When I was 11, I told my mother I wanted to go to Oxford, and she laughed in my face. "You?"

I didn't apply to Oxford, because you can't apply to both Oxford and Cambridge. I didn't go to Cambridge, because I chose Caltech instead.

When I was a first-year PhD student in control systems, my machine learning TA told me not to bother applying to the computer science department, because many tried to do that transition, and didn't get in. I risked it all by only taking machine learning courses and projects, got in, and ended up working with a star professor in computer vision.

When I was in my third year of PhD, I told my labmates I wanted to move to a larger city, with more opportunities. They said I was throwing away my career. I moved anyway.

Every time someone told me I couldn't — every time the odds were visibly stacked against me — something in me quietly decided to find out for myself.

This is not a story about being exceptional. It's a story about refusing to let other people's fear become your own. About understanding that the people telling you "no" are often just projecting the limits they've accepted for themselves.

The most important decisions I ever made were the ones where I ignored the consensus and listened to the small voice that said: but what if you tried anyway?