 We are at this tripod stable. Alright. Alright, I guess we're back. It's been a little while. First of all, I want to say, hope you guys enjoyed the new intro. Worked for a really long time on that to get it perfect, and I was dealing with a lot of song copyright claimed things, so that's why it's so short. Literally, it's as long as it could possibly be. But the idea is I could switch out some clips as some new stuff happens and kind of continually update it, keeping the same song though. Obviously, so don't worry about that. So anyways, it's been over three weeks since I posted a video, and let me tell you guys I missed it a lot. But it also felt so good to take a break. Like I haven't felt that mentally like free in a long time. As the last year was wrapping up my relationship with YouTube and with this channel was definitely not healthy, I was just putting so much effort into like pumping out content for you guys and then I just wasn't seeing any growth in my channel at all on it. It was just really disheartening, but I just pushed that all away. We're good now. Had my break. During the break though, I thought it would be important to kind of reflect on the past couple months where the channel had been, what had happened, and kind of set some new goals for this year. So I guess in this video I'm going to be talking about my new goals for this year, as well as kind of giving some tips to you guys for keeping your own goals and just kind of catch you up on what's been happening because it's been a lot. This is gonna be a really good video though. I want to put a lot of effort into this first video, so stick around. So where have I been? Well I finished up finals, went back home for a couple weeks, and then I spent two weeks in Bogota, Colombia. Actually around the entire country of Colombia performing magic with Magician Blackboarders. The trip was absolutely amazing, life-changing. I have a bunch of footage from the trip and I'm excited to share it with you guys, but now I am back at Yale for my second semester of my sophomore year, and it has been quite a time so far. What's up guys? We're here in front of Sterling the Library. We're walking home. It is very, very wet. But I'm finally ready to get back to making some videos. Finally settled in, decided what class I'm taking this semester. So with that let's start talking about my goals for this upcoming semester. Alright I'm gonna start off by talking about how I've been making videos for this past year and some of the problems that I've had with it. As you guys know a lot of my content has been focused around Yale. Why you may ask? Well you put Yale in the title of the video and it gets twice as many views. Why? I don't know. Do I like it? No. Am I probably going to continue to put Yale in the title of most of my videos? Probably. I don't want to. I don't want to. We'll get to that. This brings me to my first big goal for this year which is making the channel more about me and less about Yale and Yale dorms and Yale parties and I've been making videos just to like satisfy every little person's need and now I've realized that like you go on YouTube and you search Yale and you start scrolling through and it's me and it's me and it's me and it's just the same like same stuff same thumbnail it's all so similar and it just like I'm done with that. I'm tired of falling into this cookie cutter like Ivy League YouTuber stereotype. I'm done. I'm done. I want people to be watching my videos because of me not because they see Yale in the title. With this first goal of mine though I want to start and introduce kind of one of my first tips for when it comes to creating goals and trying to stick to them that is writing your goals down. This is something that has helped me tremendously over the past six months or so. Basically take a take a piece of paper, take your journal, take a couple of note cards, think of your goal, think of how the exact details of it how you want it to be portrayed and write it down on a piece of paper and then keep it somewhere that you can have easy access to it. You can try to keep track of your goals in your head all day long but until you write them down on paper they don't really exist. Putting that pen to paper and committing to your goal kind of almost like contextualizes it and makes it like almost tangible in a sense like it can't go away once you put it down on paper. So we're walking let's introduce the next big problem with this channel. As you guys know I try to fill as much as I possibly can while I'm at Yale because I'm hanging with friends, I'm having a good time, it's great content. There's only one problem. I don't have any time to edit all this crispy content. Most people don't realize this but editing takes forever. For an 8-minute vlog I'll probably be editing for at least two hours. That does include thumbnails, render time or even you know editing the tags in the description on YouTube. I've gotten pretty fast at Premiere 2. I mean you should see me editing it's absolutely ridiculous. I know all the keyboard shortcuts and everything. Last year alone it probably would have taken four hours to pump out one of my videos that I can do in two now. Realistically I only have enough time to edit one vlog every two weeks. Realistically I'm filming about enough content for three or four. I mean I've tried but I sacrificed my sleep schedule and my sanity. So when do I edit? I edit on bricks. I'll come home and try to edit as much as I can on my Christmas or my Thanksgiving break but things don't always work out. Like I'll come home with like probably 200 gigs of footage on my computer that needs to be edited. I have the same routine. I'll plop down on my couch right when I get home and my little brothers will plop down next to me and they'll start pegging me with questions about like how's college, what's college and begging me to play Fortnite and all these in there just trying to crank through as much editing as possible so I can actually enjoy my break. A lot of times I'll have enough footage for what I think is like 10 separate vlogs but then the stories will line up perfectly or I don't have enough help or tips to kind of like make the vlogs good but I'll try to pump out 10 vlogs out of it anyways and what they end up being is just lackluster videos and then when I'm editing all this stuff I get in this mindset where I'm being super productive and I'm just like oh I didn't pump out more videos like and I'll just film a bunch of like talking head like just like random advice videos that aren't necessarily helpful and definitely aren't fun for me to make. They don't satisfy my creative drive. Basically this year I want to make videos that make me happy and kind of help me output my creativity into something. If I have to take six hours to edit a vlog I will because I want to make the best possible thing for you guys. I mean that's it. I mean quality over quantity all the way for 2019. That means one video every week or even one video every two weeks. That's the way it's gonna have to be. Alright so next tip for 2019 when it comes to making your goals is to in addition to writing them down you're going to want to put your goals in a convenient location i.e. your desk drawer or somewhere where you can access them every day. As soon as you wake up every morning you get out of bed you do your push-ups or whatever you do in the morning whatever your morning routine is and then you immediately go over there you pull your note cards out of the thing and you reach your goals and you read them every single day so you can reaffirm them into your head every single morning so that you know what you're going out there every day to achieve. This is something that I've been doing for almost the past past six months maybe even a year now and it's really changed the way that I go about like going through my day and just getting after it early. Cannot recommend that more. I know a lot of you guys are high schoolers and have big dreams of getting into your top college and don't know how to achieve it. Well in addition to using the tips I've laid out in this video I highly recommend checking out the sponsor of today's video Crimson Education. If you've been watching my videos for a while I guarantee you've been recommended at least one of Crimson Education's YouTube videos that have been created with the student in mind to help them get into their dream school. Crimson connects students with a team of strategist mentors tutors to help them with everything from SAT prep tutoring to college essay brainstorming to extracurricular and leadership help. The best part is that it actually works. They've had over 460 offers to top 50 colleges just since 2015 and if you're international don't worry about it they have over 25 offices across the globe. If you've ever felt lost in your college applications or just want to stand out in that growing competition it seems so intense these days. Highly recommend checking Crimson out. They'll do a great job for you and set you up with an affordable plan that is right for you and will help you get into your dream school so I'll leave the link below. Definitely go check it out you won't regret it. Lastly I want to take a moment to reflect on the content of my videos. Where do I fall? Well right now I would consider myself about one foot in the college application prep niche and one foot in the college life college vlogger niche. Not that this is a bad spot to be but I would definitely like to expand to other areas this year. For example I always get mad when I post a magic video and it barely makes it to 2,000 views. Well yeah of course it barely makes it to 2,000 views because I'm posting a magic video on a channel that is mainly high schoolers trying to get into college or college students just want to get a peek into my life. Why would they watch it? So rather than just staring clear of that this year why don't I make an effort to kind of dive head first in the magic niche you know make some more videos about magic it's a huge part of my life. Like I was just on tour for two weeks in Columbia performing like two to three shows a day to like Colombian kids at like it's wild you know it's a huge part of my life. In addition to magic I also want to make more videos about computer science. What I'm studying the personal projects I'm working on stuff like that. Ultimately I just want to be making videos about my passions not about every little thing that somebody wants me to make a video about in the comments section. With this my third and final goal-setting tip actually has to deal with the way that you write your goals. This is something that I started doing my freshman year at Yale and it has helped me a lot into kind of realizing my goals and getting me into the mindset of like hey I can actually achieve this. So what you actually have to do is you have to write your goals in the present tense. What does this mean? Well for example rather than saying hey this year I want to make more videos about my passions. Don't write that down. What you're gonna write down on the note card and you're gonna read every morning instead is I am making videos about my passions. See the difference it's a little weird but it really helps with visualizing your goals and ultimately realizing them. It's a small touch and it seems really weird but if you keep telling yourself you're gonna achieve something you're going to do it eventually. I'm sure there's some psychology into why that works or why it's so powerful if I find anything I'll link it down below other than that just just do it it's it's great. Guess that about sums of the video those are my three big things that I wanted to kind of change and shift with my YouTube channel this year and also my three big tips when it comes to kind of writing down your goals and realizing them. Remember my first tip was to actually physically write down your goals so you have that physical tangible thing that will keep reminding you to achieve it. Next thing is to take that note card or that piece of paper that you wrote it on and read it every morning so you're never forgetting what you're going out there every day and going to go achieve and the third step is to when you're actually writing the goals is to write them in the present tense to help you realize and visualize them more. Those are my three tips for goal setting if you'd like to have more videos along this vein definitely let me know in the comments below but that pretty much sums up this video. I couldn't be more excited to be back and putting out videos for you guys like I'm so hyped trying to have a lot more fun with this channel this year. Get hyped for this next year because I don't know I just I have a feeling like this this is going to be my year. You know in fact I'll take a piece of my own advice. This year is my year.