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If you thought finishing an internship while juggling university studies deserves a pat on the back, wait till you hear what one university student in Singapore did.
Jervis, 25, completed eight internships during his four-and-a-half years at the Nanyang Technological University, and attained two degrees -- a Bachelor of Engineering Science and Master of Science -- while hitting his personal best at the gym.
And he has achieved legendary status on TikTok for his can-do mentality and stacked credentials.
His stacked internship credentials
A quick rundown of the NTU computer science student's internship experience and how much stipend he received was warmly received on TikTok.
In a nutshell:
1. Advanced Micro Devices product engineering intern - S$1,500 a month
2. Alphien quantitative developer intern - S$2,200 a month
3. Shopee product management intern - S$1,200 a month
4. BMW data science intern - S$1,000 a month
5. Amazon Web Services professional services team cloud architect - S$3,000 a month, plus free AWS certs was the equivalent to S$1,000 in benefits
6. Credit Suisse summer tech analyst - S$6,300 a month
7. Mercari (remote work) software engineer - about S$4,000 a month
8. Meta enterprise engineering intern - S$5,700 a month, plus S$4,000 a month in allowances, and S$670 of benefits for the entire period
In between his final two internships, he even went to Sweden for a student exchange and did not manage to do an internship.
Method to madness
To squeeze so much into 4.5 years is indeed a feat, but there is a method to the madness.
Jervis led on that he was working full-time since the second semester of his second year in NTU all the way until semester one of his fourth year.
In another TikTok he addressed one of the common queries about achieving his can-do attitude.
To give some context, he said his best semester was when he interned full-time at Amazon Web Services and got five AWS certs, while hitting 5.0 GPA that semester -- as well as logging new personal records at the gym.
Bias for action
His productivity, he said, boils down to a "bias for action".
Jervis added: "When I had a lot on my plate, I tend to overthink."
"And if I overthink throughout the course of the day, I end up wasting a lot of time."
"So I overthink because I think that there's always a 'perfect plan' or that is a 'best plan' that I should follow."
He said he recognised that he end up doing nothing because of planning too much.
The antidote is to have a plan in the morning and just do it.
"Just trust in the plan your morning self made and not overthink about it across the rest of the day," he said.
If you think this could be fluff, think again.
"Bias for action" is a principle introduced by Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, and has become the backbone of the company culture.
Bezos believes that the way to discover innovative opportunities for customers is by rapidly trying out new ideas.
And these principles are used daily by the workforce on how to think, act and communicate.
Jervis further addressed comments about how he was able to juggle everything by saying that he was able to study at night as lectures were recorded and his work was remote.
He said "we are no longer confined to fixed timings" and "the entire day is now available to do your tasks".
In his most recent TikTok, Jervis shared about his glowing up and enjoying life.
@jerv.is Replying to @ashley ♬ original sound - Jervis
All photos via Jervis TikTok