In the time since my last post, I have been placed into a project group, and we have gone through several phases of design. Our assignment is to create an emulator for the NES. I believe this was my second choice when I filled out the survey, so I’m pretty excited for the development phase next quarter!
For now, we are tasked with focusing on design, so there hasn’t been any actual programming yet. I expected all of this planning to feel tedious, but it’s honestly been very helpful for my understanding of the project and its requirements. This design phase is forming a strong foundation that my team can build our project upon, and I think I’ll be very grateful for it come Winter quarter.
In the meantime, I’ve been working on finalizing a schedule for the rest of my senior year. I recently switched my major focus from the cybersecurity track to a custom option, which has certainly been a transition. I’m happy to say that I now have a pretty solid plan, which I think is preferable to the path I was on previously.
Regardless of the specific courses I end up taking, I am in a constant state of amazement from the fact that I only have two quarters left of school (after the current one ends, of course). This is the culmination of almost seventeen years of education, or about eighty percent of my lifetime so far. To say I’m excited is an understatement, but it’s bittersweet in many ways. For the first time ever, I won’t be guided by the structure of academia– I’ll have to figure out a career and life for myself.
As is the case for most major life changes, my situation is just as full of hope as it is of uneasiness. A lack of structure also means a world of possibilities; old eras ending lead to new beginnings. I often think about the concept of “senioritis”, the lack of motivation and desire to simply be done with things that can come at the end of the long journey of higher education. While it is tempting to let the waves of time wash over me, I remind myself that I didn’t come this far, to only come this far.
