Surf Roots, Software Thoughts

The earliest presentation I can recall giving was during my junior year of high school. I was in front of my U.S. History class, accompanied by two of my classmates. The three of us had prepared for our talk, and it was my turn to present. I recall the stagnant classroom with two doors in the back, begging me to run through them and escape the horror that was in front of me. I started talking and was immediately broadsided by an anxiety panic attack. I froze and didn’t know what to say, so I turned around to one of my classmates and quietly asked them to fill in for me. I was utterly embarrassed and confident that I would never give another presentation again.

At the end of my freshman year at the University of Washington, having just finished the second introductory programming class, CSE 143, Stuart Reges contacted me and asked me if I would like to be a teaching assistant (TA) starting fall of my sophomore year. The thought of presenting to 20-25 students twice a week for an entire quarter was horrifying, but I knew I had to take the opportunity — I knew that having a presentation phobia would limit me in my career. You might be thinking that my logic doesn’t make sense; why would I want to put myself in an uncomfortable situation? I did this because the only way to become comfortable with something is to challenge yourself, to put yourself in the uncomfortable situation over and over again until you’re finally comfortable with it.

If you fear public speaking, then the only way to overcome your fear is to practice public speaking. The way I overcame my fear was by becoming a TA and presenting to 20-25 students twice a week for two years. The first few sections I taught were horrifying; I lost my train of thought often and probably did a poor job of explaining the course material. With time my sections became better and my confidence stronger. But how did I cope with the first few sections? I learned about cognitive therapy from a wonderful book my mom recommended.

Cognitive therapy will help you pinpoint your discomfort and teach you how to cope with it. The trick to coping with discomfort is to learn exactly what makes you uncomfortable.  Are you scared of making a mistake?  Are you worried that you don’t look good?  Are you scared that you’ll lock up and look like an idiot?  You should ask yourself questions like these and try to pinpoint exactly what bothers you most about public speaking.  It’s not enough to say, “I just don’t like it.”  No.  You have to pinpoint your discomfort.  My discomfort was the fear of vomiting in front of people.  For whatever reason I had a primal fear that my audience would see me vomit or would be weirded out if I had to suddenly leave the room never to return.  I know it sounds stupid, but this is what genuinely worried me.  “What if I have to throw up?  I’ll just politely say that I’m not feeling well and that I have to end class.  What if I don’t have enough time to pack my stuff up and end up puking all over the classroom?  I can’t do this presentation.”  This is the thought process I used to go through, and once I realized what my fear was, it was just a matter of learning how to calm myself down and combat my fears.

Combating your fears takes preparation and practice. I would take notes of my thoughts immediately after a worry streak and reflect on them later.  It’s natural to forget your thought process during a worry streak, so writing your thoughts down is very important.  The next step is to examine your thought process and realize ways to combat your worries.  In my vomiting example, I would think about the amount of times I have thrown up in my life, which made me realize that throwing up is not a common thing.  After drinking slightly too much one night, I also realized that the urge to vomit doesn’t come out of nowhere.  If I really had to throw up, then I would feel nauseous, dizzy, etc, and these feelings would come gradually and with warning.  These two facts allowed me to fight my worries in a very rational way, but often my worries would exceed all attempts of being rational.  In cases like these, I would try my hardest to think rationally and explain to myself that my worries were unwarranted given the facts.  Eventually I was able to not let my emotional worries take control of me by immediately considering the logical implications of my worries.  It took time and practice, but eventually logic outweighed emotion.  It’s also important to realize that you can’t try to say to yourself that your worries are just worries and are therefor irrelevant.  This will dig you into a deeper hole, because you’ll realize that if your worries are irrelevant, then something must be wrong with you.  Nothing is wrong with you; lots of people worry.  Think of combating your worries as a personal challenge, one that once overcome will be gratifying to say the least.  Before a presentation, try to mentally put yourself into an uncomfortable situation and practice the ways that you will combat it.  You’ll start being able to combat your worries, and then, after lots of practice, you won’t get many worries at all.

I used to be horrified of public speaking, and now I love it.  Since my public speaking phobea discovery in high school, I’ve given lots of lectures to 20-25 students, 5 lectures to 50+ students, 3 lectures to 100+ students, and 1 lecture to 200+ students.  I was nervous for many of those lectures, but I knew how to combat my nervousness and give the talk regardless.  I put myself in a position where I had to practice my public speaking, and I armed myself with skills to combat worry and overwhelm my emotions with rationale (cognitive therapy isn’t the only solution!).  Becoming a TA might not be in the cards for everyone, but there are plenty of other ways to practice your public speaking.  You can sign up for a public speaking class at a community college, or you can join a local public speaking club.  Try to practice public speaking with subjects that you enjoy; it’s much easier to present something that you’re passionate about.  Plus, chances are good that you’ll be presenting something that you’re very familiar with whenever you’re required to speak publicly.  There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it’ll take some determination and hard work to get there.  You can do it!

I remember my first Seattle autumn.  Having come from Los Angeles, the city with one season, the sight of brown leaves flowing in the wind reminded me of “the most beautiful thing in the world” according to Ricky Fitts in American Beauty.  I was so happy to see an autumn and be in a city that actually had seasons.  I’ve since revised my perception of Seattle’s seasons.

Having lived in Seattle for four years now I’m confident that I’ve seen what the city is capable of.  I’ve backpacked on the Olympic Peninsula, biked around San Juan Island, hiked up Mt. Rainier and snowboarded down, surfed at Westport, and lived in Seattle while attending the University of Washington.  After four years I’ve made a conclusion about Seattle: it is a city with one season and intermittent change.  Here’s the breakdown:

• June - August: warm rain with occasional gloom and sunshine
• September - November: rain and gloom with occasional falling leaves and potentially freezing temperatures, occasional sunshine
• December - April: cold rain, freezing temperatures, snow, very, very occasional sunshine
• May: rain with lots of gloom and occasional sunshine

Keep in mind that I’m exaggerating pretty heavily here.  I’m bitter that I gave my rear fender to Glenn forgot to bring my rear fender on my commute this morning, leaving me with a wet ass, back, and feet.  Perhaps this is my own fault and not Seattle’s, but I thought I would try and make a funny post out of it.  For the record I’ve had an awesome time in Seattle, and I don’t regret coming here.

Photo credit here.

The sun has broken through the never-ending cloud cover here in Seattle, and it’s about time. We’ve been without a spring this year — I can count between two and four days of sunshine since February. Fortunately for me I’ve been attending class and coding Ruby most of the day, only spending time outside on my cycle commute. Foreigners think of Seattle as some strange rain ecosystem, where no one goes outside September through June. At least this is what my family and I thought when I was deciding where to go to school. When I travel to other parts of the world and mention that I go to school in Seattle, the typical response is, “Oh yeah, it rains up there a lot, huh?” From foreigner to foreigner, I thought I would describe Seattle’s weather for the four years I’ve been here.

Freshman Year: 2004-2005
This was a super mild winter. There was a huge drought in the northwest, making for dry, clear, insanely cold days. I would say that we got only a handful of rain days that year, with an average temperature in the low 40s. It wasn’t so bad; I skateboarded a lot. However, the snowboarding was awful. I recall that fall and spring were both pretty typical. Typical meaning mostly overcast and misty with spots of sun and warmth.

Sophomore Year: 2005-2006
This one was a doozy. We had a record-tying 33 days of rain in a row, and most of those days were filled with moderate to heavy rainfall. It was miserable, but awesome at the same time. I had the best snowboarding winter of my life this year. Again, I don’t really recall that fall and spring, but I think they were both typical.

Shi Shi Beach backpack trip.

Another Shi Shi shot.

Junior Year: 2006-2007
This one was a doozy as well. We had a record-breaking seven (I think?) inches of rain in a single day, and it almost happened twice. We also had a ridiculous fall, which consisted of rain, cold, and early snowfall. I think we had a total of six or seven snow days this year. Spring, however, was really nice. The sunshine came early and stayed for a while. I remember having two full weeks of warm sun. Insane!

Three Fingers hike.

Snow in Seattle.

Hike up Rainer, snowboard down.

Senior Year: 2007-2008
First let me talk about the summer of 2008. I spent this summer in Seattle working at Redfin, and I’ve never been more disappointed with the weather. Everyone agrees that the weather sucks in Seattle during the winter, but summers are apparently beautiful, warm, and clear. Let me just tell you that the summer of 2008 was a complete let down. I think there was a total of 2 weeks of sun and warmth, and the rest was filled with drizzles, clouds, mist, fog, and general misery.

The bad summer blended right in to a bad fall and an even worse winter. We had probably around seven or eight snow days and plenty of freezing weather and precipitation. I remember getting on my cycle at 8:00am en route for work and thinking I was going to freeze to death. The snow-covered mountains were insane, and I got a ton of awesome snowboard days in. So what about the spring? We didn’t have a spring. With snow in late April, sub 50 degree temperatures, and plenty of rain and wind, winter spilled right over all of spring. I’m hoping that today’s patch of sun will be the start of a trend, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t

Alpaca farm on San Juan Island.

Conclusions
Is the weather in Seattle bad? Absolutely. Is the weather in Seattle bad even during the summer? In my experience, yes, but everyone says summer is great. I generally don’t mind bad weather, because it means better snowboarding. However, commuting to work and school either by foot or cycle sucks in the rain, and each consecutive day of miserable commutes adds to more and more frustration. The bad weather has definitely limited me by keeping me inside more often than I’d like to be. I wasn’t able to surf or skateboard that much this summer, and my winter commutes were sometimes canceled because of snow and ice. However, being inside more often has its perks. I’ve cranked out a ton of personal projects, and I’ve achieved a good academic status. The weather is not one of the things I will miss about Seattle, but there is plenty else to miss.

I just got this email about a robbery in the U-District:

On Thursday, May 1, 2008, shortly before 1:00 a.m., a female UW student was walking alone in the W-10 parking lot behind the Terry-Lander residence halls in west campus when she was approached from behind and knocked to the ground by two young men, one of whom grabbed her purse. The student was not injured. Both men immediately fled and entered a nearby waiting vehicle.  Two UWPD officers on foot patrol in the vicinity were alerted by the victim’s shouts for help.  The officers observed the suspects fleeing in their car.  They broadcast over their radio information to other UWPD officers in vehicles who stopped the car and arrested all three occupants for robbery.  The suspects were subsequently booked into the King County Jail and the Youth Services Center on investigation of second degree robbery.

The suspects in this crime are also being investigated as having been involved in similar crimes that occurred as recently as a week ago in the University District.

In order to decrease the chances of becoming a victim of crime, you should:

*  Walk with friends, especially late at night or early morning hours
*  Be aware of your environment and alert for possible danger.
*  Remove yourself from potentially dangerous situations as soon as possible.
*  Call 911 to report suspicious activity or persons to the police.
*  Call Husky NightWalk: 206-685-WALK (9255) for a security guard escort to various locations on campus and within a one-mile radius off campus. The hours of operation for these uniformed guards are 6:00pm-2:00am, 7 days week.

Notice the last bullet above - the Husky NightWalk.  I had no idea that this service existed!  I wonder if they just set it up or if they’ve just done a poor job advertising it?  I think the idea of having uniformed guards walking students around is a step in the right direction, but it totally won’t scale.  The UW Police just flat out need to clean up the U-District.  Deploy more nightly patrols, both on bike and in car, focus less on busting college students for partying and drinking, and continue to provide good services like the Husky NightWalk.  Good services will be in much lower demand with a cleaner U-District, but they’ll still be available for worrisome students.

I attended Bill Gate’s talk entitled “Software, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Giving Back” last week at the University of Washington, and I must admit that this talk was not nearly as interesting or enlightening as the Dalai Lama’s talk a few weeks ago.

The talk began with the showing of a video depicting his last day at Microsoft.  Take a look:

After the video Bill went on to discuss his view of the future of software.  He foresees technology surfacing in our day-to-day life even more.  He believes that one day all of television will be interactive and targeted.  You will be recommended different TV shows to watch, and you’ll have the opportunity to see what your friends are watching, rate shows and movies, etc.  He also said that television advertisements will one day be targeted just as Google’s text ads are targeted.  He also claimed that one day we’ll no longer have normal mirrors, whiteboards, or desks.  Instead we’ll have computer screens in place of these things that are interactive and customized.  He said the rise of these items will also make us think differently about user experience and interaction in a similar way that the iPhone has.

This portion of his talk was rather interesting.  He commented on Bubble 1.0 and 2.0 and wasn’t worried at all about Burst 2.0.  He claimed that new technology will always create bubbles and that new bubbles will be created shortly after the burst of another.  He said, and I quote, “Software is the most interesting thing in the world.”  This made me really happy, though I suppose it wasn’t too surprising.  I definitely agree that software is an incredibly creative and exciting intellectual practice, and it makes me happy to hear others who are also as passionate about the field as I am.

The remainder of his talk focussed on his foundation and social issues.  He said that large foundations must partner with foreign goverments of the developing world to ensure progress is made in healthcare, environmental sustainability, education, and vaccination.  He claimed that having a healthier society decreases the birth rate.  His reasoning for this was that parents will have less children if they know their children have a high chance of survival.  He claimed that foundations need to think critically about incentives, because the incentive system of a particular project will determine its success.

I’m again grateful to have been given to opportunity to listen to such an influential person.  This talk convinced me that worrying about computer science jobs in the short term isn’t worth it and that the software industry has plenty of growing to do.  It’s rather exciting, actually :).

I recently wrote about 10 ways the University of Washington could improve, and forth on my list was the UW police.  I mentioned that I receive an email once every six months that describes a stabbing, shooting, or murder.  Here’s my proof.  Below is a quote from an email I received earlier today from the UW police office:

On Wednesday, April 23, 2008, at 1:48 AM, a female UW student was robbed by several
men at knife point while walking alone at the intersection of NE 47th Street and 18th
Avenue NE. The suspects emerged from a vehicle. The victim was not injured.  The
suspects fled the area after taking personal belongings from the victim.  One of the
suspects is described as a male, 5′7″, in his 20s, wearing a black baseball cap and a
dark hooded sweatshirt.  This incident was assigned Seattle Police incident #
08-144718.

Approximately 7 minutes after the above incident, at 52nd and University Way NE, two
male victims were confronted by two groups of  males who assaulted and robbed them.
These groups also emerged from vehicles. One victim was stabbed during the fight and
was subsequently treated at Harborwiew Medical Center. The victims were not students
and had no affiliation with the University.  The suspects in this incident fled prior
to the arrival of the police.  One suspect was described as a male in his 20s, thin
build, with an orange colored hoodie, black shirt and shorts.  The incident was
assigned Seattle Police incident # 08-144725.

Pretty ridiculous, huh?  I know the issue is more complicated than I make it out to be, but I’m pretty certain that having an officer or two patrol the greek system at night would be relatively innexpensive and very effective.

This Spring marks the second consecutive year that the Husky Snowboard Team president (me this year, Barry last year) has failed in getting the University of Washington to approve of an on-campus rail jam.  For those of you unfamiliar with rail jams, a rail jam is a type of snowboarding event where professional snowboarders and skiers slide down boxes and rails while spinning and pressing.  Here’s a photo from one of the other campus rail jams:

Last year Barry worked with the Student Activities Office (SAO) to try and get this event approved.  The event management company, Galvanic Designs, was low on funding at that time, so they weren’t able to provide financial support.  The SAO decided that there was not enough incentive for the club to throw this event, so they wouldn’t let us do it.  Fair enough.  “We’ll do it next year!” said Barry and I.  Yeah right …

My portion of this saga started earlier this fall on the second or third week of school.  I went into the SAO office with another officer; we were hoping to throw a jam in the fall.  Our SAO advisor told us to fill out a certain form and to wait for Risk Management to get back to us.  I filled out the form immediately and waited.  I was told that Risk Management usually took three weeks to respond, so I set the event date for a month after I submitted the form.  Three weeks later I get a response from the HUB saying that I filled out the wrong form.  Great.  I filled out the form I was told to fill out, and now it’s too late because Risk Management won’t have enough time to approve the event.  I submitted the right form and pushed the date back.

A few weeks pass, and I get a response saying that they need a contract outlining the responsibilities of the HST and Stevens Pass, the mountain that was planning to throw this event with us.  I draft a contract as best I can and send it off the next day.  I don’t hear anything back, so a week prior to the event date I ping the SAO advisors to see what’s going on.  I basically get a response along the lines of, “Sorry, nothing.”

I’m kinda frustrated at this point, because it’s now December.  I give up on throwing an event in the near future and start working with Galvanic Designs to get an event thrown May 1st.  Galvanic Designs has a great track record - they do campus rail jam tours at tons of other schools including University of Oregon, Oregon State, Washington State, Gonzaga, Colorado University, Denver University, etc.  The have a huge insurance plan, lots of contracts that have already been used by other schools, and in general good experience throwing events like this.  Immediately after requesting May 1st as our date, I send paperwork to the SAO that Galvanic gave me - the same paperwork that got the event passed at all the other schools.  I then take a few months off to let them look through the papers.

I head into the HUB at the start of April to see how things are going.  “Oh, we didn’t receive any documents from you.”  Duuuuude.  I give them another copy right away and give them a few days to look at it.  I ping them a few days later.  “Oh sorry, we haven’t looked at them yet.”  Alright, it’s time to go into overdrive.  Dan, the cofounder of Galvanic Designs, drives up from Oregon to meet me at the HUB.  The two of us drop off a printed and signed copy of the documents at the SAO and at the Risk Management office.  Oh by the way, up until this point, I had never heard from, seen, or knew anything at all about Risk Management.  I envisioned some group of lawyers piled into small cubicles, locked away at some strange corner of the university.  The SAO never let me speak directly to Risk Management, and Risk Management would never respond to me.  Read on …

From here on out, the story stays pretty consistent: I visit the SAO three times a week, ask them how things are going, and once I hear “Oh we haven’t read the documents yet,” I head to the Risk Management office.  Once I get to the Risk Management office, I pick up the phone in front of their locked door and try to speak to one of the officers.  I either get a voicemail and leave a message or I get a, “Sorry, she’s not in right now”  response.  A few weeks pass, and the SAO gives us a date when they’ll have a response for us.  The date comes, and I don’t get a response.  I call them at 4:00pm to see what’s up, and they quickly reply with a flat out “no.”

Now I don’t want to pass judgement on the SAO and the Risk Management office, but it seems to me that they didn’t put an ounce of work into this.  It seems to me that they didn’t want this event to happen, yet they let Dan and I continue to call and stop by, which now I realize was an utter waste of time.  I don’t know.  This frustrates me, but I suppose it’s just how it’s gotta be.  To give the SAO and Risk Management credit, this would have been a HUGE event with lots of responsibilities and lots of mayhem, so I somewhat understand where they’re coming from.  I would also like to point out that I’m not putting blame on any one individual at the SAO or Risk Management office.  I’m instead putting blame on the officers themselves and the processes that they choose to follow.

I tend to try my best to learn from my failures, but I don’t think there is much to learn here.  If anything I’ve learned that it’s important to look for bad signs and quit early, but I don’t like to quit.  Hopefully the president next year will get approval and throw this sucker; I just worry that he or she will waste as much time as I have and as Barry did before me.  Good luck, Husky Snowboard Team president ‘09.  Hopefully the University of Washington will loosen up a little and let the kids jam.

Photo credit: here.

I’m a senior at the University of Washington, and I have a few things to rant about. In hindsight, they’re all minor things, but I believe they’re worth ranting about, especially because I don’t rant all that often.

1: Better Dorms
The dorms are just awful. They’re dungeons, especially McMahon and Haggett. I was fortunate enough to live in Lander my freshman year, which was just as depressing as the rest with a fun, social resident population. I spent my freshman orientation in Haggett, and it was possibly the worst first impression I’ve ever had of anything.

Here’s a shot of Haggett:

2: Better On-Campus Food
The on-campus food is expensive and unhealthy. I’m talking about dorm food and HUB food. If you’re feeling like eating healthy, then you eat a salad. Otherwise you eat burritos, pizza, etc that’s more expensive than if you were to buy them outside of the school. Credit cards aren’t accepted either. Accept credit cards.

3: Better Gym Setup
The IMA is great, but it’s isolated and its hours of operation are somewhat confined. It’s annoying to get to the IMA in the rain, and it rains a lot in Seattle. This is probably unsolvable, but this post is all about rants :). Perhaps setup some sort of shuttle that goes between the IMA, north campus, and south campus once or twice an hour.

4: Police
I get an email about once every six weeks describing a shooting or stabbing that occurs in the U-district. I rarely see police officers patrolling the streets, which is probably why all this crime happens. After speaking with some fraternity friends, it sounds like it’s basically a 100% guarantee that your party will be visited at least once by the police. Let college students party (because they’re going to anyway) and focus more on preventing murders, robberies, and other more serious crimes. If my mom found out about all the crime that goes on around the UW, then she would probably throw a fit and send numerous letters to the administration (seriously). My mom is super worrisome, especially when it comes to her children, but I love her anyway.

5: Lower Student Apartment Housing Costs
Come on, we’re poor college students. UW-provided apartments are way over the going rate. Nordheim court’s starting rate is $840 / room / month, and Stevens Court starts at $597 / room / month. Stevens Court is more reasonable, but their rooms are very, very small. I could furnish an entire house for $840.

6: Better Support for Student Organizations
I’m the president of the Husky Snowboard Team, and I have had an insanely difficult time putting on an on-campus rail jam. The HUB event bureaucrats are awful at communication, timeliness, and efficiency. Read more about this here.

7: Better Carpool Parking
The UW’s carpool policy is just stupid. The point of a carpool policy is to encourage people to ride-share, which saves gas and money. UW decides to end their carpool parking discount in the afternoon when the parking lot isn’t even close to being half full. Allow carpooling discounts all day. I really don’t get it.

8: Covered Bike Parking
It rains a lot in Seattle, and most of the bike parking is open. It would be very cheap and easy to setup small covers over at least some bike racks. I don’t mind biking to school in the rain, but I get rather annoyed when my bike just sits outside in the pouring rain.

9: Better RA Training
I was fortunate enough to have pretty good RAs, but I heard horror stories about some friends’ RAs. The UW RAs are entirely too strict, uptight, and power-hungry. RAs should be trained better to be less strict, yet still aware of how to handle misconduct, emergency, etc. I think my freshman year would have been more enjoyable if I wasn’t always worried about playing guitar too late or getting arrested for having a Swiss Army knife in my dresser.

10: Snow Days
The UW absolutely will not shut down school when it snows. I was greeted with nearly six inches of snow one Monday morning my junior year, and UW didn’t shut down school. My bus never showed up, and I ended up missing my classes. This happened to a lot of people, so UW decided to keep school open again this year when we got a big snow.

This post is definitely a rant, and I feel pretty emo writing it, especially given all of the generalizations I just made. However, I have been very, very happy with UW, especially on the academic side of things. I will write a post about the great things about the UW, but in the meantime learn why I don’t regret coming to Seattle from Los Angeles. Do any of my classmates have anything to add?

Photo credit: here.

My friend, Robert, and I finished our big networks project about 2 weeks ago, and I just wanted to share the project. We were given Nokia N800s and told to write a P2P file sharing application in C. Awesome.

Phase 1: The Basics
We follow the specified protocol and write a program that lets N800s request lists of files and also request files from their neighbors. Neighbors are discovered by UDP broadcast packets that are sent every few seconds. All other communication – file list and file requests – are done over TCP. I’m leaving a lot of detail out such as port selection and protocol details, but the project was relatively simple and fun – lots of buffer/network code.

Phase 2: Routing
We build off of phase 1 and implement a link state routing mechanism. We also use Dijkstra’s algorithm to compute the shortest path between all nodes. We build a ping and ping reply feature to test our routing. Link state packets and ping packets are sent via UDP. This part of the project was long, hard, and awesome - tons of fun data structure/algorithm code.

Phase 3: Enhancements to Phase 1
We build a file search and request mechanism so N800s can ask their neighbors for a particular file instead of first viewing a list and then downloading. Neighbors queue requests that they can’t fulfill and send these queued requests to their neighbors. Files are downloaded automatically when a request is fulfilled. I can’t remember what network transport layer is used, but I’m pretty sure file requests and downloads were both sent over TCP. Again, a really fun phase.

Conclusions
This project was awesome. Robert and I probably spent at least 100 hours each in the labs, and we enjoyed most of it. The biggest pains were cross-compiling and running on the N800s and odd GCC behavior. If you’re a UW CSE student and plan to take networks (CSE 461), then try and take it with Arvind Krishnamurthy. Robert and I both have a few complaints about the class, but the project was tons of fun. We ended up writing around 4,000 lines of C code from scratch, including a generic hash map, list, set, and many-to-many table. Great project. I wanted to post the source code, but then I realized that I probably shouldn’t ;).

Here I am, on a small, turbulent, propeller-driven plane, flying to Tahoe/Mammoth to snowmobile with my Dad and close family friend. I’m returning to the state that I’ve always called home – that I’ve always talked so highly of. It was Robert, a classmate and friend of mine, who motivated me to write this post. He and I were catching a quick sandwich before a long night in the CSE labs when he casually asked me, “So do you regret coming to Seattle?” His question struck me and made me realize something – that for the four years that I’ve spent in Seattle, I’ve always complained about it – complained about the weather, complained about the people, complained about the school. I realized now that most people probably think that I regret coming here, but that’s definitely not the case.

I’ve started getting the “holy shit I’m graduation” feelings; they started with my last long night in the labs. These feelings have gotten me to reflect on my time spent in Seattle, and I’ve realized that I’ve loved my college life. I wanted to write this post for those of you that I’ve grown close to and that I’ve spent time with. I will greatly miss Seattle when I leave.

My freshman year was spent in Lander dorm, where my soon-to-be best friend and I would ponder the strange drinking habits of many of the residents. The two of us were still attached to our high school friends and family, but we had a good time on Lander 2. Academically I strived for good grades in hopes of being admitted to the CSE department at the end of the year. Socially I met a lot of good people and had a lot of fun with those people.

I was ecstatic when I received my acceptance email to the CSE department at the start of my sophomore year, and I began classes that autumn. I fell in love with my major, and, as many of my friends will tell you, was consumed by it. I would spend long nights in the labs during the week and weekend, and I loved it. I would always have a half-delusional vision while leaving the labs early in the morning of me breathing little ones and zeros of fire. Jim’s delusion was slightly different, though. He saw us sitting on a large green hill with a wand, summoning bits of code in the sky to fit into place. I loved this year and learned so much. I was also exposed to one of the most beautiful areas I’ve ever visited – the Olympic Peninsula. Some friends and I took a backpacking trip to an isolated half-moon beach, where we woke up to warm temperatures, crashing waves just feet away, and blue skies. The experience was absolutely stunning.

Junior year wasn’t much different. In fact, it was even more consuming. I begin senior-level courses this year, which made the previous year look like kindergarten. I learned all sorts of things about databases, operating systems, compilers, and distributed computing – all nerd things that I’m still intrigued by. I also grew closer to many of my newly-discovered CSE friends, and my non-CSE friends narrowed only slightly. I had a blast my junior year, especially while living in the neat town of Fremont.

Senior year, this year, was/is similar, yet also very different than junior year. Having just come off a summer internship at Redfin (also in Seattle), I had a new appreciation for Seattle. I was finally exposed to the wonderful Seattle summers that everyone speaks so jubilantly about. Again, I’ve been consumed by my studies, but I’ve managed to get out a lot more on the weekends. I’ve managed to snowboard over 30 days so far, and I’ve grown even closer to my coworkers and friends. Being the president of the Husky Snowboard Team, I’ve gotten a chance to meet a lot of fun boarders.

To those of you that I won’t be seeing as often - friends, classmates, coworkers, mentors, instructors - I will miss you dearly. I know that this goodbye is premature, but I wanted to make sure that you knew that my time spent with you was/is unforgettable, regardless of how much complaining I have done. I’m going to spend my last three months in Seattle reflecting on the wonderful experiences that I’ve lived and on the exceptional friends that I’ve made. I plan to have as much fun as possible for the last three months of my Seattle life.