Reflections on the Spring 2024 Semester

Hello everyone I am back! I had expected to write at least once a month during this semester, but it turned out to be a lot busier than I expected, so my focus didn’t go towards my writing my blogs, hence the lack of posts this semester. However, the semester is now over, so I am starting to have more free time, and I am starting to focus on my blogs again! Hopefully, I am able to keep this motivation throughout the rest of the year 🙂. This blog probably won’t be like last semester’s, where I turned into a sage and said some things I learned, but rather more like me rambling about classes, things that happened this semester, and what I am planning to do in the future. I also watched a few dramas during this semester, so I’ll do some drama reviews for those later as well so I can share what I thought about them 😀.

I guess I can start by recapping this semester a bit. For the Spring 2024 semester, I took four main classes (CS162, CS161, Korean 10A, IAS157AC), a PE class (Boxing Fitness), and a DeCal (Introduction to Go). At the beginning of the semester, I thought I would have a lot of free time since the only time-consuming class in my mind was CS162. However, I once again forgot how much work Korean class was, and given the fact that CS161 Project 2 also snuck up on me halfway through the semester, I was unnaturally busy. It felt like almost every day during the semester, if I wasn’t working on a project for one of my classes (rare event), I was doing other homework or catching up on one of my other classes. Nevertheless, I don’t regret taking any of the classes I did this semester; all of them were fun and I learned a lot from all of them. This is a first, since there is always one class I am complaining about (Korean doesn’t count). Anyway, here are my very short class reviews for all six classes I took this semester.

• CS161: I thought that this was actually a really interesting class. The classes touched on so many security principles and ways that different people have been found to break code, and the material is definitely more fun and easier to grasp than many other CS classes. The projects were also very interesting, where you are either using what you have learned to break into a system or designing and writing your own secure system. However, I thought the last half of this class was less fun than the first half, especially since it seemed like just memorization of how things worked. Overall, this class was probably the easiest upper div CS class I’ve taken at Berkeley, and I would highly recommend taking it if you have the chance.
• CS162: This class was probably the most work I’ve done for any class at Berkeley, and it definitely deserved the rep that it gets. However, I also thought that this was a very nice class, as it teaches about how the underlying OS on your systems works. The main work in this class comes from the projects, of which there are three total. In all three, you work with an existing codebase of PintOS, a basic operating system. It won’t work at the start, but the projects will lead you to build a fully functional OS system as you slowly implement the core OS features. The projects are definitely not easy; even the design takes a lot of time (my group wrote 15 pages of design for each project)! Also, implementing the code is maybe just 40 percent of the project. Debugging what is wrong with what you have implemented takes up the most time, and that is what I spent most of my time doing. I would also say that if you cannot find good group members, it is not worth taking this class since it really takes all four people to work together given how much work there is. There are only five homeworks in this class, but they are all non-trivial. For each homework assignment, I ended up writing at least 300-400 lines of code. As a comparison, it took me more time to do any CS162 homework than the CS188 projects. Similar to the projects, writing the code is the easier part, because if you end up with a difficult-to-spot bug, you might spend a very long time debugging. For reference, each homework took me 8-12 hours in total. If you take this class, be sure you are very familiar with GDB (or be sure that you can learn it) and expect to spend hours wading through debug statements and gdb for some trivial bug.
• Korean 10A: Not much to say about this one; it is just a good class and teaches you Korean. I definitely learned a lot from this class and built up my Korean speaking, listening, reading, and writing. 선생님 was also really nice as well. Would definitely recommend it if you took Korean 1B.
• IAS157AC: This was actually a fun class, and I really learned a lot about engineering ethics and the environment from this class. Professor Kadir is always so energetic and willing to interact with students. If you take the class, be prepared to read 100 pages of readings each week.
• Boxing Fitness: This was a really relaxing class where I just punched a punching bag two times a week. It was a good way to force myself to be active and learn about boxing, which I had wanted to learn about for a while now. After taking this class, I might start doing actual boxing, since this class is only non-contact boxing.
• Introduction to Go: My dad plays Go, so when I was looking through the DeCal page at the start of the semester, I instantly knew I wanted to take this class so I could play with him. The class was super fun, and I definitely learned a lot about Go. The teachers are really, really nice, and if you ever want to learn Go, this is a great class to take. Assignments are relatively easy, but they do make you think hard about the game.

Thinking back on the semester some more, I’m actually quite sad, because in the beginning 8 weeks of class I managed my time quite well and consistently went to the gym 5-6 times a week, but afterwards there was just so much work I just stopped going. I blamed it on my lack of time, but a part of me knows it’s also just a lack of motivation, and that when I get stressed, the gym is the first thing to go out of my routine. This is a mindset I need to change in the future, because I definitely could have found an hour of time a day to go to the gym. I also watched a lot of dramas this semester. They are, in order, Fake It Till You Make It, Oh No! Here Comes Trouble, I am Nobody, Queen of Tears, Legend of Shenli. Normally, I watch a maximum of 1 show per semester, but I guess this semester was special and I was using dramas to deal with the stress🥲. There are also a couple that I watched over winter break, but I will find time to write about most, if not all, of these shows.

Anyway, I’m starting to write this blog during dead week (I actually wrote 80 percent of this after finals lol) and this is probably the most relaxing week I’ve ever had. I only have one final this semester, and I had one essay and one big project due at the end of dead week, which I was able to finish relatively early. As a result, I didn’t need to do much studying this dead week, a very welcome change. Normally, I would be stressed trying to cram the contents of 3+ courses in my head within a week, but I spend a lot of dead week hanging out with my friends and doing nothing. Again, I made a similar mistake to last semester, where I started watching season 1 of The Boys on Monday of finals week. By Thursday, I had finished all three seasons and was definitely not prepared for my final on Friday. But I think it’s fine, because I don’t think I could have done worse than a -0.5 SD on it, but I will find out.

There were also a few things that I tried doing this semester. First of all, I tried to not take the bus at all. I have always hated riding the buses, but they were always so convenient that until now I always took them whenever I needed to go across campus. However, I decided that this semester I would walk everywhere instead of taking the bus, and I have achieved that goal (mostly). I only took the bus one time this semester, and it was when I was heading back home from Safeway carrying an incredible amount of groceries. I do think that walking everywhere was beneficial to me. Normally, I try to be as efficient with my time as possible, but walking instead of taking the bus has allowed me to slow down my life, even if just a little bit, and have time where I can think to myself and collect my thoughts. I also bought a kitchen timer at the beginning of the semester to keep me focused when I’m studying. The idea was that I would set the timer to 50 minutes, and I would do nothing but study during those 50 minutes. Usually, I am able to do this without a timer, but it has been easier to start studying when I set the timer. I think for the most part it has worked out well, but there are times when I’m just not in the mood for studying, and it would take a considerable amount of willpower to stay on task and not get distracted. But overall, I think the timer has made me more concentrated on my tasks, so I will continue to use it in the future. Notably, I bought a digital timer instead of just using my phone since I am still trying to not touch my phone whenever possible. The anti-phone measures I employed from last semester have still been working, with me averaging about one hour and 10 minutes of screentime on my phone every day. This is something I am very happy about, and I hope it can continue for a long time.

One thing I tried but didn’t continue doing was waking up early in the mornings. I have never been a morning person, but at the start of the semester, I tried waking up at 8am every day. This lasted for maybe a week before I gave up and resumed waking up at 10am. I think what I learned from this is that I should just accept myself as someone who is a night owl and someone who doesn’t like the mornings, so I shouldn’t force myself to wake up early if I don’t have to. However, with my internship this summer coming up, I probably need to wake up at 7 or 8 every day soon…hopefully it will be okay 🙂.

One thing that got confirmed this March was that I am going to study abroad in South Korea at Yonsei University in the fall! This was something that freshman me could have never thought of. I still remember hearing about study abroad during my first few days at Cal and deciding that I wasn’t going to do it since I wanted to get all my education from Berkeley. However, ever since I met people who had studied abroad and heard from their experiences, I slowly changed, and by my sophomore year, it was something that I really wanted to do. I realized that after I graduate and start working in the industry (hopefully not unemployed :0), I won’t have the opportunity to go live in another country for an extended period of time, so I jumped on the opportunity to study abroad. I don’t quite know what to expect from it, but I hope that I will have a really good time and learn a lot from the experience. I will also be going with a friend, so we can both struggle with the language barrier and any other problems together :D. I will write a lot more about studying abroad when I come back, including more reasons why I decided to go and how it was, so stay tuned!

Thanks for reading until now. I promise I will write more frequently, especially when I go to Korea. I already have many ideas on what my next few blogs are going to be this summer, for example, blogs about skincare, dramas, my internship, or anything fun I do. Anyways, that’s it. Have a picture of me getting a perm at the start of the semester.