It’s been a while since I posted to this blog. How long? Well, I haven’t written anything since April 5, when U.S. President Donald Trump launched his ridiculous tariff campaign on “Liberation Day.”

Perhaps you’re wondering why it’s been so long. Quite simply, I became rather busy in April and May. It seems rather appropriate to provide a brief account of my time neglecting this little corner of the Internet. In April, I engaged in various academic escapades: essays written, tests taken, and countless hours of readings… read. My personal life was more exhilarating, but I am hesitant to go into detail here.

In May, I took my various finals (three in three days), submitted my final projects and papers. That’s when I should have happily ridden off into the sunset, but good-byes are always more difficult than one expects.

The week between finals and graduation was filled with various social events. Feeling somewhat intellectually neglected, however, I built a language model from scratch. Although it doesn’t work terribly well, watching its performance improve during training was immensely satisfying.

After that, my mother and I drove to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, and then to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina. Although Mammoth Cave was impressive, the Smoky Mountains really captured my imagination. They were filled with iconic views, lush flora, and waterfalls galore.

And then I got home. For the past three weeks, I have taken a break from every variety of serious intellectual labor. It has been downright exhilarating. It is only now, while I am able to relax a little bit, that I realize just how much stress and pressure I had applied to myself. The 100-hour weeks of the semester have given way to a few weeks of practically nothing, but reading books and articles and engaging in a few projects here and there.

I haven’t done tons of computer programming in these three weeks. Other than reading and re-reading books and longer-form news articles, I’ve been doing some creative writing, a little bit of journalling, some drawing, and lots of sleeping. It is a vacation of the highest order, but the decline in my productivity has finally begun to eat away at me. In many ways, this has been the longest break I’ve had in a very long time – and it feels almost bizarre.

Over the next few weeks, I intend to get back down to business. I need to find a new apartment in Chicago to move into for graduate school, actually move into it, and to prepare myself for another year of academic thought and curiosity. It will not be that many weeks before I am once again engaged in the process of learning.

Still, I have neglected this space for far too long. Be on the lookout for some coming articles – and perhaps some major design changes – as I begin to ramp up my work here once again.

-Eliora