2021 was a year mainly full of one thing: COVID. From stunting last spring semester to be entirely online (first time living alone!), to lessening in the summer and fall, and now variants coming back with a vengance, the overall pace of the year felt slowed down by the virus.

It’s hard to believe this is the same year I learned OpenGL and C++ to make a simple demo, or ran a 6-minute mile; those events feel like so long ago (yes they were but still). Other big events were renting my first apartment, interning at facebook, and getting sick with Lyme’s Disease.

Besides all the COVID variants, there was another huge event in 2021 for the history books: the Jan 6 insurrection against Congress ratifying the presidential election. Trump’s handling and encouragement of that mess definetly deserved him getting kicked off all major social media platforms.

With Biden as president, “normal” has been somewhat achieved: a Congress that hardly passes any bills of import, and a constant dissatisfaction with the executive branch for not making that happen. It depresses me how ineffective the national government is, and all the state governments banning abortion and mask mandates don’t help either. Count myself lucky to not be too affected (yet).

Anyways enough with the bad news from last year, what am I looking forward to in 2022? Some main things:

• I’m teaching a StuCo on Rust alongside Cooper Pierce next semester! Very excited for this, we both enjoy Rust alot and started this almost as a meme but now it’s a real thing that 39 (!!) other students have signed up for. Hype 🦀
• I’m taking 15-410 Operating Systems next semester! This is “the big one”, all of the 15-4xx systems classes at CMU are known to be very difficult but very rewarding in term of what you learn. Due to the expected increased time commitment, I’ll need to stop tutoring though, which is a bit of a bummer since I enjoyed it this semester. But! OS awaits, and I can’t wait!
• Getting back to playing Ultimate Frisbee! It took all winter, but my knee is finally healed after I busted it doing a heavy lift right after I was cured of Lyme, having not exercised in a month. I’ve been doing other lifts and track workouts since, and it’s held up fine so I can’t wait to actually play. Hoping that practices aren’t scheduled at the same time as class again…
• I’ll be interning at Facebook, now Meta again this summer! I got a return offer and took it, love being able to skip interview season and relax! Again, I’m still apprehensive about working for them given some of the relevations that came out this year, but on the whole I expect it to be fine.
• I have no idea what next fall semester will be like!

That’s it for me this year, hope your 2021 was bearable and I’ll see you in 2022!