Registration is upon us.

A few weeks ago, when I was helping the advisors out with a Turing recruitment event, I noticed something slightly concerning -- that all of the people asking questions about professors and finding out whether or not CS 311 or CS 311H should be taken weren’t the students, but rather their (far more engaged) parents.

A few years ago, at the very beginning of summer 2012, back when Skyrim had just started to hit the peak of its popularity, I decided to build a computer.

I used to wake up every morning at 8 AM.

I would get up, shower, get breakfast (and coffee) from the LPC, read The Economist on my phone as I munched on a breakfast taco, and then read my real analysis textbook for a while until my first class. I would also stay up late working on OS or computer vision assignments, preparing activities for my FIG, building out a side project I had been working on, or writing articles for this blog. I’d get 3-4 hours of sleep a night, rinse, and repeat.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about comparing yourself—and specifically, why you shouldn’t compare yourself to other people and instead look at how you’ve changed since yesterday.

So what happens when you find yourself doing worse than you were doing yesterday?

There is something magical about Texas. Something that defies age and time, location and position, identity and personality. Something that draws you into the deep fabric from which the state was woven. The State of Texas was founded in 1836, but the Texas which identifies us as its university is much, much older, and it isn’€™t until you're sitting on a bus, from Houston to Austin, watching the endless, rolling waves of the Hill Country pass you by that you begin to realize that.

A few days ago, I had a real analysis midterm.

Objectively, that’s not too bad of a statement. Midterms happen, and the point of the class is to prepare you for the test. The problem was that I hadn’t really been going to class for the last few weeks, because I literally couldn’t keep my eyes open in that class without opening my laptop. I figured it was pretty rude to the professor to sleep in his class or to work on other things, so I decided to use the hour and a half to teach myself the sections we were covering from the book.

A few weeks ago, I interviewed for my dream company.

The interview was challenging—probably one of the hardest technical interviews I’ve ever done in my life—but I thought I got at least the majority of the questions. I got along with my interviewer pretty well, and we chatted a little bit about the company and his role there before we signed off. All in all, in my opinion, it was a pretty good interview.

Let’s say you went to the career fair.

Next semester, I’m taking two government classes. Specifically, I’m taking Decision Theory and the United States Congress (GOV 341M and 370L, if you’re interested). The first one is plausibly related to my major—especially the math side of what I do—but at least at first glance, the second one has no relation whatsoever to what I do.

Actually, at second glance, and third glance, it still has nothing to do with computer science or math.

Which is, despite popular opinion, not actually a bad thing.