📚 student for life

when i was a kid, i had no idea what i wanted to be. like genuinely zero clue. i remember those career day exercises where you’re supposed to circle your dream job and i’d just sit there staring at the options. doctor? nah. lawyer? definitely not. astronaut? cool but not realistic. i just knew i liked learning stuff.

that indecision followed me through high school and into college. while everyone around me seemed to have their 5-year plan figured out, i was over here changing my mind every semester. but the one constant was that i genuinely loved learning new things. not in a “i love school” way — more like i’d go down random rabbit holes at 2am and come out the other side knowing way too much about something completely useless.

the internship

i landed an internship at singapore’s largest commercial bank, working in private banking. and let me tell you — i felt completely out of place. everyone around me was polished, well-connected, and seemed to know exactly what they were doing. i was just trying to figure out what a “portfolio rebalance” actually meant in practice.

but here’s the thing — instead of pretending i knew what was going on, i just started asking people to explain things to me. like really explain them. and most people were happy to do it. turns out when you’re genuinely curious and not trying to look smart, people open up. that was probably the most important skill i picked up there — learning how to learn from other people.

i also started building little projects on the side while i was there. nothing crazy, just small tools and ideas that i thought could be useful. and beyond the work itself, i fell in love with living in a foreign country. the food, the culture, the feeling of being slightly out of your element all the time — it was addicting.

the “safe” path

after that experience, i started getting drawn to entrepreneurship. the idea of building something from nothing was way more exciting to me than climbing a corporate ladder. but like most people, i took the safe route first. i got a job at a big consulting firm because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right?

it was stale. the work wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t alive either. i’d sit in meetings thinking about the youtube channel i was working on in my spare time. i’d come home from work and immediately start editing videos or brainstorming content ideas. the contrast was pretty telling.

the leap

so i quit. before i was making any real money from youtube or anything else. looking back, it sounds romantic but at the time it was terrifying. i moved into a place with 5 roommates to keep rent as low as possible and lived off my savings. some months were tight. really tight.

but it eventually worked out. not overnight, not in some dramatic movie moment — just slowly, through a lot of trial and error and showing up every day.

still learning

the reason i’m writing this is because i think the best thing i ever did was accept that i’d always be a student. not in the formal education sense, but in the “i don’t know everything and that’s fine” sense. every new project, every new city, every new conversation is a chance to learn something.

i’m still figuring things out. still changing my mind about stuff. still going down rabbit holes at 2am. and honestly? i wouldn’t have it any other way. the moment you stop learning is the moment things get boring. and life’s too short for boring.