Applying my learning outside of class has always been a passion of mine. When it comes to coding, I love to make things that are useful and practical in my life. During the summer of 2024, I've been working on a few projects that I'm excited to complete. First is my photo duplicate finder, "Mirror Image," created for my mother who wants to locate her 50,000 duplicate images. Additionally, I've been applying my newly learned ML knowledge to create a model to detect fake news, complete with a client side interface. These projects have taught me a lot about the process of completing a project and the struggles that come with it as well.

Within the last year, I've started listening to podcasts and keeping up with the tech industry as a whole. My two favorites at the moment are 1) Darknet Diaries & 2) The Changelog. I started listening to the Darknet Diary while taking my cybersecurity class during spring '23 after my professor recommended it. My favorite episode so far has been Lotería, where Jack Rhysider, the host, talks about how a drug cartel was able to steal millions of dollars from the Puerto Rican government. The changelog has also piqued my interest recently as they often discuss new and cutting edge technologies in the software development sphere.

As the world has transitioned more and more towards short-form media, I've found that reading books has really helped me to improve focus and learn about the world around me. Recently, my favorite genres have been historical fiction and biographies. While seemingly just a kid's graphic novel, When Stars Are Scattered by Omar Mohamed and Victoria Jameison has been one of my favorite reads in the past few months. My favorite line in that book goes something like this: It's not about what life hands you, but it's about what you do with what life hands you. I love this because it's something that my father preached when I was young and something that really holds true to me.

I've come to learn that teaching and learning go hand in hand. Teaching is a skill to be mastered and it truly is the best way to reinforce knowledge. However, along the way, I've learned something completely new through the interations with those I've tutored. For the past two years, I've been tutoring math at the Renton Technical College and it's been an eye opening opportunity, listening to the story of students from all walks of life including immigrants, single parents, and everything in between. I've come to realize that I can only truly understand the world and the people in it, when I step out of my comfort zone and look beyond my own perspective.