This week has been one hell of a ride. Holy. I genuinely don't know where to begin. I didn't even have time to write this blog on schedule. I was so mentally exhausted I fell asleep at 10 like a middle-aged uncle and woke up with a full 10 hours of sleep. So yes, a very late blog. But hey, we made it. Last weekend I was in UIUC meeting my friends, and that trip was... well, wild is an understatememnt. Energy draining in the best and worst of ways. Then the second I got back, the universe looked at me and went, "Alright, playtime's over." Because this week?
This week we are so back. Assignments hit the ground running, organizations are peaking, and midterms? Just when you're about to forget about them, they're back like they never left. Why are they even called "midterms" when it feels like we have one every week? It defeats the whole definition. Anyways, side tangent, back to the point. Studying for this batch of midterms feels insane. Time to recollect my thoughts and lock in again. People always say second midterms are harder, but weirdly, I've always preferred them.
The first round shows your flaws, while the second one gives you that "I understand it now" mentality. I usually lean in and take this round in stride. Somewhere in the middle of all this chaos, my LIS professor gave us one of the most unexpectedly wholesome assignments ever. He told all of us to go to the library and check out a book. It didn't even matter to him if we immediately returned it, just the act, the ritual of issuing a book was all he wanted. His whole point was simple. We are drifting too far from the physical ways information used to live. Everything is sped up, and everyone seems to only have the attention span to keep up with reels and 10 second tidbits, rather than pages and chapters. Reading feels "inefficient" because it doesn't flash or move with pace.
Issuing a book grounds you and forces you back into the world without letting technology command your entire flow. Honestly, he cooked with this assignnment. It feels like I only read for academics now and never for the joy of reading. When I was in middle school, every Saturday my dad and I would race through about eight library books, just to come back two weeks later and do it again. For the first time in a while, checking out a book felt right. It felt like reconnecting with an older verson of me.
That's where velocity comes in. It throws you so far forward with such pace, you forget where you started. Speaking of moving fast, OpenAI has been in a speedrun of its own. This week, they signed a $38 billion cloud computing deal with Amazon, on top of all the deals they're doing with Nvidia, AMD, Oracle and everyone else. It's like OpenAI is bascially collecting every tech giant like Infinity Stones. This isn't just business expansion, more like shaping the infrastructure of our entire future. With Amazon stepping in, the biggest cloud provider in the world, OpenAI now has enough computing power to make ChatGPT feel like a warmup for whatever comes next.
With all of this movement, comes a scary thought. How do we as humans even fit into this world? When AI is scaling this aggressively, and entire industries shift overnight, how do I, as one person, contribute to a world that's moving faster than any human brain can even perceive. If I'm being honest, I don't have the full answer. But I know this much. The one thing AI can't replicate is the weird, messy creativity of the human mind. The part which adapts even when tired and sees meaning where machines see data. This velocity can overwhelm you, but it can also force you to evolve. That's the part we need to focus on. I'm trying not to calculate my entire future anymore. The future holds a billion different versions of me, not a single one which I can predict. The best I can do is stay flexible, keep adapting, and let things come as they come.
Anyway, enough existential speak. Back to my midterms now. Sorry for the delay and the rushed blog! I hope you have a great rest of your weekend. If you're wondering what I'll be doing after this. I'll be locked in my room, studying for my brutal week ahead. Woo hoo.