This was my eighth semester at National Taiwan University (NTU), and also my last. For most people, senior spring is relaxed: they have already completed their credits and have no graduation pressure. But because I changed departments and kept taking courses in other departments, I still had not completed my credits by senior spring. Because of that, I still had 12 credits to take, and I still had to go to campus almost every day.

Overall, senior spring felt a bit absurd to me. It was as if I did not do anything particularly well, and there was not much I could be proud of. There were a few things worth being happy about, and a few setbacks that left a stronger impression.

This semester I interned at Skymizer. That was when I realized: I had thought I could handle a large project with ease, but in reality I could not. I still spent a huge amount of time just trying to understand the project. They were building a deep-learning compiler, and I was not familiar with either deep learning or compilers. I felt that lacking the domain knowledge I needed put me at a real disadvantage. This experience made me understand that, when job hunting, I need to evaluate my abilities more rigorously and assess how well I actually fit a company.

Last semester I met a girl. Later we became quite close, and I felt I liked her a lot. For a few months, my mind was mostly occupied by her. In the end, the relationship just faded away without any conclusion. I think that, during those months, my life rhythm was seriously disrupted—it seems I was still too immature.

I have always had a psychological barrier with General Biology. I had failed it twice before. This semester, my credit load was especially light, and I also had graduation pressure. I attended class seriously and studied somewhat seriously (maybe?). In the end, my final grade came out as a C. I made it through with my heart in my throat, and that basically declared that I should be able to log out of NTU on time. Considering that I took General Biology C three times—and all offered by different departments—I’ve had a total of 10 Life Science Department professors, which is not a small achievement. I wrote the detailed, bittersweet experience in “Course reviews for three General Biology C classes: 106-1 Bioengineering, 107-1 Pharmacy, 107-2 PT/OT”. If you’re interested, you can take a look.

For other courses, I attended them pretty casually. But I really liked History of Chinese Calligraphy. I have always had a soft spot for Chinese culture, and Lu Hui-wen’s explanations of cultural artifacts were wonderful. We also visited the Academia Sinica Museum of the Institute of History and Philology, the National Palace Museum, and “Water-Moon Mirror Images,” an exhibition curated by the instructor in person. Listening to the instructor’s guided explanations was truly amazing—she is the best guide I have ever seen.

I also stayed active in the Rust Taiwan community. Who usually takes the lead in a community? The person who is relatively free—and that person was me. So I handled quite a few community-related matters, mainly organizing the COSCUP 2019 “Everything in Rust” track. The speaker lineup was seriously impressive. Of course, I was grateful that the speakers supported us, but as the track host, I still felt genuinely proud. In mid-June, I also traveled with the COSCUP team to Hong Kong Open Source Conference (HKOSCON) to give a talk.

This semester, I also tried something really cool. I have always wanted to do what Feynman did. In Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, he mentioned that he once did a talent exchange with an artist: he taught the artist science, and the artist taught him drawing. In the end, Feynman could even hold his own art exhibition. I really wanted to try that. In the past, I asked my good friend Yating, who studied art, whether she wanted to try it, but she said she was not interested, and her classmates also seemed uninterested. Still, I was a big supporter: I went to see her exhibitions almost every time when she was studying in the Department of Calligraphy and Painting at Taipei National University of the Arts.

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(Me and Yating)

This semester, I simply made a public post on my own Facebook, asking: is anyone willing to teach me drawing, and I can teach them programming? A designer named Vivianne said she was interested. So we set a fixed schedule: one day every week she taught me sketching and watercolor, and another day I taught her programming. Vivianne already knew how to code; she could even teach others how to build websites. So I tried to explain more advanced things. As for me, I basically could not draw at all, so she led me from the very beginning. I think this kind of interactive experience is great, and Vivianne herself is also quite special—she has a bit of an engineering vibe. If art/humanities and science form a spectrum, I feel that both of us lean closer to the middle. I think that is also why we got along well.

After I got admitted to NCTU, I do not remember what exactly triggered it, but I suddenly felt that I could not stay in Taiwan—I had to go abroad early and see the world. So I made up my mind to apply for U.S. CS master’s programs the following year, which effectively meant I would not take the NCTU degree. So I started studying English. I think I stretched the English-study timeline too long, and later I felt a bit exhausted. I spent 50,000 NTD of my own money to take English courses at Elite, but I only went to class when I felt like it—it felt like a terrible deal. Still, I did not stop studying English during that period: I went to English cram school regularly, and during commuting I consistently listened to English podcasts. Overall, I felt my English improved a little bit. Then, in the summer, I would need to go all-in: I had to finish TOEFL and GRE before the end of summer.

Time flies—four years passed in the blink of an eye. In the end, what I regretted more was that the “three major things” of college life—academics, clubs, and romance—seem to be things I did not really experience properly. My GPA in coursework was really bad. The clubs I joined were mostly work-oriented and had less of the “fun” side. And during college, I did not have a relationship at all. It is honestly a pity. But no matter what, I am going to graduate from NTU and log out on time! When I have time, I will write a full retrospective on my college years.