My takeaways from this semester were:
- There is a limit to how much math you do before you start to miss coding. That limit is 16 hours.
- You should not take too many math classes in a semester.
- Not lying to yourself about what you like and dislike is very important. While I had suspected that I was not that passionate about linguistics, AI, or philosophical logic, I did not anticipate how burdensome those courses would be.
- I can work at least 40 hours per week on coursework, but I won't enjoy it, I won't learn as much, and there will be the threat of burnout lurking in the background.
- The difference between magic and boringness is possibly not the content, but the professor.
But now that I look back on it, I didn't have any particularly good alternatives either. I'll just take a better workload next semester.