HAPPY MEW YEARS.!! welcome to ... 2024: the year of sophie. (according to the sophie calendar & sophie culture, every year is the year of sophie). this year was very eventful for me so i am going to summarize the big parts and give my goals for next year. :+)
in terms of "things that happened to me", the biggest thing was that i started graduate school! i want to get a phd next so this is the stepping-stone BEFORE that. i could have technically started a phd right away but i didnt want to move that quickly through school, and in hindsight im REALLY GLAD i get to have this time to sort of think things through. i still don't know what i want to research! if you asked me a year ago, i would have confidently told you "programming languages and compilers", but now i'm leaning a lot more towards computer architecture (especially relating somehow to physics! i think that would be relating to emerging systems that utilize hardware in non-traditional ways, e.g., with quantum computers, systolic arrays, processing-in-memory, accelerators in general, etc.).
i realized my school kind of sucks. i get nearly perfect scores on everything, but i dont study particularly hard. on one test, i got a 60 on the final but the class got on average a 30, which made my grade an A after the professor curved it. that makes me feel bad! i want to be in a learning environment where everybody is cutthroat, eager to show their stuff, doing all-nighters every day, competing with each other, and everything like that! i'm procrastinating on assignments and i dont feel like i've learned not to because procrastinating is so successful. i dont want a learning environment like that. my dream is to make it into a really competitive school for my phd so i have more of an incentive to work very hard and really COMPETE against my classmates. hopefully i find a good school this year!
alongside that, my favorite tv show EVER, The Owl House, ended! i got to watch the finale live. it was the most amazing experiences of my whole life, getting to watch this show as it was happening, being in the community, stuff like that. i think the owl house was the first thing i would genuinely call a "hyperfixation" because of how much it occupied a spot in my brain. i also thing i rewatched that entire show from start to finish 10 entire times (and like, paying attention to the show on each rewatch, not doing anything else in the background. its still my favorite show even though i haven't watched it since late july. i think i want to watch it again soon!). there was a time for a few months straight where every night i would come home from school at like 9:30pm, i'd make dinner really quick and watch an episode of the show with it, then shower and go to sleep before waking up at 7am to go to school. it was such a consistent routine for me that i honestly loved it. i think i was more productive during that time, and im not really sure why. it was nice. i love the owl house even though i dont watch it any more; it still holds an incredibly special place in my heart!
final big thing was the gender update. i changed my pronouns to "every pronoun" which didn't really mean anything to anybody except me. really its just the same as saying "genderfluid" and saying i use "any pronoun" but it was a slight semantic shift that sort of encapsulated a new personality/paradigm change for me. alongside that i wore a skirt once in public and it was very fun because i was with other genderfluid people. a few of the people were very nice and definitely wanted to hang out more with me but i was (and still am) WAY too shy to create any plans to hang out so that sort of ended there. IM WORKIN ON IT! THIS YEAR I'LL BE BETTER!! I PROMISE!!! (if you're reading this, jojo in particular, hi!! im still too shy!! maybe we can hang out this year! ^w^). also i'm re-reading this and i thought i should mention my friend violet somewhere because i think she's awesome hi violet im glad we're friends :+) you're a SUPER cool dog. (here's a little message just for you, in dog language: sniffsniff sniffsniffsniff ... woof, woof woof ... BARK, BARK BARK..! AWROOOOOOO!! sneeze)
ok the big update this year was this: i have decided i am going to learn EVERYTHING. i am determined to be an EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT SCIENTIST. i'm talkin albert einstein level, baby. im gonna be like if john conway was genderfluid. the term i discovered and that i really want to embody is "polymath", which describes "someone who's sort of an expert in lots of diverse subject areas." i want to be the type of person who seems to have infinite insight into every topic, who's able to spout any kind of interesting fact about anything, and who is renouned in their field. that sounds soooo coool i wanna make it happen. i really love the idea of my friends introducing me to other people as like "thats dr. sophie, shes the smart one who knows about what a higgs boson is, he's published papers that have made a significant impact in the fields of computer science and physics, they've edited this textbook and have their name in these conference proceedings". it gives me little butterflies thinking about it.
the biggest change this required was reading more. i wasn't really much of a reader before like May. i started reading after that. since then, here are (most? all?) the books ive read this year that i remember:
additionally, this is the year i actually started reading research papers. i was very, very slow at first, but im really picking up the pace nowadays. it's turned out to be an invaluable skill i need to get good at doing.
heres my resolutions. WHAT'S ON THE DOCKET FOR SOPHIE'S 2024?
1.) MAKE MORE FRIENDS. god. i need to make more IRL friends. i am waaaayyyy too shy. i kind of stuck with the same friends from high school and they went off and made new better friends but I HAVENT. i especially want--no, NEED--to be friends with people who are genderfluid. its driving me crazy. i need to know people who are similar to me. i need to introduce myself to other people as "sophie". i need to wear a dress in front of other people. I WANT TO TALK ABOUT SCIENCE TO OTHER PEOPLE WHO CARE!! & I WANT THEM TO TALK ABOUT SCIENCE BACK TO ME!!!!
2.) and i need MORE THAN THAT TOO. IS THIS NEXT PART TOO PERSONAL?? WHO CARES!! goal number (2) is I AM GOING TO GET A PARTNER THIS YEAR. im talking GIRLFRIEND OR BOYFRIEND OR SOME OTHER KIND OF WEIRD-GENDER-FRIEND. i always used to think "people who openly yearn for a girlfriend are weird LOL" but SCREW THAT!! IM IN YEARNING TERRITORY, BABE! creatures were designed to desire physical companionship. i am a virgin. i have not kissed anyone. i have not TOUCHED anyone. IM (somewhere between 21 and 24) YEARS OLD!! i kind of went through weird emotions these past few weeks because BOTH of my siblings have a boyfriend/girlfriend and they spend all of their time together with their partner and are best friends and my parents think they fit right in to the family and i was thinking how nice that would be. I WANT THAT BUT FOR MY OWN PARTNER!! (note: i have thought of every angle this emotion takes. i have read books over human psychology, so i understand the irrationality of desiring things in general, and especially see the danger in "i want to have a boyfriend so my family thinks im cool." in fact, ive thought about this so much, i'll probably make a blog post entirely about it. brains are weird. boyfriends are even weirder because they are SO time consuming. how can i justify having a girlfriend if im also trying to be the most successful scientist in the world? the best i could come up with is "getting a partner would expand my sense of culturedness [in the same way reading classics would expand it] which makes me a more well-rounded person which makes me learn better and be more successful". is this a weird way of putting things? i'm sure a therapist would love hearing me say this. my head hurts. i want to touch someones chest and i want them to touch mine. there is no rational explanation for this, the most successful thing i could do is ignore these sensations and go back to reading research papers. i dont know. i feel weird.) i dont know if i want to have sex but i definitely do want to kiss someone. the important thing is i know exact actionable plans i can do to make this happen: next semester i have a list of five school organizations (socialization stuff like book clubs, chess clubs, etc.) to attend weekly meetings of. i will attend every meeting this semester, no matter how busy i get with school. i will talk to people and make plans to hang out with others. i will sometimes introduce myself as sophie. i am going to treat "get a boyfriend" as an objective function to optimize (and baby you can call me simulated annealing because i am going to approximate the maximum of that sucker even if it kills me).
3.) GET PUBLISHED. i am working on a paper right now i would be a main author on which will definitely get completed by the end of the year. the idea of traveling to a conference may be the scariest thing i can think of, but it needs to happen. einstein had no trouble talking to people all over the world, and neither will i. i will present my research in front of accomplished people. i think i am going to melt into slime though. sometimes i like to lay on my floor when things get too complicated and scary. but floor-time is a temporary solution to the terrifying ordeal of being perceived by other people.
4.) READ MORE. specifically, my reading goals are: 1 PAPER A DAY, 1 BOOK A WEEK, 1 TEXTBOOK A MONTH. this is extremely (EXTRAORDINARLY) ambitious, but i realized that i have WAAAAY too much stuff i want to read. this will require a level of focus, determination, and motivation that is, frankly, quite unlikely for any human to possess, but thankfully im not human. i am going to use this blog as motivation for reading: i'm adding a segment to every blog post updating you on the stuff i read. by the end of the year, the next "Sophie in Review 2024" will contain a very well formatted numbered list of everything ive read. STAY TUNED.
other miscellaneous things, like write a story (maybe soon, even. i have an idea about some one who is not human and is pretending to be human who also likes science. no its not projecting or an allegory for being autistic), play an instrument (maybe violin! i have a big fantasy of wearing a dress and playing a few pieces in front of other people in a recital setting, maybe with my beautiful boy/girlfriend playing on the piano, and my body is perfect and my boobs look great in the dress), make a game (i have two game ideas planned, one about hatsune miku and her dad Columbo solving a mystery, and another about Godel's Incompleteness Theorem), learn a new language (lots of work but we'll see if i can combine it with goal 2 above, like if i can use it to socialize), etc.
and thats all, folks! this year was fun. there were other things i should have probably mentioned, like how i used social media dramatically less this year (15 minutes a day instead of like two hours a day at the start of last year!!). also my favorite music genre is vocaloid. i have a playlist i can send other people. thanks for sticking with me!! here's to another 12 months of SOPHIE!!!
- Sophie