Choong

I stumbled upon the blog of a former professor at the college I used to go to a few weeks ago, and for some reason, it just felt like the coolest thing ever. Reading his posts just felt like I was hiding under some bedsheets reading an old diary (this guy’s work stretched back like 6 years!) It was the rawest stuff I’d ever read, and I thought it was really brave of him to write publicly about his struggles, thoughts, and personal life. Needless to say, I was inspired. So, hello world and whoever’s reading! This is my life : p

I just moved to New York City for college (Go Columbia!!!), coming right out of a very big year in San Francisco. It’s hard to believe that just two years ago, I dreamed of working 100-hour weeks at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker. Today, I can’t imagine doing anything other programming for the rest of my life. It’s hard even to believe that I’m in New York City now despite having fallen so hard for San Francisco, but I can’t complain about being in literally New York City. It’s the start of summer, so I have a few months before school starts, and I have a couple goals I really would like to get done before then.

Firstly, I want to be SHREDDED. Perhaps my most immature goal, but perhaps not. I’ve been casually going to the gym for a few years now, but I’ve never really hit a point where I “feel like I’d be happy with this physique for the rest of my life.” Right now, I have this burning desire to get in the best shape of my life before starting college here.

I think it’s because I feel like I won’t fit into New York unless I have something I’m truly exceptional at. New York is a place where the smartest, most successful people come together to change the world. Most things in life are really hard to get exceptional at, at least to the degree I’m hoping for. But looking really fit as a 20-year-old guy in New York City? This is my most realistically achievable goal. Perhaps the proximity to the finish line is what makes it feel so important.

I’m due to start an internship in two days. It’s an unpaid software engineering internship at a biotech startup, but I’m really excited for it anyways. People say that it’s silly to do labor for free, but I don’t quite see this as labor. This is my first foray into the professional tech world, and I’m excited to learn how code gets written by the pros. Excited enough to consider this more of an experience than a job, and excited enough to ignore the fact that I’m not getting paid. In my view, this is both a summer class and a unique experience, which I’m more than happy to get for free.

I’m hoping to learn a lot here. This is a total cliche for kids my age, but I’m really attracted to the idea of startups. The most meaningful thing you can do with your life probably isn’t writing unit tests 50 hours a week at a Google office, but building something that really changes people’s lives. I’ve tried and failed at building a few startups in the past, and I feel like I need some guidance, both on how to write code that scales, how to work with engineers in a team, and how to really sell a product. Maybe I could learn all this stuff by myself, maybe not. But I think my summer here is going to do a lot of good for my future.

I’m interested in the idea of competitive programming. I won’t say that I’m interested in competitive programming just yet. I recently started a Leetcode study group (a website for relatively easy competitive programming questions), and every day I’ve been knocking out a couple questions. The consistency is addictive. I can hardly go 5 hours now without feeling like I need to solve a Leetcode question (I’m 416 solved as of writing this). The process is really rewarding; I can feel myself getting smarter with each question solved, and seeing that green “Accepted” on the screen is so addictive. There is a giant chasm of competency between me and the competitive programmers I look up to, but I feel like I’m already getting hooked. So, my realistic short-term goal is to be able to reliably solve 4/4 questions on the Leetcode weekly contests and/or hit 750 questions solved before the end of summer (an estimated 3 hours of study time per day until summer ends). My long-term goal is to join the Columbia ICPC team after hitting a 2,300+ rating on Code Forces.

I’d like to make more friends. I hear people say that Columbia is socially dead and that New Yorkers are the rudest people ever, so I’m really nervous. I pride myself on my extroversion and find that I usually make friends quite easily, but moving to a new place is always scary, especially with the rumors around the area. I’m hoping to curate a particular college experience over these next 3 years (think Project X+The Social Network), and befriending as many students as I can would be an important part of it (if you’re a student at Columbia reading this, please reach out!).

Here’s the story behind my strategy for making friends. In a communications class at my former college, I spent the first 80% of class not really trying to reach out to people. I kind of just figured I’d have no reason to hang out with people majoring in communications (I know, shallow-minded). But during the last few weeks of class, I began organizing class-wide events: a bowling/karaoke night, a beach/poker night, a 2 day cabin-trip. And after those few weeks, I made some of my fondest memories of the year and met some of my best friends ever. There’s something special that happens when a group of people does something fun in person. I’m hoping this is a repeatable formula: at Columbia, I’m going to try and invite everyone in my first few classes out to events I’ll organize. My biggest concern is that they’ll think I’m strange (my extroversion is often described as “off-putting”). Word spreads quick and I’d much rather be the guy that puts together sick bowling nights than the weirdo who’s a little too friendly.

Finally, I’d like to start a proper startup this year. I’ve played around with many different ideas in the past, but I think I’m locking in on one: I’d like to make a company that incorporates VR into fitness. Gym equipment right now sucks; nobody wants to stare at a blank wall while running on a treadmill for an hour. And even the most advanced fitness technology today is little more than a TV in front of a stationary bike. I think the time is ripe for something more technologically advanced to come out. What if you could, instead of just running on a treadmill, run around a scene in Studio Ghibli? The Summoner’s Rift from League of Legends? The countryside in Genshin Impact?

Beyond that, what if you could fully replace video game controllers with real life actions? Instead of hitting the up arrow to move, you’d have to take a step forward. Instead of hitting “X” to attack, you’d have to manually make a slashing motion. If there’s some way we could plug ourselves into existing video games, like Fortnite or Call of Duty, then we’d have no need to even develop games ourselves. We could start out just by completely replacing video game controllers with player motions and very neatly plug ourselves into a huge ecosystem.

Right now, I have no idea where to start. I’m hoping to spend the next year deeply understanding this field of AR/VR. I’m going to try and join some research labs at Columbia that are doing work in the space, and if all goes well, I’d like to have built some semblance of an MVP before the school year ends. I’m nervous right now because I have no idea where to start, but if the words of countless startup founders mean anything, then nobody really knows what to do at the beginning. I’m going to throw myself into this and see where I come out. Exciting!

That’s my life for now. I have a few secondary goals (get great at machine learning! score well on the putnam! run a marathon! publish a research paper! write a novel!), but these are my most important short to long-term projects I’m working on. And of course, this blog! With this, I hope to both improve my writing skills and just have an interesting blog to look at later in my life.

Right now, the driving slogan of my life is “just start.”

That’s all, that’s all! Sorry for the meandering towards the end — NOT! My blog, I do what I want. This is kinda fun. See you next time.