Lessons Learnt in My Journey to Cambridge

hey everyone and welcome back to the channel so if you're new here my name's ray and i just finished my second year studying physics here at cambridge and in this video i'm going to be going over some of my life story and some of the lessons i learnt along the way in getting to cambridge because i briefly touched upon it in a earlier video and then i just said like if you guys want to see a new video or a separate video about this then do let me know and quite a few people wanted to so i figured i'd make it so there are two

purposes for this video uh one is mostly altruistic reason and one is like a tiny selfish reason so the altruistic reason is that i hope that even if this video encourages or inspires one other person to uh apply who otherwise wouldn't have or encourages someone saying secondary school or sixth form who wasn't seriously thinking about applying to cambridge or oxford uh to like work harder and smarter and potentially make a good application there even if it inspires like at least one person to do that who then makes it that's like huge um a huge benefits for like them um and probably a tiny bit for me as well because i get a bit of satisfaction out of that as well and hearing like stories of people who are going to do well um the tiny selfish reason is that i want to get better at making videos without scripting them because a lot of my earlier videos were scripted so right now i just have a few bullet points written on my ipad and uh hopefully that should be like enough for making videos and stuff so i guess the most natural way to start this live

journey video is probably with when i was born and that was in september 2000 and i was actually born in pakistan um but i don't have any memories of them because in about mid 2003 my family were fortunate enough to come to uk and when we came to uk we stayed in a we stayed in london for a little while for a few weeks and stayed in birmingham for a few months and then we finally like moved northwards upwards to in and around manchester and we basically stayed there since uh when we were moving around that was mainly because my dad was trying to find work um at like different places and wherever he could find it because we didn't have like a job lined up or whatever coming here um and then in manchester uh we stayed i remember that's where basically most of my memories are um so we stayed in the council house of manchester until about 2008 um and that's where i went to nursery reception year one and year two um and these are probably some of my earliest memories um and i don't have many interesting stories to share except that probably uh my dad did leave a few times to go to like germany or to go to back to pakistan to find work and also earn a bit more money there and i remember one particular case in my life where my dad had gone back to pakistan for a few weeks and he gave some money to like my mum to um yeah to like feed us or whatever during that time and like do grocery shopping and stuff like that and then uh like when we were shopping i don't know if the money was stolen or she somehow lost some money or something after that we basically didn't have any money for the remainder of this few weeks when my dad was gone and we basically had to only eat like dal and roti um if you like if you know of doll it's like a sort of lentil sort of soupish thing and um south asia um and we basically only had to eat that for a few weeks while we were sort of waiting because we just literally didn't have any other money um and despite that i think my parents kind of had a humbling approach when it came to money or well i mean i remember another example where um like my sister's mum and i were going shopping we'll eat shopping and when it came um for my mom to pay for some of the clothes that we were shopping for that day like the money in her purse was just not there anymore um so she was like pretty sure it was stolen um and then like when we just sort of came home like my mom ended up telling my dad and then my dad was like uh well it doesn't matter like you didn't really need the clothes anyway and there's probably someone else who whoever stole the money uh probably needed it much more or like they were actually hungry and yeah so i guess even though growing up we didn't have a lot my parents were still appreciative of how much we still had and how much we could still actually afford to eat and stuff like that even if some weeks it was just dull or whatever so anyways in about 2008 we moved to a new house which we've basically been renting since and it's the one we still stay at um so i attended a local primary school between like year 3 and year 6 over there and i don't have any memories there i mean it was really nothing special although during that time my dad did end up buying me a laptop uh which was really good because like he saved up quite a lot of money to buy like my sister night laptops and for me personally during that period in primary school um like basically every day when i go back from school i would go on a game called roblox and i would be building my own games on roblox uh using the like roblox programming language lua and i think that was immensely valuable like for me growing up because it massively improved my like mathematical abilities because when you sort of if when you're growing up and you think you see things around you or while you see things on roadblocks and you're like oh well how did such and such make this thing and then you sort of have to like work for your puzzle and try to make it yourself and you learn so much along the way and despite not being me being like perfectly fluent in lieu or something like i still had a lot of fun growing up and making these things on roblox and just generally improving my like i don't know 3d modeling problem solving skills stuff like that and i didn't even realize i was doing that because i was having so much fun during that process as well and i think this was vastly better than like many of my friends who were playing um like ps4 game well i mean i think it was like ps3 at the time well just like assassin's creed or black ops or whatever um like me playing roblox and like trying to build my own stuff and like learning these programming languages between like the year three and year six that was immensely valuable in terms of like improving my problem solving skills and getting me like well set up like i don't know mathematically and like improving my reasoning um and i think if i didn't have that laptop growing up my dad did not bite me then i may well be in a very different position to how i am now um just because of like how valuable that was so that's basically it until like the end of primary school there was a whole lot over there um but there are

like two important lessons which i take away from this which is that the country you grow up in dictates like 95 of the opportunities you have available in your life and i don't want the message of this video to be sort of taken wrong i i'm like incredibly appreciative of like despite not um having like the best opportunities growing up or well having to go through periods where my family just struggled financially and to even probably afford like any good food um yeah during those periods i mean we were still better off than like 95 of other people globally uh just because of the opportunities we had or like the welfare from the governments as well um that was like immensely valuable and like child tax credit and like all these sort of benefits you uh that my parents had um which meant that they could still have money to fetus whereas in many other countries like these things literally just don't exist um so i am still incredibly appreciative of just being in this country because i know like almost all my life opportunities have come from that and i think it's something like many other people yeah just forget to appreciate like how much the country you're born or raised in dictates like how your life basically like comes out and i think it's especially important when it comes to education because uh growing up my parents always reminded me how fortunate i was enough to have like a good education in like a developed country and how like many of my like cousins back home would um really want to have like the same level of educational opportunities or whatever and that i should actually make the most of it and i think that's probably the most important thing i would have taken away from my childhood that i'm glad i made the most of the opportunities i had growing up and like actually tried hard in school growing up just because my parents constantly reminded me about how fortunate i was to be in this like situation or well to just be in this country and there were like literally millions of people globally who just don't have an education whatsoever and particularly girls in like developing countries because um like all sort of expectations of society in those countries and stuff like that um and when just reminded of that fact i try to remember that i should be making the most of every opportunity that comes along and not just for opportunities that come along like make like even go out and make opportunities for yourself which is something i'll probably cover more in a later video um so like robin sitting down and waiting for something good to happen or like some opportunity to come along which you can grab or something like just making opportunities for yourself um which i'll talk more about at length in like some future video or something

and the second lesson i would probably take away is that perhaps the most useful thing you can do growing up and there's no like age at which you have to start so like you can start as early as you want is that to learn to program or will learn to build things because it like opens it unlocks like a new side of your brain almost in that you look at something and you're like well how can i make this for myself and you still have to reason through that and it improves your like problem solving skills analytical abilities even programming improves your like mathematical abilities and like when i was building games on roblox um like my 3d like visual skills were like incredible just because i like was really good at doing that and like i learned about like vectors and stuff in like year three year four because you when you had to translate objects around and stuff like that because like programming and especially on a website like roblox it just opens up so many opportunities for growth like when you're growing up oh well it improves your like mathematical analytical skills so well and you don't even realize you're doing it because you're having a lot of fun doing it as well so i would highly encourage if you like have any younger siblings to introduce them to this and if they have a whole lot of fun doing it then it'll pay off massively in the long run and even growing up my parents didn't quite realize this until i later mentioned a few years like wow this is actually the reason like if i did not have that computer or i hadn't not described roblox during that time i didn't imagine my skills would have been as good as they are now so after prime

school i went to what at the time was underperforming secondary school i think now it's like pretty average or something um but i don't have a lot of interesting stories to tell during that time like my family still sort of struggled a bit financially great during that time but it was getting better like we were becoming a bit more financially stable with a like a few more savings and stuff like that um but i do remember some particular stories which i think would probably be useful and one was that i remember in year seven like a few weeks into secondary school i just sort of said to like what a few of my friends and i think even a teacher that like oh hey like miss i want to like go to oxford someday or something and i send this to some of my friends and they like just sort of laughed it off as well and when they were like as if like you go to this school like this underperforming school you don't go to any fancy private school or something like what are your chances of getting in your family background is like isn't like not even that good what are your chances of getting in there and i and these like snorky replies would just be very i don't know discouraging but fortunately in year seven i was like stupid enough or smart enough to like not pay attention to this or well just not really care too much about what other people are saying or thinking so then during most of secondary school i kind of coasted along i did put more effort into maths and science just because those were way more fun than all other subjects um and i kind of like coaster along in the rest of my subjects and because i was putting more eff into maths and science i did improve a lot more in those subjects and um yeah like next thing i knew like in year 10 year 11 i was like getting high scores because of that um but one case or one story i like to tell is that when i was in year seven there was a uh one of my friends um he was basically like the everyone said he was like the smartest kid in the year or whatever um and like he did score the best in like all the tests but then over the years during secondary school he just kind of became complacent and just ended up with fairly average jcrc results and everyone thought that he would end up with the highest gcse results from like year 7 year 8. uh but i think he sort of let that get to his head of all these people praising him constantly um and it just made him grow complacent and then other people caught up to him and even surpassed him and well like yeah a half a dozen that doesn't well yeah many other people caught up to him and i think this is one of the lessons like uh when you're praising someone well just don't i personally would not praise my friends for like doing well i mean i'd probably say like well done but like going over the top is just not fun or well not useful for them especially if they let you get it get to their heads or like even my younger brother or my younger sister i don't praise them i just said like rather than saying oh you're so smart or whatever it's much better to say oh wow look what you can achieve putting in all these uh hours or putting in all this extra work um because you're praising the process instead of like their nat that supposed natural abilities um but i think that's a story i like to remind myself of that to never grow complacent because you will fall behind over people who may be average at that moment but will like surpass you it's like it's sort of like a marathon or a race like if you if people are like cheering you on and you're like in the lead then you might feel like oh well yeah i can sort of take a rest now but like other people are still running and if you want to stay ahead then you gotta like still be running or if you want to catch up to someone who's already had you will have pre have to run faster than them um and that would involve like doing a bit more work than them um so anyway i did carry on making uh games on roblox during that time and i was making a few websites on the side like just i don't know i made like a flash gaming website in like a year seven or year eight or something and that was a whole lot of fun to work on outside of school and i think that process sort of continued to like improve my ability of like breaking down these like large projects in small manageable chunks being like oh hey i want to build a flash gaming website and then just figuring out how to do it i'm learning everything along the way um but i ended up doing less and less of that through like year 8 9 10 because i end up getting playing like way too much there's a game called dota it's kind of like a league of legends and ended up clocking like 700 800 hours on dota and that was just not useful whatsoever like they're all like games which are fun and useful kind of like building stuff in roblox but like games like dota they're just useless and but they're designed to be so addictive that you just don't end up realizing and i played tons of dota and i just didn't realize like how much time i was generally wasting on it and had i spent that time like let's say working on some more interesting projects on roblox or like thinking about ways to actually improve my maths solving abilities by i don't know um working through some like interesting books like the art of problem solving for that matter had i done more of that i think i would have been in a much better situation or i would have enjoyed maths so much more but yeah so for the rest of secondary school i kind of just cursed it along um i carried on improving my problem solving skills a bit um and i did like khan academy on the side which helps me to improve my maths um skills and i ended up becoming the best at maths in basically my year group um and yeah that was yeah pretty good um i wish i pushed myself more during that time and i had only realized that when i got to sixth film now i wish i pushed myself so much more during maths because i remember in about year 10 and year 11 maps because i had covered all the maps on khan academy before i was just sat in the class just literally not doing anything while i was doing the work but i'd finish it like in 10 minutes or so and i just spent the rest of the lesson chatting and i wish during that time i had pushed myself a bit further or did some extra work or like did some let's say ukmt questions to improve my problem-solving skills or that my teacher had encouraged me to do that but like neither of the two happened uh but that leads on to a separate lesson um but yeah so i um it got to around a few months before my exams in year 11 and i realized that i wasn't as prepared or i didn't know a lot of the content or well i learned the content in class but i just couldn't remember it so i was trying to find ways in which i could remember the content so i tried like physical flash cards and like physical flash called silk like can i just do flashcards on my phone and that's when i found anki so i remember and there were a few days i think it may have been during the holidays at some point until like a bank holiday weekend um i literally just made flash cards like on everything we had done in all our lessons well the entire like all of science and like a few other subjects and well not for maths and english um but i made flashcards on a lot of subjects and that really helped me remember a lot of the material and it was really useful when it came to exams and because i didn't have to study as hard before a few days before the exams um so in the end i ended up with uh seven eight stars and free a's um but uh since i was the first-year group to see the new specification in english and maps i got a nine in maps which i just say is an a-star instead and i got a nine in english language which i say is an aston and an a in english so as for a few

lessons that i did learn during my time in secondary school um the first was that in my experience british people have quite a pessimistic attitude and this is why i this is like one of the aspects of british culture which i dislike um so like for the case where i was saying like my teachers sort of discouraged me from saying like oh well and my friend said like oh well you won't get in talks or whatever like this is a thing i dislike and the fact that immigrants or and their children tend to be quite ambitious and then like british culture doesn't really like overly ambitious people so you kind of like fire them down or while they shoot them down and they basically say like oh yeah you can't achieve this and i think it's a little different to american culture or well american attitudes to ambitious people um because you have like the whole american dream and if say like a kid in the u. s in like elementary school they're like oh hey miss i want to become like the next president or whatever they're generally it's like you can do this attitude like if you like knuckle down work hard whatever all this other stuff like then you can probably become president whereas if you were in like primary school in the uk and you said to your teacher like hey i want to become like the next prime minister or something and be like yeah kid like as if so i think generally like british people have more pessimistic attitudes especially when it comes to like people sharing like their big vision or like their plans to achieve x y or z um and that's something i kind of wish i could change so that's one of the realizations i came to which is that i don't have to worry too much if i'm sharing like my overly ambitious plans of like british people in general because they generally have a bit more pessimistic or well i don't know if you want to call it realistic but i personally call it pessimistic attitude um and i suppose that's also why you don't see too many like huge startups being found here and they're mainly happening in the u. s just because people are way more ambitious and like entrepreneurial over there and i don't know if you would once call them like delusional and thinking that they can like change the world or whatever um but yeah in some cases it does work

out for them so now the second realization i also had was that school will never push you and you have to push yourself and i wish someone told me this so much sooner like probably at the start of secondary school that um the average the system in schooling is designed for like the average student which means that let's say you're really good at art right um yeah like you could your teachers will probably praise you in your art listen to me like wow that's like really good or whatever but they will never push you to go further or well in most schools they won't push you to go further because they're concerned more with the average student and helping the average student to improve most systems in life or well most things in life are designed for the average person and the same goes for schooling so like in my case i was particularly good at maths and i just sort of sat there complacent in lesson for like two years just not really doing anything and i didn't realize i had to push myself and my teachers had never pushed me um and yeah there are some teachers who are like fantastic and do push like very able students uh but that's like rarely the case so a realization i came to after secondary school was that i wish i had pushed myself more and i didn't waste my time during my maths lessons um or that my teacher had kind of told me or someone had told me that sooner being like you have to push yourself if you're good at something then push yourself to get better at it rather than becoming complacent and being like oh i'm already really good at this like i can just like sit down and chill um yeah i wish i just know that sooner and

also a realization i came to when like planning this video was that don't feel bad about like any negative life experiences that have happened to you um because there were many times growing up where i was like oh wow my friends have been going on like so many holidays they've been doing holidays every year and like my family just didn't have the money to be able to spend on those luxuries or stuff like that or the latest i don't know game or whatever in other cases like when we struggled financially for like a few weeks at a time or stuff like that then i kind of envied my friends in that regard or any other experiences i've been through which were all quite negative or what i wasn't too happy with at the time i realized looking back just me speaking about these experiences or writing about them online it generally does help other people who may be in a similar situation to sort of overcome their situation as well and i feel like almost every experience has some value no matter how negative it may be um just because it can help someone else get through that experience if you're willing to share it online in the form of let's say a blog post or newsletter or like even me with this video so now after my gcse results i

realized i had a pretty decent shot of getting into oxford cambridge and just because my results were really good for the school i went to and like universities tend to compare your results in comparison to like the average results at your school so if you go to a particularly bad school and you get excellent well pretty good results which would have been average at let's say in grammar school or a private school then you're going to look so much better in comparison because they kind of like contextualize your gcse score so anyway i had that in mind and i realized like my gcrsc results were pretty good at this point so i went to a pretty average sixth home um but i was fortunate enough to have some really fantastic teachers especially my fellow maths teacher um because he was like incredibly good at teaching and i've heard that he even recommends my videos that my video on like how to connect starting from maps every year to use like a new class of year 12 students or something like that um but anyway i don't think i have many stories from six form um i do remember one specific case where it was about october time and i was helping out on the open day and i was in the physics department helping out in the open day because i kind of enjoyed physics and there was a year 13 people who i was speaking to uh because he was also helping out there and i asked him like oh where he's applying and stuff like that and he was like oh well he's applying to oxford and then i said oh yeah i wanted to sort of apply talks with some one next year as well and stuff like that and then he asked me what do you seriously results i got and then he was like oh yeah you're not going to get in with those gcse results there's no points implying like why would you even bother you just be wasting your time and stuff like that so he was basically very pessimistic to me and i think that was a huge blow to my confidence when it came to applying or thinking about applying um but anyway like a few months later when because oxford and cambridge give out their offers in like january time in january i realized that he didn't even get an offer um and yeah he was rejected and despite him saying to me that he was like predicted for a stars in his actual a-level results i think he didn't achieve any stars he achieved like a b which is like yeah still pretty good but for how he was making himself seem to be oh well by discouraging other people who were quite ambitious i mean it made me feel better about myself being like wow these people really don't matter and like the people you're dealing like blows to your confidence it's more of a reflection of their own insecurities when it comes to applying because he appeared to seem very confident when it came to applying to like oxford or something but i figured the reality was he was very insecure and very unconfident in applying and then when he meets someone else who is also thinking about applying in the year below it's so much easier for him to just sort of say like oh well you have no chance like so to make himself feel better by making other people feel worse which is like a terrible thing to be doing just in general um but anyway i was pretty pleased to learn that he like didn't get it because i realized his opinions was like completely useless and like he was just making trying to make himself feel better anyway so yeah during sixth form i ended up using anki pretty much consistently throughout the throughout year 12 and i did pretty well in the topic test during that time just because i sort of had the information but i didn't really improve too much my problem solving skills like i sort of did the senior math challenge and the as physics challenge and i did okay um in both but i didn't realize that i had to improve my problem solving skills until about the summer of the summer after year 12 because i attended a summer school at easton college for state school peoples um and during that summer school i met someone who did well in bm01 bmo2 the british mathematical olympiad and he almost qualified for the international maps olympiad team for the uk and i realized oh wow people actually do take this olympiad stuff pretty seriously or that like this guy he was insanely good at problem solving but he still didn't make it on the team which means that there were people even better than him problem solving and i remember in one particular case i was stuck in a problem for about like 10 minutes and then he sort of looks over at the problem and then like within like 5 10 seconds he sort of figured out and knew exactly like where like found my mistake and like rooms are working and i was just like wow damn is this like what people who have been problem solving like actually improving their problem solving skills for years or like and i had basically started but anyway after summer school i was inspired to improve my problem solving skills much more so when it came to like preparing for admission tests because at the time i was planning on applying for physics at oxford uh so i was going to be seeing the pat so i did a lot of past papers and i bought some like physics problem-solving books and i also did like a few british olympians past papers and stuff like that and that and also isaac physics questions and that really helps me to improve my problem solving skills over the summer after year 12 and that's when i started taking it seriously and that worked out pretty well in terms of like when it came to mission session interviews and stuff like that but i still wonder to myself like had i started a year earlier even two years earlier how much better would i be now just at problem solving in general or would i have made it much further like potentially made it onto the i don't know international mass olympiad team for the uk or whatever or physics or stuff like that i mean for the physics olympiad i did end up doing well um but then i realized like people had literally when i got to university i realized that peop this is a culture people have been preparing for this for months before and i just sort of like casually did a few papers um and i wish i had known that people were sort of doing this so much sooner because it would have been immensely useful so anyway i ended up attending two more summer schools that's my attended summer school at ucl and i cambridge and then i realized that i actually want to apply for cambridge instead so i switched my plans and sat the nsaa instead which is a natural sciences admission assessment and i ended up doing well enough nsa to get a interview and then like ended up doing well in the interview to get an offer um and actually didn't evolve my interview experience but like the footage just sort of stored somewhere on my phone or computer and i'm thinking of like piecing it together or like turning that into a video some points and if it is an issue on my channel somewhere um but anyway after interviews i felt very tired um because i had been preparing for a few months well for like admission tests and then the interviews and i did like more kinds of visuals of my teachers at my school and i also had a interview like manchester imperial before my cambridge interview um which is why i applied to manchester united because i knew they did interviews before the cambridge one so i could sort of get like more into me practicing or something anyway um so i felt super tired for that month after and i basically did no work during that month and then i remember getting my offer in about mid january and there's like a video on my channel where it's me like reacting to getting an offer um i remember the first chemistry like topic test i did after that i ended up getting a b or something um and i was like oh well my offer is like two stars in two a's and i'm getting a b right now like i felt pretty bad about myself and then i remember my chemistry teacher pulling me off to the side after the lesson being like hey you have this offer like what what's going on and what's going wrong now like why aren't you like getting good results in chemistry do you want to miss you off or something and he asked me like how i wanted to prioritize my subjects to achieve the 2 stars and 2a's for my offer and i just sort of said to him like i want to achieve 40 stars and then he sort of said something like oh in the last 20 years i've never once met a student who actually achieved four stars or in this school um which was sort of meant to be an indication like that's a bit unrealistic for you or something um but no i was like very much determined when i did end up achieving it and after the results i felt like kind of like smallish or something just because like i was told that i couldn't be able to do it and then when you're told sometimes when you're told you're not able to do something it like motivates you to do even more just to like show the other person or show whoever like they were wrong during that time um but yeah that's basically what ended up happening um so yeah i just like sort of revised like and those were mainly the two key experiences or memories from six form

but as well some of the lessons i learned during that time um during that time i learned that ignoring the haters especially orwell i'm gonna call ignoring the haters um so like in year 12 the guy who told me that like i had no chance and that should just not bother i could have given up and then and there and be like oh yeah this guy's actually right i just might not bother i mean turned out he was lying when i actually met him i remember meeting him after and i asked him if he got an offer from oxford and it turned he said yes but he was lying and he didn't actually get an offer um because the people who did get office from oxford in my sixth film they knew who else got an offer and it was just not him anyways i learned that he was sort of projecting his own insecurities onto me and in generally many of these cases when you meet someone who's dealing a blue to your confidence or like telling you can't do something it's more because they feel like they can't do the thing themselves um and what people are saying to you is just a reflection on their own insecurities instead some teachers feel particularly threatened by like overly ambitious students who want to like do really well and i don't know if it comes down to the british culture or something or but they have natural tendency to like sort of shoot them down or be like oh well like yeah it's not really possible or to sort of discourage them from doing something and i don't know if it's them trying to be realistic but i just generally don't like that attitude um although i'm not sure if it works better by saying if they're using some kind of reverse psychology but i think only for a few people that ends up working it actually encourages them more to uh try and actually get the thing done but for the vast majority of people if you're trying to use a reverse psychology or something to like kind of actually make them more ambitious or make them go for the thing by telling them that they're not able to achieve it then that actually works against most people i think uh but then again like it sort of depends on the different individual and you don't really know but i feel like generally it's better to encourage them and be like oh if you work hard you'll and you work smart then you should be able to get it

and the next lesson or realization that i ended up coming to was that improving your problem solving skills during secondary school or even six of them like if especially if you're going for stem related subjects it it's so immensely useful like i can't explain how useful it can be and just doing a little like pushing yourself with an extra challenging problem every day over like a few weeks and months is going to make you so much better problem solving and i wish i had realized this sooner that's people take improving their problem solving skills pretty seriously and they started off pretty young as well like i started off like towards the end of year 12 and i think i got pretty good but i still wonder like had i started like a year or two earlier like how much better would i be so this is sort of what i encourage my younger brother to do who's in year 8 to like improve his problem-solving skills just because i know when he sort of gets the age of like year 11 or year 12 then he would be like insanely good the time i came to this realization was that i don't think i would have come to realization had i not gone to eaton college summer school and met that guy who almost qualified for the international mass olympiad team um for the uk um and this is one of the things like if you can go to like summer schools and math camps or these summer programs with like academic people especially if you're good at subjects like let's say you're good at maths and you go to math camp during that summer like you'll realize that you're not actually that good at maths it's like a big fish in a small pond right in your school like you may be the best at ms in your school or best at whatever subject and then you're like oh well i don't really have to work much harder because like i'm the best around like what else is that how good can people even get and i feel like if in second school i had gone to math camp or something one summer then that would have been immensely useful because i would have found so like literally dozens of people so much better than me and maps and it would be discouraging at first but then it'd be inspiring being like wow like there is a huge world outside and i'm not a small fish in like a huge pond but i can like work to get so much better at it and like there is no reason to be content with just being the best in your school like i would have had i realized sooner that that they're like there's this huge world outside all well like there are so many other people who like maps just as much or like physics just as much and are really good at as well and like so much better than me then that would have encouraged me to get better earlier on and i would be on a similar level to how they are now um and i sort of wish i had realized that so you know or went on this program sooner or met people who are really good at sending subjects sooner and i think this is especially the problem with sort of oh able students at like average or below average second schools or six forms because if you go to like selective grammar schools then you can always find someone better than you oh well you can mostly um but no it's still valuable to get some math camps like summer programs and stuff like that just so you can meet people and like get a sense of like how far you can actually go with some of this uh but that's a separate video from like in this whole separate video and olympiads and stuff like that but yeah

that's basically that's sort of like my path to coming to cambridge and um how i went about like improving my problem-solving abilities and like some of the people i met along the way who were very discouraging but i didn't let them get to me and everything surrounding that so i don't know hopefully you've learned the some lessons or something like well done if you made it this far and had me ramble on for ages um but i'd say that now life is actually like much better and i didn't imagine that it could be become this much better because now i basically don't have to worry about finances anymore um in the sense that i get a 10 500 pound bursary every year from the from st john's college and the university together i get a scholarship and i also like i maxed out my student loan maintenance loan so i get nine thousand that so i get almost twenty thousand a year and i just basically don't have to worry about money um for the time being and it allows me to like focus on actually like making these videos for example as well like um and basically doing the things that i end up enjoying and it allows me to like spend a bit more on my camera equipment and like just i don't know good stuff like that and like buy a better laptop which just makes like the process of like video editing and just doing stuff in general like so much better streamlined and enjoyable i'm like i'm in a better position now and also like using the cambridge like and using a degree from cambridge it would like set me up better later in the future as well um which is like exactly the thing um like i sort of wanted growing up in that i wanted to like make the most of the educational opportunities i had to be able to go to the best university that i possibly could and to like make the most of experiences there meet some interesting people and make some like yeah lifelong connections and because of all that i'd say like i'm pretty pleased with life at the moment but yeah that's basically for the video hopefully uh you found a few my life lessons useful or you found me like going through some of my life story quite useful um and it sort of encourages you or inspires you to work a little bit harder or will make the most of the opportunities you have and try and make more opportunities for yourself um especially like in your if you're in a developed country because like you have so many more opportunities than other people like millions tens of millions of other people all around the world uh who are your age um but yeah that's basically for the video i guess i'll see you next time bye