If you had asked me five years ago what I would be doing, the last thing I’d say is be a Computer Science major.

I never thought I’d go into STEM. After all, I consider myself a language person: what with elementary spelling bee contests, helping friends grammar check, and choosing the Arts-Japanese track in high school. I’ve been told I was gifted in languages, and I thought that was what I want to do in life — work with languages. I guess in a way I still am — just with computers.

How it started

At the beginning of college, I was planning to be a Linguistics major, but I came to realize a Linguistics degree can only take you so far. Luckily, being in a liberal arts school taught me that I can learn whatever I want whenever I want — it’s never too late.

My journey with CS started one fateful day in my sophomore year of college. I was elated to see my request to enroll in Intro to CS accepted. The notoriously competitive CS department decided to grace its permission and let me into the mysterious world of CS.

After a semester of Python assignments and countless late night coding sessions, my Intro class came to an end. To be completely honest, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to major in CS. The only thing I knew was that it was fun and challenging, and I wouldn’t mind more of it. I decided to continue and see where this road would take me.

How it’s going — the Launch program

Enter third year of college, the year of Getting Serious about Jobs and Internships. At this point, I decided to major in both CS and Linguistics. I knew I wanted to try my hand at Software Engineering as a career, but I came to a grave realization that I started very late. Nonetheless, I kept applying to different internships and opportunities.

As luck would have it, I was accepted into the Launch program by Forge. The program will provide training in Software Engineering skills and match me with an internship. I thought it was perfect, because this program will complement my skills and give me a head start into the tech industry.

We began our summer training at the end of May, from 8:30–5:30 every day, working on weekly projects with a team of 5–6 people. This is my first time giving myself so completely to coding. Despite the long hours, I find myself losing track of time. In a span of two weeks, I’ve learned how to work with a team to deliver websites under considerable time constraints. Thus far, we’ve created an elementary school dashboard and a Spotify social media platform. It was fun, taxing, and very rewarding.

As our training is coming to an end, here are 10 lessons I’ve learned from doing this program.

10 Lessons I learned through Launch

1. You will never know everything, but you can always figure it out.
2. Learning by doing is the best way to understand.
3. A communicative team is 90% of successful projects. Frequent check-ins and prioritizing tasks together can make individual coding much more manageable.
4. Ask for help. If you’re stuck for more than 30 minutes, it’s time to let down your pride and think about the greater good of moving on with the team’s project.
5. Push often. Git can be unforgiving.
6. CSS styling is hard. Don’t take it for granted.
7. Even if a website specification seems daunting, you can do it in a week.
8. It is possible to make friends through Zoom, despite all the awkwardness.
9. Turning on your camera on Zoom can make a world’s difference.
10. There is no such thing as perfect. — Come time to deliver the website, the show must go on.

Reflecting on my journey, it’s astonishing to see how far I’ve come from the days of spelling bees and grammar checks. The transition from a language-focused path to a dual major in Computer Science and Linguistics has been both challenging and rewarding. The Launch program has solidified my passion for software engineering and equipped me with invaluable skills and experiences.

To anyone considering a similar leap, remember: it’s okay to start late, ask for help, and embrace the learning process. The journey may be unpredictable, but it can lead to incredibly fulfilling destinations.

Sometimes we just can’t believe about certain things, despite having all the evidence laid out in front of our eyes. We have this tendency to hold on dearly to a concept we have subscribed, and not easily be convinced to change our minds. This book has its main theme on how people interpret scientific evidence based on their hypothesis, and not letting evidence lead us to the correct result. On Good Calories, Bad Calories, the author tries to gather evidence about the science of nutrition and disease, and let it speak for itself without any bias or misconception beforehand.

Conventional wisdom has it that we should avoid cholesterol/fat at all cost, and eat a healthy, balanced diet high in carbs, fiber and protein, along with do exercises. This book illustrates that these conventional wisdom come from the authorities leading the health industry, and the authorities may not always be correct. The findings that support all the dietary guidelines might be another biased interpretation based on a presumption. From the available research, this cholesterol hypothesis is vague — we can’t attribute cholesterol to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, or cancer (aka disease of the civilization). The benefits of those eating high-carbs, low-fat diets have little significance compared with the normal American diet.

Then what’s next? The author goes on to the carbohydrates hypothesis. As we get more civilized, we tend to get fatter and fatter. It’s not a coincidence that the amount of refined carbohydrates and sugar we consume is far greater than what our ancestors eat. The cause of obesity these days, as we come to see in the book, is these types of carbohydrates. This is not just because carbohydrates is purely evil, but it’s because of our body’s reaction to the carbs we consume. Insulin, the hormone that regulates carbohydrate in our body, is the culprit. When people consume excess amounts of refined carbohydrates, insulin secretion proportionately increases to compensate for the amount of carbohydrates in our system. If this happens regularly, the cells in our body grow more resistant to the insulin, inducing yet even more insulin secretion from the pancreas. Obese people normally have high levels of insulin in their bloodstream. Because insulin also prompts the liver to synthesize triglyceride for storage in the fat tissue, high insulin level translates to higher amount of fat tissues, which is why excess consumption of carbohydrates leads to fat accumulation.

Another cause is sugar — sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup. These are other forms of carbohydrates that are especially harmful to our body, compared to pure glucose or fructose. Sucrose, table sugar, and high-fructose corn syrup is a mixture of glucose and fructose. These two, bound together, will have greater consequence than either of glucose and fructose alone. In short, glucose will increase insulin levels, while fructose will stimulate triglyceride production — double trouble.

Apart from that, eating highly-refined carbohydrate is found to be a cause of cancer and dementia. Insulin can stimulate the cells responsible to causing these diseases, so again, another reason to avoid refined carbohydrates and sugar.

On to obesity. the sole reason is because of a metabolic defect that stores more fat than mobilize them. It’s not because of excess calorie consumption and a decrease in physical activity. According to the author, some obese people eat as much as lean people, yet they are still fat. Also, it appears that most obese people has the lowest-income. These people would work physically hard, but they still are obese, so the cause can’t be over-consumption and lethargy. In contrast, the author argues that we tend to eat more and exercise less because we are getting fat — our bodies will accumulate what we consume to the fat tissue cells first, and if we have more fat cells, we eat more. Additionally, if we deprive ourselves by restricting calories, we get lethargic because we have less energy conserves to be expended. It is simple to see how we react to having less input: we reduce our output, or our energy expenditure, in proportion.

From the book, we see that carbohydrate-restricted diets works to reduce fat. These diets would allow unlimited amount of proteins and fat, but restrictive in carbohydrates — starchy vegetable, grains, legumes, and sugar. It might be controversial to a lot of people, but from the results, it appears to help obese people lose fat easily without feeling hunger, despite the unlimited calories of proteins and fats they consume. This is because our body rely on a system called, ketosis, where we function on fat instead of carbs. It increases the mobilization of body fat; therefore, we rely less on external sources such as carbohydrates. People would feel less hunger if they are able to tap on their energy conserves available in their body.

The take away might be simple: avoid carbohydrate. There. I said it.

This, to me, might come across as too extreme. For one, I want a simple diet — one that I can prepare easily at a low cost, and one that doesn’t require extra time on my behalf to prepare, also allowing me to eat out with my friends and family. A keto diet, while it sounds appealing, I find to be complicated. To eat 5% carbs to function on fat is on the far side, in my opinion. You would basically have to prepare everything and avoid sugar and food you didn’t prepare. It’s a bit too restrictive for me. Plus, it’s hard to combine with a plant-based diet, which I try to follow. I’d have to subsist on seitan, tofu, and tempeh, no beans or grains. Seitan and tempeh is either expensive or time-consuming, regarding you make them yourself. I’d rather stay on my typical plant-based diet with grains and beans, which is cheaper and easier, than a keto vegan diet.

Although I’m not the biggest fan of a low-carb diet, I still admire this book. It is very well-structured, starting from our misconceptions to the solution to obesity and the disease of civilization. I can see that the author has done a lot of research on his behalf to avoid having presumptions that lead to misconceptions. He tries to let evidence reveal results on its own; this reminds us of the practices of doing research, that we should do our best to avoid bias and constantly question our own hypotheses. Interpretation is everything in the scientific world.

Another thing that I like about this book is the lesson about oversimplification can lead to misinterpretations. Taubes explains the complicated issues to us lay people, because he believes that the truth should be understood. He would give the explanation that the issue deserves, unlike past researches which tend to oversimplify matters and cause misunderstandings that still exists to these days. Some of these oversimplified matter may cause more harm than good, so it’s best to try understand the complicated truth, rather than the easy fallacy.

Throughout this book, I feel 2% more clever from learning all about our body’s function in such a fine level. It’s something that you won’t learn from the internet (of course). Very insightful indeed.

One fact that you should know is it took me four months to finish this book. Compared to the other genre I usually read, this one is a heavy-content book. For me, I’m not used to the science-nature of the book itself, so it felt like a drag at times. It was hard to read for me, because of the scientific terms that are sprinkled throughout the whole book. Not only that, but from the nature of this book, the author tends to use long sentences to explain matters, which can sometime confuse me. It’s so much information to keep track of — to understand B, you need to first understand A, and it takes a LOT of brain energy and storage to do that. Not counting the name-drops of several hundred researchers, associating who for what hypotheses they stand for, is perplexing. Maybe it’s my brain, or my not being used to science-heavy books, but be warned, this book is not an easy read.

Overall, this book is perfect for those who are curious about diet, nutrition, and health. You will gain a lot about those matters, and feel very thankful that you have picked this book up. Be prepared, though, that the book will be challenging for those non-science-minded people, but if you’re interested, you should try reading for the sake of understanding health better.

4 stars.

The first time I picked this book up, it was because I’ve always been in love with my mother’s perfume. Since I was young, her perfume would just be the perfect smell, reminding me of my elementary school mornings where she would have her fresh morning perfume on, ready for the day’s work. Despite my love of fragrance, I’m not a perfume person, so I figured that this book might help me understand more about scent. Besides, it’s a new topic. Knowing about new things wouldn’t hurt, after all.

I’ve always wondered what a smell I’ve scented on the sky train was, whether it was the perfume of a person sitting next to me, or even the smell of food that makes me drool, especially on those evenings when I’m particularly starving. For perfumes, specifically, you’d never know what the mixtures are. It’s such a mystery that you couldn’t know what comprises your favorite perfume, in what proportion, and why a smell can attract some but repel others. You can’t touch or see smell, and people usually take it for granted, but you can’t avoid it either, which adds up to its elusiveness.

In this book, although you won’t know what makes your favorite perfume, you would definitely gain more insight to the mysterious world of scent. Aftel, our author, is a artisan-perfumer living in Berkeley, California. This, itself, adds to the appeal of Fragrant. (Who can say they’ve heard of such a job?) She introduces you to the mechanisms of smell, along with some basic knowledge of perfume-making. A perfume typically consists of a top-note, the scent that has the shortest span and is most apparent to us, followed by the mid-note and the base note. She then gives some recipes for making your own perfume, along with some advice and resources for those interested in homemade perfumes.

Moreover, this book gives a glimpse of her own perfumer life, how she became one and her experience of making perfumes. You can just feel her passion by reading about fragrance from her perspective, convincing me that I should really care more about scents. She tells stories about people coming to her shop, leaving with a love for perfumes because they have just found the perfect scent for them for the first time in their lives. This is all interesting to me, and actually makes me want to visit her shop to smell her special perfumes in person.

Into the chapters of the books. It is divided into 6 chapters: one introduction chapter about scent in general, and the following 5 chapters about a specific smell with its own theme. This includes:

• Cinnamon — adventure
• Mint — home
• Frankincense — transcendence
• Ambergris — curiosity
• Jasmine — beauty

Each chapter has its own story according to its theme, such as the history of frankincense or ambergris, and sometimes the philosophy related to a smell. I find it dry and inharmonious, because one chapter talks about various topics at the same time. When combined together, it makes a rather confusing book. I took several breaks in between, but when it comes to the part of her own stories, I find it more interesting and more relatable to read, as she addresses specifically those who are not so eager with smells like me.

Overall, I think this book’s theme is compelling, but some parts may be improved. Still, I find the stories of perfumery eye-opening, illuminating how perfumes are made, and how it is both artistry and science to create one perfect scent that appeals to you. The deep insights that Aftel provides is authentic and passionate, as you can sense from her writing and her experience as an artisan-perfumer. It is a relatively short read, so it can be read in a week or so. Lastly, I’d recommend this book to people who like good perfumes, and people who like to read about tidbits of history.

Most of us, especially women, would have seen pictures of tall, thin models on Victoria Secret Fashion Show runways, daydreaming to someday become one of them. Their physique is just perfect — their height, their abs, and not even including their charming smile and facial features. The society seems to tell us women to trace their footsteps, praising those who are thinner to be prettier, and looking at those who are ‘fatter’ as uglier. Although this book is about the fashion industry, it tells much about our distorted body-image culture that is all pervasive in today’s society, especially in teenage girls.

Victoire’s story started when she was 17 years old. Scouted on the streets of Paris, she was promised that she would become the next Claudia Schiffer, the famous German model. Tall, beautiful and, of course, thin, she was said to be perfect. With all the sweet-talking and promises, she accepted the offer. She was then catapulted into the world of the fashion industry, touring the streets, purchasing expensive outfits for the fitting audition. Not surprisingly, she was accepted into the modelling company, Elite, one of the most prestigious modelling companies in the world.

As her life as a model goes on, she started dieting — three apples a day, one for each meal. She was told to ‘lose more weight’, so she could able to ‘get into’ her size 4 clothes. At the beginning, it wasn’t a problem for her. Rather, she felt “lighter and lighter and stronger and stronger” each day on her diet. From then, she constantly weighed herself everyday, fixating on getting her weight down to 50, with the height of 5'10". It gradually became an obsession. Further into the book, she began facing health issues — fatigue, lightheadedness, and lethargy. The model industry has repeatedly brainwashed them that, the skinnier, the better. It proved to be wrong, as her situation gets worse each day, contrary to her promising success as a model. Eventually, she developed an eating disorder, leading to the hard decision to quit her career.

This book hits home for many of the women who doesn’t believe themselves to reach the ‘beauty standards’. It presents how rotten the model industry can be to value women by their figures, and that mentality can influence a woman’s life. I personally think that body-image value has worsen since the fashion became broadcasted through media, from magazines to social media. A depiction of a woman trying to diet, taking it too far, and spiraling down an eating disorder path isn’t an uncommon notion. Nowadays, especially with Instagram, it’s hard not to see people in their perfect shapes and compare yourself with them.

An honest book about the model industry, fashion, and dieting. Recommended for anyone interested in these topics, and to teenage girls who are insecure about how they look.

Have you ever wondered why some people succeed in life, and why others don’t? Is it true that the richer the more success people can achieve? Or are geniuses born with some innate talent?

In Outliers, Malcom Gladwell takes us to explore what exactly contributes success in people, and it’s not some innate superpower (obviously). It may go against some people’s belief, like “I succeeded entirely on my own”, because according to the author, geniuses are made not born. Through the process, you’re getting help along the way, no matter if you’re aware of it or not.

One factor that matters, according to the author, is when you are born. To be successful, the timing has to be right. For example, baseball junior leagues’ cutoff date is on the 1st of January, which means that children who are born in the beginning of the year are more grown physically, thus likelier to be more adept at baseball because of the physical advantage over those born in the end of the year. Factually speaking, younger children’s growth disparity between those born in the beginning and end of the year tend to be larger than that of adults. This advantage, though slim at first, can be determinant of whether you get more practice, more coaching, and more successful, or not. The importance of birth date in national league baseball can be seen in the list of team players, whose birthdays are heavily inclined towards the beginning of the year.

Although successful people are supported by their culture and environment, true stars nonetheless has a sign of talent. In other words, it’s up to you to be successful, not up to your race or gender.

One thing that is apparent in the book is also the notion of practice makes perfect. All the professionals in any field has one thing in common: practice. Talent is not inherited, nor is it born with: it is made. According to the surveys cited in the book, you need 10,000 hours to be an expert in something. This thought is reassuring, in that you can be anything you want if you are willing to invest your time and dedicate your life to it. No one is luckier than another; there are only dedicated, well-practiced people, and people who don’t have the opportunity or the grit to be one.

Throughout the book, my thoughts were alive like whenever I encounter something eye-opening. This book is analytic, yet, an fascinating read. The speculations that the author made will forever change my perspective in how I judge people and the society, and give me ideas of how I can improve to be a better version of myself. It’s refreshing for me read about ideas in non-fiction while still finding myself captivated and entertained. Recommended for people who wants to better understand success and develop themselves, or anyone wishing to seek some new perspective and have fun in the process.