3.14

describing depression: nothing matters. 

college decisions aren't tied to your worth. it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

but it feels like the biggest deal right now. this is me (rejected and unloved by MIT & Caltech):

Please tell us more about your cultural background and identity in the space below. (150/150)

In my years of living in China with my grandparents, my grandmother always made Jiuniang before my immunization shot appointments, saying it'll make me fearless because of the slight alcohol. When I moved to the US, Jiuniang's gift followed.

In Computing Olympiad training programs, I nervously entered rooms dominated by boys; in orchestra auditions, I felt like an imposter among competitors because of my late start—but each time my confidence wavered, my mental fortitude strengthened. Being the worst didn't bother me; I knew I had yet to exceed others' expectations.

With my grandparents away, I made my own Jiuniang. Although the taste is different, my lionhearted spirit continues to embrace the situations where I am out of my element—to me, growth is worth all the embarrassment it may entail.

Tell us more about why this field of study at MIT appeals to you. (100 words or fewer)

Microsoft's "PeopleLens" restores vision? When my grandmother was diagnosed with vision loss three years ago, the thought of her permanent blindness haunted me. Now, as I browse the latest AI research articles, inspiration replaces fear.

Studying deep learning opened my eyes to the world of machine intelligence. It fascinated me how neural network algorithms can reconstruct our complex neural system, emulating how we see, think, and even learn. Eventually, ML and AI's applications in healthcare motivated my research pursuit. From combating vision loss to aiding cancer treatment, the intersection of CS and cognitive science gives us hope for a new future.

If you think that additional information about your family will give us a more thorough impression of your background, please include it here. (150 words or fewer)

During the summer before high school, my family was thrown in disarray. As my father found a new family, picture frames left walls and the bonds that held our family together broke.

Over the next year, I alternated laundry and dishes with my brother and prepared our dinners. From making tomato-egg stir fry, the first dish my mother taught me, to learning my mother's specialty, SanXian GuoBa, I found ways to bring back my mother's smile.

In adapting to our new family structure, my parents didn't have the energy to support and encourage my activities, but I realized my passions and pursued the things I love. I searched for courses and books that served my math and programming interests, and communicated with orchestras for auditions.

Although my parent's separation was never ideal, it shaped my identity: I became someone who takes care of others and dares to take initiative.

We know you lead a busy life, full of activities, many of which are required of you. Tell us about something you do simply for the pleasure of it. (225 words or fewer)

When fractures of my world turned into faultlines, I found peace amidst the chaos through blogging. As I reflected upon my thoughts, trying to make sense of my emotions, what started out as a coping mechanism shed light to creative pondering of the world in which I see it.

After reading books, plays, or even watching Netflix shows, scattered thoughts spiral into order on my blog. Nostalgic 20th century films link to my perspective of the modern fast-paced society—the rapid pace of technology pushes us closer to ambitious futuristic goals, but simultaneously sacrifices the deeper interpersonal connections and genuine simplicity of the past. A reflection on how things nowadays come and go too quickly leads into Myer's American Paradox, "Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty", where the surge in material affluence and human rights leaves us unsatisfied because of spiritual poverty. After phone calls with my relatives who are oblivious of the Tiananmen Massacre, I draw parallels with articles from The Economist and express my fear of losing individualism upon witnessing tyrannical ruling inhibiting freedom of the press. The topic of freedom from mainstream order provokes more questions—why was Alan Turing, the epitome of brilliance and eccentricity, penanced for his diverge among the ordinary?

As I jot down my thoughts, learning my values and beliefs, I find my identity and place in the world.

Describe the world you come from (for example, your family, school, community, city, or town). How has that world shaped your dreams and aspirations? (225 words or fewer)

Living with a family of computers, my world was filled with machines—literally. Storage boxes and drawers held PC RAMs, CPUs, and spare graphics cards, and at an early age my father introduced me to the Association for Computing Machinery. "Flawed AI Makes Robot Racist, Sexist"—the tri-weekly updates from ACM TechNews piqued my curiosity in artificial intelligence, and my fascination with deep learning technology ensued.

I enrolled in Professor Andrew Ng's courses, learning the fundamentals of machine learning and artificial neural networks before exploring deep learning. At the time, I did not know linear algebra, but manipulating matrices of data came quite intuitively. Before I knew it, those matrices turned into artificial neural networks, and I was training machines for music generation with recurrent neural networks and facial recognition in computer vision project labs. Through auditing MIT's 6.S191 Introduction to Deep Learning course and working through the open source book Dive into Deep Learning, I gauged the underlying computation of neural networks and continued to investigate its boundless possibilities.

As I familiarized myself with ML frameworks, I applied my learnings on Kaggle datasets and research projects. Through studying biomedical analysis on COVID-19, my purpose and identity intertwined with my experience with machines—because not only am I part of the tech community, I am also part of the global community: one that chases for a better tomorrow.

MIT brings people with diverse backgrounds and experiences together to better the lives of others. Our students work to improve their communities in different ways, from tackling the world's biggest challenges to being a good friend. Describe one way you have collaborated with people who are different from you to contribute to your community. (225 words or fewer)

2020 began as a slump—summertime's warm weather came from wildfires that blackened the month of July and its long days came from the dreadful COVID quarantine that rampaged the globe.

Baking was my cathartic release. On Sundays, I turned overripe bananas into banana bread for family and friends. Seeking to help families suffering from the pandemic, I transformed my past time into a bakery, Cookies4aGoodCause, to donate proceeds to UNICEF's COVID-19 fund. From a website and online shop, I reached out to people of various backgrounds to grow our bakery. With more people came more ideas. We worked with organizations that aided the mask shortage and ones that taught online lessons to remedy the effects of distance learning. Later on, we even coordinated with others wanting to start a chapter in Boston! When wildfires burned across California, we joined together to donate to the California Wildfire Relief Fund.

The shadow cast by the pandemic began to recede. The transformation of a hobby into a service supporting people across the nation made me realize the impact we could make together. From designing infographics to creating websites to baking delightful goods, diverse talents and perspectives united to fight for a common cause. As the month of August began, the skies cleared and I saw light—not only in the blue skies, but also in my local community.

Tell us about a significant challenge you've faced (that you feel comfortable sharing) or something that didn't go according to plan. How did you manage the situation? (225 words or fewer)

Research can be rewarding, but the flip side of the process' unpredictability can be equally as distressing. In my time researching with UCSB's Vision Research Lab, I experienced both when I dedicated myself to improving automated pathology classification with AI.

Because the dataset's medical files were large and my computer's CPU couldn't handle training the ML models, I worked remotely on the lab's server to take advantage of the extra GPUs capable of running my AI tasks. After weeks of hyperparameter tuning, writing new ideas into code, and experimenting with different models, progress started to show—until it was all lost. The remote server containing my work was hacked and I lost access.

The news initially crushed my spirits, but I pieced together the work I still had and moved forward. During my research, I had backed up my files on GitHub and recorded my research in a journal, so I started from there to reproduce my work. As I flipped through messy pen writings and clicked through folders of code to copy my progress onto another server, I began using Docker containers to save all parts of my development process. Training the AI models again took weeks of running, but within a month I was back on track.

Although more challenges may arise, the unprecedented circumstance increased my caution, mentally preparing me for future mishaps.

What did you learn about the research process and your research interests? (----/1500 chars)

In music and sports, if I practiced hard enough, I would get better, but with research, efforts and results weren't always directly proportional. The first week of my project was met with low classification accuracies barely exceeding random chance, and progress didn't seem to show with seemingly improved ideas. I spent nights analyzing patterns in my misclassifications—whether they occurred in clusters, at the ends of scans, or randomly scattered—yet treating those patterns sometimes led to more misclassifications.

Through research, I experienced firsthand the common cliche "patience is a virtue", and improvement came in steps. Although there were many periods where advancement wasn't visible in results, the hard work I put in eventually prevailed when I overcame the blocks—zoomed out far enough, work and results in the process of research do show a positive association!

Research is creative, but entails more than just clever ideas: its essence lies with diverse ideas from collaboration. I attended conferences related to biotechnology, consulted other members of the Vision Research Lab, and interacted with researchers at poster presentations—the sharing of ideas and interdisciplinary perspectives fueled my intellectual development. In fact, the use of image segmentation overlays in my research was inspired by an article I came across in radiology!

I want to continue finding solutions in the intersection of computation and healthcare, because after all, health is universal.

not sharing all my essays (/ecs/stats) cuz i don't want to put more emotion into something i cannot change (and probably couldn't ever have changed). frankly idc. i'm fucking depressed (for this week). next week marks the beginning of hot girl spring.