CV

I was curious what my lab mates were doing these days. I know Xiaolei is a tenure track professor at Memphis and we just had a phone call chat the other day. I was more curious about Yoshinari, since I haven’t heard from him for years. I googled him, and he had been senior applied scientist at AWS for a while, and then moved to another AI lab that I have never heard of. I was also a bit surprised that he has actually moved to New York. Well I guess we were just never close enough to keep in touch. He also gave a talk on his work plus his “retrospect on his PhD.” I was very curious what he talked about but couldn’t find any slides. I was wondering if he mentioned me, or just curious what his thoughts are. But again, we were never close enough to really for him to mention me.

I checked his CV, and it seems he is still very active in research — publishing papers, being area chairs and reviewers for many different top venues, venues that I was once so familiar with and so eager to be part of. Same to Xiaolei’s CV.

Then I was thinking about my own CV. Ever since graduation I stopped doing any research, and it looks like my CV has stopped since 2020. It’s not actually true because I had new jobs and stuff, but for research and publication parts, it stopped. I know it’s the road I chose — I chose to stop doing research, and to pursue what I really want and what makes me happy. Still feeling a bit emotional, though. But just a little bit, haha.

I chose to better myself — a body and physique that I can be proud of. A CV, or just a paper summarizing achievements outside myself, doesn’t seem too important and appealing anymore. I was listening to Rina Aiuchi’s 「IN MY SHOES」, which is also the theme song of my 2016’s photo book. The lyrics is still inspiring and encouraging.