2018 deserves more than a quick recap, even if books, films, and music were not the main event. At the end of 2017, I wrote that my goal for the coming year was to find an internship and then a full-time job—what I called, half-jokingly, my 'eight-year campaign.' Looking back from the end of 2018, I had hit both targets, and the path had been smoother than I expected.
Reading, Watching, Listening
I didn't spend much time on leisure reading in 2018. My reading log showed only two books: Qiu Luming's Political Power and Family Networks in the Wei-Jin Transition and a short booklet, The Three Cases. I read the Qiu book during my internship, mostly on the commute, and it went down remarkably smoothly. I noted at the time:
The Sima clan assembled a coalition of interests and founded the Jin dynasty; the Jin then fell apart amid disputes among those interests. History has its contingent elements. Sima Shi died suddenly, power passed to Sima Zhao, and that planted the succession conflict between Emperor Wu and Prince Qi You. Then Emperor Wu produced an intellectually disabled crown prince, making the succession question even messier. Without those contingencies, would the War of the Eight Princes and the Five Barbarians' uprising still have happened, even if the Sima takeover was illegitimate? On the inevitability side: was the disabled heir a result of consanguineous marriage within a huge family network? Did the Five Barbarians' uprising stem from northern policy after Jin pacified Liaodong? Qiu challenges Chen Yinke's class-based view of Wei-Jin and concludes that Cao and Sima were essentially made of the same stuff; after taking power, Sima merely continued changes Cao Wei would have made anyway. He also argues that the Book of Jin, written in the early Tang, was shaped by the politics of that time—especially by Taizong, who had not been crown prince—and that this projected onto the Western Jin's succession problems. A brilliant dissertation.
Paradoxically, I don't feel like reading when I'm free. Once I'm busy, I start carving out time in the cracks.
In the US I rarely went to cinemas, so I fell out of touch with theatrical releases. I started Friends, and the comedy landed differently—really landed—in an American context. I didn't start it to learn English, but my spoken English improved noticeably anyway, mostly in tone and facial expression. Environment shapes choices. After Japanese dramas disappeared from Bilibili, I basically stopped following them. I got used to Netflix, often watching food shows with my roommate at meals. The rest of my viewing happened on YouTube; the supply of resources and vlogs is endless.
I listened to new songs when they appeared but rarely went looking. Most of my ears were given to podcasts, increasingly English-language ones. I'm not sure why, but English podcasts feel more information-dense—maybe because language itself is part of the information load. For casual music, Douban FM remained the most comfortable.
Travel and Vlogs
After graduating in the first half of the year, I took a road trip with classmates to Toronto, passing Niagara Falls. I spent three memorable months in Boston that summer. Before the new term started, I went to California with classmates. Most of it is in my vlogs. I think I made a decent start with vlogging, but I had no overall structure and the storylines were scattered. When time got tight I stopped updating. I should pick it up again in 2019 and practice more.
The Job Hunt
Finding work was the center of 2018, split into internship and full-time. Spring break fell in March. Before that, I had not received a single interview. The main reason was that most of my experience was in China, and US companies couldn't extract much information about me from it. So I overhauled my resume and wrote it in an American style. I added my teaching assistantship from that semester, and by spring break one company finally gave me an interview. First came a coding assignment. After I submitted it, the interview focused on my code, design thinking, and implementation. Later I asked my mentor why they chose me. He said my code was industrial-grade, which impressed him, and that's how I was picked from several hundred applicants. So I got the internship—late. In the US, people usually lock in the following summer's internship during the fall. I got mine in March, started in May, and the turnaround was tight.
I spent three months in Boston. I got a real look at the company's internal workflow. My team was fairly core and genuinely diverse—Americans, Russians, Indians, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, and ABCs. I got to talk with all kinds of people. I also met interns from other teams, and we often ate and hung out together; many became good friends.
The internship's most important role was as a stepping stone to full-time work. With that experience on my resume, I wouldn't be screened out at the resume stage. That proved true: most companies I applied to gave me interviews.
In the end, I reached final rounds at Google and Facebook and accepted Google's offer. Once I had it, I declined final-round invitations from Microsoft, Bloomberg, Cadence, Indeed, and MathWorks.
Trying to Keep Everything Cross-Platform
Continuing last year's lifestyle experiments: I had completed the Apple ecosystem in 2017 and it worked smoothly. But because of my major I depend heavily on Visual Studio, and I also needed to prepare for the next semester's courses, so I bought a Surface Pro on Black Friday. That pushed me to pay more attention to cross-platform tools and use web tools where I could. I dropped Word and Pages for Google Docs (assuming I'm outside the firewall). If something can live in the cloud, I put it there. iCloud is good but too Apple-bound, so Dropbox plus Google Drive became my main setup. Then I started using Google Fi, a virtual carrier—I wanted the convenience of global roaming and automatic access back home—and bought a Pixel 3 on a promotion; with the plan, the phone was essentially thrown in. On mobile I also avoided platform-exclusive apps and tried to make sure my work wasn't tied to any one device.
2019
I'll graduate in May and move to California to join Google. I expect it to be both challenging and interesting. But my focus in 2019 will be health. When I went back to China this time, I had a severe intestinal inflammation, ended up in the emergency room and then the hospital, and it made me feel that the body matters most. In 2018 I was wound up all year, with no time to exercise or rest. Once I slowed down, my body couldn't handle it. In 2019 I want a regular schedule, proper exercise, and sensible meals. Since I've started cooking, I should work out a menu and get my diet onto a stable track.
Next semester two courses involve web programming, so I can strengthen that side. At work I'll still be using C++, so I need to consolidate it systematically.
I'm still recovering, so this recap is rougher than I'd like. I'll leave it here.