2022, Hopes and Goals and Dreams
Part One: About 2021#
2021 was an interesting year — one of massive growth, personally and professionally. If there was any theme to my 2021, I’d say it was self-improvement. Some really interesting things happened this year, over which I
- worked at my first internship in a big tech company
- ran my first independently run startup program
- launched a Decal
- TAed for the biggest class on Berkeley campus
- finished my journey with Berkeley’s Gateway to Innovation program
- helped run the world’s biggest collegiate hackathon
- read 34 books in the year
- built my fitness back up to being able to do pushups
- took the hardest classes I could
- traveled as much as the pandemic allowed for
- developed more deep, meaningful relationships
- carved more time out for fun,
- and tried to be a braver person than I previously was.
Part Two: What’s Changing?#
There is one critical way in which I messed up, though. I didn’t make my goals for the year public. I left them drafted somewhere in the many apps I toggle between while writing. Here’s the problem: I can’t find that draft anymore.
Yes, I’m that friend that wrote her new year’s resolutions on a napkin, then forgot where I kept the napkin. It’s dreadfully embarassing.
Now that that shameful admission is out of the way, 2022 is shaping up to be a pivotal year. It will be what is probably my last year in college, my first year working full-time at a startup, my first year researching at university, and my last year pretending I’m of drinking age (shh).
While wondering what the biggest thing I wanted my 2022 to be about, I pondered a lot about how lonely 2020 was. I spent most of that year by myself in India, pulling night shifts for my classes and obligations that were halfway across the world. With the world tentatively opening back up, I think I want to stop learning alone and start asking for help more often.
I think it’s high time I make finding support for my passions a priority. 2022 is the year of finding communities for myself and what I enjoy doing.
Part Three: The Goals#
As such, here’s some goals I’m hoping to reach by the end of 2022. As much as is possible, I have attempted to keep these goals measurable, and quantised, such that my progress can be tracked through any point in the year.
I want to create a project that is used by other people this year.
Whenever I work on a side-project or a hack, it’s either to learn something or to create something for my own use. This year, I want to push myself to create something that is useful to other poeple as well. This can be something as simple as a chrome extension or as complex as a social media platform. The implementation is not as important as the intent. You can view my projects here.I want to publish a text-book this year.
I’ve spent a majority of my college career teaching classes. I’ve taught CS61A, and helped start the Introduction to Full Stack Web Dev Decal, a student-run class that teaches students the ins and outs of web development. This year, I’m stepping back from both these intitiatives. As such, I want to formalize my teaching material into open-source digital textbooks. You can view my progress on the CS61A Textbook here.I want to create 24 side-projects this year.
Two for every month, this number may not seem pretty massive, but taking a project from idea to execution can be a deceptively long process. It doesn’t matter what the project is, as long as it takes substantial effort and learning to create, has a public-facing version to demo it, and isn’t left incomplete. You can track my progress here.I want to bootstrap a community this year.
I really enjoy communities, being a member of them, as well as leading them. I want to spend substantial time this year not only finding these spaces, but also creating them for others in potential spaces that might require such communities.I want to read 52 books by the end of the year.
I had this goal last year, and reached a respectable 34/52. This was out of laziness more so than anything else. I believe 52 is extremely achievable. You can track my progress here.I want to meet 156 new people this year.
That’s three new people a week — which is hopefully a very reasonable target. I will point out that “meeting people” is not the same thing as chatting with someone at a party. If you can’t talk about them for 5 minutes after the meeting, it doesn’t count.I want to get good at a sport this year.
I’ve never been able to really indulge in participating in a sport, despite having tried my hand at a wide variety. This year, I’d like to hunt down whatever I’d like to keep doing for the rest of my life — worthy candidates include basketball, squash, tennis, ice skating, and more! This goal is definitely more vague than the others, because I don’t know where this will take me yet! Let’s check back in a year to see where we land ;)I want to travel to 10 different cities this year.
Eventually, I’d love to be able to spend the entire year living in different cities — while I’m in college, that’s a bit unreasonable. Until then, I’ll settle for visiting places. Any place counts, as long as I stay there for more than 3 days, and the intent of the trip is to explore the city. You can track my progress on travel here.I want to do 3 things that terrify me this year.
I find that doing things I’m scared of is a sure-fire way to do something that I’ll eventually be proud of. I hope I’ll be able to chase my fears into taking some meaningful actions this year. Another one that is quite vague, but perhaps a good place to start is with my bucket list.
Part Four: Community and Courage#
As I mentioned above, this is the year I want to chase my passions with other people. That starts right here, with this list. If this is something you enjoyed reading, or perhaps took inspiration from, take a moment to drop me a line at [email protected]
with your goals of the year.
Can be many, can be one, can be specific, can be vague. Doesn’t matter — send it anyway. It will make me feel a little less alone in my endeavors to do better, and hopefully it will make you feel a little more compelled to chase after them.
I, for one, am pretty excited to meet the 2023 version of me.
Part 5: Accountability#
Read my January updates.