Annual Summary for 2021

As the second year of this COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 is actually not so bad. Even though our movement was restricted, there are still some unique experiences that worth remembering.

1. Attending an International Conference

This year starts with a MICCAI full paper submission. I spent most of my winter holiday writing this paper and submitted it just in time. This is the first time I have submitted a paper to an international conference so there exists many unknown problems for me, such as the usage of CMT and how to properly respond to peer reviews. Luckily, I have my supervisors and colleagues helping me around and they have provided me with tons of great suggestions. After the rebuttal in June, the paper is finally accepted.

The conference is held in September, and I have to attend it virtually due to the pandemic. My presentation time is 7-9 p.m. CST, and at that time there are actually not so many people in SpatialChat. The whole process is actually quite fun since everyone just appears on the screen as a small icon, and you can move yourself to different presentation rooms to ask the presenter questions. I spent some time hanging around finding interesting works, and I did find some brilliant ideas.

2. Being a TA

This year I also signed up for the TA of the course Discrete Math. I learned this course 4 years ago and honestly, I have already forgotten some of the theorems. The students often ask me questions that I myself am also unsure about so I actually spent a lot of time searching for the answers and reviewing the course. I also have to correct the homework each weekend, and that is really exhausting.

Some students have left me with a deep impression of their ‘thirst for knowledge’ (or in other words the high frequency of raising questions) and they all did pretty well in their finals. Good for them.

3. Music Festival

Xihu Music Festival is another thing that left a deep impression on me. I went to the festival with my two roommates and we all enjoyed ourselves. However, we quit early because of the sudden rain.

4. Others

There are also other funny things that happened this year, such as the ‘dorm-moving’ and a weekend hiking (18 km I guess?). Though it is a tough year for many of us, there is still much fun in it. I don’t care if 2022 would be better or not coz every result is a different way of life and we can always discover fun in it.