 media access. Today joins a UC Davis student who's the student everyone wants to be. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. Yeah of course. So the reason I say you are the student that everyone wants to be or at least the one I want to be is you are able to balance school and multiple extracurriculars and excel at them. So my question for you is how do you do that? I think the first thing is I like to kind of budget out my day so I like to plan out what I'm gonna do that day in terms of school and in terms of piano. So if I have like projects going on and music that I'm learning I like to decide exactly what chunk of work I'm going to do that day. And the second thing is just being really efficient because a lot of times I know for me I get distracted like I will play the piano and be like watching TV or something like that and I really learn kind of over the years to just focus on doing one thing at a time. So if I'm playing piano I'll focus on just getting it done as quickly as possible without any distraction. Definitely that's great. So you play piano and what's your major at UC Davis? I'm computer science major. Computer science and what year are you? I'm a third year but I'm graduating this year. Oh awesome wait so you're graduating early too. Yeah. So how did that happen? It just sort of happened I'm always someone who likes to keep busy and so I just kind of planned out my schedule to make me busy but not too busy and then I just kind of finished everything early it never really was a plan to come in and graduate early just sort of happened. Wow so did you take any summer classes or you just took a lot of units per quarter or what? I did take summer classes but I also just took a lot of units per quarter that's just kind of how I like to have my schedule. I think if it's if I'm too free then I feel really unproductive I feel like you don't get anything done. Okay but too free it would it doesn't seem like even just as a computer science major alone you know it seems like there's this spare time is limited and so you also do intramural badminton as well and so how did when did you start that? I've been playing badminton since high school so when I came to college I just sort of continued playing at the arc every Monday Wednesday Friday just with friends that's kind of like my socializing my free time and just the way to get exercise in. Yeah so out of all your activities you would say is that when your stress relief kind of in a way because you have a lot going on like so when you first came to Davis freshman year was it hard to adjust did you start your sports right away did you start piano right away or did you ease into it? When I first came to Davis it wasn't that hard to adjust I think in high school I went to a really rigorous high school so I was sort of already used to juggling playing badminton in high school and having practice and doing my school work and I didn't originally start playing piano when I came into Davis I didn't even know we really had a music department until one of my friends who's in the symphony introduced me to like the music building and showed me that we had practice rooms that everyone can use and that there were teachers giving lessons and so I think around my sophomore year my fall quarter of sophomore year I started taking lessons and I just completely fell in love with it again and just been playing ever since. Oh that's so wonderful so when did you start playing piano just like in your life to begin with? I started playing when I was six my parents signed me up just as an extracurricular to have something to do because music is always you know good a good thing to learn and I really didn't like it at all so I think when I was in sixth grade they finally let me quit I was always begging them to let me quit because you know no kid really wants to practice all the time and it's so lonely sometimes because you're by yourself and I didn't want to do any of it and then I didn't really play anymore I never thought I really would come back to it until sophomore year of college and I started getting involved in the music department and playing in groups and things like that and just I really love it. Wow and so that's not just a hobby though you also do competitions right? Not usually just this one but I would say it's more of like a serious hobby it is a hobby in that I don't really plan to pursue it as a career but I definitely do take it seriously just like kind of taking another class like I treat it as like another class that I'm taking. That's awesome so tell me about the competition you won. So the symphony holds the concerto competition every year it's just to choose a soloist to play as like the solo piece for their last concert of the year and last year I knew I really wanted to do it just because as a pianist we don't usually learn pieces with orchestra just we just there's so much solo music that we never really get to learn it unless there's a reason and so I kind of wanted to enter just to give me a reason to learn that type of piece and just because I thought it would be good to work on something very big and I never expected anything to come out of it I never expected to win at all or nothing but yeah I just I still remember like on the competition day I just kind of like let it all go and really didn't think about like the pressure about winning or anything like that I just wanted to play that piece that I've worked so hard on over the years and like it just I don't know it just happened that's so amazing so did you how long did you work on the piece like did you work together with the orchestra how did that work so you work with your own teacher so the way the competition works is everybody has a piano accompanist you don't play with the orchestra unless you're chosen to play in the concert so I didn't start working with the orchestra until last week actually up until now it's just been with my teacher on the second piano and I started it in October I think she and I decided that we were going to do the competition last spring quarter at the end of last spring and then October I really started working on the piece and I've kind of worked on it really hard and then put it aside and then worked on it really hard and then put it aside so were you really proud of how it turned out did you mess up at all or obviously not since you won right but I feel like when you're a musician you kind of you know you can notice things that the audience often doesn't notice it was actually funny I actually did mess up I thought I actually went really bad because my I remember my first six notes came out wrong and I think that was the best thing that could have happened because after those first six notes came out wrong in my mind I was just like oh well you know it's over time to just have fun and really enjoy it and the rest of the piece went really well well that's perfect it kind of gave you a little deep breath you know you were able to enjoy it which is important and then you ended up winning so that's awesome so what is what is your favorite part of being able to do everything in college like I know there are lots of like there are a lot of different activities that you can participate in and you are able to do them all and I think that the goal is when you know when you're in high school you're figuring everything out and so why do you think it's a good thing that you were able to do all of that because I know a lot of people tend to focus on their major and they'll join activities related to their major so what why I just like the diversity and it gives you multiple things to kind of cycle between I know for me especially badminton when I have really bad days in the gym like if I have a couple bad days in a row it's really stressful and kind of playing less badminton and focusing more on piano it kind of relieves that stress a little bit and just being able to cycle through things because when you focus on one thing so much you get so burnt out after a while and you really start to not love it anymore it starts to become a source of stress for you and just being able to cycle through multiple things kind of helps me not be stressed about anything yeah so you say the your method is to kind of focus on one thing then put it aside for a while it seems like that's a theme why do you do that instead of just working on it all little by little I think with badminton and piano and with a lot of things if you work too hard on it if you focus too much on one thing especially something that requires a lot of emotion like piano it tends to actually get worse for me I know if I'm working really hard on a piece and I'm working on it day after day it tends to actually get worse and I tend to get burnt out and I tend to not want to play it anymore not feel anything for the piece anymore and so it's good to just set it aside and also I find when I don't play badminton for a while or when I don't play a certain piece for a while and when I come back to it it's actually better because I have a fresh outlook I'm excited to work on it again things like that that's great so what taught you the self-discipline that comes along with that with comes along with balancing all that you know I think because for me I think that I swim and when I swim it teaches me discipline because I know I have to keep going but is there what were your parents really like did they influence you to work hard was it just kind of how you are what do you think I don't think it was my parents because now badminton piano they're just hobbies and I think it's not really disciplined but it's just that I really enjoy doing all those things I think I don't have to force myself to play piano I rarely have to force myself to play piano or to go to the gym things like that just because I enjoy it and if I find that I'm not enjoying it then I tend to scale back I think it's just all in the balance I don't force myself oh I have to play piano every day you know if sometimes I'm not feeling it and there's no like deadline coming up then I'll just take like a few days off or something it's just not being so hard on yourself I think all the time so do you participate in badminton competitions as well ever I do I play a few tournaments I play the Davis tournament sometimes it used to be every year but not so much now and also there's a tournament at Berkeley that I play pretty regularly as well and just some open tournaments like that that's great so your music tell me a little more about your music your piano do you go to lessons is it like it's not a class right it is a class I do get units for it so I have private lessons with my teacher is just once a week and it's for an hour and she and I just work on whatever I want to work on basically I kind of tell her what pieces I'm working on and she just helps me and then aside from that I also have rehearsals with other people I like playing chamber music in groups playing as an accompanist for people so during the week I'll have some rehearsals like scattered throughout and also some of the UC Davis ensembles so I used to be in like jazz ensemble and I'm still in symphony right now and so we rehearse set number of days per week and that those are classes that's great so career-wise you probably want to pursue something regarding your major right even though you love your right piano so much so how do you plan on keeping piano a part of your life even when you don't have those lessons as motivation so I'm still planning to take lessons when I graduate I've already talked to a teacher and she said she has extra room for students in the Bay Area where I live and I definitely wouldn't be spending so much time on it because I'm not really sure with work and everything sometimes life gets in the way but I definitely plan to continue learning new music to see where I can go with my music and just keeping it as a hobby I think even if I don't have lessons as motivation but just like playing for fun is great sometimes too definitely you seem to love it a lot that's so awesome so three years you've graduated and you also took these music units did those count for your major at all yes they counted I used them to fulfill all my GE's okay yeah well that's so awesome I can't believe you were able to do all that I'm so impressed with you and everything that you've accomplished so thank you congratulations so anything if you could give because I'm a high school senior right now if you could give advice to high school seniors who are about to go to college and they want to pursue everything what's your advice my advice is to just take care of yourself first I know so many people in college they feel so much stress all the time they feel like you know they have all these deadlines and things like that they feel like they force themselves to do things and I think the most important part is if you don't really enjoy it then kind of step back and look at whether it's worth forcing yourself to do things like obviously for school sometimes not everyone wants to study and you just have to kind of suck it up and do it but for other things like hobbies you can't really let it get you down like it hobbies should be a source of fun I think just really looking at everything as a whole and just balancing everything as a whole and making sure that you're happy with everything that you're doing that's so awesome have you ever had to you know take a step back and realize you weren't happy doing a hobby or anything yeah so badminton I actually is an off and on thing sometimes I'm really unhappy there's a lot of drama that happens and it's kind of like a very precise sport so you have a lot of really bad days where your timing is just really off and you don't know what's wrong you don't know how to fix it things like that or you're not as strong as you used to be something like that and so I think right after high school I realized that badminton was just really a source of negativity like I was really stressed about it like oh am I gonna have a bad day at the gym today like what's going on all this drama between partners because I'm a doubles player so there's always like drama between like your partners and things like that and so I took a while off and then I came back to it now I just really like play it for fun I play tournaments but I go into tournaments with the idea that okay I'm just going to play for fun doesn't matter like what happens because you can get so caught up with winning all the time with badminton and piano and with your major is so competitive but sometimes that can lead you to winning yeah competition so what I've learned from this is you need to take a step back and breathe and just enjoy everything and success will come if it's right just like you know I've seen with you so thank you so much for sharing how you balance all these activities I will definitely take it with me and I'm sure a lot of the viewers will take it with them take it with them so thank you so much for joining us today on Davis Media Access if you want to watch more videos you can go to dctv.davismedia.org or find us on YouTube