2025 Feb-Mid Memo | hexo init

Climate

I thought January was already the coldest, but February easily beats that record. As a Texan and a Southern dweller my entire life, I am still wrapping my head around the seasons thing. But I will get to it.

It’s my nineteenth year alive. The past eighteen years have been really lengthy, but are now condensed into memory snapshots of me, sealed at the top of the shelf, only to be opened once in a year or so.

I felt like it was a waste of time - the amount of effort and dedication we spent in one stage of life - quickly vanished in one or two months after it ended. It’s like trying to study for a test, and you studied for two years, and the test finished so all your knowledge gained in four years just went to oblivion.

Still I was able to make something out of it. “The real treasure was the friends we made along the way.” or some other cliché that seems fitting here. My high school friends all went to Cambridge and Oxford, T20 schools, some to CMU… They were doing really well. Meanwhile I am stuck in a middle of a cornfield and a soybean field, with a three hour bus ride to Chicago and village roads covered in grey mud and crunchy ice blocks.

I am not really complaining, but it took me a while to settle in the freezing climate. After graduation I spent a fair share amount of time in solitude, wondering what to do next in life. Things are not looking bright on the research side in the States, but I never really wondered what I would be doing aside from grad school. Job after college? Not really my style.

When you grow up, you realize things don’t always go your way. Instead they span in distorted and ridiculous branches which are just unexpected in any aspect. I never have a dream college, or a dream job in this regard, so I don’t get to see me doing the stuff that I really don’t like. But still ending up in Champaign is a choice I never really expected, yet it fits me very well. I like living a secluded life in the middle of a cornfield and a soybean field, with a three hour bus ride to Chicago and village roads covered in grey mud and crunchy ice blocks. It wasn’t quite a triumph, but it was a small victory for me, which I will gladly take.

Computational Sciences

Champaign has a really good program in Computer Science. It is just below Stanford, MIT, CMU and Berkeley, all very good schools. Roughly we are on par with GaTech and Cornell, but I think further comparison is not necessary at this point. There are things the university will not provide to you unless you earn it, so individuality plays a huge role as long with your Alma Meter.

I am cut out for Information Olympiads. I have came to the senses that I am just subjectively bad of it, and the lack of talent cannot be made up in other ways. I do not like the competitive nature of these timed events. Engineering seem better in this regard for me.

What about Artificial Intelligence? People abuse the terminology too much. Sometimes it gets confusing so people in debate realizing they are referring to different fields. In the future obviously there will remain opportunities for applications of such technology, but in terms of job market and academia, I do not think I am qualified to give any input on that.

I think my area is interdisciplinary sciences. I am quite fond of the AI for Sci initiative, but there is a lot of foundational work that must be done to bridge the conceptual models into actual industrial applications.

It really is kind of surprising, that a lot of my friends actually transferred to computer science in the end. Also it’s not really surprising. Would be interesting in the end to see where we have all ended up. Hopefully I am not the most failed among them (though it’s the likely case.)

Pokémon Sciences

My favorite nintendo switch game series are the Pokémon and the Animal Crossing series, so it made some and little sense I eventually coupled CS with Animal Sciences in the end.

General biology is an overgeneralization of the major. We do study genetics, genomics, anatomy, physiology, metabolism, reproduction, and worst of all, Chemistry. Good lord have mercy on me.

Now I have been studying Biology maybe even a bit longer than CS. I never really talk about it because most knowledge is highly theoretical and too abstract for anyone apart from the field to grasp some understanding of it. I don’t talk about lab work too because I would be too tired after a day of work to type some nonsense onto a blog which nobody really reads anyways. However in general I consider it to be the other strength and interest I have apart from CS, so it’s a good addition to my academic life.

I kind of wanted a pet bird in my life. All my life I live in dorms where no pets are allowed. A senior in Animal Science I met on campus had 30 reptiles in his apartment. So maybe one day I could start small and get a pet turtle. My Pokémon are doing pretty well in their boxes - not that they would die anyways.

まだ見ぬ未来

You may notice there is not a structured flow in the ways I document things. I like to keep these thoughts casual and unpolished in nature. Again, I would not call them good writing, but this time I would rather keep them.

This instrumental is the ending theme for Tamayura, a healing anime that I never watched. I have grown accustomed to having company from comforting music. If you don’t know Japanese, the name of the song is “An Unforeseen Future”.