Reflections 2021

Time flies

Usually I post one of these on New Year’s Eve. Unfortunately, I was busy this year watch­ing Michigan playPlay might be too strong a term for what hap­pened on the field that night… Alabama in the Orange Bowl, so here we are, a few days later.

Table of Contents

This Year in Numbers

585 Github con­tri­bu­tions (a new high score!)

33 more col­lege cred­its

1 Bachelor’s de­gree (!!)

11 PhD ap­pli­ca­tions

…and a lot of things on my mind.

Highlights

In January, I be­gan my penul­ti­mate se­mes­ter of col­lege (although I did­n’t know it at the time). I also be­gan my term as one of the man­ag­ing on­line ed­i­tors at The Michigan Daily (more on this later). I also got su­per into the NYT spelling bee, and I im­ple­mented Naive Bayes for home­work for the third and fourth time.

In February, The Daily pub­lished a cou­ple of pro­jects and sto­ries that I had a hand in: the Statement Love Edition, which I helped co­or­di­nate, and a data-dri­ven piece on Covid cases. This would mark the be­gin­ning of a lot more rich on­line con­tent from The Daily. I also got Sunday donuts from Loomi Cafe for the first time. This be­came a weekly tra­di­tion that was un­for­tu­nately short-lived, as Loomi closed this December.

March flew by with a lot of Daily work: a bunch more data sto­ries from The Daily, in­clud­ing a multi-part piece on feeder schools that would go on to win an award and get a ton of read­ers. We also pub­lished a spe­cial pro­ject, re­flect­ing on one year of on­line classes. Finally, we launched a brand new web­site, open­ing up a lot more flex­i­bil­ity in the pro­jects we’d be able to tackle in the fu­ture.

In April, I got vac­ci­nated.

In May, it felt like the world once again ex­isted out­side the con­fines of my own room, and I was ea­ger to take ad­van­tage. In roughly chrono­log­i­cal or­der, I: helped my fam­ily move back to Troy, Michigan (after hav­ing moved from Troy just a cou­ple years ago), learned to skate­board, read Pachinko and Abolish Silicon Valley, at­tended my friend’s grad­u­a­tion at UVA and climbed Old Rag in Shenan­doah. I also (virtually) be­gan my sum­mer in­tern­ship at the University of Wash­ing­ton.

I de­parted for Seattle in June, opt­ing to take the Amtrak Empire Builder from Chicago. This was a two-and-a-half day trip, and I loved every minute of it (give or take). You can read some of my thoughts about it here. Aside from the train trip, I ex­plored lots of Seattle (especially U District), went on a few runs, climbed a cou­ple of moun­tains, and en­dured a re­ally killer heat wave.

July con­tained more Seattle ad­ven­tures, in­clud­ing more hik­ing, some kayak­ing, a trip to Portland, and I got my Seattle Public Library card.

I wrapped up my time in Seattle in August. My par­ents came to see Mt. Rainier and Olympic National Park with me be­fore we flew back home to Michigan. I also be­gan my last ever se­mes­ter as an un­der­grad at the University of Michi­gan.

In September, I house-sat a cat and it was the best week of my life.

October was a Michigan fall, and I did all of the clas­sic Michigan fall things™. This in­cluded a trip to a cider mill with the Blablablab, mak­ing my own cider (also with the Blablablab), a cou­ple of back­yard bon­fires, and (of course) a Michigan foot­ball game. I also sub­mit­ted my NSF GRF ap­pli­ca­tion.

I turned 22 in November. Oh yeah, and Michigan beat OSU for the first time in close to a decade. That was a good day.

That brings us to December. If some of these months seem sparse in de­tail, it’s be­cause this past year re­ally flew by — es­pe­cially this past month. There were a lot of good-byes, a lot of lasts, and not a lot of time to process all of it…

Reflections

Which I sup­pose leads us to this sec­tion. Some time to process every­thing that hap­pened this past year and, re­ally, these past three and a half years of col­lege.

It’s hard to know where to be­gin, so maybe I’ll con­tex­tu­al­ize by start­ing with my last grad­u­a­tion. When I grad­u­ated from high school, I felt a sense of com­ple­tion and a re­ally strong op­ti­mism for the fu­ture. This is what I wrote in my 2018 re­flec­tion:

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.

What I had­n’t an­tic­i­pated was the tu­mult. The best way to de­scribe the past cou­ple of years would be ca­reen­ing down the in­ter­state with the win­dows down, and a stray news­pa­per just flew into my face. Thrilling, sure, but also ter­ri­fy­ing.

I’m end­ing my years at Michigan a se­mes­ter early (I achieved this through a con­vo­luted se­ries of events, which is fit for a whole other post…) It feels like I’ve slammed on the brakes, flown out of the ve­hi­cle, and ex­tended this anal­ogy past its break­ing point. What I’m try­ing to say is, I don’t feel the same sense of clo­sure that I felt four years ago af­ter high school.

I’m sure this is in no small part due to the crazy cir­cum­stances of the past cou­ple of years. Aside from a global pan­demic that re­sulted in my course­work be­ing on­line for half of the time I was at Michigan, my fam­ily has also moved four times in three years, mean­ing some­how I’ve ac­cu­mu­lated five or six dif­fer­ent Michigan zip codes. When I said I hoped to find a home in Michigan, I should have clar­i­fied: I’d be con­tent with just one, and not six.

But pre­ma­ture de­par­tures, pan­demics and Zhou fam­ily mi­gra­tion pat­terns are triv­ial in the big­ger pic­ture of my ex­pe­ri­ence at (in, and around) Michigan. They may have made this end­ing come sooner or seem quicker in its ap­proach, but I doubt I’d be any more pre­pared with any amount of lead time. I have put a lot of my­self into the peo­ple and or­ga­ni­za­tions and life in Ann Arbor, and it’s hard to imag­ine wav­ing good­bye to all of that.

I’m proud to have helped build up two stel­lar stu­dent or­ga­ni­za­tions from close to noth­ing: the Michigan Data Science Team and the web team at The Michigan Daily. They are in ex­cel­lent hands now, but it’s still hard to say good­bye. But even greater than that, I’m proud to have built so many last­ing re­la­tion­ships with peo­ple here — peo­ple I can laugh with, con­fide in, rant to, seek sup­port from. Those are the hard­est good­byes.

Fulfilling, in­ter­est­ing and fun? Definitely.

That brings us to now: I’ve ap­plied to PhD pro­grams which I’m wait­ing to hear back from, which means I’m tem­porar­ily stuck look­ing ahead into a bright cloud of com­plete un­cer­tainty.

Usually, at the end of these re­flec­tions, I like to take a look for­ward into the next year. This time, though, I don’t think that’s fea­si­ble. I don’t know where I will phys­i­cally be this time next year, much less what I’ll be do­ing or what I’ll have to look for­ward to. Just… some­thing in­ter­est­ing, prob­a­bly.

So I’ll bide my time for now, sit­ting with my feet dan­gling off a precipice over­look­ing the en­tire rest of my life. I think I’ll spend the next cou­ple of months sa­vor­ing the end of the be­gin­ning.