Week 3 and 4 do not exist as I was back in the UK for the Formula Student Competition for a majority of it. It was fun and a great learning experience, and we had improvements across all categories - the somehow 19 hour long journey back to Kaiserslautern from 10pm - 5pm was less fun, but an interesting experience nonetheless. As one of the researchers put it, "DeutschBahn has let you down". :(
The Advent Calendar project is going better - we've gotten specific feedback on each question made so far, and have a much better idea of how questions should go. We've also been sent on a couple of directions reading into various ML topics, which has been really cool - almost like a free-form course.
We've also been given a research-based side quest on red-teaming prompts and LLMs, which has not yielded many results so far, but has been very technologically interesting. The fact that it hasn't been yielding many results has also revealed some things about personal growth: I know I would have been dead stressed over it in the past, even if I knew it might not yield results - but I think I've come to be more okay with doing my best, accepting and adapting to situations as they come. This ties into resilience and perseverance as a character growth point. Things are coming together, and it is exciting. It's also been really fun as we've been given the space to define some key terms ourselves through searching around online, and I've learnt a lot in the process.
I've also obtained access to the Advent Calendar social media, and will be doing some publicity for them. Potential abounds, and I look forward to it (within reason, ofc).
German-wise, I have established a one to one function, but not yet a bijection: I can say basic things to people, but only understand their responses 20% of the time. I watched the first football match in my life (FCK against ROMA), and the atmosphere was pretty crazy. Some meetings from back home have started up as going home draws near, so juggling the 2 timezones has been a slight challenge, but I'm treating it as preemptively circumventing jet lag.
Life is good, we are learning, things are being done, and it will only get better.
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Yi Lin, Despite the struggles of DeutchBahn it sounds like you have had a productive few days! While your side quest is perhaps presenting you difficulties your spirit and patience and kindness to yourself when dealing with it should be admired! I am certain you will be able to leverage your creativity for an exciting social media output! I am so impressed with your German progress! Who knows how much you will achieve with it in the next two weeks! Wishing you lots of new adventures this week!