2024 has ended, 2025 is about to start

How time flies. I ended my undergraduate life in 2024, entering MS ECE at UIUC.

I couldn’t even feel the time passing by. In some senses, I feel like I’m still in ZJUI.

In 2024, what happened

• My great friend, Zihan Xu, passed away due to an accident during his first phd year in SJTU. I present my greatest condolences.

We had probably the longest friendship among all my friends. We met each other in 2016, when we were both a fresh OIer in Zhilin High School.

During my last few months in China, we spent much time together. He is only 2 floors away from my office. We had a lot of fun together.

I can’t believe it when I heard the news from our high school OI team group chat. Up to this point, I still can’t believe he’s gone.

It’s really crazy this can happen to him. May he rest in peace.

In 2024, what did I achieve

• I finished my 10-month internship at Microsoft, mentored by Dr. Kang.
• It’s my first time first-authored a paper.
• I got an internship offer from NVIDIA.
• I learnt compiler, and built a small DSL one myself. Now I’m doing compiler-related research.
• Tried investment myself, with 15% return rate at stock market for just 3 months.
• Finally stopped caring about other people’s opinions.

In 2024, what did I screw up

Again, I moved them to private doc.

In 2025, what should I do

Currently don’t have a plan.

In 2024, what did I lear

• Life is a series of random processes.

Implication 1: if your goal has a single-point failure. That’s not your goal.

Implication 2: diversify

Implication 3: pinpoint the blocking event

Implication 4: focus on one big problem > solve many small problems