Keep Moving Forward: Part 2

Back in march I decided to rant because I was having a rough today. Today is the opposite of that day. I'm relaxing at the end of a long semester filled with the good, bad, and ugly. I'm enjoying the fruits of my labor and the various results that I've gotten over the last few weeks. Today will be a positive life update of sorts, with a little ranting here and there. Seven months later, I'll reflect on some of the things I wrote, and give some wise words moving forward.

The Next Decade

I have been accepted and will be attending Dartmouth College, class of 2030. This was my number one school, and I'm very proud to be going there. It took quite a bit of work (including retaking my ACT), and I'm very satisfied with the effort I put in. I try to focus on the effort in case I didn't get in (fortunately, that didn't happen) just for my emotionality's sake. The primary reason why I chose it is because I really enjoyed everything it had to offer. I toured it twice, the first time with my family, and the second time as apart of the 2025 Dartmouth Bound program (advice to potential applications: it will help you quite a bit!).

It took me a lot of different coding projects to figure out what I wanted to study. Based on my own lived experiences, the lived experience I take note of in the surrounding Chicagoan area, and the lived experiences of the hundreds of people I have talked to, I want to study both Computer Science and Psychology.

But wait, the CS market sucks right now?

No duh. Finding a generic computer science job will absolutely be hard. That's where the psychology part comes in. I plan on studying the mental health and loneliness epidemic facing a significant majority of our society. I think this has especially been enshrined into modern developer culture, since the typical stereotype is an introvert that has little to no social life. My march post noted that I take a lot of things personally; this definitely extends into the issues I see in the modern world. This mostly transforms into both sensitive and empathy, depending on the surrounding moods.

I've written about this at least a dozen times, and will only continue to write about it during the coming years. Research will likely be my next big venture alongside my existing computer science projects, both in The Earth App and Calculus Games. Speaking of both, where are they going?

Why The Earth App

The Earth App is a prototype experiment to this problem. It was submitted for the 2025 Congressional App Challenge under Illinois' 2nd Congressional District. As of writing, Rep. Robin Kelly has yet to judge the submissions. What's funny to me is that she wasn't originally signed up to participate in this year's contest, so I had to do some behind-the-scenes stuff in order to get it up and running.

I may producize it? I have to see where it goes. Mostly my friends at school are signed up. Gotten mostly positive feedback, it just kind of feels disconnected at times. Activities, Articles, Prompts, and Events all seem like four different features that belong in different app categories. As I develop what is technically my first full-stack, hybrid backend application, I'll be learning a lot more to focus on this problem that is very important to me.

Why Calculus Games

Calculus Games has gone up and down ever since I was pressed for time in submitting The Earth App. The primary struggle was that my first game, Combinatory, never saw production because the game engine I used never fixed a critical issue and didn't have the sufficient features I wanted (along with the fact that each build took half an hour). It wasn't really anyone's fault; it only had one maintainer.

As a result, I went back and forth on where to start; I eventually decided to stick on Desktop and build up to mobile later. I went between allegro5 and SDL3 before eventually deciding to stick with raylib to make Kray, which are Kotlin bindings for the library. I wanted to make a game in Kotlin to 1) prove that it could be done and 2) have the potential to talk about its potential for game development in the future. I've written about why I value Kotlin so much in a post a few days ago, and this is one of the reasons why. Hoping to see it flourish as restrictions ease up when I move up to Hanover.

I Hate Being on This Team

Now for the rant.

There is a very specific team that I absolutely despise being on which will likely be revealed years after I stop being on it. It is a combination of sub-par teachers, absolutely horrendous teammates, and inconsistent results. I'll try to break it down without showing too many details.

My performances on the team have been very inconsistent. There are times when I will never win any of my competitions, but will get high points. The reverse is true. This has led to me getting my first trophy on the last tournament of the season. It was pretty cool. Unfortunately, my teammates mostly ignored me.

The activity in particular's main weakness is that it attracts a very specific personality. A personality that does not mix with others with the same personality. It often leads to a significant amount of jealousy, combined with the trials and tribulations of being an insecure high school student: unnecessary drama. It's mentally draining. And my teachers mostly delegate all of that stuff to social workers, who do not have the context to solve this problem.

Speaking of them, it's like one of those things where you enjoy being around them but they are never really helpful. Asking for help usually involves a lot of "I'm not sures" and "ask this teacher instead" that goes on for 15 minutes and leaves you being like "so i need to figure this out myself, got it." That's kind of how I got my first trophy to, I had to ask for a **significant amount of help** outside school. And because of that, they often take credit for the work that they never really did, which is extremely irritating.

However, I can't say that I hate the activity. It's the only reason I didn't quit halfway. I got to travel as a result of it, and despite the poor team bonding and social experience, I like doing it. I know that there is quite literally nothing that could possibly change as it ends in three months, so I'm going to just toughen it out until the middle of march. You can probably infer now that the first part is a result of this activity. But, like I said over there: we just have to keep moving forward. It clearly worked out for me in the end, and it will for you too. Just keep going, keep pushing; nothing behind you matters.