A bit under a year ago, I applied to Y Combinator, a startup accelerator program.

I remember, one of the application questions was the following, and that it stumped me a little bit.

Walk us through your thinking around balancing your startup, school, and any other obligations.

I didn’t particularly understand the question, and I vividly recall being hunched over on a table at the mall, hurriedly typing out some response about half an hour before the application deadline. But over the last couple of months, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about my response, and how it’s shaped what things in my life I care about.

Disclaimer: I don’t think this is a good “application response”, in any sense. In fact, it is a very bad example! I don’t properly answer the question, and the answer my two cofounders gave were both a lot more to the point; essentially along the lines of “I’m going to drop out and this company will be my #1 priority”.

Here was my response replicated verbatim.

(My thinking process is a bit verbose, but here it is)

I think my obligations have always first and foremost been to other people. My team, friends, family, etc. I guess you could say I’m a bit of a people pleaser. Problems and the world feel real to me when you connect them to real people.

So if my friends are in a tough bind, and need my help, I’ll help them with that over landing some 50k deal. I’m there when they need me. But if I’m helping someone make sure their product isn’t getting hacked, I’ll take that over watching another movie or something with my friends anyday :)

Oh, and I guess I’m in school too so I should probably address that. I’ve always been more self-taught, I don’t really listen to my lectures that much. I was easily putting in 40+ hour weeks for much of HS, and definitely that much for a lot of last semester. I felt like those problems needed me, so that’s where my time went. It’s hard to focus on school when a client’s server is going down because of performance issues, or you’ve just discovered a critical bug in a client’s codebase.

But I do also really enjoy school, I think I learn a lot. I choose to go to a liberal arts college, so it’s really cool to be exposed to a lot of different ideas instead of being at a really rigorous tech school. I’ve taken courses in biology, poetry, grad ML, hardware design, etc. I TA for upper-div math and CS courses, and do computational physics and chemistry research. I love being exposed to all these different people and learning more about the problems in different fields.

As an example I was a research assistant for one of my English professors, and I helped him with doing data forensics on a recovered hard drive, and we also had a project where we were doing archival research on a series of magazine issues that ran for many years from the 1900s. I OCRed all of them, and ran them through LLMs, and was able to find some pretty interesting connections and do some novel research there.

And some reflection and annotations on the above.

(My thinking process is a bit verbose, but here it is)

I’m still like this. My thinking ain’t the most coherent, and it’s a bit rambly, especially for first drafts.

I think my obligations have always first and foremost been to other people. My team, friends, family, etc. I guess you could say I’m a bit of a people pleaser. Problems and the world feel real to me when you connect them to real people.

I directionally agree with this statement but there is a bit of nuance to it.

For one, this is actually a lot harder of a priority to adhere to in practice. It is sometimes too easy for me to work on the class of problems where it’s ‘number go up’. Working on those problems feels like playing a video game, and it is fun, while people problems are often a lot messier and harder to think about cleanly.

I do get pretty bored with ‘make number go up’ problems over time though. While I’m sure a lot of these problems do matter, it is still hard for me to concretely connect these to problems to people I care about.

Secondly, I used the term other people. Implicitly, this leaves out my own obligations to myself.

It’s important to take care of ones own problems. It’s not really my default mode to think about such things, and sometimes I let my own responsibilities build up when they don’t affect anyone else. I should be more proactive about tackling these looks at pile of socks on the ground u_u.

So if my friends are in a tough bind, and need my help, I’ll help them with that over landing some 50k deal. I’m there when they need me. But if I’m helping someone make sure their product isn’t getting hacked, I’ll take that over watching another movie or something with my friends anyday :)

This is something I still agree with, and have generally stuck to in my life. I remember originally typing out this paragraph because I thought having an example helped make my point more concrete. Good stuff.

I do set up a false dichotomy though. Very rarely (if ever) have I encountered the scenario where helping out with a friend’s emergency has materially cost me any business, nor do I think there’s really a scenario where hanging out with a friend has lead to someone getting hacked. However, it was still a good thought exercise for what I’d prioritize, even when things are inflated to their extremes.

I also feel that I’ve gotten to where I am in life by putting in more working hours and simply trying harder than most anyone else, which influenced the part of the response about watching a movie. What was unsaid at the time was that I thought that such “small” events were frivolous, and not a good use of time.

But over the past year, I’ve realized this might not completely be the case. Being available and present during the small things lets you be present for the big things.

One of the things about not working a normal job / being in school is that there isn’t really the concept of a break. Scheduled breaks in school previously created a natural time where I could spend time with family and friends, without worrying too much about unfinished work.

Now that that’s gone, I have to be a lot more intentional with keeping in touch. I’ve recently made the effort to call home more often (hi Ma! hi Ba!). I’ve also set up scheduled calls with some friends just to keep in touch. Maybe watching that movie isn’t such a bad use of time after all ;)

Oh, and I guess I’m in school too so I should probably address that. I’ve always been more self-taught, I don’t really listen to my lectures that much. I was easily putting in 40+ hour weeks for much of HS, and definitely that much for a lot of last semester. I felt like those problems needed me, so that’s where my time went. It’s hard to focus on school when a client’s server is going down because of performance issues, or you’ve just discovered a critical bug in a client’s codebase.

To be honest, not sure where I was going with this. I’m a fairly good and diligent student! Lectures really aren’t my thing though, and I <3 textbooks.

The latter part about it being hard to focus is less so of a knock on school being boring, but more so that other problems felt more pressing and exciting to work on (so much so that I was putting in 40 hours a week! on top of school).

But I do also really enjoy school, I think I learn a lot. I choose to go to a liberal arts college, so it’s really cool to be exposed to a lot of different ideas instead of being at a really rigorous tech school. I’ve taken courses in biology, poetry, grad ML, hardware design, etc. I TA for upper-div math and CS courses, and do computational physics and chemistry research. I love being exposed to all these different people and learning more about the problems in different fields.

I could definitely write a lot more (several blog posts worth!) about this. But I’m very glad to have done my two years at Mudd. There are many things I miss about the college. I’m very grateful for having it as a launching off point in my own life.

My learning is in my own hands now, and I have to put in some conscious effort to be a life-long learner. But I was going to have to do that anyways, even if I graduated.

As an example I was a research assistant for one of my English professors, and I helped him with doing data forensics on a recovered hard drive, and we also had a project where we were doing archival research on a series of magazine issues that ran for many years from the 1900s. I OCRed all of them, and ran them through LLMs, and was able to find some pretty interesting connections and do some novel research there.

This paragraph should’ve been cut out in its entirety to be honest, it’s not relevant at all to the question. I was just trying to give an example! But ended up rambling a bit too much. :P

Anyways! Lots to think about. This is my first blog post in a couple of months, and it feels good to write ramble again.

We only have finite time to spend in our lives. I still haven’t figured out how to balance all the obligations I have, but writing and thinking through this has brought some clarity into where I choose to spend my finite time, what I’m present for, and why those things matter to me.

If you’ve made it this far, I hope I’ve made you think at least a little bit. What do you care about, and why? :)