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This past semester, I took an Asian American Studies course in order to fulfill some Gen-Ed credits at my university. I had the sort of bland expectations you would expect for a class like this. However, I am pleased to say…I was right about the class the whole time. The entire course was framed around the fight against racism and discrimination and the difficulty for Asian Americans to…
If you were transported back to 1200, what are some things that exist today that you could recreate or prove are possible to people back in the day? I’ve long pondered this question because it really shows us what we take for granted. When you think of it, you probably don’t have a self-satisfactory answer to the question above. As a computer engineering student, I have absolutely no…
I recently had an argument with my sister about workers’ rights in the United States. We bickered about the issue back and forth, ultimately determining that our disagreements boiled down to our different worldviews. Although I won’t necessarily concede that she is as right as I am, I will say that it did teach me about the importance of opposing ideologies. In the political sphere, we…
Most people will experience a dilemma at some point in their life where they are unsure of whether to pursue a career in the thing that they enjoy or pursue a career in something that will make more money. Some people are lucky and get both. However, most people realize that they can’t make a living building professional Lego sets for rich CEOs. It’s often a difficult decision.…
Exactness is rarely achievable in daily life. In most situations, we expect things to be “good enough,” where we’re okay with a result despite knowing it could be better. There is always some tolerance and wiggle room. Spending an extra 5 hours editing your essay after a two-day grind will barely make a difference. Toyota is fine with some parts being off by a few micrometers.…
I often struggle with having imperfect work. My impatience leads me down a path where everything I do has to be perfect the first time. My first essay draft must be exact, my code must be optimally efficient, and homework has to be 100% correct and robust. I’ve spent countless hours dwelling on tiny details, making 0.1% improvements instead of big sweeping changes that actually matter. My…
Recently, I’ve been pondering on the idea of reasonableness. It’s a word that carries a lot of weight, where its applicability to any situation is highly subjective and can be easily contested. In most scenarios, there is some semblance of agreement between most parties regarding what is considered reasonable. More aptly, ideas where a reasonable amount of people can agree on what is…
We live in a unique time where the homogeneity within groups is on the decline. Historically, the world has been split by region, nationality, and ethnicity. You expect to find ethnically Chinese people in China, Indians in India, Africans in Africa, etc. Even more ambiguously, we have a current concept of what it means to be white, black, or Asian. Even in the middle East where the concept of…
My recent Instagram Reels feed has been a battleground between the sexes. You might see a short clip of a supercifical and shallow dating show solely focused on first impressions. Or, you might find a video of a street interview of random strangers about dating expectations. Regardless, these reels about how men and women treat one another will have a warzone in the comments. It’s a coin…
I was scrolling on Twitter, and I ran into this tweet: Not saying I have an opinion on this matter in particular, it was just the inspiration to write this. I’ve seen a lot of people on social media echo this sentiment: let people do what makes them happy. This seems to make sense to a lot of people, and why shouldn’t it? We all want to be happy. If someone does something that makes…
I was sitting in a professional learning and development meeting today about resilience and collaboration. He was quite the animated and engaging speaker, but as usual, most of everything he said was pretty basic and self-explanatory. I would argue that it was all common sense. I’ve felt this way about many of my classes before–mostly the non-STEM ones. In my communications class, of…
I’ve never been one to intrude on other people’s lives. I like to exist in parallel, only interfering when it actually matters. When it comes to strangers or acquaintances, I couldn’t care less about what they do. They lead their own lives and deal with their own struggles. Who am I to say anything. However, we all reserve the right to judge. In these days, it’s wonderful…
I’m in New York City for the summer. It’s for an internship. This is what I wanted. A departure from my last one. I found myself in the suburbs of San Francisco last summer. I was too far from the city to visit often. I had no car. There was no subway, and I was only armed with a very slow and oversized bike. I found myself having nothing to do after work.
With the rise of AI-generated content, will AI completely replace human creativity? Even if human-created content far outpaces what AIs can do today, how much longer will this be true? For those who scoff about how AI still makes major mistakes, remember that we’re in year 2-3 of a developmental journey that will last the rest of time. In ten or even a hundred years, do you really think that…
There are a few things in life that I am good at. Out of all of them, I’m the best at overthinking. Despite never even wanting to do it, I have become a master. With my unintentionally dutiful training, I have become the best at the thing I want to do the least. Through analyzing my personality over the years, I became more aware of how often I overthink the most mundane situations.
My friend Alex and I were talking about some of the unsavory individuals in our high school after a couple of controversies popped up over the year. I specifically recall him telling me that “even bad people are good 90% of the time”– a statement that’s stuck with me over my college years as I’ve encountered more and more cases of unscrupulous wrongdoings. The claim…
A trend I’ve noticed over the past decade is the increased obsession with celebrities and influencers. It’s not a surprise either. Access to the internet has increased the amount of information distribution channels. You can easily click through hundreds of daily articles about rumors and the latest gossip about your favorite or least favorite celebs. Most of them have their personal…
It’s been almost a month since my winter break began, and I can concretely say that I have accomplished absolutely nothing of substance. I have never been at a point in my life where I’ve had nothing solid to work toward, and I have no idea what to do. In middle school and high school, I was driven by competition and the desire to get into a good college. I wanted to win debate…
Over the summer of 2023, I interned at an AI startup in Menlo Park, California. I purchased a gym pass to the YMCA a few miles away in Palo Alto. On my daily commute back from the gym, I biked past an old elderly couple smiling and laughing as they crossed the street together. It was a scene I saw countless times biking around the well-off suburban area full of retirees.
I’ve never done a movie or TV show review. However, this show deserves it, because I had some serious gripes about it while watching it. A Quick Synopsis Abyss centers around two friends that die tragically in separate events and are reincarnated into new bodies that they don’t recognize. Cha Min, a rather ugly but kind heir of his family’s cosmetics empire dies from an alien…
Since the revolutionary public release of generative AI models, there has been an incredible wave of interest, hype, and expectations around their capabilities. Millions of people around the world are harnessing the powers of text-to-image and language models to explore new ideas and accomplish tasks that would have been even impossible in the past. These technologies sprung up so fast that we…
Bitcamp is the University of Maryland’s premier hackathon, bringing together over 1,400 students, making it the largest collegiate hackathon on the East Coast. I am a software developer on the tech team. Accomplishments So Far Built Registration App with Vue.js, AWS Lambda, API Gateway, and DynamoDB Form logic + design Built website with Vue.js Working on the EXPO app This is a story…
Our team of five, consisting of Shruthi, Vincent, Allison, Nikita, and myself, were tasked with optimizing the volunteer registration and check-in process for the Engineering Career Services (ECS) at the University of Maryland. The organization had to revert to a manual and error-prone method of registering and checking in employers and student organizations after the servers that hosted their…
Imagine that you are fresh off the boat in the United States from China. You have decided to build a new family on the American Dream by starting an authentic Sichuan-style restaurant. You try to register your new business with the government, but you struggle due to your limited English proficiency. You run into problems with designing the interior of your restaurant, and you struggle to…
Why do computers use binary? The human world is practically defined by the number 10. Ever since we evolved to be competent enough to manipulate numbers, we have almost exclusively used a number system in base 10, cross-culturally. But computers use base 2. Why base 2 specifically? There are an infinite number of bases to use– some that make more sense to us than others– but we decided…
February 4th marked the one-month anniversary of the creation of my shorts page, a collection of my short-form writing. Seeing my friend Eli embark on his one-month writing journey inspired me to try it for myself. I was at a point where I was desperate to share my ideas, but I could not find the right medium to do so. Over the course of 2022, I wrote one single ten-thousand-word monstrosity…
In many of my science classes over the years, I found myself extremely confused about the intuition behind theorems and proofs. I would ponder, how could you possibly figure that out? This pervasive thought did not only apply to complex topics. There are so many simple things that this could refer to. How about long division? We all employ that technique all the time, an elementary and systematic…
Do we have control over our lives? Are we truly the one who makes decisions for ourselves, or is our future determined by a predetermined and inescapable fate? Philosophers have pondered this concept of free will for a long time, and the answer is not so clear. The colloquial notion of free will is a concept at a very high level of analysis, one where we evaluate the tenants of existence,…
Life is a balance bewteen routine and adventure. Routine gives us the stability we need. It tells us what to expect and what to do. It’s your own crystal ball. If you lose routine, you lose predictability, which would quickly turn your life into chaos. Imagine trying to balance a day full of surprises every day. It would drive you mad. On the other hand, routine brings boredom. It’s a…
We are shaped by our upbringing. Everything that we experience is through the lens through which we view the world, influenced by the major and minute variables of our environment. I have come to a point in my life where I can notice how my past affects the way I behave. I see the ways my upbringing shaped my personality and my desires, in both relationships and company. We make these sorts of…
With the rise of automation and artificial intelligence, people have begun to discuss whether they are more beneficial or detrimental to society. On the one hand, they are redefining what is possible. On the other, they are replacing tasks that humans would traditionally do. But, why is that a bad thing, if even a bad thing at all? Automating human activities can have the consequence of replacing…
We live in the fairest time in human history. The people today are the most wealthy and free compared to almost everyone even a few hundred years ago. I didn’t say that we live in a perfect society. Poverty, racism, and inequality still plague our planet today. But, we can be thankful for all of the incredible developments we have made in recent history. Let’s travel back in time for a…
Occam’s Razor tells us that the simplest idea is always the best. In many situations, this is true. There is no need to needlessly complicate. The more complications you create, the more explanations you need to find. This rule does not apply in the realm of time. We perceive time to move in a linear fashion, but this is not the case at all. Einstein discovered almost 100 years ago that in…
The truth is the light in the darkness. When you are uncertain, the truth is the absolute defense. It gives us solid ground to stand on. We all strive for truth. It allows us to understand the reality we live in. We learn to find the truth. We think, we observe, and we grow– all with the purpose of getting closer to the absolute truth. And lastly, we argue for it.
Who are you? A collection of cells that form a mass of muscle, tissue, and bones around 5-7 feet high. A vessel of consciousness existing within the framework of time and space. An amalgamation of memories, character traits, and emotion. You probably have a strong sense of who you are. You are the primary witness of your body, your memories, your thought processes, and your consciousness. Everyone…
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It’s a day to celebrate one of the most important leaders of the Civil Rights movement. A day to honor the man who delivered one of the most memorable and impactful speeches in American history. A day to honor the man who dreamt of a world where people would be evaluated by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.
Death awaits all of us. He is calm and patient. Some will arrive at his doorstep early. Some will take many years. But, at time’s end, he will greet all of us at his door. There is no escape. Death is such a grave concept (pun intended). It marks the point where something ceases to live. Everyone lives to avoid death. We eat to not starve. We exercise to stay healthy.
Nobody likes difficult exams. After all, the professor might ask us questions we haven’t seen before. He might ask about ideas we haven’t considered before. Difficult exams can tank my grade. That wouldn’t be fair, right? Unfortunately, I would argue that those are actually “good” things. What is the purpose of an exam? Exams are meant to test your understanding of…
I went on a boat tour in Everglades National Park this afternoon. Our tour guide, Mitchell, took guided us through the 3-mile-long Buttonwood Canal, where we arrived at the mouth of Florida Bay. He was very knowledgeable of the different plants, birds, and animal life in the area– after all, it’s his job. Along the water, we passed by a few speedboats driven by middle-aged men with short hair, sun…
I watched the sun rise at Dania Beach, Florida this morning. I watched as the rays of our red-orange Sun peeked over the dark blue horizon. As it rose across the waters, the light reflected off of the ocean, forming a gold carpet towards the shore. The sky was smeared salmon and pink, gradually melting into blue. It was awe-inspiringly beautiful. This wasn’t my first sunrise. As a matter of…
Life is unfair. Some people start with everything and some people start with nothing. We’re born of circumstances that we cannot control. We do not decide our parents, our birthplace, our birthday, or our name. We’re given a hand, and we’re forced to play it. It’s an undeniable fact that people have different privileges. Some people are beautiful, some people are geniuses,…
Over the last two years, I have become addicted to chess. I’ve spent hours upon hours watching analyses of famous games between the strongest grandmasters that have ever lived. Each game is a story. Some are long, others are short. Some are super complicated, others are relatively simple. Some are wild, others are calm. The variety keeps the game interesting, just as different books and…
Humans are silly. We do a lot of really silly things. We look at squiggles on a piece of paper to learn. We bop our heads to random assembleges of acoustic waves. We go to office buildings and trade our time for pieces of paper with fancy images on them. The list goes on and on. We’ve all heard that nagging voice from a parent or friend: “why are you wasting your time?
I was going to write about dating apps here, but it ended up being so long that I put it on my blog. You can read it here: https://blog.echen.io/p/dating-apps/
I have not published a blog post in half a year. Emphasis on published. I have many backlogged drafts that I never completed, from book reviews to self reflections. Writing has become a chore for me. I spend too much time on the details, losing focus on the greater meaning behind the piece itself. If writing is thinking, then I have not thought. If writing is self expression, then I have not…
I like to keep track of things that I do. Whether it be books I’ve read, habits I’m forming, or monthly budgets, it’s important for me to keep book of my progress. Goals for 2024 Read 10 books Learn 1 powermove Create a stock / retirement portfolio Become friendly with a professor Find new intellectual interests Have meaningful things to do in my free time Books Can’t Hurt…
Northrop Grumman and UMD host a collaborative annual competition in areas of high importance, ranging anywhere from Machine Learning to Cybersecurity. In 2022, the topic of interest was environmental sustainability. Per Northrop Grumman’s own description, the point of the game was to “develop an original concept for a product, service, software, or a combination of the three, in areas…
Being thrust into the world of engineering was a thrilling experience. When you’re tasked with building an autonomous data-collecting vehicle that traverses a makeshift terrestrial arena, how could it not be? Thank you to my team: Ruth, Alex, Emmanuel, Michael, Curtis, Ajeet, Yaqi. I had a blast. The LinkedIn Version Designed and implemented an autonomous over-terrain vehicle with the…
This was the first large-scale coding project I ever did. It was the big finale of all the small projects I had started a few months before. Although I had taken Java classes in school before, I was blissfully unaware of what actually went on in the tech world. From an itching to do something big during COVID, my friend Maxwell and I decided to start a small online business to teach coding to…