2023 more like 2020p

#new years#featured

2023 more like 2020p

2023-01-02 · 3 min readtruly my resolution for this year (ie. this is my resolution post for this year but this is the best pun i could think of).

For me this year was marked by the abundance of AI in my life—from tinkering with material science at the start of the year, to being so very surprised by all the scaling up of transformers & diffusion models. The last part was especially cool because of the ease of ChatGPT making text LLMs so much more accessible. Apart from AI, I think I was at least able to do more introspection this year when I wasn't bogged down by school, getting to research some fun philosophy (more absurdism is always great). Thinking a lot more about what I want to do because of college apps, I feel like I have more of a solid grip of what I want to do in the future, or at least a more accurate more broad version.

Lastly this year was probably made best by the tons of people I was able to meet. Unironically in 2021 I probably met the least number of people in any year I've had, contrasted by 2022 where I've met so so so many new people. From new faces at school, to even more hackclub people, to meeting people @ ISEF & Italy, and even just going along talking to strangers in SF. I love how much more open to new people & experiences I've become, and thats definitely something I want to do more in 2023.Project wise, I think 2023 was less scattered in "making small cool things that I find fun in a day" and more of "making large cooler projects" like a new ML algorithm or taking my first dive into game development. I think in 2023 I want to be able to make larger cool projects, but more interactive ones that I can put on my website—maybe some personal tools, my own language, or even a new social media!!!! (queue the xkcd competing norms meme)Anime this year was amazing, can't wait for Vinland, Mushoku, Silksong, TOTK, & AoT next year. Media wise I feel like my spotify most accurately summarizes me.Some cons for this year summarized: I feel like I could've worked harder and made a lot more projects in my free time. Also I honestly miss reading a lot, which I don't think I did a lot of this year (a total of only maybe 6 or 7 fun books...)Notable rejections: Got deferred from MIT, rejected from most summer programs, wasn't a Coca Cola Semi-Finalist, and also got rejected by all the NASA internships I applied to...
Notable yays: 2nd place ISEF, all the judges & students I met were super super nice! Also got to go to Italy for a research internship (little me would freak out about that). "Travelled for work" for the first time helping make something, along with actually finishing college apps. Got to quarters for states in policy and finally got my first real trophy (and a couple from the backlog of last year). Friends were a big win along with being invited to my first AI conference woooooo!NOW finally for my resolutions:

CAD w/ blender (& print something rlly useful)
more law & legal jargon also write mock legislation
write more personal tooling, and maybe a frontend design framework to unify it all—MAYBE A GOOD BACKUP SYSTEM, mixing in borg + ncdu into a good UI
once i do that make a bunch of fun interactive AI or just math things with the frontend framework
read a book every one or two weeks hopefully (I'm finishing up the Midnight Library right now)
HAVE FUN!!! I just finished senior year first semester so honestly I'm going to take it as lax as possible, more social goals at this point...

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