Forenote

This blog will be part of a series of perhaps a semester to year review of some acheivements I have done in that timeframe.

Semester One : Year One

I did not know what to expect coming to UGA. In fact, I was so unexpecting that I didn't know about the football culture and even the fact that we won the year prior in 2021. As a follow up, we are still undefeated in the season. I came to UGA with one expectation though, Cybersecurity is non-existant here. And how right I was. There is a new degree for Cybersecurity in the masters program that just opened this year. However, the rest of the school has yet to catch up.

UGA Society for Cybersecurity has been a disappoionting experience. It is something I would like to work on and be a part of, however, the more I attended the club's meetings, I realized that this club was more business oriented rather than Cybersecurity, CTFs, and ethical hacking. There was little to no major focus towards what I wanted to pursue. UGA Hack Hours, which are supposedly every week, were replaced by guest speakers. Don't get me wrong, they were inspiring and fun to listen to, however, it comes back to the business standpoint rather than a focus on the competitive nature I would like. These hack hours were seen once a month to 2 times at most, in contrast to "UGA Hack Hours every Wednesday" as promised. I feel like the downside of this club to further rule that "there is no cybersecurity at UGA," has focused on guest speakers too much rather than what Georgia Tech's Greyhat Club has done. The ideal would be something such as GT Greyhat, however, this is just not the case.

To counteract this, I will hopefully be accepted to create a new club for the next year, name still pending, but with sooo many ideas. With this club, I am hoping I will be able to ignite Cybersecurity at UGA.

Now past me trashing on UGASCS, I wanted to talk about a new discovery in career options. There was a blog post I did sometime this year about Georgia Tech's Applied Combinatorics project, when i was looking at that project, the amount of research I have done has ignited a flame for Mathematics in me. Mixed with my focus on Cybersecurity found a mix in both of these fields, Cryptology. That is my current stance right now, but in order to build towards that topic, I believe the first step would be a focus on Number Theory.

In my next blog post, I will be addressing the first step to my research. Though it may seem unrelated, this will be clearly explained in my reasoning.

Academics

This semester I have taken CSCI 1302 (Software Development), MATH 2250 (Calculus I for Scientists and Engineers), FYOS 1001 (Freshman Required Class), KREN 1001 (Korean I), ENGL 1102 (AP Literature equivalent). I have done well, however, next semester will be a bit more difficult. I will be taking CSCI 2610 (Discrete Mathematics), MATH 2260 (Calculus II for Scientists and Engineers), MATH 3200 (Introduction to Higher Mathematics), and KREN 1002 (Korean II).

My CSCI 1302 class was mainly Java and a few dips into other places such as Git, Big-O algorithms, and Java FX (though it is dead). This course had hard tests and projects, the projects carried my grade because I am a pro at coding :p. I never studied for the tests yet was able to pass, but to be frank, if I studied I could have gotten an higher grade in that class. One of the tests, I completely guessed what a concept was and somehow passed, it was the Big-O unit. I soemhow incorporated integration into passing that concept when I know for a fact that it is not involved, or so I think after I looked into afterwards. I know it is a vital concept to learn as it lays fundamental for CS Loops, but I will relearn it better the next time it comes around. This concept was also taught a day before the test, yet was the majority, which startled me. That's enough on CS.

My MATH 2250 class was really good. It was better than my highschool AP Calculus BC course which really surprised me. I had Professor Hee Jung Kim, who compared to around 10 people who I have asked, friends and associates, they all had comparably worse professors teaching the class. Professor Kim, was not only better, but was incredible and further fueled the flame for my love for math. She went into proofs and explanations as to why everything is the way it is in Calculus I. I have really enjoyed this class. I am proceeding to take her Calculus II class next semester as well.

My ENGL 1102 class was decent. I had Professor Sarah Turula. It opened my eyes up to a lot of problems I made when writing essays, but it also amazed me with the restrictions we had on our writing. Our first essay, the entire class decided that the essay we had to write just had to appease the professor but it may as well be our worst essay to personal standards. Though it was my worst essay in all my years of academics, upon reflection I realized that the professor meant to teach us to interpret the text in a poem without insight. This is a skill that is difficult to do as all my years prior in school has told us to interpret poems on a personal level. This new skill has opened my eyes to look at poems in a different light. If needed to rewrite the essay again, with the knowledge I have gained from the course, I will do it sooo much better. Each essay after the first was more so my preferred type of writing and prompts, but each one surprised me on how I approached everything. Overall Dr. Turula has integrated such vital writing concepts into easily looked over discussions. If I were to continue English, I would be pleased by taking her class again with anew perspective. 4/5 class rating, 4/5 difficulty though in comparison to friends classes.

Conclusions

Overall this is my first semester at UGA, and it has gone decently well. Once again I will link my blog post. Have fun reading!