i’ve been meaning to write publicly for a while. i always enjoyed writing in high school, although not when i was constrained by time or when i was forced to analyze a dull book. i like it because it’s in some ways calming, dumping your disjointed thoughts and getting them out of your head. you make space for other things afterwards, and sometimes you even get pulled into it, writing and thinking about what to write at the same exact time.
i also wasn’t necessarily involved in much of what i study now. english, writing and reading, was stuck with me throughout all my years in elementary school and onwards. it was something i couldn’t shake or dismiss. and it’s a very good skill to cultivate.
math was another field that persisted while i got older. and science. but biology didn’t particularly pique my interest, nor chemistry (but i had a great teacher). i was an above-average student that would be able to get away with studying right before exams, with some interest in what i was learning.
some of the teachers/professors i’ve had were great at explaining and instilling joy in learning, others made learning feel like a chore and added resistance. classes would then start to feel like nothing but a front for exams and sometimes the next best thing to do was to memorize as best i could in hopes of doing well on a test. as i got into college, the latter became ever-so real. but why?
was it a lack of time? laziness? a stubborn habit? wrong decision of major?
well, it turns out to be a mix of all of those. it’s a combination of having unorganized priorities early on, ignoring the times where i could do something about it, and being convinced my life, hobbies, and interests needed to revolve around my major. more on the “major” idea later.
the idea of writing on these notes is an effort to mitigate the dissatisfaction “learning” has given me. learning isn’t the same as recall/regurgitation. it’s obvious when this is said out loud (they’re different words after all), but i know countless people who, frustrated with exams in college, say the same thing: how does the teacher expect me to do well on an exam when none of what i learned was actually on it?
learning = the ability to generalize. if you can only reproduce what you were shown, you’ve indexed, not understood. the test is application: can you apply what you studied? can you take what you’ve learnt, break it down, and apply the appropriate information to an adjacent domain?
on the idea of letting your major define who you are and what hobbies you can have:
i want to be the kind of person you can ask anything and leave with an interesting perspective afterwards. i want to strengthen my position on things. i can’t do so when i am bounded by the field of computer engineering.
and i think the cause of burnout and lowering your baseline for learning things is partly overworking yourself and also partly relying on a single “idea” too much (“idea” meaning: optimizing your resume purely for acquiring an internship and nothing else, or having stellar grades for the sole purpose of keeping up with your parents’ expectations of you). if i absolutely cannot relate what i’m being taught with anything else in my life, what’s the point? if i cannot see the short or long term benefit i get from sacrificing and putting in tons of hard work, why even waste your time?
…
politics is a huge field. psychology is a huge field. philosophy, health, nutrition, literature, finance, history, are all huge fields. to be well informed on all these is a lifelong pursuit… but maybe today was the catalyst for this journey.
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although i stress the importance of creativity, especially within reading and writing as well as many of the other hobbies i might get to in the future, there is a time and a place for the technical.
absolutes, or as close as you can get to them, are fundamental for a career in STEM. i chose this career despite some of my initial feelings about STEM in general because i knew at some point knowing both the liberal arts and the sciences will be a powerful combination to have in any industry. i will try to place an almost equal emphasis on this in future notes.