Why I'm taking a semester off

Experiments in passion, focus, and self-discipline

Each packed with their own blend of ambition and nervousness, sweaty students build a traffic jam at the stiff glass doors of the electrical engineering building as they hurry to the first day of classes. Normally I would be in that crowd too, but today I watch through my apartment window at that surge of excitement, wondering how I can make the most out of a decision I made a few months ago.

This semester I will be on campus without registered courses or employment. Instead, I will be working on a passion project full time, involving the electrical, mechanical, and software design of a dynamic robotic squirrel:

Using this project I hope to develop not only my engineering skills, but also to learn more about my interests, and my abilities for focusing and self-discipline.

The experiments

The gap semester is partially an experiment for myself to see how much I am capable of if I focus. Since freshman year I’ve been heavily involved with two different student car teams, a rocketry team, a robotics research lab, and many open-ended engineering class projects. I was almost always simultaneously working for multiple purposes at once, and while I don’t regret any of them—they were each great experiences and I learned a variety—I never got the chance to pour my soul into a single one, and get the satisfaction of being at the edge of the performance envelope.

This semester, there are clear priorities. No homework or final projects to be excuses for sucking up time, and I will be dedicating almost all my engineering bandwidth to the single project that I feel most passionate about.

Other than just being able to know the experience of intense focus, I believe it will also act like a calibration for me to make better estimates of my own ability in the future. If I go back to splitting attention over multiple technical projects, I’ll have a good estimate of how much total bandwidth I have and divide it intelligently.

I want to learn what my limits are for self-discipline and self-learning. Leading my own project means that there are no truly rigid deadlines and I must motivate myself over any frustrating bumps. I will also need to seek out sources for learning, and find out what I should figure out myself compared to what I should consult other people on. Practicing and calibrating my limits will help me in the future in gauging how effective I am going to be and plan my workflow more accurately.

Research questions

A major purpose of this post is to establish the research questions before the data starts coming in, to keep a record for myself what my outlook was for the gap semester and what I hope to get out of it. At the very least, even if the robot squirrel project does not go anywhere, I hope to gain a better understanding of how I work. Writing about these questions compresses my wonderings into concrete things to answer, and posting them here holds me up to a certain quality standard. If I can convey my thoughts to others here, then I can be more confident that the future me will be able to understand too.

• Which environments do I work best in for each type of task? (e.g. reading at a cafe, debugging code at home)

• What are ways to keep myself accountable? (e.g. physically separating work and home spaces, building in public, blocking out schedule)

• Without external motivators, how long can a work session be without succumbing to distractions or exhaustion? 

• How many weeks can I focus intensely without burning out?

• How can I predict how much motivation I have for a task?

• What are ways I can motivate myself during technical roadblocks? 

• Do I work better with a fixed or flexible schedule?

• What non-technical activities can I do to recharge? What makes me relax?

• How can I improve overestimating or underestimating my the time and effort necessary to complete a task?

• How ambitious should my goals be?

• Do I gain more motivation for classes if during project work I run into a problem relevant to a class?

• What kinds of things I should learn on my own vs. those I should take classes or consult others about?

• Does it help to write about my thoughts online and what kind of information should I share?

• How can I focus intensely on a personal project without being isolated from others?

• How much passion do I really have for this squirrel project? 

At the end of this gap semester, I plan to write another post answering all of these questions to the best of my ability. If other people can relate, maybe these experiments will help others find what works for them too.

I am very lucky to be able to take a semester off, yet stay on campus for its resources and exciting atmosphere. There are quite a few people who support me for this experience, and I do not want it to go to waste. These four months will feel impossibly short, I’m sure, but in January when I rejoin that jostling crowd in front of the stiff glass doors I will have grown enough to make everything worth it.