Throughout my teenage years, college felt like a mystery. I had a general idea of what life was like after college, through TV shows, my parents, and the Internet. And, at that time, I was exactly living through life before college. College itself, on the other hand, was a black box, where people go into, are never heard from again until after four years, and magically transform into adults. I had no idea what to expect from going into college, and would often be met with the dull “it’s the best time of your life” and “it’s a place to discover yourself.” Maybe I was just ignorant, but this was overwhelmingly how I felt. I cried on my first night in my dorm room.

Now, I completed two years as a computer science major and electrical computer engineering minor at Purdue University! Okay, I still have two more weeks before the year ends, but whatever. Sue me. If you are expecting me to say something meaningful about the college experience, I’m not going to pretend like the conventional advice about college is untrue. It would feel disingenuous to try regurgitating it, so all I have to say in that regard is I’m loving every moment of university so far. This is my blog after all, so let’s go over what’s happened since my last update.

I ditched the skateboard

From the beginning to end of 2024, I learned how to skateboard, became moderately good at it, and quit without looking back. On my way to class, my back foot hit the back wheel while pushing off my board sending me tumbling into the asphalt. It was a very rough fall, and I eventually turned out fine, but I was spooked enough when it happened again that I decided skateboarding wasn’t worth jeopardizing my well-being. Oh well, I’m glad I tried it out.

I uninstalled social media

I used to be morbidly addicted to social media. Quintessential Gen Z stuff. I’m not entirely clean, I still watch a lot of YouTube, my last vice, but I’ve phased out everything else from my life. Ultimately, none of it ever mattered to me. I am proud to say that I have recently been spending my time focusing on things I care about.

I took interesting classes

I declared a minor in electrical computer engineering! This semester I finished my first electrical engineering fundamentals class, absolutely loving it, albeit scary at first. Truthfully, I wasn’t confident about taking up the minor; it’s not something you usually hear CS majors doing. Compared to other minors, I had to take triple the number of classes, forcing me to stay at Purdue for all four years. It’s not particularly helpful on a resume either. Don’t get me wrong, while an ECE minor is nice to show off, there are better time investments into my career for my major. In my interpretation, these arguments were missing of the point of a minor ¹: to do something because you enjoy it. I would never be able to live with myself if I passed up the opportunity to take advantage of one of the best engineering programs in the world and Purdue’s maker space culture.

I made an audio equalizer circuit!

As a student, I had always hated English class. The word “hate” isn’t used lightly; I fell into a defeatist, closed-minded mindset, and actively refused to read because it was never something I thought I could get good at. Fast forward to my previous semester at university, I had the option to fulfill my writing requirement with an easy class I wouldn’t really care about. I gave myself a chance, and reluctantly signed up for a discussion-based reading and writing class. I’m so happy I did. It was my favorite class this semester! As much as I love computers, this class was a breath of fresh air. I especially enjoyed reading Dante’s The Inferno. I will definitely be checking out the sequels Purgatorio and Paradiso. My goal by the end of this year is to start reading for pleasure more often.

I joined my favorite club

My hand-crafted Purdue Hackers passport

I joined the Purdue Hackers club! I frequently regular Hack Night, the club’s flagship weekly hacker festival, where people collaborate to create and engineer interesting technical projects. I have made crazy talented friends at Hack Night who continue to inspire and motivate me. I have many more positive thoughts, but I think Galactic Empire does full justice to the unique culture Purdue Hackers has spent years creating.

And onwards

One thing I admire about one of my best friends Henry is his motivation to write in a personal journal. I’ve never felt the need to express myself privately, it’s not something I feel motivated to do. But writing in any form is cathartic, and I’ve found that expressing myself to others suddenly makes the process fun and exciting. I think that blogging is just a great way to share all the cool stuff I’ve been up to.

This post is quite different compared to the other technical write-ups on my blog. If it isn’t your cup of tea, throughout my last few months of inactivity, I did end up thinking of some new blogpost ideas, some of which I am currently working on.

• The Rubik’s Cube is a Computer: My most ambitious project to date, where all my time has recently been put towards, and a collaboration with friends Henry and Asher. It will take many months or even a year for this to come out.

• From NAND to AI: A detailed technical narrative of NAND.

• GitHub’s Most Influential Controversies: I want to curate the most influential issues from here and analyze the role of drama in shaping policy.

• Implanting a VSCode Rickroll: I exploited an oversight in a popular VSCode extension to implant a silly rickroll into VSCode. It would have otherwise been a small write-up, however in doing so I may have potentially uncovered a subtle vulnerability with private GitHub repositories. Unfortunately there hasn’t been much recent development, but if something happens I will definitely get around to publishing it.

• A Timeline of Rust: If there is one thing more enjoyable than writing Rust, it’s reading Rust! I want to briefly look at its older design using real examples. I intend to remaster this excellent post.

• Four Years, 30k Lines of Code, and Nothing to Show For It: If you happen to know me then you know what this is going to be about, and I would appreciate if you please don’t personally bring this up to me :(

So… stay tuned. There’s always more to come. Until next time!

¹ I have considered saving ECE for my masters. I decided against it because I want to reserve it for something else CS related. ↩