What I’ve Been Up to for the Past 2 Months

Greetings everyone Je here, I am doing good and I hope that you're doing too. If you are not feeling good, It's fine touch some grass, call your mother and talk about her day and yours to her, you'll feel better. Ball up top. Remember to never kill yourself because it's lame.

It's been a long time since I wrote an update blog, though I was giving short updates. Honestly, I was not motivated enough to sit down and write one. Even at the moment I am writing this - I have a headache and I am afraid I might get sick by tomorrow morning.

Life's been a mix of the familiar and the new. I've kept up with some routine tasks while also picking up new things. It feels like a constant cycle of breaking down and rebuilding myself over and over, but that’s part of the process, right? So, let’s jump into it.

Leetcode

Everyone does Leetcode. If you don't, you should. On some days, when I’m motivated, I’ll try to solve 2-3 questions, with or without help. But most days, it’s just the daily problems. I promised myself I’d take part in more contests, but I keep falling short. That’s a bad habit I need to fix.

I'm not some sort of wizard but after solving around 270+ questions, I can now recognize the patterns in some questions opposed to when I started, I used to be completely clueless and spend hours trying to understand the solutions and memorize the code. The best advice I got regarding the Leetcode, is just stay consistent and It will come to you someday.

On the Leetcode subreddit someone credible made a post- You would need at least 500+ questions to recognize the patterns in the unseen questions and have a working prototype in your mind. That post changed my whole perspective about Leetcode. Before that, I used to hate myself that I could not solve a problem even after I have seen the topics tab - its still like this for a lot of problems, but now I know its a number game (quality also matters). You can't just do a famous DFS problem and become ready to tackle any problem that uses DFS, you would need to solve a bunch problem that uses DFS to get good at doing DFS related problems.

So, consistency and revision are the key—and trust me, it's hard.

Tutoring

Now, this is something new: giving mathematics and science classes to a 10th grader. It’s a 1-1.25 hour class, six days a week (sometimes seven), from 7 to 8 PM. I enjoy teaching the kid—it’s fun and a nice little escape from my usual routine. On the days I don’t go to college, it also gets me out of my room and gives me a chance for a short 1km walk. Best part, I get to do core building mathematics and re-visit all the things I read in 10th grade science. It's good thing to put my brain into solving algebraic equations and learn about basic gut biology. I get smarter.

The kid isn’t particularly hard-working and puts in very little effort, which is why his parents are paying me big bucks to help structure his studies. But in all sincerity, I try my best to guide and teach him, and push him to do his best.

Working Out

I was flexy and somewhat athletic in my high school time, as the years progressed I became a little overweight, but by end of 2022, I had slimmed down again. I had never done strength training until last August, except for one week in 2021. I was unsure whether to join a conventional weightlifting gym or a martial arts gym, but a girl friend of mine mentioned she was starting weightlifting, and I thought, "I’ll do that too." So, I started lifting on August 5, and honestly, I’ve made the most visible progress in this area compared to anything else I’ve done in the last 2-3 months. I feel stronger, my muscles look bigger, and my body fat has dropped from around 20-25% to 15-20%.

I took a week off on October 5 for my mid-semester exams and resumed on the 14th. I think the reason I mentioned feeling sick earlier was related to that. I feel good and stronger, which is an important aspect of my life because most of my work involve sitting in dark dungeons.

I’ve already got a membership until January 15 next year. After that, my good friend Jatin and I are considering joining a boxing gym and starting wrestling 2-4 times a week, because wrestling is insanely good.

Project, Academics and Upskilling?

was working on an analytical application, an Overwolf-based tool for Valorant. I had to play a lot of Spike Rush matches—it’s an okay game, but I prefer CS. I worked on this project for about 4-5 weeks with the person whose idea it was, an ex-professional Valorant player. The next step is to link it to a database so players can access their stats online.

Other than that, I mentioned previously about my mid-sems- They went okay. This semester, my coursework includes Neural Networks, Recommender systems, Java, DevOps, Economics. Pretty stacked coursework, I must say.

I've been thinking about learning Java and spring boot for a while now, and finally, my coursework overlaps with my upskilling goals, I plan continue on this path and get good at it. After that, I think I would probably learn AWS, both for MLE and Web and try to deploy some stuffs locally. So there's that, I will also think of any project to work on while learning Spring boot because I've realized that I learn the best when I am writing code for an actual application not just typing random syntax slop.

Quitting Brainrot slop

I also deleted my Instagram account, and honestly, those reels were frying my brain. I felt like I was getting dumber, with my cognitive abilities being shot down like pheasants in October. Dynamite if you are reading this, we will meet again someday.

I still have a lot to give upon, Youtube, reddit and X and a bunch of more things. I won't quit these application entirely like I did with Instagram because text-based content applications are far superior than video/graphic-based applications, also these are the platforms where I get my news and world information and tech thingys.

Other than these things, I slept a lot in the previous few months, averaging about 8 hours a day.

I will see you again people, til then ask that girl out, get that job, get that apartment, join the gym, run that marathon, read those books on your shelf, unfollow those trolls, get better, organize and strategize, grind harder. Have fun, life is really beautiful. Silly and simple things are often the best things in life.