I've spent the bulk of my days in college rotting away in confusion. Confusion about thriving in classes, getting an internship, a job, a research position; the way well-adjusted people seamlessly integrate themselves into society; but also the lack of direction in planning my next steps. Some might call this "brain fog", but I think it's a slightly different sensation.

Some things have felt less blurry to me than others. Linguistics is clearly defined to me, because I felt able to visualize at once the topics I was studying and how they interacted. Our language is formed from collections of sound—the machinations of a complex system we call the human body—and sometimes of gestures, even of fully-fledged hand signs in signed language. From this we get phonetics; and these noises interact in myriad ways (phonology), composing themselves into meaningful blocks (morphology), for which we place them in utterances (syntax) to convey meaning (semantics). We can zoom out from the tiniest variation in sound, to the largest change in meaning, and at any point we stop and smell the proverbial flowers—how these changes affect our perception of others, how this well-tuned system defies simple explanations.

I don't think I can say the same for machine learning, or CS in general. There are too many nooks and crannies; too many places for new knowledge to hide. 客観的に見て、this might be why it's so compelling, why it's so difficult--so many thoughts, so little time to explore.

Sophomore year, I took a linguistics class which was all about agency (more specifically, agenthood in ergativity). Did you know that many languages have a system where the difference between "I fell (accidentally)" and "I fell (intentionally)" is baked into the grammar? Did you know that this line of thinking is so pervasive that we believe now that regardless of how grammar forms, the agent gets introduced in a specical position?

• If you think about it, this makes sense.

I find myself in the passive a lot, asking myself: this happened to me, I don't know how to proceed.

hard to do things, and muscle my way into good places

in my first two years i fell into a pit

• befor ethat i had a goal, if a vague one: get into a good college. this meant doing so many little optimizations

• when i got into college i realized:

  • nothing matters that i thought would, and so much more does
  • the world is so unoptimizable
  • i didn't have people breathing down my back (i'm really grateful for this tho), so now i don't really know what to do
  • i was optimizing for maximum pleasure of those around me

• i'm still in this pit imo,

• maybe it wasn't a pit but it was simply that the stage lights turned on and i was caught naked, that the training wheels of high school were ripped right off and now i'm learning about all the little ways cracked people push themselves to be better, and something within me instinctively rejected this. like i wasn't allowed to be doing things liek that, i can't do public speaking, i can't network, xyz.

• behind this i'm deeply afraid that i'll be unsatisfied and working so hard for so little pay, and i want to have the freedom to financially support my whole family

• people who ahve the luxury to do what they really wnat to do

anyways, this was a semi-coherent rambling