The Second Half of Summer | August 2021
In August, I finished my summer internship at Muse as well as worked really hard on my EEG-Shazam project. I'm also starting Grade 11 in a couple of days (September 7th) at a new high school which is... exciting?
Hey there, I'm Ahnaaf Khan
If I want to describe myself in a sentence, I'm a regular person, with irregular goals. I'm a young graphic designer, web developer, and BCI developer based in Toronto. I write articles on things that I find interesting and relevant. In my spare time, I listen to music, play video games, exercise, and play basketball.
Theme of the Month: Reflection
As my summer internship wrapped up, I had to decide what I wanted to do moving forward. I wasn't sure whether I should stay at Muse, or pursue other interests. After a lot of reflecting on what I wanted in the future as well as what I envisioned myself doing in 3 months from now, I didn't see myself working at Muse anymore. This isn't to say that Muse isn't a great company to work for, I loved my experience there and am currently freelancing for them.
However, my curiosity in other fields outweighed my passion for neurotech. Again, this isn't to say that neurotech will keep me stagnant, but I feel that I can feed my curiosity more in other fields. So after a lot of thinking, I decided to free up my schedule, and pull back from Muse to work for them as a part-time freelancer during the school year. Hopefully, this means that I'll have enough time to work on other projects as well as with Muse and grow like crazy.
Interning at Muse!
The second month of my internship was a roller coaster. As I found myself in the last stretch of my internship, I realized that my energy levels have never been lower. It wasn't burn out, but it was more that working 30-40 hours a week in general is quite tiring. Even though I enjoyed my internship, I needed to find ways to focus and not fall asleep halfway through my work day.
What I ended up doing to solve this problem is actually use Muse's own technology to keep me awake. I used their mind meditation to try and measure my focus with their biofeedback during the day and when my energy/focus would take a dip.
Other than that, I found it really fun to continue working on the release of the Digital Sleeping Pills that Muse is beta-testing right now and I'm excited for my future with Muse.
My Learnings From Working For Muse At 16!
This is my compilation of different lessons from my internship at Muse. I had fun writing this and wanted to get it out to possibly help anyone else looking for an internship, and how to succeed.
“Everybody's got a plan till they get punched in the face.”
This famous quote is from Mike Tyson. I've been watching a lot of boxing content recently and fell in love with Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali. Naturally, I found this quote and it really struck me. I used to be someone who would meticulously plan out their day and absolutely stick to it no matter what.
However, over time I realized that having a step-by-step plan really limits your risk-taking capabilities and ability to explore your curiosity. Even if you have a great plan, it doesn't matter if something goes wrong, since you have to throw out the plan anyways. My solution was to have an overall vision of what I wanted, and then take steps in that general direction.
What's Happening September?
I'll be pumping out a lot of content related to my EEG-Shazam project, as well as start Activate, the second year of TKS. I hope to also learn a lot of Machine Learning by the end of September.