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  Experience 1
• Nelson Sun's Honors Portfolio
  

Winter 2022

Courseload

I took 18 credits worth of classes, and 3 audit credits worth of classes. Classes are listed as follows:

DEPT ### (# credits, grade): Description

• MATH 335 (5 c, 4.0): Second Quarter Accelerated Honors Calculus II
• CSE 312 (4 c, 3.6): Foundations of Computing II
• CSE 331 (4 c, 3.7): Software Design and Implementation
• HONORS 231 C (5 c, 3.5): Gender, Diplomacy, and Human Rights
• MATH 398 (3 c): Special Topics in Mathematics

Quarter GPA: 3.71, Cumulative GPA: 3.89

Artifact Gallery

I did my best to start a workout habit this quarter. With how much I was sedentary doing work this quarter, it was very important that I got out and moved around, and I made an effort to go twice a week. A few times, I went with a friend to go rock climbing as well at the IMA!

It's about time I picked up one of these! I need to write so much for my tutoring job, which I do over Zoom, and while I've gotten pretty good at writing with a mouse, nothing beats old pencil and paper. This is the closest I'm going to get, and it also means I can now try drawing on the side if I so wish.

This is an app I made as part of CSE 331, which uses a software design that I created, which also interfaces with a local server to query requests. It finds the shortest path from one place on the UW campus to another place. The data used to build this map is a little dated, but is still good for most purposes. If I had more time, I would definitely have spiffed up the design a bit, but oh well.

These guys have become a lot more commonplace as of late, probably because of the pandemic severity winding down. As a Protestant Christian, I do understand the message this guy is trying to convey, but I can't necessarily agree with the method of choice, especially given how combative the crowd he drew seemed to be. Free speech is a thing, though.

The MATH 398 gang! I fondly recall we were absolutely stumped by what was supposed to be a rather routine result in group theory. We tried to dissect the definitions to get the result we wanted, to no avail. Still a good experience, even if my participation in the audit class dropped towards the end. ☹

I had a class - a computer science section - at the Fisheries building this quarter. Quite out of the way, especially since I was coming directly from another class. Part of my route there took me past the Burke sundial; the concept here is really cool in my opinion. Oh, and the section was good too, even if hardly anyone else was there due to its distance.

Ellie! As the year has gone one, she's become a really good friend. We registered for the Honors course on Gender and Diplomacy together, and she taught me how to play cribbage. Looking forward to hanging out more next quarter!

It's actually pretty cool to see what people are able to create by hand at the Maker Fair. I picked up some Genshin Impact items, and generally found myself impressed by the little trinkets to creative stickers to miniature self-maintaining potted plants that were up for sale.

Welp! Guess I had this coming. Although this result is certainly very acceptable, with my history of 3.8-4.0 grades, getting such a "low" result from my classes did come as a good reminder that I shouldn't load myself with so many courses. Inevitably, I had to sacrifice on quality of work in the classes. It's alright, and I know this now.

I....actually have not been to the University Villiage since becoming a UW student. Although it's very far from West Campus, where I live, if I do get here, it's a very nice, more suburban style area. Snapped a picture of an icosahedron over a small (fake) grassy field for the younger kids.

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Reflection

I have no one else to blame but myself.

If we include the audit class (which, to be fair, I had to skimp on a little in order to make ends meet), I took a total of 21. Credits. This. Quarter. And....I did decently well on all of the above (except for the audit). But...at what cost?

Well, the classes themselves for one. Yes, I did just say that I did decently well in the classes, but I admittedly do hold myself to pretty high standards in my classes, especially when I know that I can succeed in all of them. And I ended up with 3.5, 3.6, 3.7. I suppose to most people, that's great, and in fact, quite easily makes the Deans List for the quarter. Maybe it's the inner perfectionist in myself speaking, but I know that I could have done better in those classes. Particularly the Computer Science courses, as I believe that I am capable of performing exceptionally well in them. It's not like I bombed any one particular assignment, either. Points off here, points off there, and it adds up.

The Honors course I took this quarter was great as well, if not on the heavy side. To be fair, although we had a ton of reading every week, understanding how LGBTQ groups - and minority groups in general - fight for recognition and representation in all levels of government was good to understand, even if I personally don't agree with the principles of the LGBTQ movement. Having to write from an "opposing perspective" really helps humanize opponents as people, and really put to light the distinction between disagreement on issues and deprivation of what would be considered basic human rights according to the UN's Declaration of Human Rights. It also made clear that the 'buzz word' of feminism (or at least, a feminist worldview) is more focused on understanding inequalities and power structures in modern society, which I thought was a very good clarification to take away from the class. I did take this course expecting to be somewhat uncomfortable, and I was, but no one got anywhere without a challenge to their own personal worldview.

Maybe I should be happy with how I did in my school, managing to work as hard as I did with so many credits. But even if so, I still made substantial sacrifices. Case in point: the audit class. The three-credit class was an introduction to Abstract Algebra, specifically category theory and group theory. And I'll be honest, I stayed with it for the first three or four weeks, but I had to prioritize the classes I'm actually receiving credit for, so inevitably I fell behind in the material. I... know what a normal group is... but I see a question asking to apply normal groups, and I'm lost. Commutative diagrams? Same story, and the basic concepts of injectivity and surjectivity I still need to think about before I know which one is which. This course has a second quarter in spring, which I would love to attend since next quarter should be a lot better... but given how this quarter went, I might not gain anything from it because I might just be confused the whole time.

Another pretty serious sacrifice I made was to my social life. In autumn quarter, one of my friends from last year's MATH 13X series hosted game nights every Friday, which I attended with some degree of regulation. But this quarter, I essentially had to sacrifice it entirely. Perpetual deadlines to meet - CS project due on Friday every week as well as a ton of reading every week for HONORS 231 meant that Friday game nights were untenable. One friend jokingly commented that if they didn't know better, they would have thought that I died.

As I think about what exactly I wanted to accomplish while at school, while academics are certanily a big part of my goal, I did set out to improve as a person, which includes being a more friendly, more social person who exists outside of their dorm room. And in that regard, this quarter was definitely my roughest quarter of them all so far. Lesson learned, don't push so many credits onto myself. Even if I can manage it, it's just that. Only managing.

This webpage was made by me, Nelson Sun! You can contact me at nelsonys@uw.edu.