Week 9 - LaTeX is terrible

Hey everybody! Nothing interesting this week–just more academic paper writing. 

I will say though, this week I felt much more confident writing compared to last week. Once you get started, everything else flows from there. I found myself reflecting back to the summer of my junior year, back when I was learning about sequence models and the overall field of deep learning through a course online called Deep Learning Specialization. That course was the most fascinating academic experience of my life, really igniting a strong interest in the field of AI. But it wasn’t the world-transforming implications that excited, but rather the intricate, but clever mechanisms by which AI operated upon. 

I learned, from each mathematical step, just how all of deep learning worked. The buildup of complexity from simple operations was fascinating, and I remember being particularly fascinated about the idea of assigning a vector representation to words. Learning how innovation in this field translated to mathematics and eventually implementation in coding was just the coolest thing to me, and the feeling of wonder from back then translated to me starting this project. As I write on, I find myself often pulling intuitions and concepts from my learnings back then, a reminder of why I even chose to do this project.

But not all of the week was filled with pleasant nostalgia. In fact, the majority of this week was spent dealing with my new nemesis, LaTeX. I hate it so much now, and spending all this time just figuring out why the formatting looks off has become the bane of my existence. Nevertheless, good progress was made, most of the paper has been written and put into LaTeX code,  and it’s looking good so far. Not much to say this week, but next week I’m looking to finalize everything for this paper, and complete my presentation + poster for the Senior Project Symposium!