Welcome to my digital garden.
I’m Jihoon, a computer science undergraduate learning to code.
This is a place for everything from lecture notes to random thoughts. I use Obsidian to explore and visualize the links between them.
Writing things down helps me connect ideas, and sometimes those connections lead to something new.
Why I Keep This Garden
One practical reason for starting this garden is future job applications.
In Introduction to Career Exploration at Sogang University, one of my professors suggested keeping a record of my experiences and thoughts. When I eventually have to write personal statements or prepare for interviews, having something concrete to look back on should make the process easier.
I also realized that I already have trouble remembering parts of my past. My childhood is quite vague now. I can remember the rough outline of middle school and high school, but not much of what I thought, cared about or worried about at the time. I expect my university years will eventually become the same way if I don’t write things down.
So I want to use this garden partly as a diary. I care more about recording what I thought at the time than keeping a detailed log of each day. I want to write down my opinions about things that happen, the beliefs I have and the reasons behind some of my decisions.
Later, I want to connect those older notes with newer ones. If my view on something changes, I want to be able to go back and see what I thought before. Using links this way is one of the main things I want to do with this garden.
Why English?
I plan to write most of this garden in English.
One reason is that English is not my first language. Writing in another language gives me some distance from my own thoughts, which sometimes makes them easier to look at objectively.
The simpler reason is that writing in English is less embarrassing.
My English is not native-level, so I can hide a little behind the language. Thoughts that feel too direct or personal in Korean are easier for me to write down in English.
Korean would also make this garden much easier for people around me to read. My friends could find a page and understand it immediately, and I’m not very comfortable with that yet. English gives me a small barrier, which I don’t mind for now.
What Goes Here
I don’t have a strict rule for what belongs here.
Some pages will be class notes. Others might be part of a personal wiki, a cheat sheet for something I keep forgetting or just a thought I wanted to save. I also want these notes to work as references between things I thought at different points in time.
Not every note will be polished. Some may be atomic and contain only one idea, question or definition. They may look unfinished, but I see them as material I can use later.
When I write something larger, I usually prefer a top-down approach: get the big picture down first, then fill in the details. Having small notes already written gives me pieces to work with when I get to those details.
About AI
As more of the internet becomes filled with bots and AI-generated content, I want this garden to remain personal.
I plan to write and build as much of it as I can on my own without relying on AI. Some of the English may be awkward, and some of my older thoughts may turn out to be wrong. I would rather leave those things as they are than make every page sound polished in the same way.
Part of the reason for keeping this garden is to leave a record of what I actually thought at the time.
I hope you find something useful here, or simply something interesting while you’re here.