Victories

Moved to San Francisco Bay Area alone. Got a 3 month lease without a specific plan to explore and figure things out.

Completed BS/MCS degree with a 4.0 GPA. This semester took CS598JH Text Mining with LLM, CS598HGE HCI applied to Games and Education, CS527

Started my newsletter, systems for Second Brain

Kicked off the Longevity Biotech Fellowship, solo-traveled to Spain.

Became a research assistant for [TIMAN](https://timan.cs.illinois.edu/)

Started the Masters of Computer Science degree program UIUC.

Solo-traveled the bay area for 2 weeks.

Completed my internship, got highly positive feedback from managers.

My team placed first at [[chicago-startup-weekend]]!

I sky-dived! I was completely terrified

I completed my undergraduate degree requirements with a 4.0.

I went to a party felt extremely confident, I was an accidental rizzler, I made people laugh and felt connected.

I stopped my addictive phone usage and consumption!

I did salsa classes and got out of my comfort zone.

I won a dance competition at the Zagłoba bal.

I gave my ice breaker speech for toastmasters

Declared myself President of SIGAIDA and successfully ran engaging meetings

Ran 17.5 miles!

Ran a half-marathon in 2:28 hours after waking up at 4:45 and traveling home with 2 weeks of training.

Zagloba club I went outside my comfort zone and did karaoke, I also danced for them for Wigilia.

Started being an undergraduate research assistant

Project manager for Universum

4.0 GPA when taking 6 computer science courses, 3 graduate courses, 3 other cs courses, 21 credit hours. Machine Learning for Signal Processing, Machine Learning for Bioinformatics, Advanced Computational Topics in Robotics, Wireless IoT, Numerical Methods, and Ethics for Computer Science.

After break-up and being burnt out, I gained weight to 208 lbs. I was visibly fat. I then lost weight and got down to 192 lbs before college started. I did this in a month and a half from fasting and discipline.

I took 12 credit hours over the summer (Data Visualization, Programing Languages and Compilers, ANTH 105, and JJC HIST 172), while working a full time job (40+ hours/week) at Argonne National Labs

4.0 GPA taking 18 credit hours, 5 CS courses + 1 psyc course. CS446, 341, 374, 361, 222, and PSYC 250

I self studied for Calc 3, Comp Sci 1 & 2, Linear Algebra, Discrete Math and passed the proficiency exams.

Got accepted into UIUC for Computer Science

Made it to the world championships for VEX Robotics

Lead my high school's ESRP team. A girl asked for my instagram after I presented our project.

In one year, I studied for AP Bio, AP Calc BC, AP Physics C, AP Comp Sci A & Principles, AP French. I got a 5 on all of them (except for principles).

Got an internship as a software developer intern at WM International.

Was in Orchesis and performed in front of school as the only boy in my group.

For my FIRST Tech Challenge team I was the lead programmer and our team got the "highest scoring rookie award" in Illinois.

I started reading self-help books, "How to Win Friends and Influence People", "Mastery", "The Magic of Thinking Big".

I taught myself how to program in Python and made my first project https://github.com/MattHandzel/findValueOfInvestmentsOverTime

I lost around 40 lbs before high school, and continued to lose weight until I hit my lowest of 145 lbs during water polo of spring 2020.