End of the Year Thoughts

This is a quick one; Christmas is a week a few days away, and there's plenty to do. I can't do much baking for friends or family, as I have a cold, but it should pass by tomorrow afternoon. I can feel it in my bones! (Sinuses, actually...)

At the end of the year, I always put some thoughts down in one of my notebooks. Writing things out helps me focus on them, and a bulleted list is easier to understand than an abstract thought cloud. I figured it would be nice to do it on my blog this year, especially since no one reads this anyway.

The spring was great—it feels like it was ages ago I finished Calculus II, which was the highlight of that semester, and I'm sure I've forgotten many things already. What I haven't forgotten is the group of friends I made there. I ran into most of them on campus at one point or another in the fall, and it's a blast watching them dive into their majors.

That informed a decision I made at the beginning of the fall semester. I'd never made social activities a priority before, and the spring was over so quickly I didn't get to know more than a few people. But for the fall, I wanted social activity to be on the same footing as my studies. Universities are about more than grades, after all, and we can learn as much from our peers as from our professors.

I'm happy to report that it paid off—I got to do a team project with an amazing group of fellow CS majors, and I got involved in student organizations, mainly as secretary of the Assoc. for Computing Machinery chapter. I'm grateful for the opportunities, and I learned a lot about teamwork from both.

The fall was more fun in some ways, but it was worse in others. Despite being 16 credit-hours instead of 19 like the spring, it was a harder workload. But, because of my choice to make social activities a priority, I still spent plenty of time with friends. We went out to lunches, discussed everything from music to life goals, and generally had a grand old time.

I'll finish with a couple specific things that happened to me, and then the bulleted list of observations I mentioned. First, I found out I have three semesters of compsci courses left, not two. (One would have a single class.) So, I decided to go all-in and double major in mathematics. That also gave me a chance to participate in the Honors College; I'll get to do a two-semester research project in my major.

Second, a couple days after that, I received an offer from Trane Technologies, and will be joining them as a co-op/intern on the controls software team in January. I'm incredibly excited to get a taste of the industry and solve real-world problems. It means I'm not taking classes in the spring, but I'll be back in the fall with a new perspective and, I'm sure, more friends!

The List of Lessons Learned

In no particular order, the lessons I learned (or should have learned!) from this year:

• Classes are only exciting if teachers are excited to teach them, and a good teacher makes hard material enjoyable.
• It always pays to listen to people. Time is precious, and they notice when you invest it.
• It always pays to ask questions. You're guaranteed to be no worse off than before, and you'll have rephrased the problem to ask the question. Oftentimes, that reveals the solution.
• When they tell you a physics lab is one credit-hour, it's a trap. They're lying.
• The Probability & Statistics class (MATH 3351) is evil. It looks like math, but it isn't, because math is fun.
• Social life matters more than grades. I walked out of this semester with a 3.9 GPA, not a 4.0, and it was worth it.
• It's always better to handle problems early. (I keep forgetting and relearning this one.)
• Helping people learn, whether as a TA for Data Structures & Algorithms, or as a friend giving calculus tips, is extremely rewarding. The "Aha!" moment, when someone finally gets it, is worth every minute spent.

I'd love to hear from anyone reading this, if there are such people. Stranger things have happened on the internet. My email is ethan.barry@howdytx.technology.