> Nima Pourjafar

Highlights

• I am helping start an AI lab this summer called Omega Labs. I'm grateful to be working with great minds like Paul Bridger, Salman Shahid, and Parshant Ω.
• I finished CS 146! This course was both awesome and dreadful. We learned about creating interpreters, monads, memory models, and a lot of fun stuff.
• I visited Washington for the Emergent Ventures Unconference.
• 我开始学习中文!中文很有意思。(I started learning Chinese! Chinese is very interesting.)
• My friends and I won a hackathon run by the Milwaukee Bucks — we worked on creating custom ticket pricing algorithms.
• I have a lot of new thoughts and perspectives on college and work.
• I read Dune! It's a very good book. I will be reading Dune Messiah next.
• My grades are still very good.

Failures

• This term was one of the worst periods of my life mentally and physically. It consisted of a combination of terrible weather, illness, and social factors.
• I made it to the final stage of interviews for a lot of companies, clubs, scholarships, and other on-campus opportunities, but my efforts didn't really materialize into anything. It was a lot of losing while people around me were winning.
• Just a lot of losses, more losses than wins. I was very pessimistic day to day. I became a miserable person to be around for a while.

A friend told me I should have more "state-of-mind" updates, so I will try to do that this time.

Waterloo

This term was tough, it was very, very tough.

To preface, I came into Waterloo with no expectations. I didn't expect a big tech job to land in my lap, a venture-backed company to materialize on a random Saturday, or to do some crazy out-of-this-world magic.

This is because of the mentality I was raised with: "stay modest in expectations, but hungry for improvement."

It's a good mentality. It's the immigrant mentality. It's the mentality that the most important thing is putting your best in every day and praying life works out. It believes that blood, sweat, and tears shed during the weeks create generational wealth for the decades.

The mentality at Waterloo was not like that. In fact, I'd call it pretty much the opposite: "Go big or go home." It consists of joining the shiniest clubs (I had a friend unironically rank which ones have the best LinkedIn photo), making the "Excited to announce..." posts, and min-maxing every aspect of your academic and extracurricular life to optimize your resume.

This ALSO isn't a bad mentality. This can speed up your career, get you really nice jobs, give you influence, and all the other juicy desires we all love. It is a game you can play, and one that can pay off.

This is a personal thing, but I don't like that game. Don't get me wrong, both of these processes lead to the same goals: wealth, status, and a sense of value — all things that any rational human, including me, wants.

But the Waterloo psyche isn't something I'm very aligned with. I like thinking in 5 or 10-year timelines. I believe that the work, friends, travel, and other experiences aren't things I'm doing just because I felt like it. I do them because they will shape who I am for life and guide me towards the person I want to be.

This connects to thinking for yourself. How Peter Thiel believes the best founders aren't ones that force something in markets or chase competition, but ones who create their own unique path, carving out a niche where they can thrive.

It's very easy to say this, but in practice, it's very hard to reinforce this mentality when everyone around you is doing the opposite — which is what I really struggled with at school.

It's hard to explain to people that you don't want to ...

• go to networking events and meet recruiters
• work for the Toronto Raptors / Leafs this summer, and do something a bit more unconventional (yes, I was offered this job)
• prioritize working in San Francisco
• do hackathons

The way I coped with this during the term was with affirmations of "Wait until I drop out..." or "This school is a scam..."

How could such a negative nelly get anything done in life...

After taking some time to reflect, I found that I was at odds with the "high school hacker" archetype I had built up for the past couple of years. This archetype worked very well for me.

It's how I found my footing as an engineer, began establishing myself on Twitter, worked for great companies, met amazing lifelong friends, made decent money while still young, and got me into the best engineering school in the country.

But I don't really want to stick to that archetype. Up until I got to college, I decided I wanted to grow out of it. There was just so much more interesting, bigger, and unique work to do. Not even in tech, but in terms of fitness, philosophy, and especially math.

I had a self-conflict with my own values, who I was before, and what everyone around me was doing. My "builder" schtick in high school worked, but I wasn't very interested in it anymore. The Waterloo game was a loud noise, but I also found it daunting.

What I didn't realize is that the point of college is to fix this conflict. I wasn't supposed to hold onto who I used to be and complain about how things aren't going my way. I didn't go to college just to "do my own thing." If I was that confident in "my own thing," I would've gone to SF and lived my life there.

I came to college to meet the friends that will be lifetime friends, learn new things by being exposed to new people, work on dumb things with no meaning, to try what is put in front of me and decide if it's cool or not.

I didn't really internalize this lesson until the end of my first year, so I'm very much a year behind all my classmates now! But it's all good, and I can appreciate those who are now "ahead" of me. I also love competition.

The Waterloo game is something new, and I won't grow if I don't try something new. Trying new things isn't something that aligns with the immigrant mentality — but I've gotten this far, so sorry Mom!

But, I can think for myself. The Waterloo game should be a tool for you to be what you envision for yourself, not your end goal.

I value high-impact roles — which to me right now is being a research engineer. I want to continue learning about ML || infrastructure || product while being a high-agency engineer that smart people can depend on. This can only be done by working with the best (PB, Salman, Parshant, and Jon Durbin) and being able to think for myself (self-studying textbooks and taking initiative at work).

I also want the ethos of being a great engineer. This can only be achieved through the outputs of my work — projects Omega will be doing this summer. Additionally, I need to work somewhere great. Somewhere big or elite. I have companies in mind, companies that are interested in me, and more in the works. Shoutout to SA...

Last but not least, I want to think about the world in my own way. Dune was such a great book because there's no good side, and it really forced me to think about what I believe in.

All I can say is that I'm excited. I feel an unusual calm sense of urgency — but I like it.

Washington

Washington was very fun. I really want to thank MJ and AG for being great people to hang out with. Biking around DC, listening to personal stories, and just absorbing the natures of Earth and life. I will admit that the Unconference had a very diverse cast of people, and it becomes very tiring telling a lot of people what you work on. But there are always those couple of people that can enable amazing organic conversations — which MJ and AG did.

Friends

I'm very happy with my friends at school and in Toronto. I'm very happy with my relationship. I'm very happy with my brother. I think these have gotten much stronger in the past year, which is invaluable.

Shoutout to SY, YK, ST, SZ, RF, ML, and others for making my day better whenever I see you guys.

Shoutout to PB and AM for being the smartest people I know and also letting me practice my broken Farsi with them.

Shoutout to KC for being there whenever I win or lose.

Shoutout to SS for being patient with me and taking me under his wing this summer.

Shoutout to 李老师 — CHINA 101R is the best course I've ever taken in my life, and I will most likely be doing a minor in Chinese while at Waterloo.

Advice

I'm in no position to give advice. Nonetheless, to make myself feel important — here's what worked and didn't work for me in my first year.

What worked

• Having previous programming experience and taking CS 145 and CS 146. Both of these courses will make you a better programmer and get you better marks. Design recipes and writing your own tests are tedious, but you are also exposed to the smartest students in the school through these classes.
• Not fast-tracking STAT 230/231 — unless you are a math olympiad, there is no rush to get this course done in your first year. Relax.
• Using people I've worked with previously to get interviews at companies and building rapports with recruiters for future cycles.
• Doing work for upper years for free; the best way to build a rapport is to prove you are THAT guy — whether it's optimizing model inference or sharing my Chinese notes.
• Taking interesting bird courses. Take courses that are interesting and easy to study for, don't take courses that are easy and tedious to study for. Examples are language courses and courses with multiple-choice exams.
• Trolling on LinkedIn.
• Drinking tea instead of coffee. Tea has no crash and has a much better natural taste. Make sure you aren't drinking from tea bags though, as they have lots of garbage in them. Persian tea and dates would be the highlight of my day.
• Being funny. Be funny. You will make someone's day better, and they will appreciate you. You can become friends with people more easily. Don't be known as a clown, but have an occasional joke for any person you are around — this includes interviews.
• Enjoying nature. Nature is beautiful. The geese in Waterloo each have their own personality. There will only ever be one first snow in a year. Take a moment to appreciate birds coming down to our level.

What didn't work

• Comparing yourself to others. You should look up to people, but there is no race to be someone you aren't.
• Neglecting physical health. A chest pump will increase your confidence. A leg pump will make you want to get out of your bed faster and get on with your day. A back pump will improve your posture. Working out has never hurt anyone. No one is judging you when you go to PAC unless you are being a douche.
• Being a hater. Everyone is a hater, but hate in moderation.
• Eating really disgusting food. Subway every day can only get you so far. Go eat real food. This means cook, or try to eat stuff off-campus that is real food. Not Lazeez... One of my favorite spots has become Kebab Shack — much of the food they make is what I'd have at home.
• Don't act like you know everything or what you want to do. Don't say "I want to work in startups" or "I want to work in big tech." There is a gradient of all possible work you can do; it isn't just "startup" or "big tech." There is a range.
• Additionally, don't limit yourself to an industry you know nothing about. Don't say you want to go into "quant" if you aren't a math olympiad or haven't tried doing some paper trading. Don't say you want to go into "ML" if you haven't tried implementing basic NNs. Only express interest in things you've tried. Otherwise, try it!