🎓 Meeting Milestones, and Making New Ones (#2)

Wow, a lot has happened since April. Both in the tech world, and for me personally.

For most of my life, I’ve been working towards several goals: earn good grades, graduate high school, get into college, become published.

Within the past few weeks, I've finally met the last of these milestones. I’m now faced with a new question; what next? Throughout my first 18 years, my “goals” were mostly predefined. Suddenly, I feel as if the world has exploded with possibilities.

In some ways that makes me feel nervous. It’s no longer possible to do it all. I must make my own “life KPIs” (Key Performance Indicators).

I’ll start with running a half-marathon. I’ve done 10+ miles before, but that feels like a solid step towards the full 26.2. Beyond that, I’ll figure it out as I go. I’m excited to see what the future holds!

🚀 Updates

Botta, the education-focused chatbot aiming to help with online learning retention, won 2nd place at the One Dartmouth Start-Up Competition Finals presented by the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship! The MVP has generated a ton of feedback, and I'm hard at work improving it.
I contributed code to Logseq, a note-taking application designed with graphlike rather than hierarchical organization closer to how our brains organize information.
I updated the Ideastorm section of my personal site. You can now login with a Github account and share your own ideas!
I (and the rest of my lab) placed top 3 in our divisions at our town’s annual 5k. It was a fantastic experience.

💭 Thoughts

(3 things I've been thinking about this month)

Hello Wordle: From Linux SYSCalls to SHA-256 Hashes, I compiled every programming-related Wordle I could find.
Why are so many programmers runners?: I contemplate the overlap of people (including me!) that enjoy both activities.
Find book recommendations based on what you enjoy reading: Reading is a pasttime that I love and which many people say they wish they did more; here's a website where you enter your favorite books and it gives you some (often unexpected) but generally great recommendations.

👍 Recs

(2 articles, 2 novels, 2 videos, 2 movies)

🗞 How can we develop transformative tools for thought?
🗞 A trip down the web3 rabbit hole: separating hype from substance
📗 “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World,” by David Epstein
📘 “The Stand,” by Stephen King
📺 Why Planes Don’t Fly Faster
📺 $649 Dyson Fan vs. $15 Walmart Fan: The Hard Truth
🎬 “Master and Commander” by Peter Weir
🎬 “Free Guy” by Shawn Levy

Thanks for reading :)