2025

Mindset

Since leaving the bubble of college, I've begun to meet and get to know people who are not strictly in their early 20s. One example of this is Daryl, my roommate, who is 27, or my coworker Shivam, who I think is somewhere around 26.

Early on in my interactions with these folks, I often get asked, "are you seeing someone?" in some way, to which I reply with something like, "yes! my partner and I just passed the two year mark." More often than not, they then ask, "so... you think she's the one?", to which I nod.¹

Since high school, I've rarely spent time searching for answers to (dumb) questions of the same category as "do you think [they're] the one?"² Having spent an embarrassingly long time looking for universal answers to these questions, I've come to the conclusion that there's little use in attempting to decipher these questions from a rational standpoint. This is not one of those situations where thinking longer will get you a better answer, but one where answers are found through action rather than thought, and conviction matters more than correctness.³

Since making this realization, I've tried to align myself with it as best I can, which means, for better or worse, that I spend way more time thinking about how to improve things in my life operationally (relationship included) rather than thinking deeply about the emotional or spiritual sides of things. Until now, I hadn't even stopped to wonder about how I ever reached a point of certainty about my partner being "the one," or when that happened.

There is, of course, a rational, external, justification. She checks the boxes — she's ambitious, hardworking, and unbelievably kind, compassionate, and warm. However, as I move past the proverbial early game (e.g. the romance phase), it's clear that what scales into the mid and late game is resilience.⁴ What does that mean? The best way I can describe it is the willingness to savor, celebrate, endure, and weather all the shit life throws at you; the confidence that you and your partner can work through hard things, sacrificing and adapting, if necessary; the belief in repair, rather than retreat; the belief that the best way to keep a relationship afloat with your partner is to just keep living life with them.⁵

Having said that, I still firmly believe that thinking too hard about these questions is a trap. Instead, I think a good mindset to reinforce heading into the new year is to have faith that the accumulation of experiences is the only thing you will ever need to find conviction in your answers to life's big questions.

Relationships

My relationships this year (Yumiko included) have largely been defined by my decision to physically leave campus. In the same way that relationships gradually fade after graduation from distance and a change in environment, my sudden departure from campus has forced me to make hard choices about maintaining or forgoing my existing relationships.

I have a few learnings here:

1. What has worked for me so far is to schedule recurring times to chat or video call. As corporate and mundane as it sounds, I agree that 1-1s are unreasonably effective. I started off with just a few, and then gradually extended more invitations to people as I felt more confident that I could handle the extra load. As someone who thinks very operationally, 1:1s have been extremely effective in helping me maintain relationships, and I'm confident that I would be in a world of regret without them.
2. The very act of thinking through whether I want to set up a 1-1 with someone is a good heuristic of whether I really want to put in the effort to keep that relationship.
3. 1-1s are not scalable. They scale linearly with time, which means it really is necessary to be picky and choosy with how you spend your time with others
4. A recurring 1-1 can often be enough to maintain a relationship with someone, even someone that you used to spend a lot of in-person time with. Unsurprisingly, the intention and intensity of time spent with someone outweigh duration.

Beyond immediate family and friends from Brown, I am especially happy and excited to have maintained my relationships with a few of the interns from this summer as we start the journey of our careers together.

Career

On Ramp

My professional career began in May with my first corporate job, as a software engineering intern this summer at Ramp. I definitely came into the job green and very eager to prove myself. If I had the chance to do it over again, I'm sure there are things I would have done differently. Nevertheless, I'm very grateful for the entire experience, the mentors who kept me afloat, the people I met along the way, and the chance to ride the rocket ship that is the Ramp Business Corporation.

I learned a ton of stuff, most of which, I've already written about, but more importantly, the internship opened my eyes to how much I felt I still had to learn. That realization, in conjunction with my manager's ploys to get me back to Ramp and my director's inspiration, sparked weeks of deliberation, which, ultimately ended in a decision to return to ramp early in September.⁶

I've now been at Ramp, full time, for just over three months, working primarily on setting up renewals in our procurement product. In reflection, I'm a pretty happy camper, for now:

1. I really like the people I work with. There's plenty of mentorship and camaraderie in the trenches, if you look for it.
2. There's plenty of things to own and plenty of space to grow into. For example, in renewals, there's not only a ton of engineering work to be done, but also a lot to be learned from product and design too.
3. Personal forward momentum. I'm still early enough in my job and career, where I think I'm still getting better at my job every week.
4. Ramp really is a rocket ship right now. If all-hands numbers are to be believed, we're pushing the envelope in every metric imaginable, including of course, our valuation. As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats.

On networking and other companies

In the past few months, I've also passively connected with a bunch of other startups (through Neo and ad hoc intros) — not out of an immediate desire for a new job, but to learn more about what the next generation of companies look like and also to grow my network.

As someone who's only used to getting the short end of the recruiting stick, it feels nice to be on the other side (e.g. being inbounded) for once. Aside from having my ego stroked, there's certainly upside to taking these meetings even though I'm not actively looking for a job, and the pitch of more ownership, working with a "hyper cracked team," in a "really fast paced environment" might even be tempting at times (but not enough to consider leaving any time soon).⁷

Moving

I moved into Stuytown, a residential complex in Manhattan's East Village, in September, after living in Providence, on Brown's campus, for the last three years.

For the longest time, I didn't think I would like living in New York City. Maybe some of this has to do with the fact that it seems to be the city that everyone else wants to live in after graduating college, and I like to be contrarian that way. Logically, there's a lot to not like about it: depending on where you live, it can be a combination of loud, stinky, dirty, crowded, treeless, rat-infested, and unbelievably expensive. All the reasons why people live in the city — for food, art, music, social scenes, and all that — aren't things I ever thought I could tolerate the city's bad qualities for.

To be honest, I'm still not sure if I like the city, but I will say that its energy and companionship is unmatched, and that it already feels like home to me. When I'm gone for a while, I start to miss it.

Review on 2025 Goals

Disclaimer: I didn't exactly set out concrete goals for myself in 2025, so any attempt at a review should be taken with a grain of salt.

What I think (some of) my goals were (retrospectively):

1. To get as much as I could out of my internship @ Ramp.
2. To write, once a week
3. To grow my relationships with people
4. Learning to take care of myself better

I think it's pretty safe to say that I accomplished (1), failed (2), and probably hit somewhere in between on (3) and (4). I'm not going to elaborate on these any further, since they're either points I've already discussed, or points that I'm planning on dedicating a separate post towards.

2026 Goals

Write more and read more

Right now, weekends are dedicated partially to homework. As I wrap up that period of my life for good, I want to take that time to write (and publish) more. Writing is one of those things that has unbounded, multi-faceted upsides (like thinking better and running better OODA loops) while having virtually no downside.

Reading more will be equally, if not more important to find more inspiration to write, glean insights from the experiences of others, to grow taste in good vs. bad writing.

Exercise regularly

Since moving to New York, this has been quite difficult for me. I think the primary issue is that I don't find lifting weights or running as nearly as interesting as playing a sport (namely tennis), even though they are perhaps the only viably convenient forms of exercise for me. While some of this disinterest is an inherent property of gymming or running, I feel as if I haven't given them enough of a chance to justify disillusionment or quitting.

One thing I think will help is to be more goal-oriented. I'm not sure what those goals would look like for hitting the gym. For running, I'll tentatively commit to bring my 5k time down to sub-22 minutes, and to run 15 miles a week.

I have a few personal goals too. I won't go into too much detail, but I might discuss them in future essays.

¹Interestingly (maybe unsurprisingly), I don't think i've ever gotten asked that question by younger folks.

²Another example would be "What is the meaning of life?"

³As Aoi Todo says, ...

⁴It's a tank meta.

⁵This article explains it better than i can.

⁶They've both since left Ramp to co-found, which was a tough pill to swallow.

⁷Will probably write something elaborating more on this.