I'm in Bangalore right now, sitting on our balcony full of plants, jetlagged out of my mind. The flight here was deviously long (shoutout KLM for the free upgrade, though) and I had a lot of time to process everything that happened in the past year.
I’ve never written one of these before, but since life has been moving at mach 10 recently, I figured I’d share a bit from how 2025 turned out.
highlights
- I spent the first part of the year recruiting. Leetcoding for all of break sucked, but I kind of enjoyed the long-term gratification of feeling myself improve at coding assessments. Shoutout to my parents for being my rock during this.
- PLaID got accepted as a spotlight to a workshop in ICLR 2025! Had the opportunity to go to Singapore with Andy and Larry to share our work. We even snuck in a quick trip to China on the way back, where Andy's grandma's sister (the absolute goat) showed us around.
- I said goodbye to some of my closest friends at Harvey Mudd. They're doing well as phds and quants in the real world now, but Mudd feels really different without them.
- Got my dream internship at Ramp! This summer was probably the highest learning rate I've ever experienced. Forever grateful to Ramp, and especially my manager Rakesh, for teaching me what truly out-of-distribution engineering looks like.
- Visited Europe for the first time, seeing Austria and the south of France. Some slow living on the French coast was much needed.
- Became a Neo scholar! I've met some incredible people through the community so far, and I owe a ton to the entire Neo team for believing in me.
- Got out of a long-term relationship. It was rough for a long time, but we're both doing much better now. I'll always be grateful for the time we shared.
- Currently in India, spending time with family and resetting for the new year.
a few lessons
Something I did a lot this year that paid off was to bias towards saying yes. Most of my joy was from spontaneity— late night Cane's runs with my suite, or crashing a startup for some poker on a weekday. I think discipline and "locking in" are probably necessary but not sufficient to be well-lived.
I also learned that people are the only thing that matters. Go the extra mile in making a stranger feel special. Stay up late to help ship a ticket. Pay for your boy's drinks. I promise it'll come around.
Travel. As far as you can, as much as you can.
carve outs
- Kitchen Confidential is my favorite book of all time. Tony's stories are never-endingly captivating.
- Finally watched Die Hard for the first time. Totally see why it's a classic now.
- I love this video from Casey Neistat his lunchtime routine. He's such an awesome filmmaker.
what's next
A few years ago, I was interviewing a candidate for a club, and in response to the Peter Thiel contrarian question, they brought up how humans tends to recognize that their lives have changed so much in the past year but are really bad at estimating the magnitude of change in the upcoming year.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot this holiday season. This time last year, I never could have expected what 2025 had in store. Yet as the new year approaches, I don’t feel like I’m standing at the base of more growth, even though I'm gearing up for a big shift. Logically, I know that next year is going to be a big transition, but I'm struggling to internalize that.
Specifically, Andy and I are taking time off school and moving to SF to build. Huge shoutout to Neo's semester in SF program for making this possible. I can't wait to share more about what we're working on soon, but if you're in the city I would love to hang :)
Merry Christmas + Happy New Year, everyone.
-Rohan