Tired
Sapa Dreams and Term 7 Realities
The summer break feels like a lifetime ago.
Back in July, my family and I travelled to Vietnam, and we spent some time in Sapa. Being surrounded by that kind of raw nature really reinforced a quiet idea I have had for a while: I want to own a farm someday. There is something deeply appealing about leaving the algorithms and the city behind for a patch of land. Here is a view from the train tracks that perfectly captured the peaceful atmosphere of the trip.
The Academic Shock to the System
If Term 6 was tough, Term 7 is a completely different beast. It is significantly more intense.
My schedule is currently packed with Advanced Optimization, Advanced Stochastics, Urban Transport, and Healthcare Communications for my HASS module. Advanced Opti, in particular, is pushing my braincells to their absolute limit once again. Going from the total mental rest of the summer break straight into advanced mathematical modelling has been a massive shock to the system. The learning curve is steep, but I will manage.
Capstone Growing Pains
Our entrepreneurship capstone, Kinetic 104, is also going through a transitional phase. We have pulled back from our volunteering at the Watchman Home and are currently reaching out to other homes to gather more diverse user validation.
We also have an in-house academic professor attached to the team as another advisor now. It has created a slightly awkward dynamic for us. We are having to transition from a “free-roaming”, startup-style project into something much more structured. Because we now have to cater to strict academic grading criteria, balancing the real-world utility of the product with what looks good on a university rubric has become a delicate dance.
Comfort Gaming and Paused Projects
Because school is taking up so much mental bandwidth, some of my loftier summer goals have been shelved. The A Song of Ice and Fire books are collecting virtual dust on my Kindle, and my local LLM experiments have been paused for now.
Instead, I am defaulting to comfort gaming when I have free time. I am currently on the brutal solo grind pushing a character to level 290 in MapleStory SEA, wrapping up my StarCraft 2 prestige runs, and playing a lot of Teamfight Tactics with friends.
Grounding Forces
Speaking of friends, they are the real MVPs this term. We spend half our time rage-baiting each other over TFT & IRL, but honestly, they make the brutal workload and the general chaos of life incredibly bearable. It is genuinely heartwarming to have a solid, funny group to suffer through the semester with. They keep me sane when everything get a bit too overwhelming.
The most beautiful things are not associated with money; they are memories and moments.
Alek Wek
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