Since starting college, I’ve often found myself at crossroads—choosing clubs, labs, people to surround myself with, and classes to take. Alongside so many other decisions that I once thought would break me, like the weight of choosing wrong would be unbearable. But I made them—and life just kept going.

As the greedy, hopeful humans we are, we always want everything. We crave the “ideal” life, where every part is perfectly aligned with our expectations.

So it’s natural that we often wonder: What if I had made a different choice? Would I be more content? Would my parents be prouder of me?

What if I told you I’ve come to believe that part of our future is already pre-written? Another wild idea (along with the situationship thing) that high school Amy would’ve definitely raised an eyebrow at.

I’m not saying this to excuse slacking off. I just believe our futures exist as percentage likelihoods—stored in a massive library of parallel lives, like in The Midnight Library.

How hard you work now determines which “book” you get to open later on.

So maybe, if I try hard enough, I’ll find the version of my life that feels most right—and earn the right to live it.

But here’s the catch: There is no “perfect” life. No matter which path you choose, you’ll be giving something up.

In the version of your life where you become wildly successful—an AI guru, let’s say—you might one day find yourself standing at your mother’s grave, regretting the time you didn’t spend with her.

You might wish you’d sacrificed a few hundred hours of LeetCode to be just a normal SWE. That trade-off might suddenly feel worth everything.

In another version of your life, maybe you’re an Olympic swimmer. But you’re friendless beyond the pool, awkward with strangers, and quietly wondering what it would’ve been like to just go to school like everyone else.

Each choice means closing the door to other lives you could have lived.

The doors behind you lock as you walk into the next room of the library.

Yikes. That’s a lot of regret to carry.

At the beginning of this year, I stood at one of those doors again: Choosing between the preprofessional path and the entrepreneurial one I’ve always loved. Caught up in peer pressure from my friend group, I decided to give quant a shot.

TLDR: Detest it. Hate it. Felt pointless.

Fast forward to the start of second semester, and I found myself at the same intersection.