Reflections: First Semester

You'd think, a college freshman in Mexico for vacation (travel diary coming later) would have better things to do than write a blog about college. Most of the time, you'd be right, but I had some time on my hands so I figured I'd get working on this. If you haven't guessed by the title, I just wrapped up my first semester at Cal, and boy did I have an experience. People always portray college as a wild ride, and it kind of is. I grew academically, socially, and pretty much everything-ly.



For starters, this was the first time I was actually taking more classes that I cared about than ones I **had** to. My schedule wasn't full of fluff like English, History, Biology, and whatnot. I was taking 3 technicals, all of which I enjoyed thoroughly, and French, which I loved deeply. Every hard class was insanely enjoyable because I loved learning what I was learning (well, for the most part). Even though I had enough prior experience to breeze through half of my classes, the other half kept me on my toes. I always had something or other to work on, and for the first time I didn't feel _burdened_ by it.

And when I didn't have anything to work on, I socialized. I lucked out, because my dorm floor turned out to be pretty social and most of us started getting along well. As a result, I didn't have to go far to be with my friends. I figured I should make the most of it this year, before everyone moves into apartments, inevitably not to be seen except on special occasions. Everyone's doors were open at some point throughout the day, and people would just gather in the evening to talk, play [card games](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabo_(game)>), listen to music, or watch random YouTube videos (or movies). A nice little community, unlike anything I've ever witnessed before.

With all good things come distractions of course. Aside from our amazing Friendsgiving feast and Secret Santa exchange, we found ourselves procrastinating a little extra because we had people to procrastinate with. A friend and I picked up the great habit of playing video games for long hours, so any time that could've been spent studying more was spent gaming. A much needed relaxation though, to alleviate the building stress of midterms and finals. I'd say we balanced our time pretty well :)

I learned how to succeed, how to socialize, and how to manage my time to do everything I wanted to do. The independence aspect of college was slightly daunting at first, but having 20 other people on your floor to work through it with made it that much easier, and I got used to dorm life pretty quickly. Heck, I'm actually kind of excited to go back for another semester with these folks, even though my incoming course load is supposed to be many times harder than the load I had this semester. Less time for video games, more time for productivity!

I hope everyone's college experiences are positive, because I know the only reason I want to go back is because mine was. With that, it's time to be a tourist and hop on a day-long journey to Chichen Itza. Signing off.

Hello.

If you've ever kept up with my blogging status in the past, you know that I've never stuck to a blog for more than a month or so. I'd say this time is going to be different, but probably not. We'll see though! Anyway, this blog is going to consolidate everything I've ever cared to blog about -- technology, politics/constitutional law, or just my life and its ups and downs.



In case you have no idea who I am, here's a little context. I'm VS, a freshman at UC Berkeley studying Computer Science, Data Science, and French. I've lived in the Bay Area (California, in case you're not reading this from California) for about 8 years now, before which I lived in India for 11. My passion for Computer Science sparked in middle school, when I started learning HTML and eventually got into Java, which led to Android app development. I started taking French around the same time, but I really fell in love with the language during freshman year of high school. Data Science was something I didn't _intend_ to get into, but AP Statistics junior year really got me hooked onto the power of numbers. As for politics, I participated in my high school's We The People team last year (2018-19), which is a program for high school seniors to become significantly more informed about politics and constitutional law than the majority of the American population. Subtle flex, but our team was second in the nation.

When I'm not crunching CS homework, I like to fool around on my laptop. This website was a result of that -- I threw together my working knowledge of HTML/CSS and learned how to use static site generators to compile the homepage and this blog (powered by Hugo!). I also decided I'd publish all my notes for all my classes, since I tend to take decently detailed and helpful (at least, personally) notes. If you're a Berkeley student and want to potentially use my notes as extra studying material, feel free to [check them out](https://imvs.me/notes).

I also **love** listening to music. I listen to pop (the usual), hip-hop (Eminem, Logic, Drake, and a few other common artists), timeless classics (Queen, Michael Jackson, etc.), French pop, Punjabi pop, and Bollywood music. A variety of genres that never fails to make me happy.

I think that's a decent description of who I am. As I continue blogging (we'll see for how long), you'll get to know me more, but thanks for reading!

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Reflections: First Semester

Hello.

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