DANIEL: So what I would tell myself when I was considering taking time off is that it may seem pretty scary. It may seem difficult. But when I took time off, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I learned a lot, I grew a lot, and I came back much stronger compared to how I was when I left.

However, what I found is that a lot of the situations in my life I had to put work in to improve. Things improve when I put work in. If I let them sit, then things didn’t really improve. So because I had the free time, because I wasn’t so bogged down with academics, I had the freedom to do all this work and all this hard work to improve my well-being. And that’s because I had time off. I had the free time because I took time off.