with them no matter where you are, no matter who you are.

And I think ultimately that's a lesson that a lot of people need to learn is that sometimes you need to cut out negative people, and you need to make a real effort to bring positive people into your life because it will benefit you tremendously.

And that's a huge thing That I learned this year is that it's less so about, you know, the classes, the facilities, whatever it's all about, the people.

So those are the five things the top five things that I learned from my freshman year.

And if you're interested in hearing another perspective on a first year at Harvard, check out my roommate looks YouTube channel.

He's actually posted a video on this very topic, and he's starting to post more regular conference.

I really do encourage you to check him out, maybe subscribe, if you like that type of content.

So yeah, thank you.

So much for watching.

I really do appreciate your support in all of this.

If you like the video, maybe drop a like if you haven't already.

And you want to follow along on my journey of personal growth and development, make sure you subscribe it.

It means a ton to me, and it really does help me out.

So thank you so much again.

Uh, and I will see you on Tuesday.