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If I was a student again, I’d do this

2025-09-30 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 25:22 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Work and career (also: Learning and studying) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Aimed at students, His medical past, AI

Ali frames student life as an open-world video game: the main quest to graduation no longer guarantees a job, so students should use their free time for side quests that level up high-income skills such as coding, design, copywriting, sales, AI and data analysis.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Tough times for students; who Ali is

  • ★ Ali says he started his YouTube channel in 2017 advising medical students and applicants, then became the online study guy; he is now 31, with a wife and a child. — 00:00:29 · YouTube

00:00:45 — Student life as an open-world video game with a main quest and side quests

  • ★★ Ali likens being a student to an open-world video game: you need not just follow the main storyline of studying for exams and graduating, but can run side quests. — 00:01:23
  • ★ Ali's own side quests at university included an a cappella group and directing the hospital pantomime. — 00:01:52

00:02:37 — The four points of university: enjoy it, learn stuff, get the certificate, make friends and network

  • ★ Arguably the point of life is to enjoy the experience, Ali says, citing Alan Watts's image of life as a symphony whose point is to enjoy the music, not to race to the end. — 00:03:27
  • ★★ Ali thinks the certificate is the key reason people spend so much money on university: the experience could be had more cheaply, and knowledge from YouTube or a private tutor. — 00:04:51 · YouTube
  • ★★ Although he went to one of the world's best medical schools, Ali says he learned most of his medical knowledge from YouTube videos, which are easier to follow than lectures, even at Cambridge. — 00:04:51 · University of Cambridge, YouTube
  • ★★ Ali says the point of a university certificate is to improve job prospects: some jobs require a specific one, as medicine requires a medical degree, while elsewhere it is an indicator of credibility. — 00:05:20
  • ★★ Ali names four points of going to university: enjoy the experience, learn knowledge and skills, get the certificate that improves job prospects, and make friends or network. — 00:06:18
  • ★★ Asked whether college or university is still worth it, Ali says it depends on your goal and on what you plan to do. — 00:06:18
  • ★★ The main quest of university, Ali says, is to prepare you for real life, and in particular to let you get a job. — 00:06:42

00:06:58 — The AI study bundle for students

00:08:10 — Making money as an adult in the real world; degrees no longer lead straight to a job

  • ★★ Ali says that in the UK many people graduated from medical school last year (2024) to find there were not enough jobs, although they had been told six or seven years earlier that becoming a doctor meant a job for life. — 00:09:09
  • ★ Ali read a Substack post by a woman in LA lamenting that she did an English literature degree and was finding it impossible to get a job. — 00:09:45
  • ★★ Most degrees, Ali suspects, are not vocational degrees like medicine that lead directly to a job, and they constrain future job choices very little. (hedged) — 00:10:15
  • ★★★ If he were a student, Ali would recognise that merely completing the main quest from starting to graduating is not enough to set him up for life, given AI and today's economics. — 00:10:48

00:11:14 — Character A at level 30 and character B at level 50 at graduation

  • ★★ Ali contrasts two students: one who only follows the main storyline might graduate at level 30, one who also does side quests at level 50, with more experience, loot and skills. — 00:11:38
  • ★★ The level a student reaches by graduation matters, Ali thinks, because the job market, much like a video game, is based on your level and your skills. — 00:11:38

00:13:25 — Low-income and high-income trade skills: guitar, chess, coding, design

  • ★ Ali learned to play the guitar in his second year of medical school, singing a few songs and doing a bit of busking. — 00:13:25
  • ★★ Unless you reach John Mayer's world-class level, Ali calls campfire guitar a low-income skill, though not low-value: a great hobby that is good for his fun and fulfilment. — 00:13:54
  • ★★ Unless you reach grandmaster level, Ali calls chess a relatively low-income skill: unless you are Magnus Carlsen or a grandmaster, you are probably not making much money from it. — 00:14:54
  • ★★★ Coding absolutely improves your odds of making money as an adult, Ali says: it unlocks developer jobs in tech with huge salaries and remote work; in the 2010s you could walk into such jobs, now it is more competitive. — 00:16:34
  • ★★ Learning to code, Ali says, lets you start your own business building an app or a website, which unlocks the software-as-a-service business model. — 00:17:04
  • ★★ Ali's friend learned to code through side projects and hackathons at university, then after five years in consulting built the video-editing app Firecut: $10,000 a month within about two months, about $1.2 million a year two years later. — 00:17:30
  • ★ Ali says the Airbnb website has a nice user experience, while Amazon looks bad but still works. — 00:18:21 · Apple, Amazon
  • ★★★ Ali calls UI and UX design a very high-income skill: rich tech companies are always looking for such designers, and his friends running well-funded startups lament how few good ones there are. — 00:18:21
  • ★★ A coder who knows design or a designer who knows code, a product engineer, is a rare unicorn, Ali says, whom startups and established tech companies will hire remotely for large salaries. — 00:19:20
  • ★★ Alcohol and substances, and sports below professional standard, are fun but unlikely to help you make money as an adult, Ali says; he is not saying you should not do them. (hedged) — 00:20:18

00:20:42 — Side quests to level up high-income skills; university as scaffolding

  • ★★★ Ali's advice to students is to do "side quests to level up high-income skills" alongside their degree and their other activities. — 00:20:42

    “we're going to call these side quests to level up high income skills”

  • ★★ Ali calls copywriting, writing that persuades people to take action, a high-income skill: raising a company's conversion rate makes it more money and makes you more valuable. — 00:21:04

  • ★★ Ali calls sales a high-income skill that works in almost any career facing the free market, even for a lawyer who becomes a partner and must win new clients. — 00:21:04
  • ★★ Using AI well and building AI systems, agents and automations for other people is a really valuable high-income skill, Ali says, that will become more relevant over time. — 00:21:48
  • ★★ Ali calls statistics and data analysis a high-income skill: turning a business's data into insights with SQL queries, a skill set very few people have. — 00:21:48
  • ★★ To find high-income skills to learn as a student, Ali suggests simply asking Claude or ChatGPT. — 00:22:17 · ChatGPT

  • ★★★ In many ways, Ali says, the point of university is neither the degree nor graduation: university and college are a scaffolding. — 00:22:17

    “The point of university and college is that it's a scaffolding.”

  • ★★ Someone who uses university to level up high-income skills, Ali says, will never be broke, will always have a job and will be able to start a business. (overstated) — 00:22:42

  • ★★ In a job that interacts with the free market, Ali says, your ability to make money correlates directly with your ability to add value: valuable skills that solve problems people will pay for. — 00:23:51
  • ★★★ Ali begs students not to waste university: they have far more free time than they will once they have a job, and should use it to develop high-income skills. — 00:23:51

00:24:48 — Pointer to his video on getting rich as a game

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: high-income skills

Also: People: Alan Watts · John Mayer · Magnus Carlsen

Projects: Addenbrooke's Hospital Pantomime

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book)

Organizations: Airbnb · Amazon · Apple · Code School · Codecademy · McKinsey · University of Cambridge · YouTube

Concepts: copywriting

Products: ChatGPT · Chess.com · Claude · Firecut · Substack

Also centred on high-income skills: 5 High Income Skills for Students to Learn in 2026 · If I Wanted to Make $10,000 as a Student, I'd Do This

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