misplaced efforts
as a new school year begins, i get lots of incoming freshmen who knew me in high school reaching back out and asking for advice on how to set themselves up for as high a chance for success as possible. as nice as it is to see that they're entering college so locked in and with what appears to be very clear direction, i cannot help but feel that it can't be very worthwhile to be spending so much time and thought on things like internships so early on, especially when so much of it is out of your control. i guess there are really two axes that i'm talking about here.
one axis is that I see a lot of people around me spending a lot of time in areas that they think will yield high returns, when it could be spent on much more valuable areas they actually possess true drive for. for example, I see many CS majors putting all their time, effort and stress into making sure they're top of their classes, getting As and not A-s, and then assuming that the 4.0 on their resume will translate to anything (this doesn't apply to people seeking PhDs). for this I blame the college application system, because it conditioned students to overindex on their GPA. it is tough, then, to later see the same students apply to hundreds of software engineering internships, land almost no interviews, and wonder where the fruit of their efforts had gone. when they ask how this happened, the hard answer is that they have perfectly molded themselves to the exact blueprint of CS student that every other resume looks like. i have found this to be especially true because, having applied to competitive CS roles as a physics major, it's clear that putting effort into crafting an unexpected background with targeted projects and a compelling story (or just any semblance of differentiating yourself) gets much more traction with recruiting. another example: several people have asked me for help securing lab positions, and months later when I ask how it's going, i find out they don't enjoy research at all, are not publishing anytime soon, and were motivated by the vague notion of "i should have research on my resume." it sucks to hear that without some meaningful publication or interesting problems to speak of, you probably aren't going to see the recruiting boost that you expected even if you put lots of time and effort. i would describe this as putting your eggs in the wrong basket.
another axis of misplaced effort is worrying about getting into places where it wouldn't even make sense for you to be. i see this in many places, for example: average sophomores wondering why citadel didn't give them an interview, or people who slacked off in high school then stressing about getting their MIT, stanford, and ivy league essays written. i think that this is because a lot of social media and selection bias with people posting positive results has created the popular wisdom that you should "larp" until you make it, even when the case is so extreme as to be an absurd moonshot. obviously this issue is exacerbated by AI - it's baffling to me sometimes when I meet somebody who is disappointed that a top-tier quant firm didn't want them, but then I find out they can't even describe their own projects because claude one-shotted them. like they don't realize they should be infinitely more surprised if somehow the stars perfectly misaligned to give them an offer. before signaling bafflement, people should stop and consider: if you did land the role, would you even thrive there? some people now conflate the effort it takes to get into a highly competitive company/school with the effort of the application process itself, and forget that the application is not the only prerequisite to the role - you must first know your shit and be well-suited for the role. and i'm not arguing against ambition, i'm saying that if you have the ambition to chase these places, you gotta understand that there is work to be put in, not just stress to be had in applying because everyone around you is. it should not be surprising that you'd fail to reap what you didn't sow.
my biggest piece of advice to incoming freshmen is always to join lots of clubs, meet lots of friends, and make lots of memories before it's time to hunker down and lock in. the takeaway from misplaced efforts is to keep your head down, shut out the noise, and grind the things that actually have signal. i'm sure that the most cracked people at any school are definitely not going around being loud about how successful they are in school and recruiting, they're too busy working towards being on the other end of the bell curve. the whole thing is a process - it took lots of trial and error, and lots of personal failures and rejections to understand exactly which of my efforts were placed correctly, and there is still stuff for me to figure out.
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