I joined two labs in the CS part of our department, including 2 years in Hung-Yu Wei’s Wireless Mobile Network Lab and 1 year in Polly Huang’s Network and Systems Lab. I published one IEEE conference paper and one IEEE transactions paper related to game theory and resource allocation in wireless communication as the first author in Hung-Yu Wei’s lab. This kind of output is pretty impressive for an undergrad, but unfortunately, all the work is extremely worthless. I learned almost nothing apart from how to publish an academic paper and the academic gained nothing from my “contribution” either.

I got into the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Taiwan University in Sep 2019 and graduated in Jun 2023. There were a lot of ups and downs, but in the end, everything turned out to be okay.

The Start

In my sophomore year, I took the Judo course because the names of the waza (techniques) sounded really badass, like 大外割 (Osoto Gari), 小內割 (Kouchi Gari) etc.

As a Wuxia novel fan and someone who is generally good at sports, I’ve always wanted to try out Taekwondo. However, due to the myth (or fact? idk) that stretching your legs too much as a kid will damage the growth in terms of height, my mom never let me learn it.

When I first got to college, since my body growth had already become stagnant, I went to a training of the Taekwondo club in my school to get a taste of it, and boy was I impressed. The staggering physique of the black belters hitting a pad at high speed with their foot and the loud and crisp sound accompanying it is just so damn shocking, and I immediately fell in love with it.

Machine Learning

Learned next to nothing in this course. It had 15 assignments, and 10 of the highest graded assignments would be your final grade. No exams.

Due to the grading policy, I only watched the course videos for the 1st half of the semester. In the 2nd half, I was just too lazy to watch them. Instead, I just looked for the github repos from the students taking this course in the previous years, copy their solutions, integrated into my code, and submit my assignment. Still have to adjust the parameters and maybe try other methods when the performance was bad, but still, I got an A+ while learning minimal new skills and knowledges.

I hate machine learning btw. Hate to say this as it sounds retarded but I much prefer being a web dev, building things myself and knowing wtf I’m doing. Just wish MLEs don’t get paid that much.

Normally, the sophomore year is the busiest year of NTUEE, but I’m actually busier this semester.

Last semester is the hardest semester of the first 4 semesters of mine, but I still managed to go to both Taekwondo club and Judo club (and the football team of our department of course). However, in the bottom half of this semester, I only managed to go to a total of 1 time to Taekwondo club and Judo club (still played football week-in-week-out tho).

Before, I could spent all my time not doing coursework related things on extracurricular activities, but this semester, I also had to do what my boss from my internship wanted me to do and some internship preparations, like writing resume, cover letters and leetcoding, and these things took a lot of my time. Actually, during final exam weeks, the subject I’d spent most time on, is leetcode.

About the courses I took, they’re generally much easier and funner than the mandatory courses in the first two years. Therefore, even though I wan’t less busy than before, I’m definitely much happier.

Below I’ll write some thoughts about the courses I took. Note that they are not in any way intended to be helpful. I just write what I want.

EE is not useless, I am.

good things in NTU :

• 新體
• 社科圖
• 社科院

disgusting things in NTU :

• 電磁學