A lot of people warned me that maybe for the first time in my life

I would feel inadequate academically because I would be average or below

average in most if not all of my classes. And while I feel like this

hasn't been true in that I haven't felt inadequate when I've felt average and for

the most part I haven't felt average or below average, it's taken a lot of hard

work to be successful here. And I've put in that hard work, and it paid off and I

got a 4.0 last semester, but I consider this a little bit of a failure and I

want to tell you why.

I consider this a failure because while I was getting good grades I wasn't

pursuing anything that I was passionate about, or any of my avenues of growth. I

wasn't doing anything that helped me grow. I made the excuse that I was

just too busy with school and with extracurriculars but the reality of the

situation was I was spending hours a day on my phone on social media. Not even

that it was unproductive, it just wasn't giving me any value at all. I guess you

could say that I fall into the trap of living reactionarily which is that a

professor would assign a problem set and then I'd do that problem set and then I

have another problem to do so I'd do that problem but I wasn't really proactively

pursuing anything it was all reactive it was here's something what are we gonna

do about it. And so I wasn't really doing anything out of my own accord I

was just doing what other people told me to do and sure I was doing it well but

that's not really a good way to live life.

I guess one way to think about it is that I basically stop living my own life and I

just started living an average life of a Harvard student which is something that

I don't want to do. So yeah, when my grades came out I felt really successful.

I had a 4.0 at Harvard! But now in reflection I kind of see that that

4.0 is more indicative of how I just spend my life reacting.

I'm really trying to be proactive now I started to read a lot--I'm reading a book

a week so far this year and it's been amazing and I'm trying to make videos

again like this video because I feel like making videos is one of my passions

and I would be silly not to pursue it. And most importantly I'm just trying to

be aware of what I'm doing all the time I'm just trying to be mindful and I

think that's especially important in a place that is as beautiful as Harvard is. I

mean, this is such an incredible opportunity and I would feel so awful if

I look back on this in five years and realized that I just been reacting for all four years.

And so to that end I've also deleted social media and I've been

spending a lot less time on my phone as a result. And I mean I'm sure I'll get it

back but right now my relationship with it just isn't healthy and I feel like

that's just something that I gotta cut off and then maybe build a healthy relationship with in a while.

It's been crazy because I've just gotten hours

back in every single day and I've been able to put that to to passions and put

that to things that that I honestly love doing.

As I try to figure this out as I try to focus more on my passions and on the

things that helped me grow, sure, my GPA might drop a little bit. I might not have

a 4.0 for very long. But to be honest it's a lot less scary to me to consider

losing half a GPA point than it is to consider losing my passions entirely.