LEARNING BECAUSE I WANT TO LEARN, NOT BECAUSE I AM CONFUSED

beginning 8 years ago, I STUDIED MATHS & PHILOSOPHY at university.

I STUDIED BECAUSE I WAS CONFUSED.

CONFUSED ABOUT WHO I AM, WHO THE void WAS AND WHO WE WERE TRYING TO IMPRESS TOGETHER.

i studied logic, consciousness, algebra, morality, topology, structuralism, set theory, philosophy of science …

it was fucking amazing. and it’s all gone.

i spent 45 minutes looking on my all possible online and offline places for my final project – “calling the bluff in the diffie-hellman key exchange”.

i dug so deep and i was sure it was gone. but i found it, buried in dropbox on an account i had long disposed of.

i was so fucking proud of this paper, even though i felt like a fraud as i always did at that time.

how could i pour my heart, ego and future into the void, almost lost forever? how could i care about my future self so little.

according to claude (which didn’t exist at the time i wrote this (how the fuck did people do anything?)),

This paper discusses the security vulnerabilities in Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange protocols, particularly focusing on the potential for maliciously chosen parameters that can pass standard validation tests while making the Discrete Logarithm Problem (DLP) easier to solve. The author examine this issue in both finite-field and elliptic curve settings, exploring methods to generate pseudoprimes and Carmichael numbers that could fool primality tests. They extend these concepts to the safe prime setting and describe how the Bröker and Stevenhagen algorithm can be used to generate vulnerable elliptic curves. The paper aims to highlight the importance of effective parameter validation in cryptographic protocols, especially for those not using standardized, tested parameter sets. It also briefly discusses the trade-offs attackers might consider between targeting widely-used parameter sets versus exploiting vulnerabilities in custom implementations.

how fucking great and cool!

the painful majority of my work from this time is lost to the void of is16261.bristol.ac.uk mailbox.

I don’t think it’s gone because i was complacent, even though i was.

i was complacent because i felt stupid.

any exam i missed a first, i took it as evidence I was a no one, i had nothing to give and i was weak.

and any exam i got a first was a fluke that i had somehow cheated my way into.

the truth was, the system i was in was flawed.

i knew this, but i didn’t have the conviction to stand on how i felt.

any exam i forced myself to wrote-learn, i aced.

any philosophy exam i shared my truest, darkest, most complex thoughts, and any maths exam i did not hammer proofs and results into my brain, the grade was a punch in the face.

and i was addicted to chess.com.

like really addicted. nothing else even mattered.

…..

i’m doing uni again.

this time no-one really knows, and i’m not going to get a degree out of it.

i’m doing it because i really fucking want to know how ml models work. i really fucking want to know how maths creates things in the world.

at 27, i really fucking know that i’m intelligent and strong and have built the mechanisms around me that allow me to be who i really want to be

imagine if everyone had the chance to study again once they had the mental and emotional maturity to actually pursue what they like, in a way that works for them, to take exercises and exams because they actually want to figure out what they’ve really learned, and to not feel like a fucking loser at any less than perfect result.

it’s week 2.

i’m a nobody again

it feels good.