- Hi, my name is Sajan Raghavan.
I'm a student at Princeton university in the class of 2021
and I'm studying maths.
Since I filmed my day in the life video with Princeton
so as I said, then I was majoring in computer science.
So now I've switched to maths
and I'm really liking that switch.
I'm kind of interested in exploring stuff
at the intersection of maths and computer science.
And I guess on the extracurricular side,
I'm still involved in Princeton Swara and squash.
I've also decided to explore some other things.
I joined the opera company last year.
Got a bit more involved in religious life on campus.
Yeah, so since Princeton switched to online learning,
I guess academic life has changed a fair bit,
for me, the biggest difference,
was because of my new time difference,
so I'm back home in Sydney, Australia.
So a lot of my classes were kind of through
the middle of the night so I was often
just watching recordings and then staying
on top of that and still trying to get as much as I could
out of the classes was a unique challenge.
I guess on top of that, there's also the fact
that because everyone's at home,
you no longer have an easy way of you know,
studying a person with your friends
so, kind of approaching that,
in a more individual way was quite a challenge as well.
Yeah, so I really like doing research
in theoretical computer science,
particularly in machine learning
so, I'm hoping to continue that next year
and hopefully pursue graduate school in computer science.
Yeah, so I think two years ago, I kind of thought
I had like a fixed sense of you know,
what I wanted to do and what made me tick
and I kind of just kept kind of following
that path automatically.
So I think what I would tell myself then
is to kind of, ask myself the tricky questions
and ask myself, you know, what do I really want to get out
of my time here?
What do I really enjoy doing?
And I think I got around to asking myself those questions
and I'm in a better place now,
but I think it would have been nice to attack those earlier.
And I guess the other thing I would say is,
really spend a lot of time with friends because,
in about two years, that might become a whole lot harder.
I'm going to answer this assuming that,
some part of college in the fall is going to be virtual.
So I guess what I would say is just going off my own
experience, doing things virtually for a bit,
it's very easy to get used to the virtual way of life
and kind of forget about the things that made,
or lose sight of the things that made,
in person college so fun and so great.
And so I guess what I would say is to,
do whatever you can to try and hold onto those things
in the fall, even when it may not seem
like the easiest thing to do, so if that means,
finding ways to make friends, or staying in touch
with your existing friends, even though there's this,
there might be this physical separation,
I think that's a really good thing to do.
Yeah, so I'm really, really glad
I switched to the maths major.
I think I reached a point where I realized that I actually
liked how the abstract side of maths could help apply
to a more tangible things like computer science.
And I think, you know, I still take,
I think more computer science classes
than I take maths classes,
but I really enjoy being able to have a grounding
in maths and taking lots of theoretical classes
and I think that's helped me on
the computer science front as well.
I think in terms of my research interests as well,
that's a balance I've really enjoyed exploring.
I've undertaken a few projects in theoretical
computer science, a few in machine learning,
and that's an intersection I'm really enjoying right now.
Yeah, so this goes back to what I said earlier
about asking myself the hard questions about,
you know, what I really enjoy doing.
And I think I had a realization towards
the end of sophomore year that I had kind of spent
too much of my time on academics
and going forward I wanted to change that a bit
and I think that's something I really turned around
in junior year and I'm really glad I did.
So yes I still remain really, really involved in,
Princeton Swara and I still play a bit of club squash,
and those have both been great.
I also decided to join the opera company
in my junior year at Princeton, which was great because,
I did a bit of opera singing in high school
and I'd lost touch with it for the first two years
in college so it was really nice to get back into it.
And I also, this started in sophomore year actually,
but I also got more involved in religious life groups
on campus, which was really, really nice.
(upbeat music)