Spring 2025 Wrapup

The Spring Semester Has Closed, Now What?

Another semester gone by, and by far Spring 2025 was not an easy go of things. My generic carefree optimism did not last very long past winter break. The man who wrote the last blog post (past Evan) was soon to be humbled.

For update’s sake, I did end up reading through most of Calculus for the Practical Man. As its title suggests, I found it to be a practical way to attack some of the problems I encountered. I also finished out Red Hat’s Linux Fundamentals Class (RH104), which gave me some solid ground to stand on in that environment. Finally, I also spent some time getting an SQL certification of completion from the folks over at Kaggle. I wouldn’t call myself SQL proficient but rather somewhat familiar now.

The other CTF I hinted towards didn’t end up happening or I don’t recall participating. Either way, once the semester started I was in full time grind mode.

This semester I took:

• Foundations of Data Science
• Physics with Calculus
• Physics Lab
• Calculus 1
• A University Required Liberal Arts Class

This may have been a bit overzealous on my part, but I committed to doing the hard work when I signed up for these classes. I am proud to say I did well, all things considered. I walked away with an A or A+ in everything except calculus, where I painfully earned a B-.

I learned so much this semester about myself, my learning style, and what lengths I’m willing to go to win (personally). I have never been at such odds with myself to quit or to embrace the suck since getting out.

At the start it was rocky. My first exams after six weeks made me feel like maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a CS student or a STEM student at all because of how poorly I scored. However strong that feeling was to quit, I did eventually push myself to be more than I was the day prior. As a personal growth exercise (or punishment rather) I made sure to show up to all the TA sessions offered until the next exam.

That strategy worked. It absolutely was unsustainable but it worked. Going to class in the mornings and staying late on campus to study, often followed by going to work right after, made my internal flame burn a bit too hot. Burning the candle at both ends, so to speak. For anyone who feels like that, my inner motivation was out of necessity and fear of failure. I continued to tell myself that I had been through worse, and this is what is required of me right now.

That is in no way solid advice. In fact, the editor of this article had the following to say about my approach to college:

“Evan is a machine designed for peak gains and efficiency. Like every other aspect of his life, he approaches college as a problem to be solved and will settle for nothing less than the optimal solution, even when that comes at the expense of his physical and mental health. Colloquially, he has a sigma grindset.”

My immediate family also thinks I am pushing too hard, and in a way they are right. At the same time, this is a necessary part of my life. It must be done.

All that talk above but I really couldn’t keep that energy up as finals loomed. I was pushing my luck towards my own mental exhaustion just before finals. Of course I made it work but I wouldn’t call it healthy, I would call it sacrifice.

Every time I’ve done something that is difficult, like finishing out a semester or closing the Air Force chapter of my life, I send this GIF to my friend Lucas.

Hate Thanos if you want but everything you see in this gif—the stumble, the tired eyes, the deep breath, the pride—it’s all there for me. His quote, “ the hardest choices require the strongest wills” rings true for me, as do many of his other quotes.

But as inevitable as I may be, this semester also made something clear: burning through everything isn’t a sustainable way to survive college or life in general, really. I’ve come to realize that if I want to keep growing, I need to stop proving that I can endure, and instead prove that I can thrive under the pressure of it all. Becoming the kettle, not the pressure cooker.

A shift in perspective

All said and done, the semester was not all doom and gloom, in fact I took some fun responsibility with the IT club by becoming its Technology Officer! I was asked initially if I had an interest in club leadership over the winter break and initially declined, as I wanted to wait for the new semester to roll in so I would know that I had the time to support the club’s needs.

I am aware that “Technology Officer” is a somewhat vague position. To specify, I am in charge of managing the discord and working on our club’s website. That was another project that deserves its own post for sure. I generally handle any online requirements of the club, one of which was creating a discord bot, which is another project I will likely wrap into my post about the IT club website.

Putting it all in red

I also got to take my first real college level CS class, and I finally got to see if my interest all these years was still in me somewhere. It most assuredly was. I had an absolute BLAST in this class, and I learned so much in my coursework that I decided that this is it. I won’t be pursuing other avenues of CS nearly as hard.

I still strongly believe in being a master of none, but I am going all in for data science and machine learning. I know I said I made the choice to swap my degree plan because of the math requirements as per my post in fall, but actually taking the class sold me on data science for a few reasons:

• The subject lends itself to play off my personal strengths and thinking, namely visual inference
• It’s abstract enough to feel groundbreaking while still remaining grounded in the real world so that most projects can be conversationally explained
• Not pure computational problem solving (as say software engineering is) Instead asks why? to a dataset

A year in review

I can also mark the completion of my first year at BSU and my first real year as a college student. It’s a bit hard to believe. I’ve grown more in both personal and professional capability over the past year and a half outside of the Air Force than I ever did while I was in. Being able to chase what actually interests me has made all the difference, but more than that, I’m finally starting to heal, and that healing has given me the space to flourish academically in ways I didn’t think were possible before.

Wrapping up

I will try to stick to my proposed “schedule” of having at least one of these posts up during an academic break. I have some projects that may see the light of day, so stay tuned.