What is your vision? Why do you do what you do?

Urban Dictionary defines Sophomore slump as a time "During a college student's sophomore year, [where] their GPA drops after having a high GPA from their freshman year".

This slump is something I know many of my friends have expressed to me, and I, myself, have had my own share of exasperation. Even after OS (The best and worst class in CS), I find myself potentially experiencing Sophomore Slump pt. 2 because of my non-CS classes.

In light of the end of my Sophomore slump, though, I've found this past semester to be a fruitful time:

As finals are coming up, and deadlines for projects approach along the horizon, I have found that I am guilty of procrastination on so many levels.

Procrastinating occurs through habit, mindless action, and/or intentional avoidance of responsibility. Whether watching a late night show of celebrities doing peculiar acts, reading blog posts, or surfing Facebook on the latest memes or doggo content, I've found procrastinating to be focused on activities that have some to little/no value in the moment.

This past semester, I got accepted as a tech organizer for Freetail Hackers. By joining them, I've been able to have the wonderful opportunity to partner with many other students at UT with the vision of making hackathons smoothly run and amazing. I have to say that I really loved being in the org. The community within Freetail Hackers is really amazing, not only because of the miscellaneous Assassins games we hold or the various number of memes that get shared, but also because of all the amazing leaders and skilled organizers I get to meet and work with in the org.

When I came to college, I didn't really come with much passion for CS. Sure, I came in with a lack of clarity in what the future held and a bright amount of curiosity as a freshman. I had a far-reaching desire outside of class to try out new things, scour the school for free food and shirts at events, and traverse through many different orgs surrounding the inner campus. But when it came to programming, I had considered it more of a matter-of-fact chore to do. Having taken CS classes in high school, I assumed much of programming to be self-explanatory.

Hackathons are really fun. Unlike college, where most projects in class are set in stone, hackathons are loosely structured, which gives a lot of flexibility on the wide range topics that can be pursued in 24 hours. Things can become easily scattered, though, even when there is a set theme behind a hackathon. Which means one of the first (and hardest) steps that need to be taken is to come up with an idea to work on.

I haven't always loved hackathons. In fact, I used to think hackathons were rather dull.

Because of a bad experience, a lack of coding ability, and no team, I found a lot of distaste in hackathons and completely shunned the idea. 24 hours staying up while stress gorging over fruit snacks and random assorted foods because of a project that may not be completed and needed to judges may look with dull looks on their faces? Not my ideal weekend.

Important Announcement:  After blogging for about more than a semester, the department wants me to go over my experience as a blogger as well as talk about the importance of writing as a CS student and how writing can help you get a job. The talk will be held at 12 PM this Thurs. at GDC 6.302. The UTCS department will be providing FREE Rudy's Barbeque. Additionally, the first 5 students to RSVP to the link at the bottom of this post will receive a free moleskin notebook, analogous to encourage writing. And at the end, there will be a raffle done in order to give away a NEW Apple watch. If you have time, please come out then!

Have you ever come to a point where everything you thought you worked toward seemed to crumble away at a moment's notice? That fear came to fruition this past week during the spring career fair. As I talked to a company about the workflow of software engineering, a thought passed through my mind. What if I wasn't meant for the industry?

Greetings y'all! 3 weeks in, and I'm finally back in the grind. Along with blogging, I decided to take up a proctor position for a class, Object Oriented Programming (OOP), which is sometimes considered the 2nd hardest CS class next to Operating Systems (OS). It's really amazing to see the perspective that a proctor has while looking over students. Being able to see the student community gather and ask questions encountered with software errors, as well as take time to discuss and answer questions has been very insightful.