Reflections on the Fall 2023 Semester

The Fall 2023 semester just came to a close, and I cannot be more happy. This was definitely the most challenging semester I have ever done since I’ve been at Berkeley, and not without cause. I took four hard classes (EECS 189, EECS 127, CS 186, Korean 1B), all while doing fall recruiting and working a part-time job that required me to wake up at 6:30 in the mornings three times a week. However, despite all this work, I was able to maintain a life outside of school and still have lots of fun this semester. Now that the semester is officially over, I thought I would wrap it up nicely by sharing some learnings and impactful moments that I had during this time. Here are three points that stood out to me:

1. There are way too many distractions in life, and it’s good to try and reduce some.

There really are a lot of distractions for me in modern life, especially related to phone use. I think this point is definitely the most important thing that I realized this semester and the one I wanted to write about the most.

When the semester first started, I found myself spending a couple hours each day scrolling through videos on TikTok and Instagram. Before I went to bed every night, I spent at least 30 minutes scrolling through Reddit. The constant notifications that were coming in through my phone always made me reluctant to put it down when I was using it. Every few hours, I would also go on Twitter to see the latest news and trends. I was attached to my phone and couldn’t leave it. And all of this affected me in negative ways. For example, I found myself sleeping later and later each night, and it got to a point where I would sometimes go to bed at 4:30am the night I had to wake up at 6:30am for work. And because I would get so little sleep, I kept making the excuse that I couldn’t go to the gym since I was sleep-deprived and didn’t want to exhaust myself. My studies were also struggling because I wasn’t devoting enough time and effort to them. After all, the classes I took weren’t classes that were easy; each one of them really required a lot of effort, time, and practice.

I have always known that I was on my phone too much, but I was reluctant to do anything about it. I have always wanted a slower life with fewer distractions, but I could never bring myself to start on it. It was only once I saw how it was affecting me this semester, both personally and academically, that I decided a drastic change needed to be made. Thus, a month into the semester, around mid-September, I decided to get rid of all short-form videos and uninstall Instagram and TikTok. The change it brought was massive. When I woke up in the mornings, I would get my phone to open Instagram or TikTok, just to realize that I didn’t have it installed. Whenever I would grab my phone during the afternoon after only studying for a few minutes, I would quickly put it back once I realized that there were no short videos for me to watch. I was able to get out of bed earlier, sleep sooner, and stay more motivated. As a result, I was able to regain my focus on school, and what felt like a big interruption in my life was cleared. Now, I am happy to say that I do not have even the slightest urge to reinstall TikTok and Instagram.

But even though I successfully uninstalled the short-form video apps, I was still browsing Reddit and Twitter before I slept. Fortunately, I was able to quickly locate this as another problem and distraction in my life and take the necessary steps to try to counter it. I knew I still had to do something before I slept, as it takes a while for me to go to sleep. Then, in early October, a perfect idea hit me. I would buy a Kindle from Amazon, and instead of being on Reddit/Twitter before I sleep, I would read for 30 minutes every day. After all, I have always liked reading; I just stopped because my phone had replaced it! So that’s what I did. Now, every day before bed, I will read from my Kindle. As a result, I am able to sleep better at night since there are no bright colors and blue light shining in my face before I go to sleep. It’s another personal triumph too, as I replaced a bad habit with one that will help me learn something.

The two examples above were the most radical transformations I took, but there are many other smaller things that I did in my journey to reduce phone usage and have a slower life. For example, that’s one of the reasons why I started this blog in the first place – to make me sit down and think and reflect more often. I also turned my phone screen to grayscale so that there are no flashy colors on my phone anymore, making it easier to put down as well as being gentler on the eyes (this actually has had a huge impact on my screen time). I also got rid of all popup notifications on my phone, and I only check for them once every few hours instead. I started to walk everywhere instead of taking the buses in Berkeley (I never like the Berkeley buses, their smell makes me want to throw up). Now, I am at a point where I am happy with the lessened distractions in my life, and my quality of life has gone up drastically. I just checked, and my daily average screen time this week is under 2 hours long. I am spending more time on myself, with family, and with friends, so I can gladly call my semester-long voyage to eliminate distractions and reduce phone time a success. I wanted to encourage anyone who might be thinking of reducing phone time or other distractions to just get started, even if it’s something small like setting generous screen time limits or having a dedicated 30-minute focus time each day. I promise you it’s a healthier lifestyle and can only make your life more enjoyable.

2. People are more supportive of me than I thought, and I’m very grateful for it.

A lot of things happened to me this semester, both positive and negative. But through all the situations that I was put in, something that continually stuck out to me was that I always had people around me to support me. Take, for example, my parents. When I told my mom and dad that I wanted to study abroad early this year, I don’t think they thought I was serious about it. After all, I had made a lot of big claims and false promises to them in the past. But when I seriously told them this semester that I wanted to apply to study abroad at Yonsei University for Fall 2024, they were only supportive of me. They kept offering me advice on what to do in Korea, and my mom even helped convince two of my friend’s parents to let their child study abroad so we could go together. They are also very supportive of all my decisions now, whether it’s career-wise or personal, which I really appreciate (they still give their own thoughts about it though). Workwise, my leader at my internship this semester cared a lot for me. He was constantly checking in on me, making sure that I had something to do and that I was learning things that would help me in my career, whether hard or soft skills. Whenever I was stuck on my work, he would go through the necessary channels to make sure that I would get help and be able to continue making progress on my projects. We were able to have fun and friendly conversations not about work, adding to the relaxing work environment. I think the reason I was able to grow and learn so much from my internship was because my leader was always there to support me.

And of course, my friends were always there to support me this semester. I went through a particularly rough period of time this semester, but my friends were with me every step of the way. When I let them know about the problem and what I was facing, they were very understanding and supportive of whatever decisions I made for myself. They constantly checked in on me, made sure that I was doing okay, and let me know that they were there for me. For example, one of my high school friends would jump into a Discord call with me at a minute’s notice so that he could show me funny videos and make me laugh. Others would send me funny memes or talk with me for a long time, even though they had things going on in their own lives. I am usually a very reserved person who doesn’t like bothering others with my own problems, so it was fairly shocking to see people other than my parents care this much for me. Many times, I will never let other people other than my family know what’s going on in my life, so my actions and the response from rhem definitely came as a pleasant surprise. This is something I am eternally grateful for, and I am hoping/trying to replicate this level of support and care for my family and friends as well.

3. Avoid stress over uncontrollable factors; focus on what you can control.

There were many moments where I was stressed this semester. But I learned that in situations where you have no control anymore, it’s not worth it to stress or feel anxious. This semester, I interviewed for a couple companies, including DRW, Veeva, and Tesla. And after every interview, I would go into a state of emotional tension, worried about the outcome and hoping that I could move on to the next round. Over the next few days and weeks before I got any further communication from the companies, I would run the interview in my head every day, replaying it minute by minute. I would scrutinize the words that I said, repeat how fast I solved a problem, or if I was able to clearly explain something. In other words, for many days after each interview, I would be overanalyzing the interview, telling myself what I did well and what I could do better next time, and giving myself chances that I would move on and get an offer. But I realized that worrying about my past performance was unnecessary. After I finish an interview, what’s done is already done. There is no going back to change anything I said or did in that interview, no matter how much I wanted to. I know I put in effort preparing for the interview and did my best during the actual interview, and afterwards, the ball is not in my court anymore. It is up to the interviewer and the hiring manager to make their decisions, and I can’t do anything apart from sending a thank-you message after the interview. As a result, I determined that it is not worth it to exert mental effort to think about that interview anymore. There are so many better things to do with my time and effort than worry about something that I don’t have control over anymore. Instead, I can focus on what I can control. Rather than wasting time analyzing the interview, I could put that time into solving more Leetcode questions or preparing for the next interview, assuming that I got it.

The same goes for exams as well; I don’t stress about an exam after I have taken it. After every exam I take, I make it a point not to talk about the exam. Walking out of the exam room, I can hear other people comparing answers and checking their work on certain questions. But for me, if I start comparing answers I got on the exam and I get a different answer than someone else, I will only start thinking about that problem and what the solution should be. Then, that question will stay in my mind until the exam solutions get released. But I think there is no point in letting that happen; after all, you can’t go back and change your exam answer. This is why I always don’t stress too much after an exam and just wait for the scores to come out. Instead, I tell myself I did my best on the exam, and I try to relax by watching dramas or talking with friends. And if I was really angry because I thought I bombed an exam, I would channel that anger into motivation and study. There are many situations out of my control in my life, but now that I know that nothing I do can affect the outcome, I try hard not to stress about them anymore.