It is currently 11:30 pm (exactly) on June 8, 2025. I'm writing here because I spent all of yesterday and today cramming 20 lectures of content into 13 pages as a method of studying for CS 134. I then looked over the cheatsheets I had made for Math 114L (again as a method of studying) and added new content.
This is how it always goes for me.
I personally hate finals week. It's tedious and boring and it feels like there is better things to do, but at the same time, I appreciate that it forces me to look over the content one last time before storing it away in the abyss of my past courses. For some reason, when I look over it again -- it actually begins to click at a level that I hadn't previously understood.
Even though I don't like taking finals, or any of that, I appreciate it for that one little bit of being -- that it forces me to re-learn the material in a way that will make it last, and possibly give me some deeper appreciation for it.
Of course, sometimes this brings up new questions -- which you may not always have the easiest times getting answers to. Nowadays, I throw questions into ChatGPT and inspect and scrutinize its output (never fully trusting it), but trying to see if there is some direction within it that I believe.
This past academic year, I've really developed an appreciation for Math. I realized pretty quickly in the fall how un-humanities-minded I am (I was forced to take CS Ethics), and how much I appreciate things that come together in a systematic, methodological way that can be explained.
My favorite class this year was Math 114C (with Tyler Arant). He was by far one of the best educators I've met, and it was pretty cool to see his passion for the subject. I think that had a direct impact on my enjoyment of the course -- because (1) he explained things thoroughly and well, and (2) he was always excited to teach us.
I then took 114L, which I liked slightly less, partly due to my instructor; however, it was overall a good experience and I learned that I really enjoy the proof-style of reasoning, and I'm most interested in logic through its connection to computability.
Next year, I'm thinking to take the graduate logic series -- just to explore that a bit more, but at the same time -- there's just too many classes I wanna take.
I will say, that through my distributed systems course -- I realized how much more important it is to learn real fundamentals (like how mathematics taught well emphasizes proofs) as opposed to just examples, and examples should only supplement those fundamentals -- since those fundamentals are what really teach you to think.
Tomorrow's my final for 134 ... and in a week I start at Optiver. I'm pretty excited for what this summer brings, and it's unlikely I make another blog post for a while.
Until then ... (timestamp: 11:39pm)