What Now? 🤷‍♂️ (the future of my blog)

I guess this is what.

Over the past few months, this blog has existed but that is about it. I’ve been busy with school, internship hunting, and life in general. Though busy, I often catch myself wishing I was doing more. Creating more projects. Practicing coding more on leetcode. Developing myself more for my future. Well, rather than making something new only for it to sit, I’ve decided to dedicate myself to something I’ve already sunk time and effort into, to create something more than I ever intended but something that brings forth satisfaction and joy, this blog.

I’m not exactly sure how this blog will function but I am eager to get the ball rolling with this post. Maybe this blog will display the narrative of my life. Or possibly it will showcase tech news that has caught my eye. Or even music that I’ve been jamming to as of recently. How about I try a mix of all of these this time around.

Let’s start with a quick update on how my year ended and how this semester, Spring 2021, is looking.

The past semester, Fall 2020, ended up being a good one. I achieved all A’s, well with the exception of one cursed A-. Data Structures, History, Religion, and Human Geography filled my schedule. These classes were the last ones I needed before I could dive head-on into upper-level CS courses, which I currently am enjoying the swim in. I enjoyed all of these classes for various reasons. History, or moreso American history 1865 to present, was not your typical history class. Due to it being an honors class it was structured differently. And so rather than having tests and quizzes to prove comprehension of subject matter, we were assigned to read 4 books throughout the semester and write a 5+ page review for each. In these reviews, we summarized the author’s intent, who was the hero and the villain, how the writing of the book was influenced by current events happening at the time of publication, and how the book relates to events happening now. I thoroughly enjoyed constructing complex analyses of the assigned books and ended up learning more than I ever thought I would about the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the Influenza Epidemic of 1918 (which was handled shockingly similarly to Covid-19), and various other events.

In Data Structures, we went over (of course) various data structures including LinkedLists, Stacks, Queues, PriorityQueues, LinkedQueues, Heaps, AVL Trees, Red-Black Trees, B-trees, Graphs, and more. We discussed various algorithms, such as popular sorting and searching algorithms, and how to analyze algorithms runtimes. The class was taught in C++ and so I gained more experience working with C++ during the semester. A notable project we did was creating a bank simulator which, with the use of custom QueType and PriorityQueue classes, could simulate Customer objects entering a bank with a set amount of tellers and would output the amount of customers in line, at tellers, and who has left the store as the day progressed. I learned a lot in this difficult class that I know I will use extensively in the future.

In Human Geography, we learned a lot. Subject matter ranged from Food Justice to migration to even social sciences. I really enjoyed this class and the constant discussions we had about disparities among various people groups and how systematically these occur and have persisted for many generations.

In Religion, we learned about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We discussed the history, customs, and intertwinement of the three major monotheistic religions that are around today.

Altogether, it was a great semester but winter break was a welcomed event. I spent the holidays up in Sylva, NC with my family and had a great time playing in the snow with Ziggy, as you can see.

I greatly enjoyed going on long hikes and snuggling up with a blanket and book as the weather got colder and colder. I traveled back to Athens for New Years’ and after began getting ready for the new semester.

This semester I am taking iOS App Development, Android Development, Compilers, and Human-Computer Interaction. I’ve really enjoyed working on mobile applications and being able to instantly see my code create physical objects thanks to the advanced SDKs used for app development. I’m really excited to see what I can create at the end of the semester.

Welp, that was both a lot and a little. It’s dinner time and I feel good about the state of this post, though I am still a little unsure about what future posts will look like. Until those future posts are made I’d like to say thanks for reading this and be good to yourself.

Also here’s a song recommendation, the song is called Home - Live and it’s by a group called Avantdale Bowling Club. ABC is a jazz-rap group out based out of New Zealand and created by a man named Tom Scott. The ideas talked about in his songs range from an autobiographical song named Years Gone By to a song about drug issues Tom has experienced in those around him throughout his life named F(r)iends. I highly recommend this genre-fluid group. Also here’s a really fascinating interview NPR did with Tom.

Once again, thanks for checking out my blog and take care.