I was born in San Francisco, moved to LA, and then moved to LA county. I studied Computer Science at UCI and graduated in 4 years. I also studied 2 years of Japanese at UCI. I found work as a consultant/software engineer at a startup and worked in Irvine for 4 years. After getting bored of working on webapps, I decided I needed a change. I was becoming stagnant and needed something to jumpstart me. I was feeling dead inside. Ah, 2014, the year I lost all emotion. I started losing interest in a lot of things, for different reasons. I didn't want to date anybody, because relationships seemed like a huge hassle. I didn't want to play any new games, because it was tiring to get used to shitty game mechanics. I didn't want to program in my free time, because I did that all day at my job. On the outside, I looked okay, but on the inside, I was not my best. I stopped caring about a lot of things. It wasn't healthy. Maybe I was changing, but I felt an absence of a lot of things I felt before. Maybe my hormones? I wasn't sure what I could do to stop it.
I think people grow in different ways depending on their core motivations. I like finding out what peoples' motivations are. I believe that people are driven by what they most strongly believe in. If you don't strongly believe in something, then you won't be able to advance. If you don't have strong dreams, then you are bound to someone else's dream. I want to see what a person does and why they do it. What do you do to encourage yourself? How did you decide on the little ways you live your life? How have the choices you made shaped you into the person you are today? That's interesting to me.
When you face adversity, you can only react in one of two ways: either you improve yourself or you make your circumstances easier. I like to think that I am the type that needs drastic change in order to grow. Throw me in the ocean and I'll learn how to swim or die trying. I needed a change of environment. My routine life threw me no curveballs; I had no reason to get any better. Of course, I want to believe that I can get better just for the sake of being better, but I had lost that. I used to care about being punctual, running full-speed in the morning to school to make my first class, but I could hardly be bothered to rush for anything anymore. I operate well under pressure, and here I was without any pressure at all. Like liquids need a container, I, too, needed a container to fill me with a sense of purpose.
I attribute a lot of my life to my father. My father has a talent: when he sees a better way of life, he chooses it. He isn't afraid to change his life and do something new. I had never known my father as a rock climber, a dancer, or a lawyer, until he made it so. I never had any reason to doubt him- he was my father, after all. At my UCI graduation ceremony, my father was intently paying attention to the speaker's message. I think the speaker was the president of Boeing or something, I forgot. In fact, I even forgot his message right after he concluded his speech. My dad repeated it to me and now I don't think I'll ever forget it. I believe it 100%, and I'll summarize my interpretation here:
Life is about priorities. Each priority in life is a ball that you juggle. Everyone has different balls that they juggle. Sometimes you meet people who juggle the same balls as you. Others, none at all. Now you ask yourself, "Which of these balls is the most important?" I won't give you time to think about it.
1. Family. You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family. It sounds awful to say, but friends come and go. Barring the circumstance of bad family members, family is there for you. They are invested in your success and you are invested in theirs. In dire situations, family is the first support group you can turn to. You don't have to be the perfect family member. As a family member, your duty is to just be there. Treasure your family, because you only get one.
2. Integrity. You are a product of all the decisions you make in life. What kinds of promises do you make to yourself? Do you uphold your own beliefs? Are you a man of your word? If someone encourages you to violate the rules you live by, drop them like a rock. Live a good, lawful life that you can be proud of. Surround yourself with people who help you become a better person.
3. Health. Without this, you cannot juggle any other balls. Don't take your health lightly. Exercise and diet should be on your mind and disregarding it won't advance your life goals. Your body is the manifestation of your life choices. Logically, you want to have the best possible body you can obtain in order to deal with challenges in your life. You don't have to be a Greek god, but you have no reason to let yourself go, especially if it prevents you from doing something you want to.
That's it. Those are the priorities that you should never forget. You can add more, but don't ever replace these.
Back to why I chose what I did. I chose something I felt like I needed to do. I don't have incredibly strong feelings about computational linguistics. Programming is really rewarding, but this wasn't stuff that I really looked into in my spare time. I consoled myself, saying, "This is why you go to school, to learn it!" I took a machine learning course at UCI, and it was incredibly challenging. I barely scraped by in that class, but I relished the difficulty. I knew how important this technology was, since this is the core of all artificial intelligence. I know that choosing this field would be machine learning, and I still don't know where it'll lead. This is entirely career path oriented. I didn't want to do any more webdev, because it's the same old thing. Sure, I can do it, but at the end of the day, it's not rewarding. Did I make the world any better today? Was I able to help someone who needed it? Webdev won't give me that kind of satisfaction. Much of programming is thankless work, and I couldn't just tell myself that the company I'm working for had a good cause. I've used a lot of Google Translate, and I decided that if my work can make communication between people easier, it's worth my time.
Communication is very important to me. Of course it's important to everyone, but it takes effort to be a good communicator. In any relationship you need to understand how to communicate with the other party. And everyone is different! I want to make communication easier for people. That's simple, right? I'll find a way to do that with my skillset.
I wanted to study abroad. I had toyed with the idea of studying in Japan, but after visiting Japan twice, I was satiated. I had learned enough Japanese to travel around and talk to Japanese people. By no means was I good- I just knew enough to get by. I wanted to go somewhere new. I've already been to Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and India. I didn't have a strong inclination towards South America or Africa. I decided on Europe. Studying in the US would be boring. I wanted to meet a whole new culture. Lo and behold, I kept seeing signs urging me to go. Germany offers virtually free education to residents and foreigners alike. That's incredible. I'm almost done paying off the $25k+ in student loans from attending UCI. I wanted to attend a grad school that wouldn't slam with me more loans. I don't like being in debt. I started looking into German programs, and consolidated my choices into a list. Generic computer science sounded too boring, so I dropped those. Most of the bioinformatics stuff required medical courses, which I didn't take, so I couldn't apply to those. That left a lot more interesting stuff, and, coincidentally, the first grad school on my list (in order of application timing windows) was the Language Science and Technology institute of Saarland University. I applied with the recommendation letters from one of my previous Japanese teachers and my good friend. I decided to wait until I heard back from them. I didn't think I would be rejected- this opportunity sounds like it was made for me, and I wrote it as such on my personal statement. And then, I got the acceptance letter in the mail. I started tying up some loose ends and slowly got ready to leave.
So, finally, why Germany? I could've chosen other programs, like Denmark or France. I apologize to all Germans for this stereotype, but I thought that I could get along with Germans based on their stereotype. To my knowledge, Germans are known for following rules, for being very direct in their speech, and for correcting you when you are wrong. I believe I could get along well with people like that. I wasn't the biggest beer drinker, but I knew I would grow to like it. Carbonated water is popular here, and I love the stuff. I can travel from Germany to other European countries. The reasons I have aren't like...monumental. Just a bunch of small things that added up to a "why not?" Of course, the amount of paperwork you have to do is unreal. I'm going to feel the pain of that soon.
What about afterwards? After I finish the 2 year program, then what? Will I pursue a PhD? Will I come back to the US? Stay in Germany? I don't know. I can't see that far. I just wanted to do this and here I am doing it.
Do you really need a strong reason to do something so drastic like leave all your family, friends, possessions behind and go to a country you can't speak the language? It's not a decision I made lightly, but I knew it would be the right one. As Jimmy likes to state, "travel is the best thing you can do for your soul." I believe it.
Besides, whatever I did, I did it for the lulz.
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