The inspiration for finally starting this blog was my desire to document my journey as I take on The MIT Challenge put forth by Scott Young.
In essence it’s doing MIT’s 4-year computer science curriculum without taking any classes.
Why am I doing this and what are my goals?
I took a long break from school that lasted roughly 4 years. During that time, I ended up experiencing many things and working all sorts of jobs. However, the one thing that was always on my mind was my desire to become an engineer. And it was about 1 year ago, when I finally started to make up my mind.
It was during the 2022 fall semester. I had started to seriously frequent university hackathons. To briefly summarize what a hackathon is, hackathons are events where people come together in order to try to bring their ideas to life over the course of 1 to 3 days. These are software & hardware projects that can cover all sorts of fields. I was seriously invested in the scene and was going out weekend after weekend. I was only a part-time college student at the time and was really debating whether I should still attend school. But it all came together when I attended HackMIT.
My experience at HackMIT was lifechanging, the stories I heard from the hackers and the mentors blew my mind away. My desire to become an engineer had finally truly set in, it was already starting to grow when I first began attending hackathons, but HackMIT solidified it. Although I say this, I didn’t start to work towards my goal until the August of this year. That was when I decided to take on the MIT challenge.
I want to become a truly great engineer and apply my efforts to the world of AI & Robotics. I believe pursuing this path is the best way I can add to the world in my own way. I was a part-time student last year, however currently I am on break from school for another year. I plan on returning to school next year to continue to work towards my degree in Computer Engineering.
My Plan
The MIT Challenge was the perfect project to create a strong foundation for my future goals. As I take on the MIT Challenge, I plan on splitting this project into two sections.
- Pre-requisite Portion
- The MIT Challenge
Over the years I had self-studied programming, but completely ignored working on my math skills. As a result, my already weak math foundations have essentially shattered. I will be studying math starting with Pre-Algebra and working my way towards Calculus. After a lot of research I have decided that going through the AoPS curriculum would leave me with a truly strong framework for mathematical thinking.
Alongside my math studies I will be doing some Systems/Network studies that involve things like Linux and computer networking. The reason for these studies is work related, since I’m not currently able to dedicate myself to the MIT Challenge full time yet.
As soon as I finish the book on Calculus by AoPS I will officially begin the MIT challenge.
In the meantime, I will be sharing my progress on the pre-requisite curriculum weekly on my blog. And I plan on creating an interactive dashboard that will show off my current status in the near future. I belive this will make for an interesting data analysis project and it might lead to some interesting discoveries.
I look forward to sharing my journey with everyone else, and although I’ve already started, there is still much more left to learn and discover.