Reflections 2020

An R.E.M. song

It’s the end of the world as we know it

And I feel fine.

Table of Contents

This Year in Numbers

415 Github con­tri­bu­tions (making a come­back!)

31 more col­lege cred­its (I think? I’m start­ing to lose track…)

12 weeks read­ing pa­pers this sum­mer at USC ISI.

12 more weeks mak­ing plots and crunch­ing num­bers at NBC News.

1 mu­si­cal at­tended (Hadestown, on Broadway!!)

1 first-au­thor pa­per published (in Proceedings of EMNLP 2020)

27 by­lines from 2 news or­ga­ni­za­tions.

2 new li­brary cards (Boston and New York City Public Libraries)

Highlights

This will be dif­fi­cult be­cause it feels like time did­n’t re­ally ex­ist be­fore March, but I’ll try any­way.

In January, the Michigan Union held its grand open­ing be­fore shut­ting back down due to Covid just three months later. We kicked off a new se­mes­ter of Michi­gan Data Science Team with a new set of work­shops tar­geted for be­gin­ners. I read The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver. Finally, af­ter talk­ing to my room­mate Parth, I de­cided to join the data team at the Michigan Daily.

February was short but still plenty event­ful. I started work­ing on my first analy­sis for the Daily, read Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee, and went axe throw­ing with MDST. On the last (leap) day, I landed in Boston to visit my friend Nina at Har­vard.

This leads into March, where I wrapped up my spring break with what in hind­sight was prob­a­bly an ill-ad­vised tour down the east coast. I wrapped up Boston by get­ting a li­brary card from Boston Public Library (absolutely beautiful), vis­itng the Isabella Stewart Gardner mu­seum, get­ting Chinese food and desserts from Chinatown, and see­ing the ducks in Boston com­mons. After a har­row­ing sprint to South Station, I made it to New York, where I had more Chi­nese food, at­tended a com­edy show at my hos­tel, and vis­ited the New York Times build­ing, the Highline, the Chinese American History Museum, the New York Public Library (also very pretty), Hadestown on Broadway, the MoMA, and then sprinted to Penn Station to catch an Amtrak to DC. From DC, I con­tin­ued to Pitts­burgh, catch­ing up with friends at CMU and Pitt, be­fore dri­ving back up to Ann Arbor. All this took place over the first week of March, af­ter which every­thing de­scended into chaos: we had pri­maries cov­er­age for the Daily, immediately af­ter which Michigan shut down for Covid. March ends with mak­ing a pre­ma­ture de­par­ture from cam­pus.

After a very event­ful March, April was bor­ing by com­par­i­son, marked mostly by on­line classes and ex­ams as the se­mes­ter wrapped up.

May was mostly en­joy­ing my sum­mer va­ca­tion be­fore school be­gan and fi­nal­iz­ing my pa­per for EMNLP. I also re­solved to sew my­self a back­pack as a sum­mer pro­ject only to dis­cover all the sewing ma­chines were out of stock! I started my re­search in­tern­ship at USC af­ter Labor day. Finally, I watched as SpaceX launched the first as­tro­nauts into space from the US in close to a decade. An early in­ter­est in rock­ets and space re­ally pro­pelled me onto a STEM track, and this was a re­minder of what had in­spired me so many years be­fore.

In June, I fi­nally man­aged to buy a sewing ma­chine (but no ma­te­ri­als yet). I was in­tro­duced to cross­word puz­zles and pro­ceeded to waste spend a few hours every day on cross­words…

July is when my back­pack­ing plans went into full force as I fi­nally re­ceived my sup­plies. Plenty of mis­takes were made, and I had to dis­as­sem­ble and re­pair the sewing ma­chine more than once.

I fi­nally, in a mad dash over three days, fin­ished my back­pack in August. This was just in time to move back onto cam­pus, where I would pro­ceed to take all my classes from my room and leave the back­pack sit­ting de­ject­edly in a cor­ner. I also made some fan­tas­tic pro­duc­tiv­ity pur­chases: a nice chair from Ikea and a stand­ing desk (amazing).

In September, I started at NBC News and cov­ered the first pres­i­den­tial de­bate my sec­ond week of work. It was an ex­hil­a­rat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for some­one to­tally new to the news scene as we worked to de­bug our vis lit­er­ally up un­til the minute the de­bate be­gan. I re­ceived no­tice that my pa­per was ac­cepted to EMNLP. I also deep-fried food for the first time and it was a re­sound­ing suc­cess. Finally, I bought a cross­word sub­scrip­tion, much to the detri­ment of my pro­duc­tiv­ity.

October was dom­i­nated by cov­er­ing Presidential de­bates (the ones that weren’t can­celled, at least), prep­ping for EMNLP, cross­words and other word games, and en­joy­ing the last of the good Ann Arbor weather.

In line with March and September, November was quite event­ful. Election week cov­er­age, deep fry­ing more food, at­tend­ing and pre­sent­ing at my first con­fer­ence, and cel­e­brat­ing my 21st birth­day (by not go­ing to any of the bars)! Some­how, a lot of these things also hap­pened in the same week…

Finally, December saw the end of the se­mes­ter and my in­tern­ship at NBC. It also saw the re­newal of my cross­word and Netflix sub­scrip­tions, both of which I was not com­fort­able main­tain­ing dur­ing the se­mes­ter.

Reflections

This is the end of a very event­ful year. It’s one that I can safely say I did not see com­ing, filled with dis­ap­point­ments and hard­ships. But it has also had some re­ally amaz­ing mo­ments. With the switch to a new nor­mal in terms of me­dia of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, I’ve been able to re­con­nect with many friends I’ve lost touch with over the years. I’ve also had so many fan­tas­tic op­por­tu­ni­ties pro­fes­sion­ally, and I’ve met some re­ally fan­tas­tic peo­ple at both USC and NBC.

And in the midst of per­sonal, na­tional, and in­ter­na­tional chaos, I’ve grown to ap­pre­ci­ate so many of the things I used to take for granted: see­ing my friends and loved ones in per­son; be­ing able to travel to China to visit my grand­par­ents; see­ing the bot­tom halves of strangers faces. I’ve also learned to take care of my­self in try­ing times: to cre­ate a space I want to live in; to find joy in my rou­tines (think you cross­words); to reach out to my friends for com­pany and sup­port.

Every year sees ups and downs, set­backs and growth. This year was no dif­fer­ent in that re­gard, and I’m con­fi­dent that 2021, what­ever it has in store, will also bring both plenty of dis­ap­point­ments and plenty of joy. In many ways, my lim­its were tested this year — in some cases, I grew and stretched those lim­its. In others, I saw the cracks and learned when I should ease back. The tri­als of this past year have taught me a lot about my­self.

I’m look­ing for­ward to a year filled with new joys and new dis­ap­points. I’m looking for­ward to a year where I can see and hug my fam­ily and friends. I’m looking for­ward to the year I start my se­nior year of col­lege, where I meet new peo­ple and ex­pe­ri­ence new things. But mostly, I’m look­ing for­ward to a year that will hope­fully chill the fuck out.

Good night, 2020. Good morn­ing, 2021.