Dear Reader,
I sat down with staff member Aidan Chin to talk about his final semester at M5.
Alex Reineke
So you're a senior now, yeah, you're computer engineering?
Aidan Chin
Yes, I am okay. Class of 2026,
AR
Are you ready to leave?
AC
No, really. I don't have a job yet, and I don't know, whenever I go home for break and stuff, it's so boring. Yeah, I like being on campus, but I don't want to go to school.
AR
So what are you gonna miss the most about campus?
AC
Probably, like the community, I guess, like going home to my roommates and we hang out. We like, party together all the time, play video games, watch movies, and then on the weekends, we go out, and it's like there's always something going on every single day... But then when I go home, it's just me and the computer, like the gym, I got two places.
AR
Oh, that's so sad. Well, I hope you find a community wherever you go… You know, I feel like we're under, we're always under a little bit of a pressure cooker [at UMass Engineering].
AC
It's fun, though. I like it until it boils over.
AR
How so?
AC
Like, when all the assignments are due! I have CDR this week, and I also have the miter capture the flag competition thing. We got to finish our program by this week also, and just a whole bunch of stuff piles up.
AR
So when is the pressure fun? When you don't have any work to do?
AC
it's when I finish, when I'm over it, then it's like, Oh, thank god.
AR
It's like a relief. I love that, the little death, you know, the clarity, yeah.
AC
And then you're like, Oh, I did all this hard work and it actually paid off.
AR
Yeah, well, what do you want to do when you get out of UMass?
AC
I think when I graduate, I want to go sort of into prototyping and embedded systems and stuff, sort of like low power wearables, is kind of what I'm doing for my senior design project and stuff like that. Like little things that help you out, and they just kind of operate on their own. I really like that idea, so I think I'm going to try and get a job in that. And like, rapid prototyping is fun, just anything kind of hands on. Can't remember what it's called, but it's like this sort of programming where you're doing the computer stuff and the hardware at the same time. I think it's called co design. That's like, my favorite part is when I have, like, full control over everything. But I guess it's not conducive to a team. But, yeah, I don't know. I like to work in teams too. So it's just, like, a whole bunch of stuff going on at once that I like. It's hard to put just one name on it.
AR
You have so many different interests.
AC
Yeah, like, a million. Same goes with my hobbies and stuff. It's just a million of everything.
AR
That's cool. How do you manage that?
AC
I don't think I manage it. I don't think I manage it well at all. Yeah. So it's like, I'll have stints of where I'll do one thing and I'll be like, All right, I'm bored of this. And then I have like, 15 other things I can switch to, but then it's very overwhelming when I have 15 things going on at once, and I can't even remember half of them.
AR
Have you always been like that?
AC
Always… I never thought about it until recently. But yeah, I'm just spread out everywhere. Just do everything I like being a jack of all trades, but then that's like me wanting to get control over everything… I, like, inherently don't trust people to do it to my level of standard… I'll have my eyes on everything, and then I'm like, oh, I'll just do this in two seconds for you, and then I'll do this for two seconds. And then in the end, it's like, I do everything anyways.
AR
Now, interesting, yeah. So what do you plan to do about, like, now that you have the information [about yourself] is this gonna help your life at all?
AC
Yeah, I think I need to let people do their own thing. I've always, I've come across this saying recently is a see that saying doesn't make sense in this context. Actually, I was gonna say you can't help someone who doesn't want help. But the thing is that people come to me who ask for help, and then, instead of teaching a man to fish, I fish for him, if that makes sense, yeah. And then I'm like, wait a minute, if I, if I do this all the time, they're never going to learn, and I'm going to always be doing this. So I've tried to switch my mentality.
AR
So how's that gone? How is the process of trying to let stuff go?
AC
It definitely spikes my anxiety. Like I'll explain how to do something, and I always, never think that my explanations aren’t up to snuff, and then I send them off, and I'm like, “I hope he doesn't, like, saw his arm off or something”... But then sometimes I'll ask someone to do something, and then, in the past, I'll be like, “Oh, this isn't up to snuff. I'll just do it.” And then I realize it's better to have everything done but half a__ed versus one thing done perfectly. That make sense?
AR
I, I very recently also adopted, I adopted a more “Buddhist” mentality of letting go of, you know, understanding that I cannot control other people. Yeah, and so, so I actually relate to this on a deep level, yeah. But at some point somebody is going to disappoint you, right? I mean, how do you deal with that? How do you develop that mentality? Saying, okay, somebody will disappoint me, but I'm going to go with this philosophy anyways, does that make any sense?
AC
Yeah, I've started to lean into the idea that people aren't a means to an end… I think it was Kafka said that I can't remember. I'm trying to sound smart… So it pretty much means that people don't exist to do things for you, which sounds pretty self explanatory, like you should, you should just know this in the first place. But then yeah, also extends to like you should just enjoy someone for being a person, instead of like they are disappointing me, per se, by not doing things to what I consider up to par. But then it goes back to just letting people be themselves, where it's like, okay, they did this, and as far as I know, is the best of their ability, and they still didn't do it up to par.
AR
Yeah, I understand that. And it's funny, you mentioned the people aren’t a means to an end. You think it would be self explanatory, but we, you know, we still have fascism, yeah, in the world, right? So it's not self explanatory, right? It is difficult to learn. It sounds horrible, but everybody really does this [use other people as a means to an end], right?
AC
I think you can't really completely remove it from your life, but it's like you can take steps to kind of protect your own headspace with it. I think, yeah… So it's like, if someone else is upsetting me I got to remember that they’re someone else, it's not me, yes, like, I'm just chilling with myself.
AR
So what I'm hearing is you're trying to allow, just allowing others to exist as themselves, you’re changing your mindset in a way that's maybe, I guess more is empathetic?
AC
I’ll think about a better or a good way to explain it, because I don't know if there's a perfect word for this, but it's like when you're in a in the ocean and the waves are crashing against you and you're trying to butt up and go against the flow and block the wave, you realize that it hits you really hard and, like, knocks you down. But if you just, like, float around with the wave, it'll just pass right through you fine, and you'll be okay. And it doesn't really hurt you or harm you. It just kind of moves you around, and then you go back to normal, sort of just like a little disturbance, but it doesn't hurt you at the end of the day.
AR
That's lovely. The wave is always going to be there. The wave will always be there, and it's not anybody's fault that it's there. It just happens. And it's your choice whether or not you get hurt by the wave.
AC
Sometimes the wave hurts.
AR
But, but you can lessen the blow for yourself, and you can definitely take less damage by going with the flow when you can. That makes sense, yeah, yeah…
AC
I don't really know what else…
AR
No, that's perfect. That's really good. Thank you so much.
