“They must not do anything with their life but school,” concludes pretty much anyone when learning a valedictorian’s GPA. 

A top contender at Wilsonville High School, Aarush Palve, maintains a whopping 4.66 GPA – achieved by taking and acing 12 AP classes his freshman through junior year. This year, he tackles the challenge of enduring six more. 

Yep: 18 total AP courses throughout high school.

Why does he do it?

How does he do it? 

He expresses that there is a little external motivation driving this heavy workload: other-valedictorian-top-contender Arush Goswami. 

“I mean, I probably would have taken fewer [AP courses] if the other Arush didn’t also take as many. Gotta maintain rank one!”

Outside of inborn competitiveness, Palve claims that he “was just bored.” 

He elucidates, emphasizing the importance of managing time how you want – for him, he just enjoys a little bit more school than most.

“Like, you know, I would definitely say I don’t like to socialize as much as most people, but I still socialize as much as I want to. 
It just happens that it happens to be less than most people. But like, the thing is, for everyone, it’s different.”

“There are only so many hours in a day, right? For me, it’s 10 hours of sleep, and you’re in school for like six hours a day. So that leaves you a good chunk of the day for your extracurriculars, for socializing, for whatever. 
So then it’s up to you as to what you want to use your time for. And there’s no reason that it should be school or that it should be social or whatever. It should just be what you want it to be.”

Okay, so he enjoys it. He’s still spending all his time doing schoolwork, right? 

Wrong. 

Palve maintains a busy outside-of-school life, which includes working a job, participating in robotics, serving as president of “a few clubs,” and enrolling in “some random competitions.” 

Okay, he must be God. He’s reversing time and living a double life. There’s just no way. 

He lets us in on his secret to living in this supernatural by vocalizing, “
I mean, you just have to know what, how much time and everything is going to take, and then how that time comes out of your day or your week or whatever,” adding – in true Aarush style – “But if you don’t want to spend the time, then you just shouldn’t.”

So maybe he’s not reversing time – just using it better than the rest of us! Or, as Palve would put it, differently.