Challenges, Lessons, and the Road Ahead

These are my thoughts these days.

It’s August 2025, and more than half the year is gone. Since it’s my third week of Semester 2, it feels like a great time to reflect and sort out my thoughts.

The thing I’ve realised is that collaboration is so challenging. It’s fun at times, but also tough. Capstone Project 1 was more of a software construction phase, heavy on document writing, introducing Agile methodology, client meetings, and all sorts of professional practices. Seeing all of that in action was interesting, and I thought everything would go well.

Now in Capstone Project 2, we’ve actually started coding the web application. Working with six people and managing Git conflict issues has been more challenging than expected. I thought I could handle it. I tried to use Docker effectively and make good use of Git commands, but I’m not a Git expert.

Things got mixed up with frontend and backend people working here and there. I don’t want to blame others. They were actually nice and doing their job. It’s about my ability to communicate better. Being introverted, I still find it hard. It’s challenging, but I enjoy working with others and helping out. It’s fulfilling to participate in something that feels like a great achievement, and that feeling is so valuable.

Now I see why terms like communication, Jira board usage, and product management become so important in the industry.

I’m also looking for an internship or graduate role. So far, all I’ve received are “sorry” emails, but I won’t give up. I’ve had a few chances for graduate role video interviews, and some of those questions made me reflect on why I want to work in a company. This is why I am writing my diary now, to organise my thoughts.

A few years ago, during a break from my engineering degree, I lacked motivation and didn’t really know what I liked or who I was. I started to think from the end: let’s say I’m 80 or 90, just about to finish my life, what would I regret the most?

I realised it’s not about money or fame. It’s about “not reaching my full potential”, the things I could have done but didn’t, whether from laziness or any other reason.

Since then, I changed my degree to Computer Science for a few reasons: I enjoyed programming, wanted to explore more of AI, and it worked well; I still enjoy my studies. Now, in my last semester of third year, all these machine perception and computer vision topics are content-heavy but truly exciting.

Life is fun because I can’t decide anything yet. I could follow someone else’s path, but I can still carve my own. Whether I find a work opportunity to start right after graduation or not, I will never give up on what I’m doing: continuous learning and exploring opportunities.

We’re still in a very early stage. Just as the industrial revolution freed humans from physical labour, the knowledge-based society might end with AI (if they release it for free haha).

The next big investment opportunities will probably come from brain-embedded chips or wearable devices like glasses, wristbands, rings, and other things that could replace smartphones. The YouTube short-form era will give way to a new virtual reality era in the coming years. My interest in AI/ML puts me in a very advantageous position.

That’s it for today. I didn’t expect it to become this long. It’s harder than I thought to organise my thoughts concisely.