Wow I love this stage of my life. I’m so busy I don’t have a single minute to waste. =) But yeah, of course I still waste some.
My sleep schedule is destroyed. I don’t hit the gym at all. I barely even move. I don’t eat properly. But for the first time after a while, I don’t plan to fix them. That’s because I have a lot of deadlines. I’m under a huge pressure and stress. But I enjoy it. During the days, I do so much work that evenings when I look back at the morning, I feel it has been some days ago.
For example, during the last few days, I handled two phases of automated debugging project. I also handed in a homework for this course. In addition to that, a university professor suddenly notified me that I can take part in his seminar and I had to submit a paper’s summary within two days. I magically learned all the background knowledge for that paper and wrote the summary in <7 hours. I even learned most important parts of Rust in <2 hours and completed a big part of my research project at the lab. I also prepared some slides for my own presentation at the seminar. On Sunday, I wanted to procrastinate working on the presentation. What did I do? I didn’t open YouTube or Twitter, but I opened Discord and joined my friends taking part in a CTF competition. I solved a relatively hard challenge there. See? Even my procrastinations haven’t been pointless. I just love this pressure. :))
Life will stay like this for another one month. In a few days, the research project will reach the deadline, and I won’t have much pressure in my next research project. Also, most of the courses will be done with their projects and homework. My last final exam is on February 19th. After that, I’ll be free in its true meaning. I’ll only have Program Analysis project for the rest of the February and March.
The thing that makes me feel good is that after such amount of workload, I’ll be mostly done with the courses in my master’s. I’ll only have to pass two advanced courses, 6 credits each. One of the advanced courses will be given by my current professor, and it’s at the same direction as my research. I can also choose a seminar as the other course, which can happen to align with my interests and not demand much effort. Then the only thing that remains from my master’s studies will be my master’s seminar and master’s thesis. I’ll have a complete year to work on it and enjoy.
One thing that makes me sad is that I want to read a lot of papers. I want to do a lot of exercises. I want to read a lot of blog posts. I want to watch a lot of conference videos. All to improve my grasp of the field and researches done in my area. But I don’t have time for it. I really hope I can spend much more time on it after this semester. It’s been a long time since I wanted to achieve mastery in software security. But still, crypto challenges are easier to me than pwn/reverse challenges. What a shame!
Another good thing that happened recently is that I think I earned the respect of a Ph.D. student in our group. When I started to work here, he directly told me that he is cautious with whom he works and prefers to only involve the people in his projects who he’s sure to work reliably. Yesterday, probably because he witnessed me working hard in these days, he suddenly started to share one of his ideas with me and suggesting me to work on it as my master’s thesis. It was a pleasure! XD
Anyway. I’ll now go to bed and keep working hard tomorrow. After handling this mess, I’ll return to normal life. I’ll fix my sleep schedule, diet, and workout routine. But most importantly, I’ll start to read the papers actively. I’ll finish fuzzing book and those exercises in the fuzzing repo. I’ll read a lot of security write-ups. I’ll watch the videos from BlackHat and other similar conferences.