random ramblings

cool thing i found

Posted July 9 2025

was going through some other neocities sites and found a pretty cool link on ribo.zone for rosalind, which has a bunch of problem sets for learning bioinformatics. i've been having a fun time today going through the problem sets. so far they've been coding problems, kind of like ones i've done in computer science classes before, but i think it's cool that i also get to learn a bit about biology as well. i've finished 12 problems at time of writing, will probably do more after i post this.

what even is passion

Posted July 7 2025

From what i've seen, there's two main schools of thought for picking a college major: Pick Something You're Passionate About, or Pick Something That Makes $Money$. When I chose to major in Computer Engineering, i thought i was doing both. As a kid i seemed to have a knack for coding and generally tech-y stuff, and it was common knowledge that tech is where the money is. But i'm now three years in to my degree, and i think i have little to show for it. My GPA is sitting at a mediocre 2.7, my projects are unimpressive and boring, and i have no (relevant) internship experience to speak of. I think if someone asked me to show them something to prove i'm truly interested in this field, i wouldn't be able to come up with anything.

I don't know what to make of this. Am i in the wrong major? I don't think i am, i've enjoyed many of my classes, and i can do pretty well when i get my occasional flashes of motivation. Like my final project for Intro to Electronics, where I had to simulate the effects of a Class-D amplifier in MATLAB, which i finished in 6 straight hours of mostly very focused work. Those flashes don't happen all the time though, and without them, i end up feeling an overwhelming urge to do literally anything else. Does this sound like a person who's passionate about what they do? It sure doesn't seem like it to me.

So what are these things i'd rather do? Where do my actual passions lie? Well, i spend a lot of my time watching youtube videos. Often they're related to whatever fandom i'm obsessed with at any given time. Lately, i've been watching a lot of Deltarune theory videos. Other times it's video essays about things like media, history, mythology, linguistics, or music theory. Could I call these things "passions"? Maybe. I haven't really engaged with these topics enough to really know for sure. After all, there is a huge difference between passively watching a video about a topic, and actively seeking out and analyzing information about it.

I know one thing that holds me back from actually pursuing these fields is the fact that all of them are very reliant on writing. I've struggled with writing for as long as i can remember, particularly writing as an assignment. I tended to get lost in the research part of a paper, and struggled to organize my ideas in a way that flowed well. After all, i don't think in an ordered string of text, but in more of a scattered web of impulses, often wordless, jumping from one thought to another via a tangled network of loose tangents. It's all vibes, i guess.

There are also more practical reasons why i'm hesitant to switch to a more humanities-related major. For one, i'm only one year away from getting my bachelor's for Computer Engineering, barring unforseen circumstances (i.e. failure). Changing my major at this point would almost certainly obliterate my four-year plan, and cost my family additional tens of thousands. And the result would be a less in-demand degree, significantly limiting my career prospects.

So, if changing majors isn't a practical choice, then maybe i need to approach this problem from a different angle. I can power through the last year of my Comupter Engineering degree, but also try and do some more humanities-oriented things on the side. That might be difficult to do during the school year, but right now i'm on summer break. I couldn't ask for a better chance to start. I guess what i'll do is find something to write about and post it on here. We'll see what happens next.

This has been pretty fun to write btw. It's mostly just a stream of consciousness honestly, but it's helped me sort through my thoughts. I should do this kind of stuff more often.