<p><b style="font-size: 18px;">Graduated from </b></p><p><b style="font-size: 18px;"> Yale University</b></p><p>毕业🎓耶鲁大学</p><p>A little more than four years ago, I submitted an essay to Yale to make my gramma happy; I had missed the chance to get into Harvard and I really needed something to make up for it.</p><p>四年多以前，我向耶鲁提交了一篇论文，让我的奶奶高兴;我错过了进入哈佛的机会，我真的需要一些东西来弥补。</p><p>All my luck must've gone into that essay, because I managed to get into Yale and lost my ability to write a passable essay on time ever again.</p><p>所有的运气都花在了那篇论文上，因为我设法进入了耶鲁大学，却再也没有能力按时写一篇还过得去的论文。</p><p>That is why I switched majors, and am proud to announce that I am graduating with a BS in CS.</p><p>这就是我换专业的原因，我很自豪地宣布，我将以理学学士的成绩毕业。</p> <p>My favorite memory is of that first-year winter break, when my suitemates and friends had returned to the warmth of their homes, and I was still on campus, grinding out my essay for Professor Quan Tran's Asian Diasporas since 1800s three days before Christmas. I'm very grateful that she passed me, and I still carry the lessons of her class with me today. However, I learned not to emulate the behaviors of my peers - they can get away with playing League and writing an essay in two hours and still get perfect scores on their assignments, but not me. Minh I hope you are still ranked Challenger!</p><p>我最喜欢的记忆是第一年的寒假，我的同学和朋友们都回到了温暖的家中，而我还在学校里，为全川教授(Professor Quan Tran)的《亚洲移民》(Asian as)论文苦读，那是自19世纪圣诞节前三天开始的。我非常感谢她通过了我的考试，今天我仍然带着她的课。然而，我学会了不去模仿同龄人的行为——他们可以在两个小时内完成联赛和写论文，并在作业中获得满分，但我不行。我希望你仍然是排名挑战者!</p> <p>After the rain, comes the rainbow. And the rainbow came in the form of my amazing suitemates. It was a very odd assortment of people; the bubbly teddy bear Aiden, the vim-loving Hristo, the s-open-at-all-times Ryan, the breaking-on-the-dance-floor-and-then-in-the-bulldogs-racing-garage Kevin T., and the clown Kushal. But between the thousands of nuggets we ate together and all the suite hangouts we were supposed to do but never executed, I have to say that my suitemates grounded me and gave me the strength to get up everyday and face new challenges.</p><p>雨后有彩虹。彩虹以我那些漂亮的女伴的形式出现。这是一群非常奇怪的人;活泼的泰迪熊艾登，喜欢维姆酒的克里斯托，随时开着窗户的瑞恩，跳着霹雷舞的地板，然后在斗牛犬比赛的车库凯文T.，还有小丑库沙。但是，在我们一起吃的成千上万块鸡块和我们本应去但从未执行的套房聚会之间，我不得不说，我的同伴们让我脚踏实地，给了我每天起床面对新挑战的力量。</p> <p>When I look at the classes I took this semester, all I can really remember are the people that made these classes significant and worth remembering. I am grateful for all the struggle sessions in Intro to CS, because it was through these long coding sessions that I became closer friends with Nishitha. Hard-working, diligent, meticulous, and humble, she inspires me to constantly work on and improve myself. Japan's Great Peace 1550-1850 was a funny class. For the whole semester I sat between Bobby and this girl who'd show up to class everyday with a baseball cap pulled down as low over her face as possible. It was kind of pressuring - Bobby has a manic, obsessive desire to be the best, to absorb everything, while the girl to my right appeared to be cool, collected, and poised. This turned out not to be the case at all, for Victoria probably cares for the wellbeing of everyone at times moreso than they themselves.</p><p>当我看到这学期的课程时，我能真正记住的是那些让这些课程变得重要和值得记住的人。我很感谢CS入门课程中所有的挣扎课程，因为正是通过这些漫长的编程课程，我和Nishitha成为了更亲密的朋友。她勤奋、勤奋、细致、谦逊，激励着我不断努力，不断提高自己。1550-1850年的日本大和平是一门有趣的课程。整整一个学期，我都坐在鲍比和那个每天上课都把棒球帽拉得低低的女孩中间。这是一种压力——鲍比有一种狂热的、强迫性的欲望，想要成为最好的，想要吸收所有的东西，而我右边的女孩看起来很酷、镇定、泰然。事实证明并非如此，因为维多利亚关心的可能是每个人的幸福，而不是他们自己。</p> <p>If not this semester, then it was fall of sophomore year, but somewhere along the line I was introduced to Nick. Honestly, Nick is one of the most hilarious people I've met - though I can't tell if he knows this, is intentional about it, or if it comes to him as naturally as anything else. I think our 223 coding sessions with Eric Chang were some of my formative experiences at Yale lol. I wish I had gone to see you sing more often, or better yet, see you solo a song! However, I did get to see you bleep bloop in Computer Music: Sound Synthesis. And that one time I shopped the advanced music class with you, I was wowed by your talent for musicality and technicality (bleep bloop).</p> <p>Intro to Relativity was the funkest experience of my life. It's such a traumatic experience that I really can't remember well what happened lol... But I do remember the nights before the psets were due when Esul would show up to some Silliman Intro to Relativity group session, drop her completed A+ perfect pset on the table and be like "I'm here to hard carry" - exaggerated a bit of course, but I think it captures the spirit well.</p> <p>I started my junior year off super ambitious. I was taking systems programming, I wanted to learn computational vision, and I wanted to improve my probability theory by taking two classes in it. On top of that, my friends and I were piooneering a new dance group, Yale Movement! It was really exciting, and probably my favorite time at Yale yet. But it got stressful really quickly cuz I had nooooo idea what was going on in classes like Databases. I couldn't see in computational vision, despite working with brilliant minds like Juliana and Ellie. I ultimately credit-d'd probability theory and withdrew from intro to data analysis - I could've gotten a B+ just from failing the class though! I was fine with taking these L's though because for one, no L could be bigger than the one I took my very first semester. Secondly, I had way too much fun with Yale Movement to really worry about my grades. Watching the show come to fruition, being inspired by the creativity, innovation, and ambition of my peers as they pieced parts of the club together, I was too motivated to be dejected. I definitely took for granted the new members who wanted to join us as we pioneered a new (K-Pop) community at Yale, but I'm glad I got to grow along and plan cool things with and for everyone in the end.</p> <p>I think going to Korea that winter with Juliana and Julia was one of the most random, wild, and fun things I could've done at the time. In hindsight, it could've sounded like a recipe for disaster - I had just met Julia through Yale Movement, and I had just started dating Juliana. I think I was very childish at some, if not most times, so I'm grateful for the fact that they put up with my antics. But it was also an opportunity and a glimpse into the kind of globalized future we'll experience as we graduate and venture into the world. We met up with Lauren Kim and her friends, Lauren Lee, and Victoria (who had been studying her ass off at SNU). There is a lot of truth to the statement "The more the merrier", because it definitely felt lively and fun with so many friends in Seoul. Juliana and I fixed our love padlock to N Seoul Tower, and I got to experience my first M Countdown. This was also when my height was made painfully aware to me - the organizers or whoever told me to move to the side cuz I was too tall lol ...</p> <p>When I returned to campus, my glow up(?), guided by Juliana, finally began. And through quiet determination and unlimited willpower, she also began piecing together dance covers under Yale Movement. I like to say that I was the one who coordinated people to show up to practice and push through to film, and that she was the one who came up with the next cover to do / ideation. But it takes so much to convince others to join in on an activity, to push for it time and again despite lack of interest, and to try to be as fair as possible in putting these covers together. I'm grateful that she persevered, because through these covers I got to grow deeper connections and improve as a dancer with so many amazing people. It was exciting to see each person's unique strengths on full display, it was inspiring to see everyone get back up for another run despite having practiced for three hours already, and it was satisfying to see the culmination of our hard work - in the form of a Youtube video. Shout out to Joe, Milla, and Juliana for being in so many of them, and shout out to everyone for trying out covers at least once.</p> <p>In my senior year at Yale, I finally got onto Rhythmic Blue. To this day, I don't think I really deserved to get in. But I continue to be grateful for the opportunity to train with and get to know talented movers and amazing academics. I think few will disagree with me when I say that my tap class is powerful. Our class name, Tik Tok Taps, is the only thing holding us back from unlimited power. But without the guidance of people like Kesi and Makayla, or the wisdom of people like Imani, I think our energy would've been less ed. As an example, never in my life have I ever been challenged so much by a piece of choreo outside of a dance class until I learned Kesi's closer.</p> <p>On the note of dancing, I also need to give a tremendous shout out to Kevin Zhen and co for organizing the Hip Hop Block Party(ies). I admire Kevin's devotion to the craft as a dancer and promoter, and his open-mindedness and free-spiritedness on the battleground and in practice sessions. Also, he speaks like at least three languages? It was an honor to dance with Jason Wu, genius programmer in day and ambitious breaker at night. Alexis stomped out the competition and Emily cut through them like water flowing through rock.</p> <p>Korean class with 이선생님 was the most fun I've ever had at Yale. I'd always wondered why her classes were so loud everytime I passed by. But having been her student, I now understand that you had no choice but to be loud, to enjoy life and the never-ceasing moments of joy she brought to her students. Honestly, it didn't even feel like I was learning. But somehow we smashed through lecture after lecture; looking back at my lecture notes, I am honestly surprised by how much we have learned. Upon reflection, this makes sense; someone so invested in the wonders and joys of teaching will only motivate her students to become invested in the wonders and joys of learning.</p> <p>Finally, all that was left was the senior project. After procrastinating until two weeks before the deadline, Ellie and I managed to piece together a lean mean dancing machine. Thank you Ellie for always asking the hard questions and baking some monstrously good bread.</p><p>And to throw it all the way back to pre-frosh times, thank you Kiddest for reaching out about something regarding financial aid. It was the beginning to a long and meaningful friendship filled with chaotic tangents, ridicule at existing structures, and other goodies.</p> <p>Thank you Stephen for Oslo, your music, and your guidance.</p><p>Lastly, I want to thank myself. Everytime I look back at some memory, I find myself cringing. I am thus grateful for the growth that has allowed me to reflect and be utterly disappointed at myself, and myself for being that disappointing.</p><p>And of course, thank you grandma for only knowing Harvard and Yale.</p> <p>It was tough getting here without knowing anything - the college admission process, SATs, etc. Although my mom always somehow pulled together enough information at the last minute for me to take the next step, I think this would've been a lot easier if I had access to someone who knew the whole pipeline in greater detail. So hopefully I can be that source for people who need it. Maybe starting with my cousins.</p><p> Regardless, class of 2020, </p><p> <b style="color: rgb(237, 35, 8);">congratulations!</b></p> <p>'I got a job at Yale and was studying economics at the time. I got a job at The New York Times when I was 9 and I worked for a paper. And I was told that this was not in my best interest. I was just told that I had a duty to write about things, not just how they happened, but how they really worked out in those stories. It just wasn't in my interest. And I had to go on, and it worked out perfectly.</p><p>It was a great time. It was a good time. There were people on the other side of the door who were working in other places with interesting jobs and had this huge interest. I said, "Wow, this is crazy. How could this happen? How can a piece like this happen? I am not that interested."</p><p>So I came to Yale, and as I was writing this, I went to The New York Times with the hope that I could be part of a movement of journalists that were very interested in making...'</p><p>An excerpt from LinkedIn Generation, Machine Assessed (LIGMA)</p>