Monday, January 24, 2011

Resolutions

I had written this up after talking to Lin, who asked me about my resolutions, but forgot to publish it. Since it's kind of a tradition for me to list my resolutions on this blog, here they are.

Last year (2010) was an interesting year. I can't really say if it had been good or not, but it was interesting. I didn't consciously keep last year's resolution of "focus on what's important" as close to heart as I should have. It is a very open-ended resolution, so it's pretty difficult to judge how well things went. I also had a tremendous amount of luck: a lot of micro-decisions turned out well, I found the type of work that drives me, I learned a lot, and I made friends in the process.

I had another resolution last year, which was to declare my major. I did. My majors are Pure Math and Applied Math.

For 2011 I have two resolutions lined up. The two are related, and they are even more basic and more open-ended than the ones I had before:

(1) Don't do what I know is wrong.
(2) Do what I think is right.

These two things sound simple, yet those who can abide by them truly inspire me. Actually, of all the people I know, I'm really only certain of one person who does these. I really wish to be able to live up to this person sooner rather than later. (You know who you are.)

The two resolution also sound the same, but they're not. (1) is a subset of (2), and is a much more realistic and less scary target. On the other hand, (2) completes (1); it's what I really should be doing. Hopefully I'll remember both of these for the rest of the year and truly live by them. (So far I'm doing okay. Not perfect, but okay.)

Memorable moments of 2010? Landlord. Buddhist temple. Blogging on Blackberry at Exploratorium on Valentine's day. Conspiracy theories. Grocery trips. Poking ringworms. Being mad at a friend. Forgetting a fellow intern's name in front of >200 people. Failing complex midterm. Logistic Regression. Hiking. TMI. Hiking at TMI. Putnam at Stanford. More hiking. Secret project. Causes. Hotels. Many Hackathons...

End of Entry