TL;DR: This is my 2025 year-end reflection. On the surface, it looked like a highlight reel It looked like a highlight reel, but it was also full of doubt, anxiety, ADHD-driven friction, and burnout cycles. I realized many “wins” were mostly momentum from earlier years, and that chasing external validation made my self-worth fragile. So I shifted from proving myself outwardly to building inward: accepting my baseline traits, getting honest about feelings, finding internal anchors, and making long-term growth executable through systems.

Chinese Ver.

For many years on social media, I had a habit of only showing my best self: listing highlights, amplifying results, carefully folding all the wrinkles into the shadows, working hard to maintain an ideal self-image that appeared to be functioning well and constantly improving.

If I were to continue with that narrative style, my 2025 would probably look like this done list:

• [x] First variety show appearance aired
• [x] Paper accepted as ICLR Oral
• [x] Started internship at Microsoft Research Asia, a place I'd always wanted to work
• [x] Admitted to CMU SCS, achieved perfect GPA first semester with A+ in two courses
• [x] Won award at AdventureX, China's largest Hackathon
• [x] Managed to maintain work-life balance, kept up various hobbies—skiing, dancing, cooking, fitness, rock climbing; traveled almost every month, visiting 6 countries and 24 cities in one year

Sounds like a year of riding the waves and reaping rewards, right?

But that's not the complete story.

More often, my 2025 was composed of moments of confusion, doubt, and uncertainty:

• On the variety show, the cameras magnified my competitive drive, but also magnified my poor emotional management and character flaws. The result—being eliminated in the first round, along with those comments—plunged me into prolonged self-examination: Am I unsuitable for situations that require "performing authenticity"? In front of cameras, should I fully invest in winning the game, or should I divide my attention to cultivate a likable persona?
• In research, my first paper being an ICLR Oral, joining MSRA and CMU—these stories that sound like linear ascent have another side: nearly two years into research with no first-author publication, projects often stalling, progress always a beat slower than imagined
• Meanwhile, I've been chronically troubled by ADHD-related difficulties with initiation and procrastination, always relying on deadline-driven sprints to compensate for daily productivity deficits, with sleep schedules frequently inverted, falling asleep at increasingly later hours, until my sleep schedule would drift through a four- or five-day cycle
• Travel, hobbies, experiences—I did try hard to keep life rich, but chronic irregular sleep and eating patterns, combined with multi-tasking pressure, made my body's protests particularly evident: after moving to Pittsburgh, I got sick almost every month, frequently falling into cycles of low energy, inefficiency, anxiety, and procrastination
• Not to mention those unlisted reverse sides: the anxiety during applications, the long waits after interviews, and the rejection emails that accumulated in my inbox—far more numerous than offers