A midway-ish reflection of 2025

I almost can't believe it.

Summer went by so quickly but so much has happened.

I deployed a project I was working on to help students find affordable housing in the Vancouver market which has currently connected over 50 students to a lease. I fast-tracked and achieved As in the 3 courses I took this summer. In addition, I secured two software engineering intern offers for the fall. Taught Stanford's Code in Place and became a teaching assistant at Circuit Stream's pre-uni course to earn some cash on the side.

I've also been side-questing with my friends every week or so ever since I found out that "fun" doesn't always have to cost money. We explored Vancouver, playing beach volleyball with strangers, doing the Grouse Grind (haters will say I did the BCMC), hiking up Tunnel Bluffs and consecutively helping host a potluck at a friend's place for 4 weeks in a row.

Honestly, I couldn't have wished for a better summer for 2025. At the start of it, I was beginning to feel uneasy. No internship lined up. No interviews even. Nothing... I was beginning to feel like a chud. I felt so lost I even considered graduating early to complete a Master's.

And yet, I still kept pushing through until it became true? At some point I don't even remember if I was even applying to jobs anymore but suddenly everything just fell into place.

"Keep learning and inevitably, success will find it's place."

Is what one of my mentor's said to me when I was in the "trenches." I thought it was hella cliche but as time went on, it resonated with me more and more... progress isn't linear.

Every hour of effort I spent, didn't directly translate into movement. And every inch that I moved also didn't mean that I was getting momentum. The funny thing about progress, however, is that you can ask anyone in the world if working out once will make them healthy and they might say no... but if you ask anyone if working out makes them healthy, they will 100% say yes. The key is that continued effort > large efforts once.

Progress will sometimes delay itself like a stale red light and yet other times, it'll appear like an object closer than it appears in the mirror.

And that leads me to my future and what's next now that my courses are over.

This fall, I'll be interning at TD as a Software Engineering Intern in Toronto. In exactly 4 months, I'll be flying back to Calgary.