Well now, hasn’t this been an exciting year. Two academic semesters down, and (hopefully) six more to go, assuming I can get my Master’s degree in that time. I made plenty of friends this year, and who knows, maybe some enemies too. If I had to summarize this year, I would have to call it busy and exciting. The numerous opportunities that I’ve discovered over the course of this year leaves a lot for me to do, but before I talk about the future, I should probably actually review the year.
The introductory courses that I took this year were about as I expected them to be: mostly busy work, with the occasional valuable bits of knowledge in-between. The transition to college was fairly simple, seeing as I had a similar experience before college over the summer. Luckily, my workload allowed me to focus on meeting people and joining groups without having to sacrifice my grades, something fairly key to college beyond pure academia. The friends I’ve made and the encounters I’ve had have made me grow as a person immensely. In addition to the general increase in maturity, I feel more reaffirmed in my chosen field of study. I look forward to my future in Computer Science and all of the possibilities available to me within it. In fact, during the spring semester (out of boredom), I designed a schedule for the next few years, and with that discovered that I should be able to finish a Master’s degree in 8 academic semesters, the exact amount my scholarship covers. I normally wouldn’t have looked this far ahead in the future, as I usually go with the flow; however, through a combination of boredom and an increase in responsibility, I managed to discover this key fact, which would not have come about had I not become more responsible.
Now, it’s time to discuss the future. This summer I will actually be working in a research lab on Machine Learning and Data Science problems. I am also looking forward to the more advanced classes available to me in the future. Some goals of mine for the future are: continue learning as much as I can when I can, help to develop and improve the newly-formed astronomy club, and continue to develop my connections and skills within my discipline. As a final piece of advice for myself that I hope to follow, I simply hope to continue to follow that old Kung Fu Panda adage: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”
The introductory courses that I took this year were about as I expected them to be: mostly busy work, with the occasional valuable bits of knowledge in-between. The transition to college was fairly simple, seeing as I had a similar experience before college over the summer. Luckily, my workload allowed me to focus on meeting people and joining groups without having to sacrifice my grades, something fairly key to college beyond pure academia. The friends I’ve made and the encounters I’ve had have made me grow as a person immensely. In addition to the general increase in maturity, I feel more reaffirmed in my chosen field of study. I look forward to my future in Computer Science and all of the possibilities available to me within it. In fact, during the spring semester (out of boredom), I designed a schedule for the next few years, and with that discovered that I should be able to finish a Master’s degree in 8 academic semesters, the exact amount my scholarship covers. I normally wouldn’t have looked this far ahead in the future, as I usually go with the flow; however, through a combination of boredom and an increase in responsibility, I managed to discover this key fact, which would not have come about had I not become more responsible.
Now, it’s time to discuss the future. This summer I will actually be working in a research lab on Machine Learning and Data Science problems. I am also looking forward to the more advanced classes available to me in the future. Some goals of mine for the future are: continue learning as much as I can when I can, help to develop and improve the newly-formed astronomy club, and continue to develop my connections and skills within my discipline. As a final piece of advice for myself that I hope to follow, I simply hope to continue to follow that old Kung Fu Panda adage: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”