Leaning into Fear & Full-Sending
I took 44 flights in 2024 and travelled to 14 countries, pretty much all for free
At the beginning of 2024, I told myself I had to get my sh*t together (lol this sounds pretty familiar). But meticulously obsessing over my goals, adding checkpoints, colour-coding and boxing everything, and placing sticky notes right above my workspace with my 4 priorities, actually seemed to work. I hadn’t girl-bossed that hard in a long time, and even though I was tired, I felt happy and productive.
As you’ll see later into this newsletter, the lifestyle I kept up wasn’t very sustainable and rather alarming, but for some reason, I kept smiling through it all. Looking back, I think I largely attribute it to people and mindsets, and upon reflecting on the past year, I believe the same could be said for the entirety of 2024.
Joining Greek Life
Upon returning to Penn for 2nd semester of sophomore year, I did something younger Sam probably would have never imagined herself doing - I joined a sorority. Despite all the negative stereotypes about Greek life I had grown up hearing about, I said “f*ck it, why not?” I ended up getting a bid from Zeta Tau Alpha and the rest is history.
Outside of the most challenging courseload I had ever taken, of which included Quantum Physics Pt. 2 (listed as top 10 hardest classes at Penn), Calculus IV, 8:30 AM Materials Lab, Thermodynamics of Materials, plus 3 more classes that I can’t even remember that had mandatory attendance too; most of my time was spent attending sisterhood events and weekend mixers with frats. I also made an effort to attend Quaker Kitchen’s Wednesday cooking class every week as well. Life was no long strictly about hustling as I had a number of scheduled events to look forward to every week sprinkled between all the work.
Despite being the most busy and most sleep-deprived I had been since starting college, I was simultaneously the happiest I had been. I had finally found people who, even if they didn’t understand the fields I worked in, loved me either way. I finally felt like I had people who cared about me and supported me, people who would run to hug me when they saw me enter the room, people I could tell anything to.
One time when I had been so hurt by a boy that I skipped my pledge class retreat, my big told me to call her immediately and I shamelessly dumped everything. She showed up an hour later at my dorm with Ben & Jerry’s and brought me over to her place to bake matcha white chocolate chip cookies together.
While I had many friends at Penn, this bond went far beyond just words of empathy or an open space to vent - the kind where someone is willing go out of their way to do something for you. The kind of love and friendship that I hadn’t experienced since my childhood friend group of 10 years. And for that and so much more, I can confidently say that joining a sorority was one of the best decisions I made in my college career.
Hm I don’t think this is ok…
During the month of February, I was one of the key members of FranklinDAO helping to organize our annual Penn Blockchain Conference & Hackathon. All I can remember when I think back to this time is how exhausted I was. Running the logistics of everything was practically a full-time job. I was on-call 24/7 responding to messages on Telegram, and in the meantime, maximizing every little 15-min pocket of free time to catch up on a problem set. My mind was constantly running nonstop like a hamster wheel.
The night before the hackathon kickoff, I finished up a lab report due at midnight on a pickup truck we rented so that we could drive all the way to a Costco in New Jersey to pick up 16 cases of bottled water and $300 worth of snacks (and while the boys went to the Costco food court, I pushed the massive trolley all the way to the back of the warehouse and single-handedly loaded up all the cases of water myself). The next morning, I skipped class so I could MC the hackathon kickoff. That Saturday, I arrived to my sorority’s date night with only 30 mins remaining because I had spent the night at a mansion for our private speaker’s event.
Realizing I had 3 exams the following week and was flying to ETHDenver right after my last exam, I ended up consuming 1200 mg of caffeine the day after the conference cramming for my thermo midterm the next day, finished the exam having been awake for 36 hours, then went to sleep on the notion that if I couldn’t learn the entirety of Calc IV in 5 hours before my exam at 7 PM the next day, I would drop the class (fortunately I was able to and actually somehow got a 97 on the exam; unfortunately the same cannot be said for that thermo midterm).
Even during spring break (I flew directly from Denver to LA then SF to visit friends), the grind never stopped:
Started and finished an accounting problem set (of which I did not know any of the content for) on a 1 hr Uber ride from Stanford to SF
Finished another assignment due at 9 PM (with 6 mins to spare!) that I only realized existed at 8:34 PM while I was in line for airport security
Kept my reading light on all night on my red-eye flight back to Penn because I had a lab report due and a negotiation to prep for
And the grind still continued after:
Locked myself in my lab Monday evening to cram for my midterm Tuesday afternoon. Was going to head back to my dorm around 5 AM, but gave up realizing it was on the other side of campus and I had lab at 8:30 AM in the building next door anyways. Slept in the office.
When I thought it was finally all over, my M&T advisor reminded me that I had over 50 M&TSI applications to read by Friday. Stayed up Thursday night until approx. 3 AM when I realized I was just waitlisting everyone because all the applications started to become a blur.
Woke up at 7 AM on Friday morning to my friend asking me to be her 18+ accompaniment to her wisdom teeth removal appointment at 8 AM - knowing that literally no one else would be awake and she had been waiting for months for an availability, I of course went with her and took my laptop with me so I could read over more applications during the surgery.
This was the reality of my stress level, sleep deprivation, and caffeine intake at the time. People became seriously concerned for me, and I honestly was a bit too. Even though I felt happy with life and would rant about my issues as if it were funny, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could do this for. My roommates grew concerned with the amount of empty energy drink cans stashed outside my room. Whenever I started to feel sick, my mentality was “no time to be sick” and so I would carry around Emergen-C packets around me and just down the powder (w/o even needing water).
Nonstop Conference Hopping
I went back to ETHDenver 2024 after my first time 2 years prior. And from there, I didn’t stop going to conferences. Flying to Dubai for Token2049 mid-April was the first time I was truly traveling alone outside of North America, not meeting up with anyone I knew or joining a group. I fought my way for the opportunity with my elders, and we were able to set up a plan for me getting sponsored for Token.
My last night in Dubai, I was hanging out with the CEO of the largest space tech company behind SpaceX as well as some other really cracked people in a penthouse villa by the FIVE Palm Jumeirah. One of the guys was ex-military and what he said in response to me saying that I was “90% sure I was going to gap” really stuck:
They did a study on soldiers and found that their chance of survival directly correlated to the probability of survival they thought for themselves. And so when you give yourself a percentage probability, say 90%, you’re actually instilling 10% doubt.
From then on, I adopted what I call a “full-send mindset.” I no longer dilly-dallied over decisions and told myself to just commit. Even if I wasn’t actually so sure inside, I told myself I was anyways so I could embody the commitment as much as I could until I manifested it into reality.
I remember texting a lot of these thoughts to one of my friends at Penn a couple weeks before finals (he’s also gapping right now!); here’s an excerpt:
Recently the mindset has just been to lean into fear, like literally if it scares me now I have to do it. And I just wanna take risks now bc sure idk what exactly it is I’m doing but I think its scarier to not know what could have been.
And Dubai wasn’t even the end of it. I managed to time everything perfectly so that I would fly back to Penn just in time for a mandatory lab and class the next Tuesday, and was in Philly for less than 14 hrs before flying again to LA to get scouted for modeling/acting.
It’s Finally Summer!
By now my friends all joked that I was away from campus more often than I was on campus (especially given that I was usually grinding in the library or M&T office or my room instead of in class). My travels only increased after exams were over - here’s a very quick bullet point recap of my summer (click the links to view in image/video):
SF (May 19-24): M&T Immersive Week
Austin (May 28 - June 2): Consensus
Philly (June 3-26): Research for a month
SF (June 27-30): VeChain x BCG x EasyA hackathon
Brussels (July 1-13): Starknet Hacker House + ETHCC + hosting the Shared Security Symposium
Beijing (July 14): 14 hour layover
Kyoto (July 15-23): 9 day co-working post-up with friends
Tokyo (July 24 - Aug 3): spoke at EDCON + 1 week Tokyo explore program funded by Masason Foundation
Taipei (Aug 4): 8 hour layer
SF (Aug 4-6): Visiting my bf
NYC (Aug 7-9): Science of Blockchain Conference
Philly (Aug 10-16): Lab experiments
Denver (Aug 17-21): American Chemical Society Conference
SF (Aug 22-24): Visiting my bf
Philly (Aug 25-30): Packing up my things for my gap year
The best part? All of these flights were sponsored by hackathon reimbursements, my job, Masason, my lab, M&T, fellowships, etc.
I want to take advantage of these travel opportunities when I’m young, while my brain is still malleable and can be shaped by all the different cultures I can experience around the world - because the older you get, the less likely you’ll have people willing to fund opportunities for you, the less energy you’ll have to travel, and the more tied down you’ll be with responsibilities.
With this in mind, you’ll see in my next newsletter that the desire to travel and see more of the world heavily influenced my decision to gap and the places I went to.
Sneak Peak: Gap Year Pt. 1
My reasons for gapping
Travelling to a new country every week
How 2 weeks solo-travelling in Cambodia changed my life
Winning 3 hackathons in 2 months
Find me on my socials:
Website: bit.ly/samantha-ouyang
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/samantha-ouyang
YouTube: www.youtube.com/@sam.sidequest
TikTok: tiktok.com/@sam.sidequest