From late June to early September, my freshman-year summer vacation ended, and so did my freshman year. During this summer, aside from a five-day trip home around late June and early July, I spent all my time at school. In fact, more than 70% of that time was probably spent alone.

I had planned very early to stay on campus for the summer, because my efficiency at home was truly too low. At the time, I thought I would stay to make up the computer science knowledge I had fallen behind on. I did not expect my transfer attempt to fail, so what I ended up doing after staying was no longer my original intention.

I have to admit that failing to transfer majors was a serious setback for me. I was fairly down during these two months of summer vacation. But that is not the focus of this post. Maybe I will write about it another time.

With the new semester coming, I need not only to organize my things, but also to sort through this summer.

The good news is that I do seem to have done some things this summer.

The bad news is that there are indeed some things I failed to do.

Let me keep a running account, as a summary of the summer.

Course Learning

English Learning

  • Reading English media: I followed two Bilibili creators, 张富贵的英语世界 and 三言两语杂货社, and skimmed more than a dozen articles that interested me.
  • Vocabulary: I memorized very little, and regret that I did not keep it up later.

Math Modeling

Most of my study time in July went into this. I was not really in good shape then, and studying math modeling briefly redirected my attention and energy.

In the team, I was responsible for data crawling and analysis, a small part of the modeling (mostly basic algorithms or algorithms borrowed from papers), and most of the paper writing.

During the math modeling study process, I did learn and train many skills.

Typing

I used to feel that my typing speed was not fast enough and that I could not touch type, so I practiced typing for two weeks, perhaps longer. I mainly practiced on Kingsoft PowerWord and Typing Practice (keybr.com).

Here is my “progress curve”:

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PS: I tried again today and the result was not great. My English typing speed has almost returned to the starting point. It seems the skill was not fully formed, and of course I do not type much in English day to day. Still, the basic touch-typing skill has more or less stayed with me.

Linux

After installing a dual-boot system, I got started with some basic Linux operations.

Git

I had already skimmed Liao Xuefeng’s Git tutorial before. I went through it a second time during the summer, and with some project practice, I finally became fairly comfortable with it, though only with the basic operations.

Voluntary Work

I did not manage to complete a social-practice project. During the summer I only signed up for a “Chemistry and Biology Innovation Camp” for Nanjing University Affiliated Jiangyan High School. I served as a three-day “guide” for incoming high school students, going to places I had barely understood during my past year, such as the chemistry building and the life sciences building. To make sure I could follow the planned tour route smoothly, I probably walked around those two buildings six or seven times before finally figuring out some of the layout.

Here is the only group photo in which I appear, since most of the time I was the one taking photos for the students.

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