Sophia Grekin (SG): "Can you tell me about something you've overcome?"
Apurva Iyengar (AI): "I think in high school there was this pressure ... to do what other people were doing, especially just in academic circles in terms of taking AP classes and stuff like that. I took a gap year and a big part of that was just being OK with doing not what other people were doing and just dealing with that as a concept.
I feel like that's something I definitely need to work on a little bit, just because I saw all my friends go to college and do all the college stuff and I was just at home. I didn't travel or anything for my gap year, and a lot of my gap friends were also traveling and stuff like that. So I watched them go to fancy, interesting places and I was at home, doing work. It was a little bit of a jarring experience at times, but it definitely helped me to just be comfortable doing what I wanted to do and not really [think] about what other people were up to."
SG: "What do you think was the best thing that came out of COVID?"
AI: "I definitely got to spend a lot of time with my family which was really nice. I think just being forced to be in the same house with people for a really long time can be grating sometimes, but we also developed ways of communicating better, which was kind of nice."
SG: "Are any of your family members really influential to you?"
AI: "We are pretty close, so we tend to do a lot of things together and they definitely influence the way I see the world. Also just exploring new things is nice, based on other people's interests. My sister and I — she's a year older than me [and] she goes to Northeastern — we have very different interests, and we tend to show each other interesting things because of that. I feel like I've been able to learn from her a lot."
SG: "Do you have a motto or advice that someone has given you?"
AI: "I feel like I tend to overthink things a lot before doing them. So I feel like ‘Don't think, do’ is sometimes running on repeat in my brain. Just get things over with instead of harassing myself over the decision-making process."
SG: "When was [a time] you used that?"
AI: "College decisions. I was really, really f---ing confused, and what helped me decide was … not choosing what I wanted to choose in my head but choosing the decision I knew I wouldn't regret. ... I'm a really indecisive person, so that helps me figure out how to make choices that I don't hate. But sometimes it's not about what the better or worse option is, it's about which one you won't live to regret."
