Quite mentally tiring year - Burned out a lot.

Something done

Slightly working on G-POS project again. For term project of graphics course in fall and game development in winter, learning Unity.

What I’ve lost

GPA

I’m not a enthusiastist of liberal arts courses & struggling with finding motivation to study them. Since I had to take 3 courses this semester (for graduation requirement), GPA dropped significantly.

Health

Had infected shingle before the 2nd semester started. Cured and reinfected twice during the semester.

Straying goals

TL:DR; Abandoned CTFs this semester (except dutied works), trying to fire up again this winter.

LLMs are amazing, so amazing… My opinion may NOT correct because I’m not familiar with them enough - I was awed by how that stochastic machine can outstands most of human. And also I’m not scolding LLMs (and user of it in CTFs) - It’s a literally game-changing technology. Why not CTF players utilize them?

Reason why I abandoned CTF this semester is I felt like never cannot catch up with LLM-assisted players, even I also tried to be familiar with LLMs (attaching MCP, try to write better prompts, etc…).

1. Is this help me to learn?
2. Am I querying right? Aren’t the games became LLM-prompting competitions?
3. Is this fair? If better LLM model provides better results, isn’t the CTF is becoming a pay-to-win game?
4. Finally but most importantly, as a viewpoint of AI newbie, does this huge bunch of probabilistic model could always be trusted? (Always logical? Can reason itself?)

Those doubts (or just excuse) made myself to pause competitive activities for a while, and had been realigning my goals about entire topics of security.

For entire 2025, I had a chance to participate in outsourcing project - I had fuzzed and analyzed real-world products. Hope that experience help me to broaden my possiblities.

Outlines for 2026?

Research was my main focus in 2025, and thankfully I got an award for that in POSTECH CSE. Continuing that, trying to publish a paper in a conference/journal in next semester - which finishes my undergraduate university life.

In later half of 2026, going to apply for BoB, or try for internships if failed. Those are my main goals for 2026, and willing to advance to graduated school in 2027.

Closing

Since I mostly had been struggled with my physical health, but not mental health, Going to take psychiatric treatment soon. Hope myself to be more stable and focusing.

Wishing everyone have a perfect 2026.