Episode 10: Daring to Dream: Reetam Ganguli on College, Medicine, and Revolutionizing Maternal Health

(upbeat music) Welcome to the Visionary Vault podcast. You're also make backstage paths to the minds of trailblazing college students and professionals revolutionizing their fields. I'm Siara, your host and fellow high school student, here to guide you through the exhilarating yet challenging paths to higher education and beyond. As someone navigating these waters myself, I know firsthand how daunting it can be to decide on a career path, overcoming obstacles and find those unexpected sparks of inspiration. That's why in each episode, I will be diving into bold unfiltered conversations with guests who share their real life experiences, choosing career paths, conquering challenges, and uncovering the secrets to their success. So get ready to explore the vaults of visionary ideas and embark on an exciting journey of discovery with me. Whether you're aiming for the Ivy League, launching a tech startup, or pursuing an artistic dream of yours, this podcast is your ultimate guide to navigating college and beyond. So welcome to the Visionary Vault podcast, where inspiration, meat, action, and your journey to success begins. Tune in, get inspired, and let's conquer the future together. (upbeat music) Hi everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Visionary Vault podcast. My name is Saira, and today I'm talking with Rhythm Ganguly, someone doing incredible work at the intersection of medicine and technology. Rhythm is the founder and CEO of Alipia, where he's building machine learning tools to improve maternal health. He's currently leading clinical trials in five African countries, and also working with Harvard Medical School to test and scale these tools. But before working on Alipia full-time, Rhythm was actually in Brown University's PLME program, where he was accepted into medical school at only 17. During his time at Brown, he created his own major in cancer engineering and published over 20 research papers, including several in nature journals. He also founded Junior Medical Academy, also known as JMA, which is a global nonprofit that provides free education to students across the world. Today, JMA specializes in medical education and reaches more than 10,000 students in over 30 countries, and has also earned special status with the United Nations. So in this episode, we'll talk about Rhythm's work with Alipia, how his time in PLME shaped and the impact JMA continues to make. So before we get started with our podcast, Rhythm, can you please introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about who you are? - Yeah, sure, so I'm Rhythm Ganguly. I was a, so I went to Brown from my undergrad, and I have kind of switched my career a lot throughout many years. So I came in to Brown under what they have, the PLME, the Program of Liberal Medical Education. So I was fortunate to get into their BSMD program. So I had like a med school acceptance by the time of 17. And I explored a lot of different intersections and Brown from philosophy to engineering, to computer science and deep learning, and actually ended up leaving med school and doing a startup of my own. So been a lot of twists and turns in that regard. - Okay, that sounds great. So you've already like been through the whole college thing. So if we could rewind a little bit just to your early education years, could you tell us a little bit about how high school or your college experiences really influenced your interest in healthcare or social impact and what inspired you to leave med school and like really help people out? - Yeah, and I think this is actually some of the things that we were just talking about before we started recording. But I think for most students, the first science, like people who are stemming climb, the first science you're exposed to is biology. Because unlike physics or a little bit of chemistry, there's no math prerequisite, and it's a little more easy to understand. And also most people with rising disease rates have some family member, unfortunately, that either is impacted by cancer, heart disease, autism, or any other developmental disability. So people find them sometimes some natural applicability of, well, I like people, I like, I wanna help somebody, I'm stemming climbed, and that's why most people start thinking medicine. So I was definitely one of those people, and biology was one of the first science that I'm exposed to. I liked it, it stuck with it, and I did a lot of my kind of research and extracurriculars around it. But then by the time I got to college, slash like college slash, you know, med school, and started thinking about that route, I realized that the world was a little bit bigger than I thought, and I would say that if you, for the average student who has a proclivity towards wanting to help people have impacted scale, at least for me, I realized that there's better ways to do that outside of the realm of medicine than it would be inside the realm of medicine, which is why I chose to kind of leave, and do a start of, that's more healthcare-focused, but a startup nonetheless that, in my eyes, would scale more and reach more patients than I could have as a practitioner. - Can you like tell us a little bit about your startup that you started? - Sure, yeah, so we're, it's called Alifia. So we have kind of pivoted and narrowed and focused over the past couple of years, but we started as a way to help pregnant mothers on Medicaid and income countries get earlier care that's preventive at the right time. So the crux of what we do is try to use machine learning to predict our you high risk at really early stages of pregnancy. And unfortunately right now, clinical care for most people is kind of reactive. It's what they call a sick care system. So typically, we, you know, the average doctor, especially if you're in a rural region or a developing country, will see you at one or two touch points, they'll wait for you to have some kind of life-threatening complication, like postpartum hemorrhage, where you're bleeding out on the table as you're giving birth, or pretty a clumsy, that's a hypertensive related issue that happens when during pregnancy. And only after you have this bad complication, do they then try to do damage control? So we really wanted to shift the paradigm and say, well, could we use machine learning models that are really scalable, accessible, even in the most rural, no-internet parts of many African countries that we partnered with, and see can we predict from day one what your likelihood is of having these complications. So you can start preventive care and get prophylactic medicine right from day one. And we've been able to show, so we've partnered with five African countries to do clinical trials there, as well as multiple centers in the United States. And we've shown that when patients use our technology, they have close to half the rates of severe complications, a quarter of the rates of C-sections, and a quarter lower C-section rates. And almost 100% lower ICU admissions. So very exciting. - That's amazing. Like, it's crazy how medicine and a bunch of other STEM-related technologies can really intersect together and be so impactful, whereas a lot of people think they have to go into either one, where I feel like there's a lot of intersectionality when it comes to these type of sciences. So obviously, there's a medicine aspect to your startup, but is there any artificial intelligence or any of that stuff related that students who are interested in either or can figure out if they can combine the two to create their own passion project? - Yeah, I mean, I think the really cool thing about if you're doing machine learning or any other kind of large language model or AI native project is that, as long as you have the technical skill set, the domain is transferable. So if you're a technical person, if you're a founder, as long as you have that technical skill set, you can choose a domain of medicine, you can choose a domain of construction, you can choose a domain of insurance. It really, really varies. And I'm a big proponent that the, there's a lot of kind of legacy industries in the country, so you can think of their kind of industries you might look over, but they're like the construction industry, they're the garbage industry, they're the insurance industry, things that you don't actively think about and that are a little more niche than people aren't often technical in, that are right for disruption, specifically for people who are technical founders. So I'm always a big proponent of that. - Yeah, like that's great. Like leading back into, you know, you're starting your startup and you going into the PLMMe program, would you say there was like a major, like experience, class, or challenge that really shaped your path to what you're doing currently? - Not honestly, not necessarily. I think, well, the one benefit of pleamy, is that you can pretty much take any course you want. Obviously, you know, if you choose a major, then you have to choose courses in that major, but you have no gen ed requirements, you have supreme flexibility in your courses, and I would say of every student in the world in my class, I probably had the most flexibility out of anybody. And the reason is because I actually made my own major, I didn't have to take a single class I didn't want to, and I don't think anyone can say that, because everyone has other GE's or general ed requirements, or they have courses they have to take for their major, they don't want to take. So that was really cool. And unlike a lot of, you know, other students who are taking courses to, you know, that they feel that they have to take for a job or for grad school in some capacity, we already had a guaranteed admission. So we, it was a really unique time to be able to take courses that you generally had a lot for, or areas you generally want to get better in. And for a lot of students, they took courses that, they wouldn't have otherwise. I don't think I ever would have taken a CS course if I wasn't in this program, because I was really bad at CS starting out. I got terrible grades starting out, and it was really nice having that flexibility of a program to really learn and fail in a safe space so that you could get better and build yourself up in an area that you wouldn't have otherwise tried. - Yeah, I think like the openness of the PLME program is what really attracts people. Can I ask like what your major or course that you created? - Yeah, so I, so the major I made, It's called Cancer Engineering. So it's kind of cool, but based on that, basically what I noticed is that I went in with a kind of lean towards engineering, but I also wanted to take more kind of machine learning and those kind of courses, and I wanted to learn what I call like medical engineering, so engineering specifically in the disciplines of medicine. The issue is that, you know, you think you just do BME or biomedical engineering, but biomedical engineering the way it's structured in both universities, including Brown, is that you have a core course, you have kind of a core of physical, like physics focused courses and mechanical engineering and electrical engineering, which is more of like traditional engineering, and then you supplement that with courses in like an advene physiology. So it doesn't like you don't really get to explore the true nexus of that. You're just learning like mechanical engineering and then some like different microbiology and these kind of courses that don't gel really well, but at the same time Brown has a really phenomenal and a disappointed program, so there's a lot of really cool courses like neuroengineering, cancer nanotechnology, cardiovascular engineering, tissue engineering. So instead of kind of supplementing that in my course, I wanted to make that the core. So I made a kind of proposal to the deans and petitioned and got this major approved, and yeah, then I was able to study that and take exactly what I wanted to. That's such a cool achievement, do you know if anybody's like doing the same major as you like currently, have they like students do that? I don't, I actually don't think so, not that I know of, I mean, I know people have tried to make similar Asian medical engineering courses, or some medical engineering majors. I don't know if it worked out, I hope it did, but that's one really cool thing about Brown where it's called independent concentration where you can make your own major. So I mean, I know people who made their own major for stuff like philosophy and politics and economics and mirrored programs and other places, I know people who made courses or started their entire major on something really abstract like happiness or, you know, stuff like that. Or one was, let me see, it was like psychiatric epidemiology or something like that, which again, I thought was really, really cool. That's really, really cool. So, going on like, you know, the brown tan jet, you were accepted into Brown's medical school at like 17 years old, like you said, through the PLME program. Can you kind of walk us through like your academic or extracurricular focuses that you focused on in high school and what helped you really prepare for the college application process? I'm sure, yeah, so academically, I took all the AP courses available to me and self-studied some AP courses from freshman to junior year. So each year, I probably, I think freshman year self-studied because we didn't have AP courses offered like three or so AP courses, I self-studied a couple more AP courses in self-marriage as well. Retrospectively, although I did do that and I got all fives and all of that, I actually don't think that was really helpful. I think that was very dumb of me. So, I think that would, if I had not done that, that would have not impacted my admissions decision and would probably have freed up more time for me to sleep more, like have friends that don't know. Yeah. Yeah, so like that, academically, that's what I did. Extracurricularly, I did, so as you know, as you're an ambassador of JMA, I did JMA. And it, well, I was in approaching ninth grade. So actually, I was like, I think 1415, so it's been almost 10 years, it's been a long ride. But it started off as like an after school kind of project of just tutoring students in biology and kind of grew from there. And we started partnering with kind of homeless shelters and Tier 1 schools, which are underfunded and foster care systems. And then we got a lot of interest from international partners, so then we started partnering with a lot of close partners like Zimbabwe, like this Zimbabwe science center that we're still extremely close with. And I love the founder, Knowledge Academy, the amazing guy, and Pakistan and a couple of other countries. And we were, you know, we've been ramping that up ever since. But I think that was really helpful to show some kind of impact and scalability of interests. I also did web research, so I did some research at both at UCSF and I also did a bioengineering research at Stanford through their summer program. And that I think was kind of helpful. I mean, I wouldn't say it was super helpful, but it was helpful for me to understand how research actually worked in a web setting and how owning a project and seeing it cradle to grave work because, you know, it's, it looks a little, you know, it looks attractive on paper, but sometimes, you know, when you're doing the hard work and then your culture's die after, and then you lose six months of effort, and then, you know, you see, you see how frustrating it can be, but that was kind of the core, and a debate was a really big part of my high school as well. So I was a nationally ranked debater and I spent a lot of, I was co-president of our team and I spent a lot of time at the debate tournaments, probably more than I should have. So retrospectively, if I was like reflecting for students that were listening, I was reflecting on like what I did, I probably would have done half as much, honestly. I think, I think a lot of the academic stuff was unnecessary. I think as long as you're taking courses that kind of align with your intended major, that's fine. I mean, I don't think you need to go over born, take 20 APs or whatever. I would say like, taking for like ACTs and stuff, I like retook it, like not retook it. I took it kind of 35 and then retook it for 36. I think that was unnecessary. I think as long as you hit like a benchmark of like 3435, then you're fine. We had SAT subjects back then. No one else does. No. I took, I believe I took biology, physics and math and I got 800s on them. But again, I think like if I, even if I didn't get perfect scores, I don't, I think colleges care less about it than I thought they did. So my overall message to people is into this would be like, I think the less you, not the less you focus on academics, but I would do kind of the bare minimum to pass or like have a check mark on whatever your good academic scores are and I would invest most of your time into your esoteric leaders and essays and personal story because that's the majority of what people evaluate. Would you say your Pasha project junior medical academy was like the leading force in what your application was? I'd say, I'd say so, but not in the way that most people think. I think the, like, we did a lot of work with JMA, so I think by the time I applied, we were reaching thousands of students across I think six or seven countries. But we, and that was a cool, like I guess, line and stuff to have. But at the end of the day, there's like, there's a lot of people with organizations that, you know, that scale a lot. And unfortunately, in reality, there's a lot of people that just straight up lie and I've met people who like, they'll just make up stuff and, you know, they'll, they'll, or they'll inflate numbers of like, they'll put an app on the app store and then they'll say, oh, like, it's true. 43 people from 43 countries download their app, but it's like, you know, it's like, you know, it's like, you know, it's like, you know, that destination, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I, I think that was definitely helpful that I scaled internationally. I think that the way I wrote about it was what really helped. So like one, one big challenge that we overcame with JMA is like one of our first close international partners, I was talking about it, Zimbabwe science students in Bavoy. One thing they really struggled with was getting education to rural students. And that was an issue because at that time, our curriculum was fully online. It was fully in English. And the students in the rural cities and towns around Zimbabwe only spoke Shona, which is their native language, didn't speak English and they didn't have access to the internet. So my kind of first line of one of my essays was saying, how do I get my fully English online curriculum accessible to students who don't speak English and don't have the internet. And I think that kind of compelling hook. And like the honest answer was as, so I was invited by Philly at the Australian Embassy to go to Zimbabwe and then kind of met with some of these teachers. I met with a lot of the principals and tried to understand their education system. And doing that and being on the grounds, the one thing I learned is that the students in the main capital actually were bilingual and did have access to the internet. And they lived like 15 to 20 minute walking distance away from these rural communities. So we had kind of a student ambassador model that someone took what you're doing, except the students, the main capitals would learn the curriculum and then teach each other. And then they would go and become the teachers and go 15 minutes walk down and then translate in Shona and teach these students. And these students would teach neighboring villages and so on. So I won't say that it was like a game changer and I won't say I like reached everybody through that. But we definitely reached at least a thousand or more students that definitely would not have been reached and definitely would have had access to a curriculum otherwise. And it was so, so, so cool seeing pictures of students that are in these settings that so a lot of them don't have like some of their school buildings are under renovation or haven't just been made. So a lot of their education happens using chalk on large walls. And it seems like shabby, but like that's kind of the way the education system works in a lot of these places. I was really cool seeing them drawing out pictures translated of kind of the DNA, central dogma or different amino acids and macromolecules that I made on my like laptop when I was like 14 and seeing them translate in different languages. I couldn't even understand. I was really cool. It was a really, really cool moment. But yeah, anyways, I was like talking, talking about that unique kind of working through that unique problem. I think was really interesting and really helpful because a lot of people say, Oh, look, I found it this cool thing. Here are some flashing numbers and move on. But I think the more you can get the admission officers to remember you and remember your story and think it, you know, that it stands out or, you know, I like to say like you want your admission officers to like mention you to their like wife or husband at dinner. The more you can make that like more intriguing for them, the better because oftentimes a lot of students will try to they'll have very like, this is like a mean of saying, but they'll have very like normal or like average experiences, but then they'll try to frame it as something that's more like more exceptional that it actually is and I can come across this tacky and actually make it unlikable. So if you say like, Oh, like I had this like really unique challenge of like how I had this like big event. How do I get people to come? I sent out flyers and I posted on Instagram and then it's like, yeah, like yeah, but that's like obvious. Yeah, if that's, if that's too ordinary, then people actually like, you know, it won't stick in. I don't think it'll help you obligation too much, but it's more so about like the impact you created and like the way you leverage your current resources to identify like serious problems and what the impact you're trying to create is and like trying to solve that and like really showcasing that is that what you're, is that basically like the thing you would say to kids? Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a good way of summarizing it. one thing you would add is that I think Everyone has, most people have something very unique that they've either overcome in their life or that they've done or like a unique problem. So the more that you can almost make it like a narrative that's like a hook, the better. - Like a story. - Yeah, exactly, like you should write all your essays and narrative format, they should be engaging. Like if you were reading your essay as like a stranger, you should want to read more and you should enjoy reading it as opposed to being like a like another one. And you should try to, I'm trying to think, how to word this properly. I think, I think yes, the social impact and kind of the reach you have is important, but the way you tell your story is just as important. I think if I told the Jamie store in a very robotic and monotone way, which is the one we're telling it, it wouldn't have gone over very well. And I think I would have been rejected. So there's a way I could have written about it that would have been rejected. So how you write about it is almost as important as what you did, which I think is actually a really unfortunate lapse in the cold system, because how you write about it is really subjective and that shouldn't dictate how it's perceived, but truly it is. - I mean, it's like people are reading it with human emotion. So it's like if somebody likes it, it really sticks. And it depends on the way you talk about it and everything. So would you agree to not talk about cliches, like diseases in your family and stuff like that? 'Cause a lot of our teachers are telling us to talk about cliches 'cause they're so overdone and boring. - I mean, I honestly think it's how you write about it. Like I've read essays from, this is really sad to say, but I've read essays from people with like, who had like grandparents with cancer, but then they write about a really tacky way of like, and it was so sad and I was broken, but I got past it or whatever. And like they write about it in a really like, in a way that makes them really unlikable, but I've also got essays from people who have something as quote unquote minor as a speech impediment or something like that, which isn't as bad as losing something you love, but the way they write about it is very tactful. So it's not like what was me story, but it's almost like they add humor to it and they make it like a funny essay or they take a different spin on it or they talk about a really small moment that's like memorable and they come across really well and they make half die-billies they apply to. So it really, really depends how you write about it. I would say that cliches are cliches for a reason. They impact a lot of people, but if you know, if you have disease in your family, if it legitimately impets you or, you know, it's somewhat of an obstacle, it's a legitimately a big part of who you are, then you shouldn't you deserve to write about it, but just write about it in a tactful way or in a unique way. And I would say that you should assume that, you know, the admissions officer has read three essays, the ten essays that look exactly like yours at the exact same disease. So the question you should ask yourself is, how can I stand out from the ten other people that wrote about this same thing or have a unique span or unique take on it? Like I've read essays or I've written or helped students write essays where it's like, you know, they had a parent with cancer or a very serious disease. And they almost, you know, they wrote about it in terms of being like they started the essay writing about it in terms of like, my coach would always do XYZ, my teacher would always do XYZ and writing about in terms of a coach or a teacher but at the end of the essay, you find that the coach and the teacher is actually the cancer or the disease itself. But then seeing it as like a way of growth, et cetera, as opposed to like a soft story essay, which you know, it was a unique span and it resonated. And part of me also like, I hate how tacky it sounds because it's like stupid because another student who also had a parent with cancer who just didn't write about it in like a creative way also went through the same struggle. It just, you know, it really sucks but that's the way the admissions system works unfortunately. - So it's just about crafting a very engaging narrative at the end of the day. - Yeah, I think what a lot of people don't consider is that unfortunately especially like Asian communities, you have a huge emphasis on grades and scores and tests. So like, how did your SAT or ACT go? Are you taking LARAPs? Do you have a 4.0? And then it's like, yeah, I do some extra cricketers on the side and then yeah, yeah, then the essays will take care of themselves and obviously, you know, your dream school will accept you if you have a 4.0, which I see where they're coming from. Like even my parents obviously came from India and they, in the Indian system, you know, you have your joining exam and then that's kind of determines everything that your score on that is whether you get to your top IIT. But, and that's where I think a lot of that pressure comes from. But in the American system, when an admissions officer is reviewing your essays and reviewing your application, all of the hard work, all of the literal hundreds of thousands of hours you print your APs are seen and reviewed by the admissions officer in literally 10 seconds. Like they look at it as a basic pace markup. Generally, do you have A's? Generally, is your standardized score good enough that you perform well here? Like obviously if you're for ACT's 23, like you're, you're not going to do very well at Brown. But if you're ACT's generally like a 34 plus, then generally like if accepted, you can survive. Like that's all they're looking for. So like the distinction between 35 and 36 is like non-existent, like it doesn't really, it won't really further the application at all. And I know students who like put hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars into like trying to optimize a 34 to 35 or something, a 35 to 36. And it's really, really diminishing returns. All the work you do when you actually create that there's stuff, they will probably spend 30 seconds reading through it, maybe a minute. And then majority of their time, like the extra five to 10 minutes at least spend on your application will be reading your essays. So I find it almost really sad that students will spend and almost kill themselves optimizing their grades and then like BS or essays, like the week it's due. Because to me, it's like, wow, like 80% of what they're seeing is like the BS you're doing in a week. And like what you poured your heart and soul into is 10 seconds, it just feels like mismatch to me. - Yeah, no, totally. It's like, 'cause you're at the end of the day just like bullet points, like 10 things on your comment app. So you can't really explain all the hard work you did through that, but the way you can do it is through your essay. So yeah, that totally makes sense. On the college pathway, like I know like in high school and maybe in college, students are told to like build their resumes and be able to take hard classes and score well in them. But honestly, it can be like really overwhelming and induce a lot of unneeded stress into people's lives. So how did you personally balance school with passion projects such as JMA and like really enhance your mental health but also, you know, keep beyond track for like a good college or a good future. - Yeah, I mean, that's an important question. I like, I really like in high school, I didn't really have any social, like I deleted all my social media for the most part, aside from like Mace Messenger, 'cause we were like a Facebook, Heavy School, so like a lot of clubs ran on it. And it was truly, it was just, I regret doing this, but I really skimmed on sleep. It was just ruthless execution. And I feel like it was a lot of mentality that did adopt as a founder that helped, but I like on days where I had like zero period classes, I'd have to get up before, you know, 7 a.m., and then after school, when I'd go to do research, I'd have to go all the way to UCSF and back, and I wouldn't be home until like 2 a.m., and then I'd have to rinse and repeat. And I think that was horrible. Like I really, really, really regret that. Everyone I know from my high school that I did that really regrets it later on. It's done through development, it's horrible for your health. And I think like the sad part is in high school, people almost have like a complex of like, "Oh yeah, I got like, you have five or just like, "I don't think I've got four, ooh, I'm so cool." Like the most dumb, it's like, it's like bragging that you have cancer when your friend doesn't. It's like a horrible thing to do. And I was just skimping a lot on sleep and not having social media. And I actually don't think that was a good thing at all. I think if I was giving advice to like students, I would probably tell them to, I'd probably tell them to collapse on like one to three things that they really feel passionate about and that they really care about. And they want to be like the defining thing in their application and then cut the rest. Like I met a lot of people that would do a lot of things to resume pack, so then they would do like six clubs that they would try to be present though. They would do eight volunteer and extra curricular stuff with the mentality that more is better when actually more is worse. Like it's better to have only one club that you're present of and then you win national awards and have six clubs that you're like vice president of or whatever. - Oh, I don't want to do you. - Exactly, I'm very much probably going to do you. Like for me too, like I, so the comment app lets you put 10 and extra curricular activities. And I did have a lot of experiences of like other side volunteering, other clubs that I did for a year or two and then continue with that I could have put on there. But I very intentionally didn't. So I very intentionally only, I think I only put four things on there out of 10, which it was a bit of a risk. But in my opinion, I was like these are four or five, I think I put four or five, but like I didn't fill it up intentionally. And I made sure each thing I listed was extremely impressive and had like very high numbers and high like international or national reach so that it seemed more quality-heavy. Because colleges know that students will like put random stuff just to get to 10 or like if you're student with eight, eight things to put for extra curricular activities, you'll like squeeze out something BS and say oh, I did volunteering here and when I help my mom pick up groceries or something really random. But it ends up hurting you 'cause you look like a lower quality applicant that's more disingenuous. - Yeah, totally. So, you know, you said that you did research. So how did you like balance school work with that? You know, I thought-- - It was just really, honestly with wet lab. It was really, really hard. Like those that I regret not learning how to code sooner because I probably could have saved myself a lot of time there. But I, it was really, really hard. So like I would, so I went to the high school in Fremont. My, the research I did that was wet lab was in UCSF. And if you know anything about wet lab research, it's like you're culturing bacteria. You're trying to harvest DNA, et cetera. There are protocols that you have to do on a day-to-day basis. So you can't just, you know, do something and then come two months later 'cause then, you know, your coaches will die. So I would have to plan key days to go and work on it. And then right after school, I would go to SF, reach SF by like four or five. And then do as much research as I could and much front and wood had broken till like 12 or one or two. And then come all the way back home. And then it was, it was, it was really bad. Like it was, it was really hard to manage. - Yeah. - Over the summer, it was obviously a little bit easier 'cause you don't know the classes, but still it's, it's, it's tough. - Yeah, I know. That's, that's a lot of work. But I mean, it's, it's how you manage your time, I guess. And I totally agree with you that I think sticking to three or four clubs that really matter. And like two or three experiences, like that's what I'm doing currently. A lot of people told me not to override myself with a lot of clubs in high school and just try it, some of them out in freshman year, but then in sophomore year, you know, cut them down to where you have potential. where you can progress really well. So yeah, I think that advice was really helpful and I hope people do use it because I mean, there are people in my school who are doing like 10 clubs, but they're like not really achieving anything in them is just, they're doing 10 clubs, so. - Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense to you. I would totally agree with that advice. And like, if you want to add is if you're doing research, I totally recommend doing computational research because now like when I went to college, slash from Ed School, a lot of my research and like I informally found it in many lab at Brown, like all of that was computational research and it was so much easier to manage because you can work your own hours and the benefit is like for students who are doing like physical research, if you're doing like robotics, you're buying medical engineering or even what lab research, there's a material cost to when you screw up inevitably and you will screw up because you're, you know, starting off versus in the dry lab setting or like the computational setting, if you're, you know, if your experiment fails or if you mess up something, then you know, you just, your code compiles around, right? So then you can just fix and there's no material cost. So I'd strongly recommend students to go that route because any project you need data analysis for, you need data logging for, you need, you know, some kind of statistical analysis for and these are not super hard skills to learn and especially if you're around 10th, 11th grade plus you have the math prerequisites you need to do that. I mean, for the basic statistics and multiplication. So, you know, I'd recommend you, I'd recommend that for students than trying to go further. - I don't say it's the same amount of impact working in on a computer versus like in person. - I think it depends, but I would actually argue computational is more impact. Reason being that for the wet lab project, I'd probably poured. So the earliest pot, like the legal age, you have to be 16. So I'm, I think on my 16th birthday, it was my first day in the wet lab. So I did it literally as soon as I legally could have. I put two years or one and a halfish years into it. But, you know, like my first year was a lot of screw ups and, you know, a lot of my cultures and stuff died. And by the time I actually got a handle on things, it was a really narrow window before I, you know, graduated and had to leave, to actually get in your guilt. So we got some decent originally, like starting off results, but the process of like kind of publishing that, going to the next level, what have taken another year or two, and that been feasible. And if you really want to have impact and scale it to humans, you would have to do FDA trials, you would have to have millions, not even millions, like multiple millions of dollars of funding, maybe 10 million to like actually get to human trials and decades of your life versus computational projects. Once I was able to show some validation with patients, which happened within the year, I was able to, or some early preliminary retrospective data, then I was able to go and launch immediately to patients within the next year and now we're impacting thousands and soon hundreds of thousands in the next quarter or two, which, you know, would not have been able to be possible if it was like a physical thing that needed lots of FDA clients. - I guess it just narrows down to how much you're able to do with the time you have and the capacity you have, obviously. - So on the same time, like many students, especially now, because of how difficult the college application process is getting, they're told to, you know, get internships or do research, publish, but they aren't sure where to start. So can you kind of just like tell us a little bit about what the process you went through to, you know, gain the research skills you have today and any advice on how to make the most of these career building moments? - Totally, totally. Like for me, I just got lucky because in my first or second year of college, I took like a CS course, which I didn't know anything about. And I personally, like, I think some people a little bit more geared to than others. I was definitely not geared to it at all. So I definitely struggled a lot initially, but after taking one or two CS courses, then you have the materials and the basic prerequisites you need to be able to self-teach yourself, basic machine learning. And then I started kind of doing that, playing around with some data sets that I had access to and that kind of spun out. And I realized it was like easier to create good models than I thought and then started publishing on that. And the interesting thing that I learned was that before I thought that if you wanted to publish something, like I for some reason thought that it was required to have some like professors, required to have some kind of PI or something on the project. That's just because that's what everyone does. That's actually not true at all. Like you can, like whoever's listening to this, you even in high school, you can start today and like write some, if you have some interesting data, write that up in a proper format and then publish it right now or submit it for publication. So yeah, like no one, like rate limits you there. So as soon as I realized that around mine, I think off my ear, I was like, oh my god, like that's crazy. So it's like, it doesn't seem as hard to do. So then I started putting out, pushing out a lot of publications and I think I got to like 20, 25 plus publications within first three or so years. And it was like, again, it, like that's not, it's a lot easier than it sounds because once you understand the structure and do it the first or second time, it gets easier and easier because you know exactly what you're writing. And generally just to break it down when you write a publication, there's really four main sections. There's introduction, methods, results, discussion. And as far as you're, you know, as a lot of these are templated, like your methods are especially if you're doing a lot of machine learning projects or kind of detailing what packages and how you change your data and how you change your models. The results are literally laying out here as my accuracy, here's my AOC, et cetera. And then your introduction and discussion is just citing a lot of relevant literature and you know exactly as it sounds, introducing the problem and talking about the implications of results. So after you get that framework down, then publishing is a lot easier. So basically for students that have this pressure to publish and get results, I resonate with it. I mean, I think a lot of it comes from when Harvard was sued in 2019 and in the core documents, it came out that they consider publications in your academic ratings. And it's one of the few things that can elevate your academic rating aside from like winning at Olympiads. So then there's this huge publication grades and a lot of students have started doing it. And you know, I think it's also unfortunate because in a school like how much, you know, it's gonna be the students that like have a family member who's a doctor or have like a, you know, a family member who's a professor or something that has them on to research and don't really do anything meaningful. But you know, that's just kind of the system. But I would say for students who are not in that position, if you want to publish, you still totally can publish. You just have to pick a domain that you have particularly interested in. And domains that are less crowded like what led biology and that are more unique things like, I don't know if you want to do Egyptology research. If you want to even do ethics research and then you're not having to publish data but as opposed to like critically think, those might be lower barrier for you to enter in and actually write something interesting and contribute to the literature in a productive way. - Did you just kind of figure out like a topic on your own and just do your own research through Google and stuff and conduct your research? - Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. I had, you know, kind of interests in kind of gynecology and cancer from family members that had been impacted. I had a data set that was pertinent and genuinely just to kind of play around and test what I've been learning. I started using that and before I knew it like the models that I was playing around with the test, exceeded by a very large margin. The models that was gold standard in clinical settings and I think most students will find themselves in that place because the clinical standards especially medicine are very, very okay and any basic model that you use that's like cutting edge will definitely, you know, at least 3X whatever the clinical standard is. The issue is in like deploying it and getting by and et cetera but that's a different story. If you're just looking to publish results like you can, you totally can. You just find the right journal and go through with it. - And it's like a dedicated high schooler, oh my god. (laughs) - A lot of my publications have. Most of all my publications actually post high school 'cause I didn't realize this in high school that you had to publish. - Oh. - It was my teenage year of an award that's due. So as everyone had had their acceptance, then the court documents came out and I was like, oh my god, if only I was one year younger. - Yeah, but I mean, you still got into PLMESO. I guess in the end. - Yeah, thank you. - Would you say like having a mentor is very important in high school and like how can somebody find a mentor and like how can that really be helpful towards them? - Yeah, it's a good point. I think a lot of these things happen organically. Like for me, I regret. I think I was a little bit more egotistical in high school and I was very much of the mentality that I will do things on my own. I did have one mentor, his name is Richa. He was a debate mentor in some sense. So not too much academic, but still, I mean, actually, there were a lot of, there were a lot of friends I had that were like one year older, they mean PE, they give you advice. - Yeah. - My biggest, like my advice to most high schoolers that want a mentor is your natural friend circle or your natural people, you mean clubs and stuff. We'll only be one or two years, maybe three years older than you, but that's rare. They still don't have enough of an outlay on life or admissions to give you good advice. I mean, maybe they'll give you good advice on classes and stuff like that, but if you want actual advice on like, you know, how do I get published or you know, well, yeah, like, or how, like how do I optimize to get into XYZ college? I don't know if it'll be that helpful if they haven't gotten into that process themselves. I would probably go for reaching out to alumni of your high school or alumni of some kind of association or whatever anything that you're a part of to get to people that are in college or graduated college to be your mentors. Because at that phase of life, people are probably a little bit more receptive to those kind of requests and in that mentality wanting to give back. Typically, students that are in high school or just starting out in college are of the mentality that like, I have to get my career together. I can't help but I have to think about myself, but people who are a little bit more salvage in the career are a little bit more, that's some time to take out to talk to people and give back and they feel mentors only help people that they see themselves in. So there's enough of a gap of like, oh, you run me up myself five years ago. Whereas that effect is not as present if it's only in one or two year gap. So yeah, my unpopular, maybe popular rice would be, go for people that are at least four to five years older than you that maybe are at your alumni of high school or somehow some club or et cetera or something that you can relate to them on and somehow get them to see themselves in you. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree, especially with the upcoming culture of gatekeeping, academics and extracurriculars, especially like, you know, because of so much competition, like nobody really wants to share what they're doing, which is totally understandable. I mean, I get where they're coming from because we're all from the same high school where we're all gonna be close to similar colleges. So yeah, I mean, I think I feel like it probably would be more helpful or like, I guess even teachers might help. you know, professors. I think the issue is the thing that I also encountered what so I had a couple of really really good teachers that helped me a lot like for example my biology teacher or I was Miss Kohler. She was just very big support of my life. I still actually keep giving touch with her and I've laid dinners with her and stuff like five to eight. Eight? Yeah, oh my god like seven eight years later and you have some teachers like that but for the most part like a lot of teachers themselves in high school actually don't know how the mission system works. They're just going off their best bets or they're like oh like trying to pattern match or whatever but I yeah I mean we like we had a lot of teachers that tried to give us like college advice that were just like blatantly completely wrong because they themselves didn't didn't understand or we had counselors that like so we had counselors that straight up did not know that Brown was an Ivy League did not know the planing programming existed did not know the ACT one up to 36 meanwhile students in private schools whose you know their counselors literally know the admission officers from Harvard and Yale and and recommend students through a back door so I mean there's there's some of that for sure but I would say like if you're getting advice for specific college or something you should make sure the person giving advice has attended the college at the very least or helped other people get or like you know had had some experience with the admissions process in that regard because you know if you're trying to get into Princeton but then you know the person you're getting advice from didn't has never applied to Princeton you know they're just making stuff up at that point right or maybe going into secondhand advice it's better to get advice from people who you know have been through that process and no deeply what how you're being valued yeah I mean especially I feel like the college application process is so abstract nobody like really knows what's going on especially like teachers who like who themselves probably have high school students who are like themselves trying to learn the process so yeah I mean that that was really good advice so thank you for that just a couple more questions one of them is what advice would you give to students who love science or you know helping people and want to make like a tangible impact in their society but they aren't sure they want to be a traditional doctor kind of like yourself so like what other paths do you think they can take that we'll still let them make a difference in healthcare or medicine I would say a loaded question no not at all it's a I would say I would almost disagree with the counterfactual implying that their students who like know they want to be a doctor and like do all like doctor focus activities because when colleges accept you and this also took me a while throughout my head around like when colleges accept you they don't accept you for what you say you want to be they accept you for what you can be so it actually looks bad when you play the code and say I want to be a doctor and here I did all the premium societies because to the college it's like you're 17 like what the hell do you know about life like you're going to change back and forth and stuff and almost committing to wanting to be like you know there's some people who say not even say I want to be doctor they say I want to be this specific cardiovascular surgery very specific sub fellowship and that's what I want to be um it's just too it's just too much at that point like colleges kind of see you as a kind of out of like a pluripotent stem cell almost when you're when you're in high school and you're committing to a differentiation pathway of maybe you want to be nervous tissue or something or maybe you want to be somatic tissue or something when you get into college and then you so specialize after that so you generally will apply under a major and every college will ask you what is your major attended major um like you are just making the case to the college that this is why I'm interested in what I say I'm interested in so they used to show intellectual curiosity for a subject so at the end of the day if you to answer your question if you're stemming client you want to help people um you should choose like you should work backwards and say when I apply to college I have to apply under one or two majors what should those majors be and then once you understand what those majors should be then you can work backwards and say well what brings me joy am I someone who likes to teach am I someone who likes to um make things am I someone who likes to you know read and and and do analysis and and whatever like you like you should then tailor your natural proclivities to that subject so to give you an example like if you're a student who wants to help people and you really care about the environment and you really like making things and you want to pursue a unique major and you are interested in a school like let's say brown then brown has a environmental engineering major that's under subscribe not a lot of people do it that seems like an intersection of all these things and then you can work backwards to say well I I want to help people I like the environment I like making things maybe I can and I really care about water pollution so maybe I can make something around there and then you can kind of work backwards to you know inform what you should be doing but in a in a decisive way that will help your ultimate major and help that ultimate umbrella so it's it really seems backwards and I do I do take I don't love saying it because I feel like I'm asking students to like do their high school for the sake of being to college but I mean that's a reality like that's what most people do anyway so yeah why not lean into it yeah I mean especially like I don't be SMD programs like PLME and at themselves like they kind of expect high schoolers to like know for sure that they want to become a doctor and be committed to a med school so what advice do you have for people who like want to apply to these type of programs we were like so set on becoming a doctor I would say that the plea me is really different from any other BSNB program in that I think there's a lot like so for example I didn't I was not a BSNB applicant like a plea was a very unique situation for me so I only applied to plea me I know some people that applied to a ton of other BSNB programs and there's a lot of people that make plea me that don't get to any other BSNB programs there's a lot of people that make every BSNB program but don't make plea me the reason for that is because plea me is looking for a very unique kind of archetype of someone who almost could not have been a doctor without plea me to maximize that plea me admission so if you are like kind of a straight gunner and you have all the good pre-med societies etc then in the eyes of plea me it's like okay then go to a BS program you know you can you can be a doctor there plea me is almost looking for like a different type or archetype of doctor of like if you want to be like if you want to study music and incorporate that into medicine if you want to study archaeology and somehow integrate that into medicine like they they're looking for a different yeah kind of kind of type of doctor to massively leverage the program as opposed to being another cookie cutter that fits someone okay that's interesting I didn't know about that so they're kind of trying to see somebody has like various types of interests and hobbies yeah yeah being solely focused on medicine itself yeah that's interesting okay so um another question is what's one scale that you wish you would started out with that you didn't start out with but later realized was super important and how did you kind of harness that scale later on yeah definitely definitely coding um and I I would say I say two courses coding and they're kind of hand in hand coding and learning how to like found in scale projects um I I think on the on the CS end um I think many students including myself uh when I started out are like there's a certain kind of person that has a quote unquote CS brain um they're their CS mind they they understand technical programming stuff and you know those are those are those are those kind of kids I'm not those kind of kids I make people person or I like to talk or whatever uh that can be yes like that's actually one of the first things our CS professor told us a very first introductory course if she's like that dispel that notion it's a complete fantasy it's a complete myth um that was really helpful because it's like anyone can learn CS I you know there's there's there's even programs where you know they teach I incarcerated justice of all populations how to code and many of these people have not had a formal education beyond the eighth grade it's like it's not that hard to pick up it's just learning logic and I think anyone in any field whether it's archaeology whether it's philosophy whether it's egyptology anyone in any field can benefit from doing data analysis or learning basic computer science because you need to use it no matter what so there's no downside to learning it and the very worst thing that happens is that you know your code doesn't compile or you're not as good as you thought you would be but you know that that's probably um secondly what I was talking about of like starting up like learning how to really found and scale that's a tough trait because I think the experience that most people have up into high school is that I will start a club or I will you know start a volunteering organization and stuff but like yes that that's good experience as especially when you're at the high school level like you know you can't be expected to do the world but I almost wish that I kind of buck the consensus more and focus less on academics in my opinion I I'm almost like in line with Peter Thiel here where I think it's like almost a complete scam it's completely useless which is funny because I went went through college anyways but I don't think there's anything I learned uniquely in college that I couldn't have on my own and I think it was for the most part not not very productive use of time I would have spent a lot of my time like founding projects or companies that I check to scale to users or go on the grounds to patients or different systems and try to actually launch projects and see when can I get them the hands of patients actually impact care and I think a lot of students especially medicine have this kind of very rigid interpretation of the steps you have to follow in order to do something that scales including a lot of my physician advisors many of which were MDs and PhDs our MD MBAs etc where they have this idea of like okay look right now you're just in college you're technically a pre-med wait you have to finish med school then you have to finish your residency and fellowship and then you have an academic career and only then can you apply for our R1 grant and only then can you have results and then when you're like 40 then you start something there's students who are 19 that launch projects that end up being multi-billion dollar companies that IPO and that's a reality of what you know the people who move fast and executed are the people who will ultimately own the future so I really regret not having like I started doing that more actively when I you know dropped out and did why commentator and then started you know doing my own startup but having these skillsets as soon as when I was you know 1819 in college and I had a lot of idle time would have been incredible experience and I have some friends that did some version of that are started like monetizing projects or small things that they you know peppered the campus with flyers and stuff like that for which is an amazing it's an amazing growth opportunity teaches you so much more about the real world than you can imagine and that that I highly recommend any students do that especially with a lot of LM driven apps you have rep-leg you have lovable you have both you like you can use one of these system use one of these platforms and easily scale and build something within days or cursor on yeah I mean I've been like so on and off ever since I was a kid about learning code because I always thought like I don't know just wasn't ever my thing like I'm not really code person and I guess like I guess I I am what your professor said like I like talking to people I like doing like more hands-on things um and stuff like that so I guess it is good advice I mean my dad always tells me that like the future is code like it's technology it's evolving and even in medicine there's you know my uncle says that there's always um AI somewhere in whatever's going on so I think yeah you're totally right about like you know leveraging that opportunity especially with so many free courses these days I think it is easier to learn these types of skills so yeah and imagine like to your point if you're a people person we like to talk and and if you want to quote unquote help people like imagine how dangerous you would be if you also knew how to code and leverage insights to actually have technical innovation um I yeah I like I also think like the nice thing about CS is you learn by doing like a lot of my ML background wasn't from formal taking courses uh because I think if you're taking courses in a graduate program it's actually useful you understand a lot of theory so if you're trying to make your own models or understand kind of how to ground up make modifications existing foundation models that's really helpful but for the most part if you're just applying models um and applying what technology exists um for unique use cases then you don't need that level master you can just teach yourself and you probably learn more about how the models actually work in practice uh then someone who's just studying the theory on paper yeah I mean I totally agree um I think coding is very valuable especially in today's today's so technology forward time so yeah um another question I had was about college decisions um so a lot of kids you know stress about choosing the perfect school for them like the one and only school that they're gonna stick with for like the rest of their eight years or whatever they're going to college for so what would you say matters most when deciding what college you're gonna attend in the future and what doesn't matter as much or what people put more emphasis on that actually doesn't really affect anything and were there only some moments where you datted you know your decision to go to brown or um whatever and what pushed what helped you push through that my advice just probably actually the opposite about most people will hear of which is like you know have the college at the best fit for your major and best fit for your goals and don't look at prestige um and a little bit of what I'll say is conflicting and a little bit but still so my my general advice would be no matter how set you feel on what you want to study you at the end of the day are only 17 when you're making it maybe 18 when you're making this decision um you should not commit and go to a college that is overall worse but maybe better for a specific program because if you switch your screwed so I would actually say which is very you know probably an unpopular take that most of your teachers will assuage you against choose the college that's more prestigious and that sets you up better because if you switch you have more optionality now the exception to this would be colleges with very specific programs for example browns PLME where you get into an MD immediately or there's some other colleges that guarantee you know have certain guarantees or you know maybe get a full ride plus you get a stipend and stuff these are unique situations and in those cases I would elevate that above you know any prestige um but for example if you know for a fact you want to be a doctor and then you know nothing in the world can convince you otherwise yeah I think PLME is a no brainer above any Iveeli any school in the entire world um but you know if you switch out of that then you know maybe you maybe regret that decision so who knows uh for me when deciding um so I had a really kind of really weird kind of path here because I so I edied brown which early decision so I was committed to brown when I got in and I had some other EA's or state schools that I got into um but you know those kind of clear um in my freshman year for a number of uh personal and family reasons I applied to transfer and this is actually right before the pandemic hit so at this point everything was fine and nothing you know no one knew the better um and the transfer application due in February but I also did end up making Harvard and Stanford so I had a point whereas making a decision between Harvard Stanford and PLME um and I mean part of that decision um part of that decision and I obviously stuck with PLME but part of that decision why decide to stick with it was because I already was a year plus into college um I had friend groups I had you know I adore like to later became my girlfriend uh and I had like I was pretty socially situated I got into the idea medicine and also it was Harvard and I think Stanford for a little bit to had like a like for the pandemic they extended like being remote for next few years so what have lost entry of college or has browned it in so that back a little bit more um but ultimately the decision I made at that point was that I was pretty set on wanting to become a doctor it seemed like their Harvard and Stanford had better brand names and prestige it didn't it didn't it wouldn't be as conducive to having a career in medicine because at the end of the day I have much more flexibility and brown and I can do more publications I started studying for my step exams and undergrad that would have set me up much better for being a doctor now of course I ended up dropping out and then if I knew that in the past oh I probably should have switched but um you know that's that's just a lot of life and chance so I that's my long-mighted way of telling people um I would in my case do like it probably would have behoved me to go for a procedure name because at the end of the day if I switch then I have more optionality now I would say the difference between brown and Stanford Harvard is a little smaller so it's not like huge but you know this still is a difference in terms like VCs and brand recognition um so yeah my general to to to kind of overview a general advice would be go for the college that allows you the most optionality because you should expect your plans and life plans and careers just to change like three times or do you think if you had known that you were going to drop out of that school do you think you would have done Harvard or Stanford is that like a big it's really hard to say because I feel like you know I wouldn't have my current girlfriend I wouldn't have like my current friends I wouldn't like it would be incomplete different I'm really honestly got I'm really back and forth on it I don't have a good answer to this because I think staying with brown like easily allowed me 10 times more flexibility I got 20 plus more publications and it would have I at least you would not have existed and I would not have made what I see if I had left because I wouldn't have had all this extra time to devote into doing clinical trials or pitch competitions or et cetera so for me it should have time that brown forwarded me not necessarily the anything about the academic environment was super super keep on that wouldn't have received at all in any other school um so I on that point I say yes but then also on the flip side I probably would have had a slightly easier time raising if I went to a different college or you know maybe some more optionality for you know very unique jobs and finance or for a very new jobs and finance that only recruit from certain schools but at the at the end of the day I I still you know maybe ten sidebars I still I still think I I would have made the same decision if I could go back in time um but it's definitely not a hundred percent you know no brim or like it's definitely at least like 64 E so um but for a lot of students where you know if you're lucky to be in the case where you have a lot of good acceptance is like it's kind of hard to go wrong like I mean I have a lot of students who decide between I had a student of a jamming student actually who I worked with um very little bit from Zimbabwe who got into uh Harvard and Stanford yeah everything that it stood in who got into like Princeton and probably could get got into some other good schools but um for them it's just kind of like you know it's it's like if you choose Stanford or Harvard it's not like you're gonna like end up like you know a failure you know it's like you're you know you it's hard to go wrong in many cases so a lot of you know I believe nonetheless I mean yeah well the one on Stanford but okay um well yeah I guess Stanford but it's basically and I feel like at this point yeah I yeah I'd say like at that point just a lot of the soft factors of like whether people will culture end up mattering a lot more so yeah that's that's great advice I think yeah I think I honestly do agree I think being in a more prestigious college even if you do end up changing your major in the future it looks really good on you know future jobs that you apply to like the friend circle you get with all the like-minded people as well I think also plays a huge role because they're all you know into the same things you're into if you're in the same college. yeah um the last question I have before we go on to the speed round is like it's like four questions yeah if you could go back and give your high school self one piece of advice what would it be and which high school activities or clubs helped you most in discovering the person you are today. I it's maybe a little controversial I would actually tell myself to not go to college because I know I would actually tell myself to drop out from high school do yeah start something be a founder do the field fellowship or something and still apply to YC and then I think that would give me a lot more lead time and I think that would have been much more beneficial for me um I like I would feel sad about saying that because I would lose out on a lot of friends I would have from college and probably my girlfriend too um which yeah don't tell her but I mean like like you know if you're you know if you're at a high school path and you want to be a founder um yeah I think I think the role of experience probably matters more now the nuance I would have is uh I think college irrespective of what you learn is important because you develop as a person you meet more friends and it's like really good time and you know it's uh it's a it's a big point of happiness in your life you're for back too so you know maybe that's me being immature and I'm still my 20s maybe I'll say to me differently when I'm in my 50s but um yeah I mean I I say if you want to be a founder I think it's best to start getting real experience as soon as possible I think college is not conducive to that that's such a different answer from like the other people I've interviewed from um NYU like that's that's such a unique answer and I think it's not I don't think it's for everybody like I think yeah I just I just think it's so interesting to see here so many different perspectives based on different people's experiences because I mean you did end up dropping out of med school but it worked out really really well for you so I think it's if people are like you know with the same mindset as you I think they can make your work without going to college and they probably do have the same you know that process um okay so going into the speed round what food or drink have you did you rely rely on too much during college or work or high school like what's your one go to food um I try to be really healthy so I actually like I drink like A2 milk it's like it's like healthier form of milk I really I feel like they're really layman's here but A2 milk okay um if you could time travel to give your your self advice in the future, what would you say? - So give the future self advice? - Yeah, like about what they should do in the future. Does that make sense? - Oh, like what I want myself to do in the future. - Yeah, basically. - I really hope I'm spending like adequate time with like family and friends. I think I'd be really depressed if the future of me was just, I don't like trying to grind all the time or like pursuing money or something, especially like 30, 40 plus. I think yeah. - Okay, that's a great answer. If you had one day off without any meetings, emails, personal things, how would you spend it? - Going to the beach with friends. - I love the beach too, yeah, especially in the summer. And the last one is, what book, quote, or movie has deeply inspired you? - Definitely Tuesday's of the morning. - Tuesday's with, oh, I have that on my TBR actually. - Yeah, it's like a better form. If you've probably heard of one breath becomes air, in my opinion, it's like a better form of that book. - Oh, really? - Yes. - Today, we unboxed some truly inspiring stories and insights and a massive thank you to my guest, Rita, for your candid and uplifting conversation. Your experience has truly brightened the vision involved and encouraged us all to chase our dreams and face challenges head on. To my wonderful listeners, thank you so much for joining me on this adventure. If you've got a story to share or know someone who does, I'd love to hear from you. Please reach out and let's continue to fill this moment with vision ideas and experience. So remember to stay curious, stay passionate, and keep striving for your dreams. Until next time, this is Tyler on the side. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)