The last semester of 2020 and my first year at Georgia Institute of Technology and for the first time in my life I wished that a day would have more than 24 hours.

You know that meme where on the left someone looks all chirpy with the biggest smile spread across their face, and on the right they look like they just walked out of an episode of the Walking Dead, well, that’s how this school year has been for me.

I remember how bright-eyed and excited I was back in January. In my first class, eager to interact with all sorts of Computer Scientists and the professors at Georgia Tech. It was all a dream come true. still is

So much has changed since that time. When I started, the Corona Virus was not really talked about except in Asia, but halfway through my first semester, it had reached almost all continents and everyday lives were confined into homes. My school life was not affected because I was/ am an online student, so classes, schedules, and everything went on without being affected.

This semester has been the hardest one, and from what I gather, it will be the first of many. Despite feeling battered and bruised, I got to the end of it with a lot of lessons learned and personal growth nonetheless.

I took Introduction to Operating Systems and there was nothing introductory about that class, to say the least. In July when I was looking for the class to take for the third semester, I thought an introductory class would be a good way to dip my toes in the deep end and prepare for stronger waters. Reviews made by students who had already taken the class grouped it in the medium category. Naturally, I was drawn to register for it. I didn’t have to know the main programming languages, C and C++ beforehand. The basics were enough and the class had enough room to learn the languages alongside. At least according to the reviews I read.

Yeah, all that was not true for me.

 

Ups

The lectures were easy to understand and I did enjoy watching them. The professor used some real-life scenarios to explain concepts and they were all beginner-friendly.

 

Despite the class being a bit hard and needing more time, I did get to learn a lot in a short period. Other than the class’s content, my C, C++, and documentation skills were polished up.

This was the first class I’ve done with closed-book exams. Closed-book means no books, internet, or research of any kind during the test. That was a good and a bad thing. The good side was that closed-book exams tend to be less hard and trickier than open-book exams.

The final didn’t need us to remember everything we did all 4 months, just the second half of the semester. That reduced the amount of content I had to study for.

 

Staying home because of the pandemic gave me more time for school because I barely left the house and wasn’t too exhausted in the evenings from my work commute.

 

Challenges

The assignments did not feel like assignments of an introductory class at all. They were basically entire projects, 4 in total. All were due in 4 weeks and all took the entire 4 weeks to complete so I barely had any time for a breather in between. And if I did, I had to either study for midterms and or finals. With full workdays, I’d end up working the entire night and part of dawn just to get by an assignment target.

 

Burn out has been real these past 4 months with a lot of autopilot mode and despair. Though there have been glimpses of light on occasion. That’s what made me hang on.

 

The theme emotion of this semester has been giving up. Not giving up entirely and dropping out mid-semester but giving up on putting the effort to actually do well. Many times I thought to myself, the bare minimum was enough.

 

Despite having 4 extreme projects worth 100 points each, the class also had a midterm and a final exam which happened to be closed book so I also had to set time aside to study.

Working from home did affect my morale this semester in that I lost all motivation, both for work and school. For a very long time I was on auto-pilot mode I bet other people can relate too. Here’s how I finally managed to get myself out of it.

 

This is the first time I’ve read research papers in-depth and it was a big challenge at first because they can be a tad boring and use very technical jargon. Did I mention how tiny the font is… Here’s an article about how I learned to read research papers effectively and the challenges I faced.

 

Helpful resources

Some resources that I found extremely helpful during the class and will definitely go through them again were the class’s lectures, which are also available on Udacity, and the book Operating Systems: 3 Easy Pieces. I’d recommend this book to anyone looking to understand how Operating Systems work.

 

At beginning of the class in August I was so determined to make it a habit of meeting deadlines a few days prior so I’d have time to rest as well as study without pressure, but I ended up doing the exact opposite of that. I have come to accept that from now on there is nothing I can do to avoid the pressure that comes with being in school and working at the same time.

My greatest lesson this year has been resilience and I look forward to carrying it on to 2021. Now that I know it can’t get any easier than this, Spring of 2021 won’t catch me pants down. Bring it!

Catch up on my entire school year 2020.

Semester 1/10

Semester 2/10