A few months ago, a friend and I were walking home from the gym when he asked me what my biggest regrets were. It caught me off guard, but I answered honestly.

I told him I wished I had tried harder academically in high school. That maybe I should have taken a more traditional path. I regretted saying no to certain opportunities. I regretted hesitating when I should have leaned in.

He shared some of his own. Different details, same feeling. But he ended with something simple.

I don’t think it’s good to regret anything.

It sounded unrealistic. Of course there are things to regret.

But maybe that’s the point.

The decisions I regret were made based on who I was at the time. My confidence, my fears, my understanding of risk. It’s easy to say I should have known better, but I only know better because it happened.

Regret assumes there was a cleaner path. A better decision. A more optimal version of events. Maybe there was.

But that clarity only exists in hindsight.

You can look back and see what you missed. The risks you didn’t take. The options you didn’t choose. Everything feels obvious now, but it wasn’t obvious then.

You made decisions with the perspective you had. Your priorities, your insecurities, your understanding of the world. Expecting your past self to think like you do now doesn’t make sense. The growth came from going through it.

The relationship that didn’t last shapes how you understand people. The path that felt uncertain gives you a perspective you wouldn’t trade. The opportunities you turned down clarify what actually matters to you.

None of it is neutral. It leaves something behind.

Regret assumes a different choice would have led to a better outcome. Maybe it would have. But it also would have led to a different version of you. And there’s no guarantee that version would feel more right than the one you are now.

I’ve started to think of my past less as a series of right and wrong decisions, and more as a sequence of necessary ones. Not perfect, not always efficient, but necessary.

The clarity I have now wasn’t available to me then. It had to be earned.

Living without regret doesn’t mean everything worked out. It means recognizing that even the missteps carried something with them. They sharpened your standards. They revealed what you value. They expanded your limits.

You don’t need to rewrite your past to feel at peace with it.

You just need to recognize that it built you.

If it shapes how you move today, then it wasn’t wasted.

Early on, I started to notice how quickly people form impressions of each other. Conversations often felt like quiet evaluations. Small pieces of information would shift the tone. The energy of an interaction could change almost instantly, sometimes without anything being said directly. It felt transactional. Like the value of the interaction had already been decided.

Over time, it became clear how often people tie their identity to what they do. Not just as something they’re pursuing, but as something that defines their worth. And naturally, that lens extends outward, shaping how they see others. At first, it got to me. It was hard not to internalize it, to question whether I was being perceived a certain way for a reason. Whether there was something I was missing. But that way of seeing things didn’t feel complete.

I don’t think most of this comes from a bad place. If anything, it reflects the environments people come from. Years of pressure, competition, and reinforcement around certain paths being more valuable than others. It makes sense that people begin to see the world through that lens. In a way, it’s learned.

There were also moments where the tone of an interaction would shift again. More interest, more engagement, depending on what someone thought they understood about you. That stood out to me. Not in a way that made me resent it, but in a way that made me more aware of what was actually driving the interaction.

Over time, I stopped taking it personally. It became less about how I was being perceived, and more about what it revealed. Not something to judge, but something to recognize.

I also don’t think people stay fixed in that mindset. The way someone understands value, status, or identity at one point in their life is shaped by where they are. That changes. The friendships that lasted felt different from the start. They weren’t based on evaluation or what someone represented. There was no need to qualify yourself first. Just people talking to people.

Looking back, I’m glad I experienced it early. It gave me a clearer sense of what kind of interactions I value, and what kind of people I want to be around. Not defined by status, but just grounded in who they are.

At first, it was easy to gain an ego. Being around ambitious people, doing things on your own, feeling like you’re building momentum. But at the same time, it’s just as easy to get humbled. There’s such a wide range of talent and ability that it balances out quickly.

I think I learned how to sit somewhere in between. Staying grounded in what I believe in, while still being confident in what I can do.

I also stopped judging people as much. Everyone is moving at a different pace, figuring out different things. Not everyone is at the same place, and that became more obvious the longer I was there.

At some point, I started to lose my sense of identity a bit. Being in a program I didn’t fully resonate with, while being surrounded by people in completely different paths, made me question where I fit. It messed with me more than I expected. But over time, I realized that identity doesn’t have to come from school. It’s easy to let it define you, but it doesn’t have to. You can build something outside of it, alongside it.

Being away from home also made me realize how much I value the people I grew up around. It’s easy to take those relationships for granted when they’re always there. But distance changes that. It takes effort to stay in touch, to call, to keep those connections strong. I started to appreciate my family more. Calling my parents every day became something I valued, not something I felt obligated to do. The same goes for friends back home. It’s harder to maintain those relationships, but it also makes you realize which ones matter.

Another thing I kept coming back to was time. There’s more of it than it feels like in the moment. It’s easy to get stuck thinking about what you could have done differently, or trying to plan everything out. But that just takes away from actually doing anything. You can overestimate what you can do in a year, and underestimate what you can do in five. What matters more is what you do day to day.

Ambition started to feel less fixed too. It’s not something constant. It changes depending on where you are, what you’re exposed to, and what you start to care about. I think I’m still figuring out what it means to me.

One thing that became clearer is that there are good people everywhere. And it doesn’t take long to recognize who you want to be around. First impressions aren’t everything, but they do tell you something. The people I’ve kept around are the ones that feel genuine. No pressure, no need to prove anything. Just normal conversations.

I don’t think I have everything figured out. But I feel less pressure to. There’s time to figure it out.

I just got back from San Francisco and this is something I don’t want to forget. Being there and meeting people around my age who were already building things made something really clear. It wasn’t that they had everything figured out or that their ideas were perfect. Most of it was still rough. But they had started.

Before this, I spent a lot of time thinking. Planning things out, trying to make sure everything made sense before I began. I told myself I was being intentional, but most of the time it was just hesitation.

Seeing it up close made the gap obvious. It wasn’t intelligence or access or experience. It was a willingness to act without needing everything to be clear first. The people who were moving weren’t overanalyzing every step. They were just doing, and figuring it out as they went.

I don’t want to forget how obvious that felt. Overthinking doesn’t move anything forward. It just keeps you in the same place, convincing yourself you’re making progress when you’re not. Weeks can pass like that.

There isn’t a perfect moment where everything aligns. There’s just a point where you decide to begin. Even if it’s unclear. Even if it’s rough. Just start.