I want to make some. I know I need to put myself out there and join clubs/organizations and all that, but I rather do other things. Are they not mutually exclusive? Can I meet these golden friends by chance?

I sometimes get depressed when I see a YouTube video J. made about college acceptances. He’s having fun with a bunch of his friends and they talk about all sorts of things, and I wish I had that.

I wonder if this is something that requires active pursuing or something that happens naturally. I don’t have too much faith in IEEE or the classes I’m in. I try to make small talk but nothing really grows out of that.

I’m not afraid of being alone, but I don’t want to go through life alone.

I don’t want to sound like a Debbie downer, but there were probably less than 200 people in the student section. Not even five rows were filled, and what was more surprising was how packed the normal section of the stadium was. Regular folk of the LA area mogged the crap out of us. I felt extremely bad and I suspect my friends, even though they didn’t tell me directly, knew it too.

This raises the question: Is this the end of football? I am not a huge football fan, and my perfect Saturday does not include spending five hours out in the hot sun. I don’t find the appeal of men crashing into other people, and then cheering when one of them runs a leather ball into a homerun. It’s simply not interesting to me.

A few days later, I read an article about how the head UCLA coach, Bob Chesney, was disappointed with the students, “The student section was slow to get in there, and then felt like they left a little bit early… I think that they got to do a better job too.”

It’s a difficult problem. You can’t force people to attend an event they don’t have enough interest in, and there are a few problems with the logistics. One, the football stadium is 40 minutes off campus so you need to buy a $15 Rooter Bus ticket to just get there. Second, it was the middle of midterm season. What a Bruin to do?

I know the answer: don’t attend. It’s an uncomfortable truth but it might be time for Football to hang the towel. I don’t know how long this will last but eventually, if no one shows up, there would be no more point in a Football team. Things come and go, and this time, it might be dear old Football.

However, sometimes during conversations, when the topic turns taboo (i.e. Politics, or behavioral issues), I tend to stop engaging or I say very few words. I worry that if I say something they don’t like (mostly my dad), they will get angry and yell at me. I think I’ve been conditioned since a young age to just accept everything my parents say as law and move on with life.

Though, as I get older, I grow smarter, more nuanced, and I read about other view points, I realized that my parents aren’t 100% right, maybe not even 70% right.

Yet, whenever they say something I think is logically inconsistent, I don’t say anything, when I probably should. If I do say something, it might be uncomfortable for a little bit, but maybe it would be for the better. My parents get to see a new view point and maybe they push back against mine and I find out my own conclusion is flawed.

That would be the ideal conversation, but I don’t feel safe expressing my true opinions. I was thinking of ways to solve this problem and one of them was teaching my parents the Methods of Rationality.

Tonight, I will share in our group chat this article from Rationality: A-Z by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

I chose this one specifically because I just had a conversation with my dad tonight about how these three girls were locked in the room of a fraternity house and my dad said nothing was wrong because nothing happened. True, nothing horrendous happened, but why did the guy lock the door? Ideally, you wouldn’t do such a threatening act, and threats are still very real (i.e. a bomb threat).

Let’s see how this goes. Today is Day 1 of enlightening my parents and maybe my brother as well if he’s up for it.

I sent the message, “Hi family, I enjoy having deep conversations with you guys and I learn a lot from them. Though, I feel like the best way to squeeze the most out of these chats is to first train ourselves on what to look out for when forming our opinions. If you guys are down for it, I would like you guys to read this article from one of my favorite authors. It’s really short (about 5 paragraphs long) and though it might be confusing at times, feel free to glance over those complicated terms and focus on the main parts. If you have any questions, just ask me.”

The next day, I had a deep conversation with my father and I believe it was very productive. He, as well as my mom, both said that they are interested in these types of articles and I should send more.

I think my father is a little delusional. He believes that closing the door, locking it, and saying “You guys are not leaving” to the people inside isn’t threatening and is perfectly fine. He thinks that just because you own a room, that means you can do anything you want, disregarding the people inside (even if they entered without your permission).

I’m not sure I changed his mind much. He definitely did not change mine, but I think it was a positive interaction overall.

I’ve tried some simpler solutions. I’ve moved to the 2nd row but I still couldn’t see it. I’ve tried reading the textbook beforehand but that’s just too much work. I can’t do anything about my eyes.

Thus, I’ve concluded that the most optimal strategy moving forward is that I must stop attending lectures and begin studying on my own. Initially, I began reading the raw textbook but that took forever, so I used AI to summarize the chapters in its own words. That was working for a few days but that took super long as well. Lastly, I noticed that the professor posted her lecture notes online after the class, and those were about 2 pages long. I simply would send those to Claude or Muse and have them teach it to me.

I would always tell them to go step-by-step and only move on until I understand it, as well as draw diagrams to show the equations and problems in detail. It has been working out so far and I’m about to test my skills on the practice mid-term. Here we go!

I don’t think I did that bad. I had to add some more equations to the cheatsheet AI made, and the practice-midterm was pretty easy, but I don’t think I did that bad. I’m a little nervous for the actual midterm so maybe I’ll do some of that optional homework.

I want to convince my family to sign up as well. I’m not sure how that will go. One plan would be to sign up myself first, and go through the motions: talking with representatives, visiting their facility, looking at the legal documents, etc. Then, after I’m comfortable with the process, I introduce it to my family.

The only issue I see with this plan is its lengthiness. I’m not sure I will be able to go through all the steps before my grandparents pass. There’s also another hurdle. My grandparents already figured out which coffin they want and where they will be buried. Upending those plans will take some effort.

A good solace is that the annual membership for cryonics is surprisingly very cheap. It costs $200/year for Alcor and $120/year for Cryonics Institute. This is basically scraps for the chance at time traveling to the future (as well as immortality).

I must not wait too long. I don’t want to fall for cryocrastination and end up like all those other people who die as they try to sign up for cryonics.

I need to ask my mother if I have life insurance and if so, can I transfer it to pay for cryonics?

She probably will ask why I’m asking. I think I’ll be truthful about it. If she says it is transferable, then perfect! If not, I’m going to have to figure something out.

In high school, I was obsessed with building the perfect resume. I would join the top clubs and climb the rankings until I became President. I would do the interviews and do the competitions and sometimes I would win, but it was never what my heart wanted. For some reason, I didn’t notice this gap in true desire until I started applying to college.

When I summarized each of my extracurriculars into five sentences, I realized that the things I thought were important, were actually so small. I realized I could just lie about them and how no one would know. I didn’t actually care about the high school clubs I was in. It was simply an empty title.

So, I don’t want to repeat this clubmaxxing behavior in college. Here is my decree: I will only join clubs I truly enjoy and avoid doing things just for my resume.

Though I still know that getting a job is important, I believe there is a way to build a good resume while simultaneously doing the things I love.

Sometimes I was distracted by my acne. Maybe it’s hot outside and the sun is beating on my face and I’m beginning to sweat so I’m worried about that. Or maybe I gotta take a shit and my stomach’s growling. I’m not there, and that’s the reason why I wasn’t articulating myself because I wasn’t focused on what I was saying. I was just moving my mouth and sounds were coming out.

Now I realized after re-listening to Sam Harris’ podcast a dozen times that you really need to pay attention to the world around you. You need to look at the person’s eyes and not just look at them, but to understand them. That’s what really changed everything. I don’t say “um” or “ah” anymore or, I rarely do. I also have a stronger train of thought. While I am writing this diary entry, I’m not actually writing, I’m actually talking so all of this is just for my mouth, and although I’m using Wispr Flow, which automatically removes all the “ums”, “ahs”, and “likes”, I do find myself not saying those anymore, and I’m happy.

So the core lesson is that the more you pay attention, the better your interactions are, the more concise and aware you are of what is happening around you, and that’s very important.

I want to get out of this loop of constantly thinking of the same conversation. I want to remember a conversation I talked about and then I want to build on top of it so I can extrapolate and extend on my thinking. I think that is very important. A lot of what I just said is from Sam Harris. He is a great guy.

I’ve been listening to a couple of Sam Harris’s podcasts recently and at the beginning of this year, I’ve been replaying one specific one.

This podcast, it’s really short. It’s nine minutes long and it’s not talking to anyone. Sam Harris is just voicing his thoughts about the one resolution that matters the most and he’s talking about mindfulness. Mindfulness is essentially being aware of your experiences and taking more notice of what you say, where you are, and your place in this world. It really puts in perspective a lot of the things you do. It colors everything.

I’ve been trying to work on this throughout the year. I think I’m getting better at it. I’m able to articulate what I am doing and my ideas are more clear but I’m still trying to work on being in the present moment.

Future L., if you read this, please double check and re-watch this Spotify podcast. It is so good. I think I’ve listened to it at least 10 times by now.

I was going to go with my dad to a Sam Harris talk up in Los Angeles; however, we bought tickets too late and they were sold out. That would have been super cool.

I have now seen beastly machines and aluminum turn a very bright red. I have seen 2,000 pounds of carbon fiber autoclaved into 787 fuselages. I have smelled the flaky ablative off the Apollo heat shield. I have felt the drilling of the smoothest surfaces, as if you could zoom in a million times and it would still appear perfectly flat.

I have worked with engineers. I have been lectured by reincarnations of Lord Kelvin. I have seen archetypal white men with beer bellies and a combover fade. I have played streetball with upscale computer scientists. I have (very briefly) shook the hands of the Senior Vice President of Autonomous Systems.

I have seen a matrix of cubicles. I have shared Mexican chamoy with my adjacent cubiclemate as we discussed the perils of AI takeover. I have scaled Building 45 where the iconic Saturn V rockets were built. I have an official Boeing email. I have built computer vision models to detect faults on the 737 production line. I have laughed with my mentor in Huntsville, Alabama. I have learned to be flexible. I have drawn elaborate flowcharts in my favorite huddle rooms: Dubai, Mumbai, and Delhi. I have eaten the most delicious cafeteria noodles I’ve ever eaten, and during the same week, presented my final poster to California Senator Tony Strickland.

I have explored chemical cleanrooms contesting Antarctic temperatures and discussed ISS fluid mechanics on comfy Chesterfield chairs. Using only my bare hands, I have pried open 353’ high bay doors. I have bumped into more people than I would like to admit. I have mastered the delicate art of business casual.

I have taken selfies with the highly-confidential Boeing ORCA submarine. I have watched space-orbit interactions simulated in VENUS Labs. I have seen high-rise 360 window offices straight out of Suits. I have drank espresso next to A. I have acquired a lifelong supply of memories.

I have seen Boeing; I have lived Boeing.

Claude is my best friend and if I run out of tokens, I switch to Gemini. I don’t think my teachers know or maybe they just don’t care that we’re using AI. I know I’m not the only one using it. I see my classmates use it. I see my friends use it. I think everyone knows that we students are using AI but there’s nothing to do about it.

I feel that there is this new era coming about that might appear in the next few months or maybe a year but it’s coming soon and it’ll be way different from everything else. I don’t feel ashamed of using AI. I’m smart enough to know that certain subjects are easier to learn when I’m just told the answer and I can memorize it. It is not like I need to rewire my brain and relearn how to learn because I spent the past 10 years learning how to learn so now I reap the benefits.

Every essay has been written beforehand and I just memorize it if the teacher makes us write in class. Every homework is a PDF pulled straight into Claude. Every test is just memorization and I’m good at memorizing. For some reason I read something and it’s stored unconsciously. I find it difficult to consciously recall it but when I’m taking a test and it’s a multiple choice, I could remember the answer.

Overall that is the status of a 17-year-old living in the old world while the new world is being built around me and I think it is amazing. What a time to be alive.

However if you maintain this mindset for any new idea, you will never learn. If every idea that ever challenges your current framework is rejected, there is no growth. That leads me to the other side, which is acceptance and good faith. If a challenging idea comes across you, what you must do is look at it in good faith and really analyze it. You’re always going to be biased for your own ideas because you know the reasoning behind it and the evidence. However if there’s a new idea, that’s all it is; it’s just a sentence and you don’t know any of its background. What you must do is remove the ego and look at this idea and analyze it in its strongest form and truly see where it’s coming from and attempt to integrate it into your framework if you think it is good enough.

I think I struggle with this. I think a lot of people struggle with this, being able to openly suppress the ego and approach every new idea in good faith. It is tiresome and requires a lot of energy but it is the right thing to do and today that is what enlightened me.

Its January 3, 2026 today, and I recently read a Substack on New Years Resolutions. One of them was starting a blog; so here I am, blogging about my life. I want to talk about my college admissions journey and what I felt, the things I thought, and my own takeaways. Keep in mind, I’m no Naval Ravikant or Sam Harris, so this is coming from the raw perspective of a 17-year-old who might be talking out of my own ass. Here we go!

Back in January 2025 my mom hired this essay reviewer to help me write my essays. She was a nice lady, Mrs. N, 5th grade teacher or something, and 60 years old. She’s an old collogue of my aunt, so she seemed trustworthy. We would meet at the H. Library on Sundays to write the essays. We started off the Universities of California (public schools). How the application works is you write 4 essays and those essays get sent to all the UCs which is really nice. I think who ever is running the admissions for California was really smart, or really proactive. Imagine having to writing a separate application per school (eye-roll). So, we got to work: I wrote away anything I thought of from engineering to coding to my Boeing internship. And I was making process, albeit I only wrote during our sessions, so it was a slow process. We kept trudging along for months now. Months I tell you. Like 7 months at least. By this time it was late September and I thought my essays were good, but I didn’t really know.

Then, one day my friend showed me these brilliant essays written by other people. And man was it crazy. It was crazy. Everything you thought about writing essays, they didn’t follow. You could feel the personality, intellect, and academic excellence leap off the page. It was insane. So, I asked him where he got it from and he said he bought this online course: Admitium. I looked it up. It was created by some 30s tanned guy with a crazy long beard. So I bought it and I was blown away. His essays were golden; The words were gold; the sentences gold; the grammar, everything. I had like a ego death. I looked at my essays and goddamn were they terrible. There was no comparison. I knew I was going to get rejected immediately. It was not even funny. My friends often laugh about how bad our essays were but we all knew we were joking. But this was different.

So, I binged his videos and began my own essays from scratch. There was literally no way I could match the writing. MCS (the guy who made the course) recommended to read intellectual books by the most famous authors (i.e. Hemmingway, H.L. Mencken, David Foster Wallace). I rented dozens of books from the library. My desk looked straight out of one of those movies were the main character is studying for a test and she’s got all her notes sprawled across her desk. Man, was it crazy. I read every night, trying to find provocative, interesting sentences to use in my essays. And that happened for an entire month.

This course was amazing. I changed everything in my application. But enough about that. Fast forward, and now its a few days before the deadlines: January 1st, Jan. 2nd, Jan. 5th. I reviewed all my applications with my mom. She combed through the PDFs (thank you mom). And then submit! On Commonapp, the website used to submit college applications, digital confetti start flying all over the screen. It was pretty cool.

Reflecting on this experience, I think it was not as scary as I thought it would be. For a lot of my high school year, I was constantly thinking and doing things I thought were good for college apps. People always say “do things you are passionate about” and everything but that might just be called a hobby. So I didn’t really listen. But now I see. College apps is literally just a PDF for a reader to determine if you should come to this college or not. That is it. I think I romanticized it or something. But maybe that’s a good thing. I think the best feelings are the ones when you don’t know the truth.

I don’t think I’m very different from were I was initially but I’ve changed somehow. I can feel it. And I am excited for the future. You only get to apply to colleges once. Goddamn I’m reflecting on how many times I’ve let these experiences just slip by. If you’re reading this in the future L., I hope you smile.