Cultivating interests and some of my favorite books from undergrad (opens in new tab)

At the close of the spring semester, I spent a bit of time advising students on the near-term: which classes to choose for the fall, how to prepare for graduate school, ideas for things to do over the summer, etc. During these discussions, I like to ask students about their interests. Most of the time, they don’t know. If they have an answer, it’s often something trendy, e.g., NLP or AI. Either case is fine; I didn’t really have an answer initially when I was in their shoes.