Recently, a question kept popping up:
“How do you feel now that you’ve graduated?”
Answer: “Weird in a way. It’s finally over. I won’t ever be coming back” is my typical response.
I remember the day I got my likely letter and I knew then and there that I will be going to University of Notre Dame. It felt surreal. I graduated late by a semester and a half, as I left ND twice, so originally was meant to be class of 2024 and ended college in winter of 2025.
The last 3 years especially feel like they’ve aged me in a way nothing has before. 3 years ago I was talking to a mentor (December 2022) about what I want to do. A lot has changed since. I remember that 2023 was when I winded down a lot of of my startups. That was the year one app we made got a -100 NPS score.
2024 was when I started Desync with Maks. 2024 was rough to say the least. 2025 was way better, as we hit revenue and didn’t just build something we thought people wanted.
More on the journey through all the startups in a later essay. I want to focus on college specifically.
Favorite classes at Notre Dame
I have a major in science business and a minor in entrepreneurship. The major helped me understand people from all walks of life and I took a wide range of classes from finance to physics to organic chem II to hackers in the bazaar (CS class).
My favorite classes at ND were those that taught me something useful and applicable in life. Here is my list of top 5 classes I enjoyed and they taught me something I won’t forget. Some classes sadly are no longer available as the professors have retired. Most professors whose class I was in were aware that due to startups + meetings + personal reasons I find it hard to go to every class. If a class was uninteresting I wouldn’t show up ever, like intro to python. More on that later.
Funding New Ventures - Professor Hubbard - This was by far my favorite class I’ve ever taken at ND. I took it 3 times over. Given that I don’t show up to most classes, this was the sole exception. Professor Hubbard taught me about life more than ventures and I still get mentored by him to this day. The first time I took his class I got a B- lol. The second time I sat in on some fun lectures. On the third time, I decided to film the class, as he told me he was retiring. I need to publish it soon. I had no time to do it yet. Coming soon! Fun fact - on his exam he has a cap table he makes you fill in, given a 5 round funding scenario. If you don’t know how to fill it in, you are screwed! I know some founders will struggle to do this even know. The stuff I learnt in this class was invaluable to me.
Scientific Entrepreneurship - Professor Flavin - To this day I am still surprised that Professor Flavin drives to ND multiple times a week to teach this class. He is very humble, so you find out the following fact later, but the man did 2 IPOs from 0 in medtech in 30 years back to back. That is insane to think about. The class centers around medical research and launching a venture that is in the field of deeptech or medtech. The class is spent on creating a business plan for a wild venture. I remember someone did flying tractors one year and it was fun to listen to final project.
Hackers in the Bazaar - Professor Bui - this class is a 40000 CS class that has pre requisities that have pre requisities. I was fortunate not to need those and was allowed to take the class in my final semester. Professor Bui makes you learn new languages, build 3 projects and contribute to open source. Absolutely insane class, as I picked up multiple languages and really found my groove with how I approach development. On a separate note, the reading required for this class is Paul Graham, Linus Torvalds and more! The business school always recommends Lean Startup and other common startup books, so some of it feels repetitive. Never have I ever had a professor recommend Paul Graham. If you are at ND and want to learn to build something, I recommenced this class over front end development or any other class that claims to teach you how to build something. This class lays down the fundamentals of what being a developer truly is. If Desync ever decides to hire from ND, I will be looking for people who know professor Bui, as he is exceptional in all aspects of teaching and making sure everyone is left with a feeling of fulfillment.
Interpreting the Y-Axis - Professor McKenzie - this class is about essay writing. I’ve never seen that much red on an essay of mine to this day. Professor McKenzie taught you how to write essays that made the reader more appreciative of your essays. His major rule was about not using fancy bs words that people overuse. Make the essay clear for everyone reading it. This has shaped the way I approach essays, updates and how I write in general. Professor McKenzie’s class also included interpreting songs, movies and poems. This class was no walk in the park, but it fundamentally changed how every essay has been written since.
Why Business? the Role of Business in a Just and Humane Society - Professor Otteson - this probably is the most surprising entry to this list of classes to most people. I think this class should be mandatory to anyone at ND. This is how strongly I feel about ethical business practice after this class. I think the range of readings you do for this class is exceptional and I would say that this class helped me discern the direction that I wanted to go in in life. As a result, Desync does no work with unethical customers and tries it’s best to provide real value to people. I think a lot of founders get this wrong. Some choose to enable destructive startups that take away more than they do good. I will say this class requires a large amount of time, but it’s worth it. This class teaches you to care about what you do in life and what impact you have.
Criminally badly taught class
Even though my degree is in science business, none of the classes I listed were core science classes like orgo, physics, chem, bio in my top 5. Here is the thing, I didn’t enjoy them even remotely as much as I did others. Some were brute memorization, others felt slow and I never ended up going to lectures. I think the majority of professors cared about their research way more than students. Sadly, that’s what life is. I won’t name and shame anyone, but I hope that if those professors ever read this, they would re evaluate how they give grades and test the knowledge of students.
One class sticks out like a sore thumb in all of this that I feel needs to be mentioned, as the repercussions could have been devastating if it wasn’t for my stubbornness. Intro to python with the ACMS department. I had an attendance rate of 1/all sessions. The reality is that python is a simple language and very malleable. As a result you can build a lot with just python.
The class is literally: here is a concept, here is a math equation, write it in python.
ACMS 20220 Scientific Computing with Python (3.5 Credit Hours). To describe this class as dull would be an understatement. Here is the big issue with this: I started to hate to code by middle of the semester when doing those homeworks. Python clicked for me in march/april of 2025. The class’ entire syllabus can be learnt in 4 weeks tops, rather than 13 required for the course. If i didn’t persist on my own with python, I would have never been able to build what I build.
Start of 2025, Maks sat me down and drilled me endlessly with python. By the end of the year, I was learning async rust meta programming and was able to write and correct the code without ai help. I learnt multiple languages this year and even have some code in production. The biggest thing that I learnt is that you have to love to program if you want to be good at it. You cannot escape that fact. If you don’t love it, you’ll always build for someone else. This year my VS code grew to 48.9 GB compared to the 5GB it was before the year began. Coding is really beautiful as if you apply yourself you can build anything.
Every founder building tech should learn how to code. That’s one of my beliefs that I am taking into 2026 and onwards. I will say that I am the weakest dev on my team, as my co founders are elite at what they do. I code for my own sake, so I can communicate with them better and be able to simplify projects when there is complexity. I think developers often over complicate things that shouldn’t be over complicated. There is a “curse of knowledge” at play. In 2026 I will be more focused on sales, team development and building more personal projects.
I fell in love with coding, as I ended up building a lot of personal projects. That helped me learn faster. I think that picking up multiple languages over the course of the year was only possible because of another set of skills I maxed out at university.
Skills to work on
Here is a couple of skills I’ve been practicing for years quietly that helped me get through college.
Speed reading - I used to read much slower than I do now. Currently it’s around 600 words per minute. If I am able to digest information faster then I can handle more of it.
Memorization - This goes hand in hand with the previous one. Due to me not going to many classes, I had to memorize textbooks overnight and pass the exams the next day. I learnt how to combine speed reading with memorization exercises so that the information stuck in my brain better.
Presentations - Over the course of ND I made over 800 presentations and videos in Canva. Making a good presentation that communicates what you do well is hard and most kids do SIBC style PowerPoint that looks comical when you compare them to the Canva presentation I would make. I think my grades in projects were always close to 100% as a result. People tend to not remember the long essays you submit, but people remember a good presentation.
Empathy - Most people are very similar in college. This means that if done right you can predict the next thing a person does and influence it. If you understand people, you can predict questions that can come up in your exams or presentations. College is not made for exceptional people who think outside the box.
Here is a scenario, you are making a presentation about your startup. You don’t mention how many users or types of users you have during the main presentation, but you mention the revenue number. One of the first 3 questions is going to be about what kind of users you have, how fast they are growing etc. As a result in your appendix you should have these graphs pre made. It makes you look way way more prepared and wastes around a minute or two or q and a.
Risk taking - when you are in college you can take risks with almost 0 repercussions. A lot of people do not take enough risks in college, as they are scared of being judged. I have rejected internships to go work on my startup for 1/5 of the salary for the summer. People thought i was insane. After 15 internships and 7 companies, I can say that I am happy in the place I am. I am building something with people I trust and I have a vision that doesn’t let me sleep at night.
Failing - this is a funny one for me. I am used to failing a lot. I think the more you fail, the more you realize how fake everything is. I do not care about GPA or classes, unless they were ones I liked or the professor was a goat. Yes, if you want to be a doctor GPA does matter. If you want to go to IB sure. Just ask yourself once in a while if you want to do it.
Living life - living life does not mean getting drunk at a bar. Living life means finding what you love doing and pursuing it. A lot of people never pay it much attention. Do you really want to be a consultant? Do you really want to be in XYZ? This question is never asked by the majority of the students and they go with the flow. Many realize later that in fact they don’t want to do what they chose. Start that YT channel, start that business, write that music, publish that book. The possibilities are limitless if you know what you want.
Why ND
Despite any negative experiences I had at ND, I choose to remember the good times. I think the University of Notre Dame is really special for a unique set of reasons.
Catholic nature. Some people love it. Some people hate it. I think the catholic social teaching frameworks that are ingrained in business make it really hard to start bad ventures at ND. Out of all the startups I know at ND, I can say for sure that the overwhelming majority do good and even more are able to build things people want.
Welcome to South Bend. It’s quiet most of the time. It’s boring. But it allows you to focus. I think big cities really divert your focus to a lot of things that really do not matter. South Bend is awesome because it allows you to minimize external noise.
Distribution of resources. Notre Dame and the alumni network make ND an unfair competitive advantage for anyone who decides to go here. I think the resources available per student at ND is significantly higher than any other institution I’ve been to. The only thing required for any student to unlock this resource is purpose and direction. The second you realize what you truly want the resources find you.
The people. I think many people at ND are special in a way that they care about each other. It’s a very supportive community if you decide to embrace it. Along the way many people helped me get to where I am. Some are still in my life, some aren’t. What’s important is that they did. Very few colleges around the world have something that feels similar to ND.
Thank you
In this last section I want to thank a couple of those people who have helped me on my journey at ND.
From the faculty: Mark Hubbard, Mitchell Olsen, James Otteson, Peter Bui, David Veselik, Forrest Spence, Michael Flavin, John Henry, Logan Herzog, Justin Crepp, Chris Stevens.
From the alumni: Maksymilian Kubicki, Jackson Ballow, Tim Connors, Caroline Gash, Mike Haarlander, Alan Gordon, Alvin Alaphat, Spencer Koehl, Jamal Wilson, Niamh O’Donnell, Eric Ulchaker, Jim Hunt, Liam Redmond, Joe Hunt, Joe Shepherd, Paul Fehrenbacher, Paul Swegle and so many more.
There will always be many names that come to mind when I reflect on my time at ND that I’d like to thank and I think overtime I might come back and add some names or create a section on my site called awesome people. I haven’t decided yet. Anyways, thank you to the Irish Family at ND, you’ve changed my life for the better and I will always be grateful for it.