decisions

What an exciting year 2022 has been! I’m a chimera of math and language, so I’ve come up with two frameworks to reflect: Reflection is computing gradients for gradient descent. Actually, I liken year-end reflection to computing a Hessian matrix. While the decisions I make during the year are Jacobians, this is an opportunity to look at the bigger picture and spend more time to compute an 2nd-order update. Reflection from the perspective of “Postmortem & Postvitam”....

If you’re feeling stuck at a crossroads, imagine a 3rd path. Many of my students and my friends come to me with hard decisions, feeling the existential dread, asking “Which should I pick? Which is better?” Stick it out with my horrible advisor while I cry everyday or face getting deported? Take this amazing 7-figure offer to work on something I don’t care about or keep searching for something more fulfilling while suffering impostor syndrome?...