Sui Generis (ERC)

I was fortunate enough to be awarded this amazing scholarship, and today I want to share a little of my experience with you, the upcoming recipients. I am a big critic of the notion that we all share the same underlying experience. I am adamant that my experience was unique, and yours will be too. That’s why I titled this blog “Sui Generis”, Latin for “of its own kind.” But even though my experience is unique, there are always lessons worth sharing that you might learn from. To be clear, I don’t consider myself worthy of giving advice. So, the following are not rules, but rather pointers or hints from my own journey that you might find handy.

Make Long-Lasting Friendships

First, I want to give you a glimpse of a day in my life as an undergraduate. I would wake up at 5:20 AM, having slept only about six hours. I lived about half an hour from the bus pickup point and needed to be there by 6:40 AM. From the moment I left my house, it took about two hours to reach the university. In total, that was four hours of commuting every day.

This sounds brutal, but I genuinely didn’t mind the time I spent on the bus. This was because I always had the most interesting conversations about the most random topics with my dear friend, Mostafa. The crazy thing is that I even grew to enjoy my commute. I looked forward to those hours of discussion more than anything else in my day. Things that seem unbearable from the outside can pass smoothly or even become entertaining when you have the right company.

This friendship even led to some unexpected adventures. For some reason, I had a running joke with my friends about the German Bundestag. So when I later visited Germany, I went out of my way to go to Berlin just to take a photo in front of the Bundestag. Here is an image of my very happy self in front of it¹. You never know; sometimes, the jokes you share with friends can turn into reality.

I want to put great emphasis on “long-lasting.” You want to find friends you will still be talking to five, ten, or even fifteen years from now. Having no friends is better than having friendships that are transitory or superficial. Always look for quality, not quantity. It’s far superior to have a handful of deep, perpetual friendships than a huge number of shallow, transactional ones.

Have Fun

This is one of those things we constantly need to be reminded of. We, myself included, often forget one of life’s greatest hacks: having fun. We get so consumed by where we are, where we want to go, and, mistakenly, where others are, that we completely lose the plot.

You need to put a little extra effort into everything you do to ensure a fun element is embedded within it. I am telling you, you can absolutely have fun doing anything, even the most tedious tasks like completing an assignment or finishing a semester project. You just have to be mindful about it. I had the most fun while finishing a project just hours before the deadline or studying for an exam on the day it was scheduled². Sometimes, a little adrenaline kick is all you need.

Savor Every Moment

Anyone working in the field of AI knows that we continuously move the goalposts. Once we built models that could perform classification and regression better than humans, we said, “This isn’t creative.” We needed models that could generate content like images or sound. Once we had these generative models, we thought we could rest assured and enjoy the win. Funnily enough, we now have models that can generate almost any type of content, but the goal has shifted again to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). You can see the pattern here. We are trapped in an endless cycle; no matter what milestone we achieve, we always feel we are behind. We just need one more thing.

This isn’t unique to the AI field. We are all victims of this mindset. Appreciate every single moment of your undergraduate journey to the fullest. If you are solving a challenging assignment, enjoy the struggle. If you are applying for that internship you’ve always wanted, enjoy the process and the anticipation. If this is your first semester and you are frustrated by the new system, enjoy the novelty. Let me tell you, even in the most difficult moments, there is always something to delight in. So, savor every moment.

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Addendum

I didn’t talk about courses, exams, or anything related to studying because I believe those are the easiest things to figure out. You will become a master at these monotonous tasks after just a semester or two. Most importantly, keep your eye on your north star and follow it religiously. You will eventually graduate, but it’s the direction that truly matters.