The department at Middlebury was small, but I doubt that I could have received a better CS education elsewhere. The opportunity to do one-on-one interesting research so early in my college career was invaluable. All three semesters were Go-related, but I didn't focus on the same thing during each.

The first summer was spent scoping the lay of the land. Reading the papers, implementing naive "improvements", and a lot of testing. Our best result was achieved by implementing someone else's we'd read in a paper. It was a humbling experience.

The second semester started with finding ways to visualize the algorithm in action. Since the improvements were so nonintuitive I felt I had to find a better way to understand how it worked and what my changes were doing. Easier said than done.

The third semester was more varied. I did more testing and playing with parameters. I also ported a version to the iPhone (we wanted to be the first and best on there- this was before ios 2 was released). Then my professor and I started a company that was initially related to Go and iPhones but later pivoted substantially several times.

I'm very thankful for the opportunities I had at Middlebury and the chance to work with Tim Huang.