5 Life Lessons Learnt at University (2 Years at Cambridge)

hey everyone and welcome to the channel if you're new here my name is ray and i'm in my third year doing physics here at cambridge and in this video i want to talk about some of the lessons i learned in the last two or eight years of university so because it's almost the end of the year i thought it'd be like a good time to reflect so some reflecting some of the lessons i lent and i figured turning into a video may be helpful for someone out there so i don't know if you're watching it then hopefully this

is helpful so i want to caveat this video by saying that university is a learning experience for everyone and whether you're in your first term or your final time of university you will continue to learn and realize things as we're going along these are just things that i've come to realize over about seven terms of university so far with there being free terms and academic year

so the most important lesson for me was that it's worth spending time to try and figure out what you value and prioritize whilst you're here at university now this can also stem into like wider life and what you value and prioritize in life um but you will find that things rarely stay consistent for that long and things stay consistent usually when there's a major change in your life and university is this case so for example about five years ago when i was still in like secondary school sixth film um i valued and prioritized like i don't know getting good results and being academic and stuff and i imagine about like 15 years from now i will value like spending time with family and friends and like having children and like spending time with them and stuff but as for currently in university it's worth like figuring out what you value during this time and for me personally it took me about two years to realize that i uh one really value talking about like my personal experiences and then hoping some people like get some value out of it and whether that be with conversations with friends or even when making youtube videos like this and it seems to be working well so far because i made a video on like mistakes i made in sexual and that ended up getting 50 000 views and that was just me sitting on a bed rambling like i am now i also learned about myself that i like getting ideas off the ground and then passing it to someone else when things begin to feel too formal um so that's what i ended up doing during last summer's internship so like i got a whole new project off the ground and then like towards the end of the internship i just passed it over to like one of the full-time employees i also realized that i really like having the freedom and flexibility to work anywhere and like any times i want um and that became especially important realization during my summer's internship when i was able to work like anywhere i wanted in like any hours i wanted uh which also meant that i could like do a bit of traveling as well so i went to like scotland for a week with some friends and then just signed a cafe and like did some work for like two three hours of uh during the day and then did more work in the evening and so into leave that with doing other activities or like i also went to us for about three weeks and then there i was also doing work and like interleaved that we're doing like over activities whilst i was there so this is something i realized i value and would like continue to value in like the foreseeable future at least before some same major change happens in my life but before going to university the thing i thought i valued was like getting good results doing research and being like an academic eventually someday and because of that it meant that i wasn't signing myself or getting involved in opportunities that didn't directly contribute to say something research related and because i value this like quite highly it also meant that i experienced more imposter syndrome when it came to people getting better results around me but not because i don't really value like say getting really good results and like being eventually becoming an academic or whatever um it means that i don't really care too much if like people are getting better results around me because i realize that's something they're valuing and i'm valuing something entirely different or aiming for something entirely different so basically took me about two years to realize this is like how my values have sort of changed when getting to university and i'm sure they will change some more before i graduate but i don't imagine them changing a whole lot from now because i've had like experiences which kind of back up these values of like me doing some internship and realizing i like getting ideas off the ground or like traveling and working remotely as well and realizing i really enjoy that process um and then like doing a bit of like research and realizing i don't really enjoy that or like studying a whole bunch get good scores and realizing i'm not enjoying that or not valuing that as much and so i do have like evidence to like behind these values so because of that i would recommend that you don't let any of your beliefs about what you enjoy and don't enjoy um early on in university hold you back from doing anything or signing um holding you back from signing up to you like any opportunities and let yourself figure out what you enjoy and don't enjoy with time like sort of imagine you're more of a blank slate than before and also good for opportunities that you normally wouldn't go for because you'll learn a whole lot about yourself by doing these opportunities like if you attend like a two three day program somewhere and it just turned out to be a waste of time then like you realize you don't like doing this thing anymore and that's a really good like thing that you can use for the future and on the point of

opportunities i would recommend going into things with zero expectations so an example of this was over the summer i had a week off from my internship and because our boss gave everyone a week off and he told us to like find something to do during that week off so i ended up contacting some people at some offices that i really liked and i went to offices for a week to do some like work experience whatever and from like a break from my internship uh just doing more work um but it was still fun so i ended up doing that and i met a whole bunch of interesting people and there were a bunch of like existing american students there and then i ended up becoming good friends with some of them and afterwards like many months later i found myself in the us just like being tore around and shown around by some of them and just like crashing with some of them as well and that was like very fun so i had no idea that me going into this like office for the week and just like randomly meeting some people here would lead to this outcome happening and i think if you set yourself like zero expectations when going into something then it means like you're much more likely to do it or actually enjoy the process or just be there in the moments so much more so i think this touches on a point which i'm going to be calling like asymmetric outcomes so for that week um they're in the offices i imagine they're being like a low bound and an upper bound all like an unbounded upper bound so the low bound would be like the worst possible scenario which ended up happening and was like for that week i would just spend a week there and not really learn anything not really meet anyone interesting and i just like eventually learn nothing and go back now the best case scenario like i could just not have imagined that the best case scenario here would have been like meeting a bunch of interesting people and then like spending three weeks in the us with them and just being tore around like almost every day and i just could not have imagined that being the case going in because like i don't know it's pretty difficult to predict that happening so you have asymmetric outcomes where you have like a known possible worst case scenario we have like an unknown best case scenario of like the worst case scenario is bounded by like um say in this case learning nothing during that week whereas the biscuit the best case scenario is like unbounded um and like there's just nothing stopping like something being a super really good best case scenario and i think this

ties into another lesson of not blindly following everyone around you so one example is during my first time at university everyone around me was applying for like investment banking internships spring weeks whatever and i thought because everyone else is doing it i have to do this as well so i sat down like found some applica and places to apply and then just started applying and then during the process i realized i just did not enjoy the process or investment banking or learning all the terminology or writing these cover letters or doing these like aperture tests and i remember one time there was like a weird virtual interview happening where um the virtual interview what they do is they display a question on the screen and then they record your response for a minute and they display another question and during one of these um virtual interviews i just realized i was not enjoying this process applying for investment banking internships so i just like quit that interview and then just said i'm not doing any more of this and i realized because i wasn't enjoying this process or just learning about like people in these roles i just would not enjoy doing the role itself so there was literally no point in me just applying for these like rules or internships um and i was basically just doing it because everyone around me was doing that and in this case i found it more helpful when it comes to like say programs you want to do over the summer like thinking about what you're most excited about doing or learning about or listening to whatever people have done before and then just like trying to do that as well and another example is that during my first year of university a lot of people i knew were just going clubbing and they like seemed to like hype this up to be like this amazing thing and because i thought that everyone was doing this is what i had to be doing to like have the full experience of something so i'd try this one time and it just wasn't for me and i realized like i prefer doing like more wholesome things like i don't know playing card games or board games with friends and just like chatting and having dinner and stuff together and i realized i also really valued having i don't know fun insightful conversations with friends and i could not really do this like whilst going to club or something like that so i think another example blindly following people around me is when i came to studying so quite a few people around me wanted to like rank highly in exams or like score like top 10 20 whatever uh just so they could like say flex to over people on results day and i found myself doing the exact same thing and then over time i realized i just wasn't enjoying the process of putting all this additional work or effort in just for something that i didn't really care too much about and i found in many cases that people who i'd spoken to who ranked highly in previous years usually made some kind of like trade-off or sacrifice uh when it came to like how much studying they were doing versus like how much socializing they were doing or like working on like interesting awesome projects or whatever but generally i changed my attitude to more of like i'm going to be putting in the average amount of work that a cambridge student puts in and like if i end up scoring really well because of that um like i don't know with some nice topics or questions coming up or questions that i just got lucky with then that's great but like if not then like at least i got an average score in that case so um that's like kind of how my value sort of shifted when it came to

studying now something else i wish i learned earlier during university is applying for as many opportunities as possible there's many opportunities which you find exciting like say don't apply for investment banking internships if you don't find the whole process or like the prospect of being able to do this exciting um because even if but don't worry too much about this fact because you can always say no later so for example i applied for some like investment banking like outreach sort of program in first year and i did that in my first term so like we went to london to some fancy offices for um like two days and just learnt a whole bunch there and then afterwards we were followed up for like several weeks after and months after i was just attending a whole bunch of programs and i just did not enjoy attending the programs whatsoever and the person in charge reached out to me said like oh hey i noticed you haven't been attending these like sessions and i just said to him like yeah i'm not really enjoying it sorry and just left the program and that was completely fine and because i explained the fact i was enjoying it and why i wasn't enjoying it because my values sort of surrounding investment banking had changed so when it comes to opportunities and programs like apply for things which you find exciting and like notice feelings of like hey it would be particularly awesome to do this so the offices i went to for the summit like i really liked that organization so i just decided to like send an email and be like hey can i come to offices for a week and do your work experience well when i came to my internship last summer like there was a youtuber that i really liked and i just sent him an email and said like hey can i intern for you of the summer and he was like yeah sure and that's how you end up getting an internship and slowly as you do more opportunities you get a sense of what you like and don't like doing and this is the explore exploit dichotomy so when it comes to like machine learning algorithms like explore a whole bunch of options they find like a few good options and then they begin to exploit those options so you can sort of apply this when it comes to like opportunities because like you explore a whole bunch of opportunities and then like you realize the ones that you really like and get excited about and then you like try to do more of those or for some friends they say explore exploit is useful when it comes to dating because like they explore a whole bunch of options by dating a whole bunch of people really realizing what they like and don't like just in general in like i don't know dating people and then like the next person who comes along who matches like a lot of the things they like they sort of exploits this um and yeah they just figure out what they like so using the terms like explore exploit like gives you a better framework and just thinking about like hey i'm going to try a whole bunch of things and then like uh go and really go for the things i like the most and

another lesson i wish i'd land seen it is that everyone is making some kind of trade-off and this goes back to whole thing about values so when i started university i found myself being quite envious of people who were getting much better results than me but then i like slowly as i got to know these people more i found that they were in fact envious of me um because they said to me like oh ray you seem to have like really awesome or interesting friends or ray you seem to be working on like some really exciting projects or just doing like really interesting stuff and even at the summit i did like a whole bunch of traveling remote internship met a whole bunch of interesting people and then when i told people about this like coming back who had done like investment banking or quantitative trading internships and they just ended up saying to me despite their internships like being so much more competitive and hot like harder to get into they wish they had my internship instead because it seemed like i had so much more fun than they did so the point i'm trying to make is that if you see someone excelling in one particular area then they're most likely lacking some other areas in life because very very few people get like a perfect balance across everything so this reminds me of a saying which is like university students are kind of like dogs so when you see a duck going along it's like smoothly sailing across a pond or a river whatever but like underneath the water it's like paddling really hard and it's like moving its feet like very rapidly just to make sure like it's still moving along and this is like what university students are kind of like so on the surface of a lot of people you see they seem to have like everything in control or in order or whatever but like behind the scenes they're probably like working really hard really intensely just to make sure everything looks or is going fairly smoothly on the surface but you just don't see all the work they're doing like behind the scenes and you just see like the smooth sailing above the water so it's pretty uh pretty unfair comparison when you're a duck and you know how hard you're like paddling along and you see like other ducks and you just forget how hard they're paddling along as well because you just see what's above the water but yeah i don't know hopefully that analogy kind of makes sense so it's kind of useful i do remember hearing a quote as well which kind of encapsulates the same idea which is that no one ever has a time management problem they have a priority management problem train yourself to never say that you don't have time say that this is not a priority and make sure you're happy with that prioritization so when it comes to some of the trade-offs which you're making or like some of the things that you're prioritizing then just uh consider whether you're happy with this level of trade-off or prioritization but yeah

that's basically for the video hopefully you found something interesting useful in there and if you did like do let me know otherwise i guess i'll see you next time bye