May (and April) 2026

02 Jun, 2026

Life isn't linear, so it's hard to catalog and compress life into a list (of events, of words, etc). While I could project my past two months onto some sort of temporal axis and share some of the unique experiences I've had whilst on that axis, there's really no way to do this well as events themselves in some sense aren't comparable.

Take for example the "event" that was me crashing an ongoing class (ECE 271C, 05/12). In terms of my life, it was definitely a notable event — I met a professor, I learned about optimization from a theoretical lens, and showing up to this class in a sense directly led me to show up to the next class which in turn can eventually be traced to me attending a guest lecture and meeting with a research scientist at Anthropic. In terms of all the possible events that I could've done on that day, I think showing up unprompted to this lecture was one of the best things I could've done.

Yet I'm drawn to this event as the event itself was notable and moreover, I still remember the event and its notability. That second point is most crucial as many notable moments (e.g. moments when I felt wonder, moments where I pondered something interesting, moments whence something interesting (intellectually stimulating) happened) have happened in these past two months that I simply am unable to recall. Of course, writing the list down in its entirety would be impossible, yet if I also don't cherry-pick specific moments I remember, the best thing I can do in these monthly milestones is note down the broad strokes of life¹ which defeats the whole purpose of these words; a present me writes for a later me to remember moments, not a vague idea of what I was doing around this time of year.

Anyhow, reading through the past two months of logs and my calendar, here's what I found notable:

• Spring quarter started (03/30) — As I'm writing this, I have my finals next week so a school quarter elapses basically every two months.
• Showed up to ICPC practice (04/11, 04/18, 05/02, 05/16(ish), 05/31) — I made some friends and had some fun programming some problems.
• Saw Yuja Wang (04/23) — She has crystal clear playing and great musical interpretation (specifically in her dynamics and the way she 'controls' time)
• Crashed more classes (ECE 1B 05/04, ECE 271C 05/12) — Crashing the "good" classes is fun :P
• Had my first real interview (05/07) — Didn't get a call back, but the whole experience was validating and I'm happy I've got this experience under my belt.
• Had a week where I "Quit" videogames (~05/18) — I didn't quit as in stop completely, but I am happy to say I reduced my time playing (and stopped playing M-F entirely)
• Met some cool Physics PhDs who are doing cool work and had a chat with an Anthropic Scientist (05/21)
• Started "doing research" (05/25) — i.e. reading papers, talking about ideas.

On a broader level, I:

• Started showing up to more professors'/grad students' Office Hours — Good professors/grad students are fun people to talk to and it's fun to ask them about their research / what they do then throw them hard question afterwards :).
• still sleep super late and wake up super late.
• still don't spend my post-midnight hours as productively as I would like (though some hours are better well spent than others which are infinitely better well spent than even others).
• still don't feel great or pleased everyday with myself whence going to bed (but maybe this follows from a late bed time and 'wasting' the few hours I have before bed).
• got better at chess under longer time controls.
• got better at ping pong somewhat.
• started doing more things I care about :)
• experimented more with using AI in my life

I want to say "all in all, a great two months" but it feels intuitively cliché; these two months as a retrospective (and frankly, almost any two months) are always great as I am always (in my view) doing something somewhat interesting and cool. Moreover, these two months haven't gone well; I haven't been striving towards some cool goal, I haven't made legible progress towards doing cool things (still haven't made my website, programmed literally anything cool, moved to Linux, gotten better at pure math/pure algorithms, etc), and haven't got secure summer plans even though the end of the year is literally within sight. Beyond that, I just haven't been "doing" too much and in two weeks time I'll be in a 'new' environment, learning how to do all over again, and trying to figure out what is it I do best.

Whatever. I'm sure I'll look back on June as a happy month, and I'm confident that I'll make things work out. That being said, although metaphorically one can arrive at the same destination after smooth sailing or after a rough journey, in practice, mentally the two individuals are different people. We'll see where this June will take me (or rather, where I'll take myself this June).