Stanford Reflections

For the record, I'm glad I decided to go to college. For most people who have the privilege of attending college, this statement might seem glaringly obvious—but for me, that wasn't always the case. My apprehension toward higher education, and toward educational systems in general, began years ago when I moved back to the United States after living in Japan for five years. At the small charter school I was placed into, I was disappointed to be greeted by a lagging curriculum, and I returned home each day feeling largely unchallenged. As that disappointment turned into frustration, I realized I didn't need school to learn, and in turn began to perceive the traditional classroom as merely a structure that institutionalized my curiosity rather than nurtured it. Although these views softened when I later attended a project-based high school, I still carried a relatively fixed perception of college—one rooted in the assumption that its rigidity would formalize learning while charging an unreasonably high price for what should be a public good. However, through the generous college-access support offered by my high school and a growing realization that it wasn't credentials that mattered most, but rather the people and opportunities college could offer, I found myself dislodging one mental model and replacing it with another: that college might actually be the right choice for me. Ten packed weeks later, I can say with confidence that yes—this experience has been well worth every moment.

My transition into Stanford went smoothly, especially considering that I had just graduated from a high school whose culture felt vastly different from the academically rigorous, exam-focused environment I was entering. While the institutional structures largely aligned with what I expected, I made a conscious decision not to dwell on my critiques of the system. Instead, I redirected my attention toward what I could gain from it—most notably, the people I got to share this adventure with. From late-night conversations and dorm karaoke to movie nights, parties, and outings, attending a Shawn Mendes concert at Stanford, and even spending a week in Yosemite National Park over Thanksgiving break, I've been immersed in an incredible breadth of experiences with people I'm grateful to know. As the quarter progressed and routines settled in, I found myself feeling a deep sense of gratitude for my life as a student.

Learning in college, I've realized, happens across many dimensions. Beyond the classroom, I've developed a clearer understanding of the rhythms of my life—what habits and routines allow me to function at my best, and how intentionally I need to protect my limited time. I've also grown personally through exploring my social identity, finding my place across different social circles, and forming friendships that feel both energizing and grounding. At one point, someone who is now one of my closest friends in college invited me to ditch class for two days to attend SF Tech Week. We crashed numerous events across San Francisco and found ourselves in rooms with venture capitalists, company founders, working professionals, and entrepreneurs at vastly different stages of their journeys. That impromptu excursion made something tangible click for me: this is this is the beating heart where ambition, talent, and opportunity collide—and it was when the spark I was carrying within me was fanned into a small flame.

Going into college, I knew I wanted to pursue an entrepreneurial path, but I wasn't sure which direction to take or whether I was settling too quickly on a single idea. That uncertainty began to resolve itself as I realized just how concentrated the right opportunities for me were at this school. Before arriving at Stanford, I remember browsing the university's website and feeling largely unimpressed by the curated bachelor's programs, many of which didn't align with the entrepreneurial spirit I carried. The closest major that initially appealed to me was Management Science and Engineering—a blend of engineering, business, and public policy—yet even that felt only tangentially connected to the kind of high-impact work I wanted to pursue. Fortunately, Stanford gives undergraduates ample time to explore before declaring a major, and I took advantage of that flexibility. Still, I function best when I have a long-term strategy, even if the connection between present actions and future aspirations remains somewhat abstract. A few weeks into the quarter, I realized that instead of focusing solely on analytical frameworks for business, I wanted to dive deeply into a field where those tools could be applied to real, complex problems. After deciding that sustainability might be worth exploring, I tentatively switched majors to Earth Systems, and shortly after, to Energy Science and Engineering.

To be honest, I never imagined I'd develop an interest in sustainable energy, but between the energy seminars I attended and my own exploration of Stanford's sustainability ecosystem, it became clear to me that transitioning to clean energy is one of the highest-impact challenges of our time—and one that Stanford has invested heavily in making accessible to students. What drew me in was how unexpectedly interdisciplinary the field is. My prior mental model of energy was that it was a rigid industrial system with little room for innovation, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Understanding energy requires simultaneous engagement with physics, modern technology, grid infrastructure, policy and regulation, economics, business models, and environmental justice. The deeper I went, the more I realized that transforming energy systems isn't just a technical challenge—it's also an equity and affordability one. Discovering that Stanford hosts dozens of organizations, research opportunities, fellowships, and courses at the intersection of sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship only reinforced my excitement. Though it's only been one quarter, I have a strong intuition that continuing down this path will lead to meaningful work. While my growing interest in energy might appear to be a departure from my desire to transform education, I see education as the vessel for learning, and the best educators as those who identify as lifelong learners themselves. I view my time in college—and the near future—as an opportunity to explore deeply a field that is both novel and impactful to me, trusting that the stories and experiences I gain will ultimately shape the kind of education I can one day bring into a classroom. In that sense, deviating from a conventional path toward education isn't straying from it at all; rather, chasing curiosity is essential to it.

My experience at Stanford challenged another assumption I brought with me. I had half-expected that most of my peers would be relentlessly ambitious, constantly searching for the next high-impact problem to solve. While everyone I've met is undeniably talented and carries compelling stories of their own, not everyone is trying to become the next big-time entrepreneur in the way pop culture often suggests. As I met more people, I began to see little reason why most of my peers from high school couldn't belong here as well. Despite the roughly 6% admissions rate, I believe far more than 6% of graduating high schoolers possess the wit, grit, and intellect to succeed at an "elite" institution. At the end of the day, people are people, and the higher-education admissions process boils down to a lot of luck and factors beyond any one student's control. I find it disheartening that young adults place an increasing emphasis on a single acceptance or rejection letter when those outcomes aren't a reflection of the genuine qualifications a student might possess. More broadly, the educational structures we've normalized aren't incentivized to educate the masses, but rather to curate an exclusive cohort of the top 10%. That's not what higher education should be. The sad irony is that I'm a beneficiary—and an active participant—in reinforcing those dynamics despite my desire to change them. Herein lies the question of whether it's possible to change a system from the outside—or whether I must work my way up through it to reach a position where change can happen. For now, it seems I've been compelled to choose the latter.

As I've navigated college, I've also begun questioning the nature of academic rigor itself. I'm unsure whether the difficulty of coursework at Stanford truly differs from that of other institutions, and another critique I have of education lies in whether these institutions actually educate students in the way they're intended to. There's no doubt that students learn new information from the classes they attend, but do they find that learning meaningful—and are they becoming better not just at memorizing material, but at the act of learning itself? I've discovered that I excel in academic settings, which is striking given that despite attending a project-based learning high school, I seem to have retained as much academic aptitude as someone who came from a traditionally rigorous one. My personal measure of academic success isn't in the absolute value of the scores I receive, but whether I earn higher scores than I think I deserve given the amount of time I put into studying. This gamified strategy is justified because I know that the numbers provided by the system aren't at all a true reflection of genuine learning and given that I learn even better without structure anyway, this is what optimizing for the system looks like.

For instance, in my COLLEGE 101 class, which culminated in a handwritten bluebook exam on educational philosophies, I lightly reviewed a table of text summaries I had created over several days and found that I have a knack for remembering arbitrary information with little effort. I earned a 19.5 out of 20. For my EARTHSYS 10 final, I realized at 11 p.m. the night before that I had mistakenly thought the exam was in the afternoon when it was actually at 8:30 a.m. From there, I spent roughly twenty minutes skimming the TA's review slides and did no further preparation. With just under half an hour of active work, I earned a 93%. Of course, there were other factors that undoubtedly contributed to those outcomes. More importantly, however, the reason I felt confident that the limited studying I did would be sufficient wasn't just that I knew myself—it was that I understood the nature of the academic tests the system tends to produce. In other words, designing exams based on course content isn't some magical process, but is something that most people could do if we were paid to do so. The divide between test-takers and test-writers would suggest there's some huge gap in special insight or cognitive ability between those groups, but that's rarely the case. In turn, understanding the arbitrariness of structured education works in my favor as I recognize that doing well at what's assigned to me is a matter of preparing for and performing the way they'd expect me to.

If I had even the slightest apprehension about how my academic performance would fare at Stanford—given that I hadn't practiced that muscle compared to those who attended more competitive high schools—it seems my knack for absorbing knowledge with ease has remained sharp as ever, giving me an edge in producing above average results with minimal effort. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my tendency to learn outside of the classroom hasn't stopped, and I'd argue that I've learned far more meaningful knowledge through my own personal studies even while at Stanford. Again, the speed at which I learn independently will never match the pacing a structured institution provides. So, while I'm still learning through my academic courses, I'm far more excited when I get to learn unobstructed in my own time rather than putting effort into my studies. I've found that college acceptance might measure academic aptitude well, but not intrinsic motivation to learn independent of the structures they're thrown into. While some may argue those who love to learn are naturally better at learning, I've encountered plenty of cases where students do perfectly fine in their courses and then don't bother to learn above and beyond. If I'm to find people who are motivated beyond what the system tells them to care about, then it seems that being accepted into an elite institution isn't enough. I have to dig deeper to find those putting effort beyond the system.

These experiences, however, have prompted deeper questions about education itself. It's no secret that exams, the results of which often dominate the outcomes of a student's grade, are designed to reward the retention and application of information. While that isn't inherently flawed, I feel traditional exams place a disproportionate emphasis on memorization as a marker of genuine intelligence and that the current system is structured in a way that disincentivizes self-reflection and improvement. In my Earth Systems class, for instance, I retained very little from the weekly lectures held three times a week which I'm supposed to be learning a great deal from. I assume the instructors believe the lectures provide useful information to students who in turn demonstrate that at their exam but my learning experience wasn't a linear progression like that. As stated above, because I excel at knowing what the system expects from me, I only had to skim through the final review materials the night before to do well which is an unintended byproduct of the system where rational actors will optimize for the system. Perhaps this isn't seen as an issue because if I can do well on the test surely it means I've learned the content, but I do wonder whether my high scores will be interpreted as a positive validation of their lecture-based structure even if it had little influence on how the learning actually occurred for me. By virtue of the structure, traditional educational systems—including those at Stanford—hinder their ability to assess the quality of their education because they have academic metrics that produce a distribution of students that disproportionately favor those who can efficiently memorize and prepare for the tests instead of measuring genuine learning from students from different privileges and backgrounds.

If the goal of education is truly to make learners better at learning, the way the system is designed now, there's no straightforward way of comparatively assessing whether the services an institution offers truly better educate those who didn't know the material beforehand. If exams were designed to measure essential understanding, wouldn't universal mastery be the goal? Shouldn't instructors be aspiring for 100% of their students to get 100% on their tests? But this obviously isn't the case. The design of tests, intentionally or not, often function as a means of differentiating students on the basis of arbitrary assessments and they fail to capture whether or not genuine learning has transpired. The irony is that students who excel at testing will likely succeed at nearly any arbitrarily constructed assessment provided there's sufficient opportunity to study towards it. But if education is to remain true to its purpose, the goal shouldn't be to validate the top 10%. Rather, the real challenge lies in supporting the bottom 90% and helping them strengthen their ability to learn better. As far as I can see, however, there doesn't seem to be meaningful structures in place to identify what it takes to uplift those students—either for the next exam or for the next course. Instead, the same classes are offered largely unchanged year after year, and while I'm not suggesting we should stop recognizing top performers, I do wonder whether educational systems too often defer to individual merit to explain why not all students succeed, rather than rigorously examining their own capacity to deliver effective teaching and learning. Too often, education becomes a series of academic puzzles designed to capture marginal differences in performance rather than systems that nurture curiosity or cultivate problem-solving capacity. I'm finding that even at Stanford, perhaps that remains true.

The one exception I'll raise is with MATH 19. This calculus course was comparatively harder than my other exam-based classes, which makes sense given it's the first step toward acquiring a technical foundation in almost any engineering field. What I've taken away from this class isn't just the ability to test well on mathematical theorems and calculus problems, but the confidence that my efforts can lead to genuine understanding of conceptually difficult material. In this case, I'm not overly critical that the arbitrary questions on exams may never appear in a real-world context. Instead, the course instilled a confidence that I can engage with increasingly complex concepts in this discipline, which in turn motivates my willingness to keep learning. One connection I've made between knowledge and value creation is that society can be thought of in terms of the problems people are solving. This raises an important question for those actively learning: what kinds of problems do we want to solve? What I've realized is that most smart, motivated young adults could apply themselves to almost any field and perform well. Some let expected salaries guide their decisions, while others—like me—ask whether the problems they get to work on are ones that matter to them or hold personal significance. Given that I'm interested in sustainable energy, I can connect the dots between the calculus I'm learning now and how it'll contribute to a deeper understanding of the systems I want to help improve. This reframes academic mastery not as a means of chasing higher grades, but as a way of becoming better at solving problems you genuinely care about. I feel fortunate to have found a problem space that resonates with me early on, but I'm confident that for others, that alignment will emerge over time if they continue putting themselves out there.

Looking ahead, in addition to majoring in Energy Science and Engineering, I also plan on minoring in education, and I'm interested in doing a coterminal Master's program. Co-terms are a way of getting a M.A with only one additional year of schooling instead of two, but after learning that it's possible to co-term in the same four years as your undergraduate studies, this ambitious undertaking is something that appeals to me too. While it would necessitate me taking an average of 19 units a quarter instead of 15 for just a bachelor's, it's an endeavor that feels aligned with my desire to challenge myself and to gain the knowledge needed to create the kind of impact the world needs. It's not often that a student can get a bachelor's and master's in four years at the same cost, but this is yet another reason why I'm grateful for the opportunities that Stanford has provided me. Moreover there's over 150 paid summer opportunities available to students in the sustainability space and even more paid sustainability internships offered throughout the school year where students are paired with working professionals within Stanford facilities to solve problems for the campus. While there's no guarantee I'll be selected for these, that doesn't change my conviction that I intend on making the most of my time here. Ultimately, my first quarter at Stanford has affirmed something I've long believed: learning is most powerful when it's driven by curiosity, not conformity. While I remain critical of the systems I participate in, I'm grateful it gives me freedom to explore, question, and grow within them. If I can continue using this time to learn deeply and pursue problems that matter to me I trust it'll serve its purpose not just as a means of obtaining credentials, but as a way to forge the kind of educator and entrepreneur I hope to become.