Summertime 🏖️

It’s again been a long time since I wrote the last post.

I used to skip blogging because I don’t have a lot things to write during that period of time. However, there are too much these days that I even could not fully experience let alone recording them in written.

Pre-Code+

After coming back from the beach week, I moved to friends’ apartment near west campus. It is the first time ever I lived someplace truly independent. Campus dorm doesn’t count since I could get everything I want within walking distance. Also there are staffs taking care of all housekeeping and tedious logistics things for you.

It was nice staying in an independent place, though sleeping on the floor in the living room. I slept unexpectedly really well every night and developed some good habits that I should have had a long time ago. I took a shower every morning to wake myself which I normally did at night since I could not get up in the morning. I continued to cook food for myself but more frequently. I started to practice LeetCode problems every day with friends on Zoom. I kept working in Perkins OIT desk to earn some pocket money.

In a nutshell, this is the first ever summer I felt like I am being productive instead of doing nothing.

Code+

It’s Code+ time. To be honest, I have a lot of expectations toward the program. I got kind of disappointed in the first week of Code+ since we attended quite a few extremely entry-level programming classes and useless lectures. Then I started to learn everything we need for our project by myself. It turned out really well.

Also supporting staffs of the program are really helpful who I learned a lot from. It feels exciting to build an actual website that could help Duke students. I have to say that I enjoy working every day 9 to 5 and debugging all tricky problems I encountered. That sense of achievement has made me convinced and determined to be a software engineer at least in the near future.

Some fellow participants said I was really smart and the prototype I built was really awesome. But I do believe there’s nothing difficult of what I achieved. I just put all my efforts and I am genuinely interested in software development. It’s nothing like algorithm design or academic researches that I believe require high understanding of knowledge and IQ. Nevertheless, it is an important work that makes differences to people’s life. It is a miniature of amazing high technologies that human has developed. This is exactly what I would love to do. I am delighted that Code+ not only “forces” me to learn skills myself but also makes me confident and determined in software development.

Cooking

Hang out

There are just too much to share about my life… :)

Best, Haojin