Academia and how it distorts your perception of age

9-month academic contracts and
a little vacation in Barbados

Being a student can be fun. Yes, childhood and school days are fun. But I am not talking about that. I am referring to the university life. Especially if you do not have to earn separately for that. A lot of people, including me, lived with their parents during their undergraduates. It is very common when your university is in the same city where you already lived with your parents or family. That makes the undergraduate life more of an extension to the high school. For me, the real fun started when I went to grad school - two years after the graduation from my undergraduate program. For most grad students, one year gap between their undergraduate studies and grad school is inevitable. Because, you apply when you are done with your undergraduate program (usually in the fall semester) and that means, you are accepted for the following fall - making it a year-long wait. Some choose to apply for grad school while they are still in their final year of their undergraduate program. Works best if they already are extra-ordinary. But does not work for most. However, working a little before applying for grad school can be good idea if your grad school is going to be in a foreign country. So I worked for one year before applying for grad school. That gave me a two years of job experience in between my undergraduate program and grad school. In Sri Lanka, school years is meant to be 1 - 13. It shifts the US K-12 system by 1, with kindergarten becoming grade 1. So, there is no additional time. But our A/L exams, at the time I was a student happened in next year August (a delay incurred by 2004 tsunami) and then the university entrance was following year's August. Two extra years added! I was among the youngest in my undergraduate batch and I was among the oldest during my MSc... because of these two additional years and that I had worked for two years - compared to 0 to 1 year of the others.

Then, in Europe, compared to countries like Australia and the US, you usually must do a masters before starting a PhD. However, their BSc programs are usually 3 years compared to our 4 years. Oftentimes, in the EU, students do an integrated MSc of 5 years, where they complete their BSc coursework in 3 years and do the MSc courses in the last two years. For me though, that was a 2 years of MSc followed by a separate PhD program. In the US, MSc is often coupled with the PhD. You could start your PhD with just a BSc, and you could quit with an MSc in around two years if you have completed the necessary credits, on your way to acquire your PhD. I went on to do a PhD in Europe (Erasmus+ for the win!). I loved it. I was not in a rush. I spent five years to complete my PhD. I had scholarship after all. It allowed me to live comfortably. While US grad programs usually last up to 5 years, my MSc + PhD was 7 years. This added two more years, compared to my US peers.

I went ahead and completed a postdoc for 4 years, before moving on to my tenure-track position. In the US, a postdoc is usually considered a trainee. Or even a "student." Being referred to as a "postdoctoral student" was annoying to me. Postdocs are not very common in computer science. I did mine in biomedical informatics, as part of the school of medicine. Postdocs are more common in medicine after all. They last up to 5 years. Anyway, compared to many of my CS peers in tenure-track positions, my postdoc added 4 more years. So, I started my tenure-track position after a whole ten years, compared to someone who entirely studied in the US and then went on to their tenure-track position without spending time in a postdoc position. A decade spent extra indeed: one extra school year, one gap between school to undergrad program, two years working in middle, two extra years during MSc + PhD, and the four years of postdoc! I started my tenure-track position at 36. This is basically the early career in the academia, whereas, one in IT industry in this age will be in a mid-senior level as an engineer director or manager. The tenure-track assistant professor position lasts up to 6 years before you get tenure and get promoted to associate professor. These "early-career" years give you some benefits - such as additional training opportunities and grants targeting just you! You are young again, while you are heading towards tenure and (first) promotion in your life, in your early 40s! Fine, I just admitted I spent a whole decade with the slow academic progress due to my Sri Lanka -> Europe -> US migrations and long years spent due to these circumstances. But I tend to believe academia in general makes you feel younger since you are early career while those who went to industry are well into their mid-career. I know there are goods and bads in how this distorted perception of age. That probably is for another post.

Before Sunrise

Vancouver, a day with friends.

I recently watched the movie "Before Sunrise" on a flight. How did I miss it for this long? The movie follows the two lead characters as they walk across a new city, enjoying minor activities, all while having a non-stop conversation along the way. One thing that I loved was how the hero did not try to make perfect conversations, and did not hide their imperfections and conflicts. The lengthy walk and the conversations reminded me of some of my days. However, one thing that stood out was their decision not to share contact details by end of the movie, and rather deciding to meet at the same location six months from then. This is obviously in close contrast with how I have (and most likely most of us have) dealt in similar situations. We do not leave the friendship or relationship in the hands of fate when there are technologies available to be in conversation beyond the day we bid goodbye to each other.

But it got me thinking. The "online phase" of a once a real-world close relationship often just make the magic fade away. The tail end may not be as exciting as those few days. The frozen memories are powerful. The person in the memory does not change or age. They remain intact until the time does its thing. Events happen in order. Memories does not have to follow the same order, although the ordering dictate the experience. The most beautiful aspect of an experience is the memory it leaves behind...

This time for Africa

Kigali, Rwanda

My desire to travel to Africa started almost as soon as I moved to Europe. 2012 August. The Erasmus Students Network (ESN) planned a trip to Morocco. It was a cheap flight to Barcelona and then onward to Morocco in a cheap ferry. I really wanted to join that trip. Unfortunately, I could not join that trip as that group trip was for anyone who did not need a visa for Morocco. 12 years passed by and I visited every continent except for Africa and Antarctica. Of course, Antarctica is not even permanently inhabited. I visited Australia in 2024 August. Since then, countries of the African continent dominated my top-20 bucket list - with Sierra Leone and Kenya in top 2 spot.  

Eventually, this month, I visited Kigali, Rwanda. Rwanda was my 51st country. Kigali is a very safe city. A solo trip. But with many friends I made there, it felt home. Now, finally I have also visited Africa, and Antarctica is the only continent that I am yet to visit.

The missing pages and the return to normal

Charlotte: A pandemic era local trip

It has been five years since the pandemic was declared. Many posts are resurfacing to recall that weird period in time, the early pandemic. Hopes and fears. It took me four years to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic era. COVID-19 is a name unfair to the year 2019. Sure, the disease started in 2019. But it was not known to most of us until the last two weeks of January. The full impact of the disease was realized only in February with the travel restrictions and then March with "work from home" mandates. People eventually started to return to "normal." For me, 2024 was the first "fully normal" year. A full year with no more work from home. 2024 felt like a natural continuation of 2019. A perfect year. The stories of pandemic feel like a weird dream in the middle.

Recently, Microsoft announced it will discontinue Skype and migrate its users to Teams. No one likes Microsoft Teams. It is bundled with Windows Operating System and admins keep using it when better alternatives are available. As for Skype, its fate is sad. Skype started its journey as a peer-to-peer system. Microsoft acquired it, but still Skype was largely untouched. The pandemic time could have been a good time for Skype to pick up momentum. But somehow it lost that race to Zoom. Skype was a tool we used to communicate with family and friends. Teams was entirely for work. Merging Skype and Teams would be like merging Facebook with LinkedIn. Imagine your Facebook friends are now forced into your LinkedIn, as you have no option but to use the newly merged LinkedIn where you also have your Facebook friends. I can understand Microsoft realized there is no business potential for Skype. However, Skype will leave a gap no app can fill yet. Whatsapp and similar apps are phone-based, where Skype is available to computers across the operating systems as well as mobile phone. There are computer-based video alternatives based on computer operating systems - but they either lack mobile support or do not have the support to add friends. Having friends that you can check to see whether they are online and then calling them is a nice feature which Zoom does not have. Apps such as WhatsApp and FaceTime are also tied to the mobile phone number. Skype gives some sort of anonymity as it just needs an email address. Perhaps, that might be another reason Windows wanted to give up Skype?

Blurred memories of early 2020s

Social media keeps evolving. We had a period of "being nice" that made us all tip even the Starbucks baristas for that take out coffee order. Now, that habit sticks around, incorporating tipping in cashiers and self-checkout machines. Twitter was a refreshing part of our life during the early pandemic days. When the outside world was dark, Twitter gave us some light. Now we are back to normal. Twitter has gone dark and X. It is filled with weird people and bots. Everyone with a blue tick is focusing on engagement to get their cashback. Algorithm is skewed to incentivize arguments rather than happy memories and celebrating achievements. Most of my friends have left Twitter. I am still around although the conversations have either become boring or died down. It maybe time to quit. I am unlikely to quit while I minimize my time there to focus more on the physical world. The world has a lot to offer, and we are so back to normal.

The hope and the fear of AI

There is both panic and excitement around the AI in the tech world. Some of them, well founded. Others, exaggerated. In one side, we see celebrations how months-long efforts became an hour-long task. How a complex undertaking that would take a proper training on the topic (for example, write a modular, distributed algorithm in Erlang programming language) now can be done in the matter of minutes in ChatGPT or a similar LLM. Then, the other side, panic that AI is going to wipe off the junior software engineer roles. It is probably widening the gap. In one side, engineers paid in millions to write the tools. In the side, the fresh graduates reducing themselves into "prompt engineers." Do we even need a 4-year bachelors on computer science if all we do is becoming a prompt engineer?

When we grade the take-home assignments and open-Internet exams, it is very clear that most of the answers are ChatGPT-inspired. We do not ban the use of LLMs in assignments. We just ask the students to disclose their source and tool, and almost all of them honestly report the ChatGPT use and it is ok. We are a StackOverflow generation. When we got stuck with an error message, we would ask StackOverflow and someone from 10 years ago had the same problem and there is the solution! Then, we would copy-paste. When we did not know the answer to a question, we would ask Google and Google gave us the answers. So, Internet copy-pasta is not new. Perhaps, ChatGPT has made it easier. It still needed some serious effort and "expertise" to find the answer from Google and StackOverflow. Maybe ChatGPT has made the entire process easier by giving you the answer, entire answer, rather than bits and pieces of it. StackOverflow was a crowdsourcing human effort. ChatGPT is using that human effort second-hand. Proponents of AI would argue even the use of tools like ChatGPT need some level of expertise, what to ask. There is some truth in it. What differentiates us is the human element. Everyone has the tools. But tools are not going to give you the answer we need.

Friday Feeling

Sesimbra, 2018, before leaving Portugal

This year is going fast. That is something I often felt with many years. Some years start eventfully. This year did! Especially with the new year day. We came back from our travels by the second week of January. But then when we returned home, the momentum slowed down. Drastically. It took some time to recover from all the food overdose. The year was already on full swing. January 10th. Weirdly, Anchorage is not as cold these days, although we are in the peak winter. Temperatures at mid 40s! (that is, 7 c). 2024 was a great year. 2025 so far felt like a hangover from the remarkably fun 2024. The semester is already getting to its speed. We are planning the summer and travels for 2025 already. Although it felt like a continuation of 2024, 2025 is starting to have its unique features too.

View of Tagus River

I often wonder how travels are an inevitable expense in the life of a person who is living abroad. Even when international students struggle with their finances, they travel back home once a year or once in two years. I did. We all do. Such a long-haul trip would feel like an unwanted expense or a luxury for a person who lives in their own country (unless they take pride in being international travelers). But for foreign students and foreign employees, travel is just a part of their identity. Most of us don't even consider going back home as a "travel."

When I hear from students who just got accepted to grad school, it brings me back to 2012. A time that feels so close, yet too far. An intermediate time between now and a time when I was in Sri Lanka. It feels like a previous birth at times. Grad school is a fun experience. As grad students, we already knew how to build things, how to write proper software. We felt like adults. But we also felt like kids - we were students, after all. Things look beautiful when you look back!

It doesn't feel right that I must spend thousands of dollars to fly across the ocean to walk on the same riverside I walked ten years ago or to enjoy some bacalhau in my favorite restaurant of my 20s.

Why does the world feel big sometimes? Don't mind me. It's the Friday feeling.