For those beautiful memories at UCI.
Under the deep blue sky, the lawn is shining in the warm and enchanting sunshine.
In the sunset painted with a gradient from blue to pink, the crescent is surrounded by palm trees standing erectly.
When night falls, all kinds of elegant houses seem so warm under the saffron light at night.
This is Irvine, a tranquil “village”, in which I spent 10 weeks this summer.
Irvine is so different from LA although there is only 1 hr drive. LA is a fancy metropolitan which is inclusive to all kinds of culture. You can always find the latest fashion trends, wonderful independent music and art exhibition here. However, Irvine is a city which is a little boring given a first impression. No art museums, no big theaters. The only place that I can go for entertainment if not taking expensive uber is the nearest supermarket. Instead of calling it a city, I prefer to call it a resort. All houses here follow a similar style which is quite elegant and cute. Despite all the boring aspects of Irvine, I just cannot help myself fall in love with this kind of chilling lifestyle when I live here.
I don’t want to spend too much space talking about the general chillin’ lifestyle here (which is definitely great). Since this program is basically related to research, I’d like to talk more about my research life in UCI.
To be honest, I feel quite nervous before coming to UCI. First of all, my supervisor in UCI is the pioneer in database system research. He is always a keynote speaker on top conferences. It is like lots of people want to talk with him on conferences. Second, what I will face in UCI is a huge code-base, which means there must be a learning curve. I need to first spend lots of time figuring out the code-base then focus on the prototypes. I am very afraid that I will not manage to make any progress after 10 weeks.
However, I am so lucky that I meet my super nice mentor, one of my supervisor’s Ph.D. students. When I freaked out at the code-case in the beginning, he taught me how to understand the code and introduce me to different tools which can help me deal with the code-base. After two weeks, I turned from nearly drowning in the sea of code to swim slowly in the sea of code. In addition, there is no documentation for the system I am working, the only way to figure out codes is through debugging line by line to see how things work.
I am very grateful that my mentor has constructed a complete story for my project. So my research pace is generally stable with the continuing feedback, which I know is rare in the real research world. In fact, when understanding the code-base, implementing an idea is quick most of the time. The most difficult part is surprisingly in the experiment part, i.e. doing benchmarks. As for system research, doing benchmark is of great importance. First, you need to design comprehensive test cases to evaluate performance and most importantly, you cannot ignore any anomaly in the experiments. For every anomaly that contradicts your intuition or inference, you need to do more experiments to find the reason, which is truly a tough process.
Besides my great mentor, my supervisor is also a nice person. I begin to have a feeling that the more a person knows, the more patient and tolerant he is. Every time I sent him an email to meet, he would be easy to know my progress. When I made a presentation to him, he would listen carefully and try to figure out every detail. The encouragement and positive comments he gave me is so precious for a newcome to research.
If asked by what the most important lesson that I learned in UCI is, the answer is neither a project to enhance my CV nor a letter of recommendation. The most precious lesson is the attitude towards research. Be rigorous to every detail and make things work.
The breeze is still rippling in the sunshine. Cute rabbits with little round tails still hop around in bushes. However, it’s time to say goodbye.
How come, I already begin to miss Irvine the first day I left.