Intro
This article reflects on my life from the week of
2025-04-07to2025-04-13.
Location: Wuxi, China. Team Canada Sabre Fencer Steven Chen has just 15:0’d his opponent in the Junior World Fencing finals. I give a deep bow to the cheering audience and open my eyes… It’s 8 am, and I stared back at my dorm room ceiling.
Jokes aside, watching the 2025 Fencing World Championship this week had me reminiscing about my childhood fencing days - a bittersweet nostalgia. Starting a weekly review blog during finals week wasn’t the most strategic choice, as nothing particularly exciting happens when you’re buried in textbooks. Tuesday marked my last class of third year. Since then, most of my mental energy has been directed toward my upcoming probability final.
Three Years of Engineering: A Retrospective
Looking back at my three years in electrical engineering, I can’t say I’ve enjoyed my coursework all that much. Circuits, which dominated second and third year, just don’t spark joy for me (pun intended). All the fascinating topics that convinced me to major in EE - controls, state space analysis, deep learning - are frustratingly locked behind the fourth-year gate. It’s no surprise that most of my engineering enjoyment and actual learning has come from design teams and personal projects rather than lecture halls.
But the question remains: am I any closer to my goals? My love for robotics, which traces back to watching Gundam 00 as a kid, was the main reason I chose this path. Among the three popular roads to robotics - mechanical, electrical, and computer science - electrical engineering seemed most aligned with my interests since control theory ultimately determines how robots behave in the physical world. However, with the explosive rise of AI and ML these past two years, I sometimes wonder if computer science would have been the better choice.
The Road Map
This week I stumbled across this Zhihu article by a CMU robotics PhD grad and former Tesla/DJI Control Engineer. It outlines a comprehensive guide to navigating the world of robotics from undergrad to masters, from linear algebra to embedded systems to design teams to controls research. My journey seems to align with his vision - but only superficially. I wouldn’t say I’ve mastered linear algebra; I merely learned enough to pass my courses. Similarly, I can’t claim to have mastered embedded systems. Most of my learning has been problem-driven and lacks systematic depth. Perhaps this summer I’ll revisit fundamentals, starting from first-year concepts and rebuilding my foundation properly this time.
Album of the Week
This album has been my soundtrack through late-night study sessions this week, elevating me away from circuit diagrams and probability distributions.
Short rant today, steve out.