I finished my master's program last week on December 18, 2025. As of the time of writing this, I'm still not quite at terms with that fact. This post serves as a small reflection on the program.
I took many different classes that covered many different disciplines, ranging from learning about the inner mechanisms for hardware-optimized cryptographic ciphers (i.e. the Feistel cipher) to implementing modern deep-learning stabilization techniques (i.e. batch normalization). Here is the complete list of the classes I took (in order):
- COMPSCI 514: Algorithms for Data Science
- COMPSCI 532: Systems for Data Science
- COMPSCI 560: Introduction to Computer & Network Security
- ECE 656: Introduction to Cryptography
- COMPSCI 565: Advanced Digital Forensics Systems
- COMPSCI 677: Distributed and Operating Systems
- COMPSCI 682: Neural Networks: A Modern Introduction
- COMPSCI 571: Data Visualization and Exploration
- COMPSCI 563: Internet Law and Policy
- COMPSCI 661: Secure Distributed Systems
Out of these ten classes, I think my favorite class was ECE 656: Introduction to Cryptography, which I took with Professor and Graduate Program Director of Electrical and Computer Engineering Wayne Burleson. As a computer science major with a software background, I did not know much about the field of ECE, nor did I have much of a hardware background. Taking this class granted me the opportunity to learn more about this different realm as well as explore topics I've heard about in other security classes, like quantum cryptography and elliptic curve cryptography. I urge all students to try to take a class in a different college than your own - for fellow computer science students, taking classes in engineering may be worthwhile and fun!
There is a subreddit called r/knolling which is dedicated to the photographing of carefully arranged objects. There was this post I saw a long time ago, where a person took a picture of all of the bobby pins that held their hair together at their graduation. When I started the program last fall, I knew I wanted to be able to look back on my accomplishments in some physical form similar to that person, which eventually manifested into me collecting every single pen I've used up over the course of the program (and promptly forgetting which ones were empty and putting them in my stash full of perfectly usable pens, resulting in me continuously accidentally picking up dead pens).
Looking at this collection of used-up pens and notebooks, I feel a large sense of accomplishment. I'd like to thank my boyfriend, my family, and my friends for their undying support throughout my program. I also want to thank the many uni-ball Signo Gel Grip 0.7mm Tips that perished in my fight for the pursuit of knowledge.
Master's Wrapped #
- Program length: 470 days
- Classes taken: 10
- Homeworks submitted: 68
- Quizzes done: 43
- Tests taken: 16
- Notebooks filled: 9.5
- Used-up pens: 8 (rest in peace)