Reflections 2018

What

Wow time flies. I’ll try to keep this short and sweet, but we have a lot of stuff to cover.

Table of Contents

This Year in Numbers

491 Github con­tri­bu­tions (less than last year — sad…)

17 cred­its of col­lege courses taken

8 weeks spent sur­viv­ing Java Spring dur­ing my sum­mer in­tern­ship at Capital One

Over 1.4 thou­sand likes and re­acts to my post on UMich Memes for Wolverteens – my crown­ing achieve­ment.

0% — the bat­tery ca­pac­ity of my lap­top that died

8% — the bat­tery level of my new lap­top as I’m typ­ing this post.

Things That Have Happened At Some Point in 2018

In January, I pub­lished an Alexa skill with my friend, went to a cou­ple of track meets, and re­leased the Ion bus app. I also went to HoyaHacks at George­town, where I made Scout with David, and had a cou­ple of de­li­cious cup­cakes.

In February, I ate (and was sub­se­quently dis­ap­pointed by) a ki­wano melon. I also stole the show as Banker Number Three in the TJHSST pro­duc­tion of Mary Poppins. To top it all off, tjCSL achieved an con­sec­u­tive 7 days of up­time on all ser­vices, which was un­for­tu­nately very ex­cit­ing for me.

In March, pro­duc­tion started ramp­ing up for Threshold Litmag, went on a class trip to Washington, DC, where I got my Library of Congress li­brary card. We also moved out of our apart­ment.

In April, I de­ployed Ion Signage 3 and went to Bitcamp, where my team used ma­chine learn­ing :wow: and a Myo arm­band to de­ter­mine whether you were hold­ing a can. Also did some more pole vault­ing, and went to Chicago, where I experienced deep dish pizza for the first time.

In May, I wore a skirt. I also played at Chantilly Jazz Fest with the jazz band, con­structed a gon­dola out of card­board, ex­e­cuted a flaw­less (read: heav­ily flawed) prom ask­ing, and ran tech sup­port for tjS­TAR (also pre­sented my se­nior re­search pro­ject at tjS­TAR). May turned out to be pretty event­ful.

In June, I went to prom, then grad­u­ated and took lots of pic­tures and said lots of good­byes. Then I went to ori­en­ta­tion, at which I met my very first col­lege friends. Then I came back to Virginia, moved into George Mason University, then be­gan work­ing at Capital One! I also went to the National BBQ Festival, in which the free sam­ples and free stuff make up for the price of ad­mis­sions. The week af­ter, I saw the National Symphony Orchestra per­form.

In July, I went to the “A Capitol Fourth”, ex­cept it was the dress re­hearsal, so it was mostly sound checks and John Stamos for­get­ting his lines (sick burn). Also checked out the National Building Museum and fun­haus, then or­dered food at a Chinese restau­rant for the first time, com­plet­ing my tran­si­tion into Asian Adulthood. Ooh! I also wit­nessed the af­ter­math of a mi­cro­tor­nado, so that was cool, I guess.

In August, my team at C1 moved into the newly con­structed head­quar­ters, fea­tur­ing a hot choco­late ma­chine on every other floor and pricey yet de­li­cious cafe­te­ria food. Then I flew to Detroit, then San Francisco (where I was stuck for al­most 14 hours due to flight de­lays), then to Chengdu. I caught up with fam­ily, friends, and an abun­dance of Uniqlo stores. I also flew a (sim­u­lated) air­plane and man­aged not to crash, so that’s pretty ex­cit­ing, too.

On September 1st, I moved into the University of Michigan. I took a pic­ture in the Big House and then got rained on. In September, I also went to my first Michi­gan foot­ball game, took a selfie with a he­li­copter, tra­versed the in­ter­con­nected build­ings of North Campus, and saw the Philadelphia Orchestra.

October in­volved a squishy moon in the UMMA, MHacks (!), HackHarvard (!!!), and some re­ally beau­ti­ful sun­sets in Ann Arbor.

November in­cluded one (1) fake mus­tache, many Welcome Wednesday Bagels, first snow, see­ing Candide live (hilarious and won­der­ful), try­ing to climb into the walls of Rackham Graduate Building, and head­ing back to Virginia for Thanks­giv­ing.

December was a last push to fin­ish out the se­mes­ter. I built a gin­ger­bread house, dis­cov­ered this re­ally cool book­store in down­town Ann Arbor, turned on the Christmas lights in the CAEN cave (where I work), and prac­ticed a lot (rel­a­tively). I also had a Zingerman’s sand­wich for the first time, which means I’m ba­si­cally an Ann Arbor na­tive now. After school ended, I flew back to China, where I went to Guangzhou (saw a tomb and a huge li­brary), Chengdu (saw my grand­par­ents, ate hot pot), Zhuhai (went to the beach, saw a huge clam-shaped thing and a whale shark). I should clar­ify, the clam-shaped thing is a build­ing (the opera house), and the whale shark was in an aquar­ium. I did not see those things as I was walk­ing along the beach.

And so that brings us to now. This was a pretty cur­sory look at the past year, and I guess there was­n’t much re­flect­ing go­ing on — mostly just re­mem­ber­ing what the hell I did for an­other 525,600 min­utes.

Reflections

This past year was pretty busy, and there were a lot of firsts. I lived on my own for the first time. I wore a grad­u­a­tion gown for the first time (hopefully not the last). But there were also a lot of lasts — a lot of farewells bade (bid­den? bid­deth?).

This year was the start of a new era for me, one with greater in­de­pen­dence, with more re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, with new peo­ple to meet and new things to dis­cover. But the start of a new era means the end of an old one, and as I think about not just this past year, but the past 5 that I’ve spent in the state of Virginia, I realize just how lucky I was to have the priv­i­lege of liv­ing there, of meet­ing the great peo­ple that I did.

I’ve lived in a lot of places in my life — the five years I’ve spent in Vir­ginia is maybe the longest amount of time I’ve spent in one place; it’s cer­tainly the span of time with the most sig­nif­i­cant changes and growth.

I’m not sure where I’m go­ing with this. I guess, as I ring in the New Year (in about 50 min­utes), I can only hope that the next five years will be as ful­fill­ing and in­ter­est­ing and fun as the past five. I hope that, just as I found a home in Virginia, I’ll find a home in Michigan, and wher­ever life might take me next.

And you know what?

I’m al­most cer­tain it will be.

Happy 2019!