Exercise is one of the most important tenets of my life. This includes exercising physically at least 3-4 times a week (but most likely way more), reading books and listening to podcasts, and frequent meditation. Even though I think every skill can and should be “exercised”, or practiced, I will generalize my main avenues of exercise into physical, mental, and spiritual.
Physical
With a dad who grew up swimming every morning, playing field hockey in the afternoons, and lifting at night, and a brother who has arms bigger than my head, it’s kind of hard to not to be physically fit in my family. Fortunately, I love sports and physical exercise and I grew up trying out every sport under the sun. I played soccer for about 10 years, playing for travel teams near the end, and swam for nearly as much time, even though I was never nearly as good as my brother. I also had some stints playing basketball for 3 years in elementary school, a season or two playing tee-ball, and even two weeks of rugby while I had a bruised clavicle (not my best idea). I’ve also won tournaments in badminton, running, and pickleball, and I almost went to the pickleball nationals tournament in 2021 but had to drop out due to it coinciding with the week of final exams.
However, probably the two most important sports of my young life, except perhaps soccer, were volleyball and ultimate frisbee. In my freshman year of high school, I decided to start going to the pickup games held by the Ultimate Frisbee Club, which at that time was over 70 members strong and overran my school’s field with games almost every Friday. I still remember that I was the only Freshman to play that year, and while I was not very good, I did really enjoy it. Later in the year, I also made the momentous decision to not only try out for my school’s tennis team, which my dad pressed me to join as he had played for years, but also the volleyball team despite having no prior experience. I ended up making both teams but decided to drop tennis in favor of volleyball, figuring I would try something new. Little would I know just how far that decision would take me.
In that spring, I played JV volleyball and had a fantastic time, getting to know my teammates really well on the hours-long bus rides to games, starting middle for the games, and wearing the free merch I got with pride. That first season was also a test of my time management as I would often come back from my daily practices or games after 9:00 pm and sometimes even past midnight for games that were far away. I still remember lots of homework being done on the bus!
I learned to love volleyball so much that I actually tried out for the local club team called Yorktowne Volleyball Club in Pennsylvania. Despite having a bruised collarbone which I got, funnily enough, from playing ultimate, I was still able to try out and ended up making the team and playing under my high school coach for that year. It was a total change of pace as I was suddenly by far the worst player on the team and at first I felt very awkward. But soon enough, I got to know my teammates a lot better and I ended up becoming very good friends with all of them and I still keep in touch with some to this day. Over the course of the year, I got to play in tournaments ranging from down the road in York, PA and just outside Philadelphia all the way to Rochester, NY. At that tournament, which we had to go through 4 foot walls of snow to get to, we not only got second place out of more than 80 teams, securing a bid to nationals, we also beat a bunch of trash-talking Canadians who claimed to be the best team in Canada.
That led into my second season with my high school team, where I started to take more of a leadership role within the JV team and the team as a whole. I had definitely gotten a lot better since the year before and we did a lot better at various tournaments than we had the year before.
The volleyball season ended with open club nationals in May which was held in Dallas, Texas. My first ever visit to Texas, I had a great time exploring around the city with my parents, including going to the 6th Floor Museum and the Art Museum. The tournament itself was held in the huge conference center there. We did not do so great as we had in the season itself, but it was still a great experience to play against some of the greatest teams in the country (we even played against a team from Puerto Rico!).
Throughout the summer, I kept on playing frisbee for fun with friends and I started to actually get to know the people in a lot better. These people would become some of my greatest friends throughout college and one of them would actually influence me to come to Texas A&M.
Over the past two years, I had also simultaneously been playing at a very high level of soccer, first for Keystone F.C. in my freshman year, and then for Eagle F.C. in my sophomore year. In each case, I got to play at tournaments around Pennsylvania and in Maryland throughout the year, including an indoor season in the winter, and we actually placed at quite a few tournaments. As one can understand, during spring when I had volleyball practice every day, this made playing soccer simultaneously very hard. This is what eventually led me to drop it in favor of other sports.
In my junior year, I decided to drop out of Yorktowne V.C., mainly due to the costs. I instead played for my school’s club team, called Soul. It was a lot of fun because not only was I being coached by my high school coach again, I got to play with all of my high school teammates for about a tenth of the cost. We definitely were not as great as the Yorktowne Team but we still played hard.
Unfortunately, due to COVID, my junior season was cut short 1 week into the season. Soon after, when school was cancelled as well, I spent much of my time playing ultimate with friends, and when even that was banned, just running and biking by myself. While it was definitely a lonely time, it was the first time I had to stay disciplined to stay in shape and I could not just rely on weekly practices for exercise.
Senior year, when things started getting back into the swing of things, I again played Soul while continuing to play ultimate frisbee almost every other day. Things looked a lot different, with masks required and sized-down practices, but it was still a great time. My senior season in volleyball was marred by two injuries: first, I started getting terrible pains in my left knee, possibly caused by patellar tendonitis; second, I fell off my skateboard going at almost 30 mph trying to impress my ex-girlfriend and ended up with a hole in my arm that was two inches deep. Despite this, this was the best year of volleyball for the team yet, seeing us make states but miss the districts championship by only 1 point.
That summer, I had the chance to play competitive ultimate frisbee for the first time at a summer league in Harrisburg. That was the first time I learned about the actual rules and strategy of ultimate, and despite not being of great help to the team for the first couple of games, I really got the hang of it and became a great asset near the end, helping lead the team to the championships. I also realized at that point that I was not going to pursue volleyball any longer, but rather focus on ultimate frisbee. Also during the summer, I got far more into hiking, got three scuba certifications, and went canoeing.
With the start of my freshman year, I tried out for the D1 ultimate team and ended up making the A-Team. Becoming a core defensive piece for the team, I would help lead the defensive lines at tournaments in Austin, Tampa, Denver, and more, all while getting better and having a lot of fun. I also started getting into weightlifting, as much as I could, but with ultimate and other activities I just did not really have the time to be consistent.
With the summer of 2022 seeing me traveling abroad with limited time to workout and eat heavy meals but almost continuous walking in over 80-100ºF weather for hours at a time, I lost a lot of weight and muscle mass. When I came back, sick and feeble, I was utterly disappointed and ashamed. I finally found the motivation in my shame to do what I had always wanted to do and go consistently to the gym for the first time. Starting the way you’re never supposed to start, with 6 days a week, I committed myself to going and getting stronger and more muscular. With a few hiccups at the beginning, I gradually got the hang of it and I never missed more than 1 day a week, if that.
Eventually, it had been more than three months of this program and I had definitely gotten noticeably stronger. After testing my maxes on the 15th week, I had a 235 Bench, 315 Squat, and 295 Deadlift (all for 1 rep and without belts, straps, etc.). While this was a lot better than I ever could have done before, I was nowhere near finished.
In my second year of ultimate for Texas A&M, I played our first major tournament of the year, Missouri Loves Company, in Columbia, MO. It was a great time, even though it was about 20ºF the entire weekend, and we definitely got a lot better as a team.
I spent the entirety of the winter of 2022-23 in Australia and I lost a lot of the progress I had gained both in weightlifting and ultimate. Fortunately, though, I still found times to work out in gyms across the country and ran a couple of miles at least twice a week.
Just a week after I cam back from Australia, I participated in Dallas Legion tryouts, which is a professional ultimate frisbee team. Despite not being selected to move on in the tryout process, I was incredibly proud of myself for facing my fears and playing against some great players from across Texas (some who I had only ever seen on TV!).
Then, only two weekends after that, the team went to Tampa to play at the annual Florida Warmup tournament. Unfortunately, in one of our final games, I dove for a block and landed on my knee. I immediately felt pain and, within a few days, realized that I had fractured it. That prevented me from playing any more ultimate for the rest of the season (and even walk for a couple of weeks without incredible pain).
However, that break from ultimate helped me regain time to spend on weightlifting and to start working toward a new dream: Climbing mountains. By March, my knee was feeling much better (still hurt, but better) and I began climbing one of the tallest buildings on my school’s campus for hours with a progressively increasing weight in my backpack. Using 5 lb bags of rice, I went from 20 lbs to 60 lbs in just 3 weeks and climbed up and down 1000 feet of stairs every other day. I had signed up for one of the last spots on a climb to Mt. Baker in Washington from May 14-19. One of the hardest, most lonely training I’ve ever had to do, but it was all worth it since I successfully summitted the mountain with relative ease.
I wasn’t done with mountaineering though. A couple of weeks after, on June 4, my friend Burke and I went from the bottom to the top of the contiguous United States in less than 24 hours; that’s right, we went from Badwater Basin (-282 ft) to the summit of Mt. Whitney (+14505 ft) in 20 hours. We actually left from Whitney Portal at exactly midnight on June 4, made it up in 11.5 hours, back down in 5.5 hours, and then back to Vegas about 30 MINUTES before our flight left for Dallas. One of the hardest physical things I’ve ever had to do for sure.
Soon after, I formed a goal to run a 10K without stopping. After never running for more than 40 minutes IN MY LIFE, I was able to successfully run the 10K in 1:03:17 after just a month of training runs (none of which were more than 4 miles in length).
I ended up reaching the 1000 lb club later in the year in November and ran my first marathon in December.
For 2024, I am focusing on training for Denali 4 times a week and improving my pickleball skills. For Denali, that means up to 4 days of 3-hour stair climbs with a weighted pack (40-70 lbs) and 1 day of up to 4 hours of sled pulls with a weighted pack (40-70 lbs) and a weighted sled (65-120 lbs).
I am proud to say I summited Denali! After months of hard work, this was truly a monumental accomplishment. I can confidently say I one of the 50 youngest people to ever climb Denali (out of almost 20000 who have climbed it).
After Denali, I started training for multiple goals in the upcoming years: Climbing Aconcagua and Kilimanjaro; doing a half and full Iron Man; running a 50K; and climbing the Northwest Face of Half Dome. This includes stair climbers 3 times a week, pulling a sled once a week, rock climbing three times a week, and running, swimming, and biking each once a week (all, of course, while still hitting the gym six times a week).
Mental
I love challenging myself every day, either by attempting to learn a new software, or by sight reading a hard song on bass guitar, or in a myriad of other ways. I cannot provide a clear, chronological story, so I will instead provide lists of things that I feel have helped me expand my mind.
Literature
Biography
- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Classics
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- A Separate Peace by John Knowles
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
- Don Quixote by Cervantes
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkein
- Inferno by Dante Alighieri
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
- Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
- Mi Antonia by Willa Cather
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
- On The Road by Jack Kerouac
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- Steppenwolfe by Herman Hesse
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- The Art of War by Sun Tzu
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Handmaid’s Tail by Margaret Atwood
- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
- The Odyssey by Homer
- The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli
- The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Walden by David Thoreau
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Crime/Mystery
- Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
- The Big Four by Agatha Christie
- The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
- The Murder on The Oriental Express by Agatha Christie
Entrepreneurship and Personal Development
- Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
- Good to Great by Jim Collins
- How to Know a Person by David Brooks
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
- Range by David Epstein
- Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
- The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
- The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
- The Entrepreneurship Rollercoaster by Darren Hardy
- The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufmann
- The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Fantasy
- American Gods by Neil Gaiman
- Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling
- Heroes of Olympus Series by Rick Riordan
- Maze Runner Series by James Dashner
- Percy Jackson Series by Rick Riordan
- The Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan
Graphic Novels
- Asterix Series by Goscinny and Uderzo
- Tintin Series by Georges Remi
Horror/Thriller
- American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
- Carrie by Stephen King
- Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
- Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk
Investing
- How to Make Money in Stocks by William O’Neil
- Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets by John Murphy
- The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
- The Man Who Solved the Market by Gregory Zuckerman
Leadership
- Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars by Patrick Lencioni
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
- The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni
Non-Fiction
- The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker
Novels
- Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
- Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis
- Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
- My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
- The Color of Water by James McBride
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Plays
- Macbeth by William Shakespeare
- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
- The Crucible by Arthur Miller
- The Cursed Child by J. K. Rowling
- The Doll House by Henrik Ibsen
- A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Poetry
- Howl by Allen Ginsberg
- The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot
Science Fiction
- 1984 by George Orwell
- 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
- Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
- Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem
- Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
- Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
- I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
- Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Micro by James Crichton
- Minority Report by Philip K. Dick
- Nightfall by Isaac Asimov
- Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
- Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
- Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
- Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
- The Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Futurological Conference by Stanislaw Lem
- The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
- The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
- The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells
- The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
- The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
- The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
- The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
- Ubik by Philip K. Dick
- We Can Remember It for You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick
Short Stories
- Allegory of the Cave by Plato
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
- Second Variety by Philip K. Dick
- The Bet by Anton Chekhov
- The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
Travel
- 1000 Places to See Before You Die by Patricia Shultz
- A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
- Best American Travel Writing 2021 selected by Padma Lakshmi
- Glacier Mountaineering by Tyson and Clelland
- Training for The New Alpinism by Steve House
Others
- This I Believe edited by Allison and Gediman
Spiritual
I have only started meditating consistently when I, on a whim, took a “Meditation for Stress” class in my first semester of college. In it, I was able to step away from all the stresses of college for an hour and just feel in the moment and I felt that I was truly able to grow from it. That has influenced to continue my meditation and inner reflection on at least a weekly basis, if not daily.
I do not prescribe to any one faith so I cannot say that I find spiritual solace in a traditional place of worship. Rather, I feel most at peace in places of untouched nature, such as hiking in national parks. I feel as if I am connected to the earth and thus to myself, helping me ground my thoughts and reflect on my life.
If I had to pick any part of organized religion that I most believe in, it would be karma: Instead of living by dogma, I believe the universe tells you when you should change your actions.
Long-Term Plans
- Get into the 1000 pound club
- Done
- Half-marathon, then a full marathon
- Done
- Do a backflip
- Hike Denali and the other tallest mountains in the world
- Denali done on June 13, 2024
- Do an Iron Man
- Do an ultramarathon (50K, 50 miler, 100k, and/or 100 miler)
- Climb Half-Dome
- Climb the Cassin Ridge of Denali