#and then come back and finish this pset

[tapejob]

blegh

#everything hurts but at least i got free food :') #lost hearing in one ear and jaw pain and enough pressure in my sinuses that i may simply pop like a cheeseburger #i need to be taken out with at tranq but instead i am going to go out and comp this stupid club #and then come back and finish this pset #and then prep for my exam #and cry #delete later

[mitadmissions]

december at mit!!

“No matter how busy life gets, remember to take a break from time to time (preferably with good food!!)” - Alison F. ‘23

Hello hello happy December!! For MIT students, the beginning of December marks the end of classes and the start of finals season before winter break. As this crazy mess of a year draws to a close, we wanted to share some of our favorite experiences from last December/end-of-fall-semester traditions! Some of our favorite memories come from taking a step back from the stress of school work!

Felix L. ‘23

At the end of my freshman fall semester, I decided to go on a solo trip to the List Arts Center (MIT’s contemporary art gallery!) and the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). I popped on my earbuds and put on one of my playlists. I remember it was a pretty cold day-the walk across campus from Simmons (my dorm) to the List Arts Center wasn’t terrible. I think the List Arts Center is a hidden gem on campus. It’s tucked under the Wiesner Building and hidden by all the construction on the sidewalk. The best part was that there were only a few other people so I could take photos from the weirdest positions and not be judged. After having a short conversation with the receptionist I had my fill of social interaction for the day and decided to walk two miles to the MFA. I told myself it’d be good exercise (I would later regret this). I swear there are only a few places in this world that make me feel full, besides restaurants, and the MFA is one of those places. Sometimes MIT students get stuck in the “MIT bubble” where we forget that our campus is nestled between Cambridge and Boston (two cities rich with history and things to do). Even though we’re all stuck at home (or should be), take some time for yourself and go on a walk outside if you can. Escape whatever bubble you feel stuck in.

Alison F. ‘23

On the last day of my first semester at MIT, I went to a Pentatonix holiday concert with some of my friends! We walked the 20ish minutes together to Agganis Arena in Boston, sneak attacking each other with snowballs because we are Mature Adults, Yes. The concert was amazing, and our combined excitement--officially finishing first semester, the holidays approaching, and just singing along to Christmas songs surrounded by friends--made it even more magical. My dorm (Next House best house!!) also had a bunch of study breaks throughout December leading up to finals. We roasted marshmallows and made s’mores in the courtyard, made the life-changing discovery that is hot chocolate peppermint tea, ate too many donuts and Insomnia Cookies, baked colorful macarons and crème brûlée, and generally acted like idiots together as much as possible before parting ways for winter break. No matter how busy life gets, remember to take a break from time to time (preferably with good food!!) :)

Emily H. ‘22

You know what is cool? Snow is cool. I think it is a tradition amongst students that for the first snowfall, we all drop whatever we’re doing to run out and frolic. I have a super distinct memory of last winter, my roommates and I were studying in our dorm’s kitchen at like 10pm. We suddenly were compelled to look out the window and lo and behold there were *snowflakes* falling outside! So we threw our psets away and ran outside in whatever we were wearing and simply frolicked in the white snow under the moonlight 🌙. We joined the gathering crowd on Kresge Lawn right in front of the student center. People were building some very sad excuses for snowmen with the mere inch of snow that had gathered, but overall it was one of the most wholesome moments of mY LIFE!! Everyone was just having a great time and enjoying the wondrous beauty that is nature and snow ❄️, and enjoying each other’s company 💞.

#massachusetts institute of technology #mit #december #winter #snow #christmas #holidays #art #pictures

[officialcolumbiauniversity]

February 15, 2020. It’s been a great start to spring semester on campus; I’m registered for 4 classes as well as research, but I decided today that I’m going to drop one of them. Puts me at barely 13 credits but it’s worth it: the psets for that one class had 10-15 problems each week, and it would take me around 4 hours per problem to finish. And it was only 2 credits! I only stayed in it this long because I love the subject, and it’s half a semester so I thought I could just suffer through it and bullshit my way through. BUT I love the subject, and I would rather take two years to understand it once than fail the class now then relearn it again in grad school. 

Anyways, with the absence of this class I suddenly have 5 days of the week off, and it’s Saturday so I’m gonna take a nap then try to get some work done for research. I’m in a new lab again this semester, after the last two labs over two semesters were definitely not the right fit lol. This semester is one I’m hoping to stay in for the rest of undergrad: it’s a baby lab because the PI was just appointed at Columbia last semester. Three grad students and me, potentially a postdoc that I had the honor of sitting in on his interview of! and asking questions along with the other team members (interviews are just an hour-long talk of the postdoc’s research history and what he plans to continue). I love love LOVE this lab because I feel like an actual member of the group, with agency, like I’m going up on the website n all that :) and I can stroll into work whenever I want and the PI is training the grads and I himself, etc. The lab is brand-new, so new that a good portion of it hasn’t been set-up yet and actually a good portion of my research will be creating some of the technology!! Because we’re trying to develop a way to image single electrons, so obviously it doesn’t exist and we’ll be developing microscopes to figure out how.

Anyways, that’s my academic life. Clearly I can talk about research all day so I’m just gonna move on. I will say that I’ve been taking so many math classes that I realized like a week ago I could totally get a math concentration too if I just took like another 4 classes, so I guess I’m chem/math now! Wow a whole STEM bitch y’all could never

I’m otherwise not too involved in campus life anymore, tbh. I can’t tell if that’s the norm, because I don’t think it is but when my sorority was preparing for recruitment and we quickly introduced ourselves to the rest of the chapter a surprising number of people upperclassmen were like yeah I kinda do this and I’m in this club but I don’t rlly go to meetings anymore and ya pretty much the sorority is what i’m most involved in now. And i was like huh. I do, however, still worry about it, and i keep trying to think of ways to get involved so that job or grad school applications are easier. Research takes up most of my time so when I get back from it, I’m pooped. I either go work out or watch Netflix, or cook, or chill w my dog, and I’m honestly happy with this life. I guess I’ve kind of figured out that clubs are pretty culty on campus, and not being involved in a club doesn’t mean you’re not passionate about it. It just means that those people who are just make it their whole life/social scene, the way I make my dog and research my whole life.

On campus, things have settled down since the Tess Majors attack. I don’t think I wrote about it before: just a few days before finals week a Barnard freshman named Tess was stabbed to death in a mugging as she was walking back to campus. It was terrifying not only because she was an unarmed, white, freshman, but also because it happened with no provocation and extremely close to campus. I personally ended up deferring two of my finals to the beginning of this semester, because I was too scared to leave my dorm to study. I also spent a ridiculous amount of money on Postmates and when I had to leave I took a cab even 4 blocks. Since being back on campus, things have quieted down, but I along with a lot of other people downloaded the Citizens app, and that awareness of all the crime going on in the city makes me feel much more vulnerable still.

Also, for some reason a facebook page called Columbia Confessions has blown up; I’ve posted three or so times myself and my most recent one, a shitpost about stealing people’s Canada Gooses at parties, broke a hunnid which I’m proud of! I actually wrote it to specifically target some kid who kept complaining about his lost Valentino, and someone actually tagged him lmao.

Lastly (that I can think of), the housing process has just begun and its a weird time on campus as usual: freshmen breaking down and losing friends over groupings, sophomores just trying to avoid the drama of last year, juniors angling to see if they can get an EC suite or a nice Hogan single. I personally was offered a nice single in my sorority house which i GAVE UP because a good friend of mine we’ll call Omicron wanted to room together and I’m tired of not having friends lol. She’s got ODS accommodations and theoretically so do I, so we’re trying to go for a Watt, EC, or Woodbridge 2-bedroom suite. I don’t know which I want because I’ve never been in any of those dorms, besides an EC townhouse, so I’m feeling really nervous about giving up my brownstone room. But I don’t really fuck w my sorority anymore, and worst comes to worst I’ll live in River because they have some HUGE ass singles, so for now i’ll trust Omicron and hope that we get a Watt 2br because they have lounges. 

OH lastly for real, I’m in art hum this semester! so keep ur luscious eyes peeled for a Core Review at the end of this semester~

#columbia university #journal entry #columbia journal entry #ivy league #columbia confessions #undergrad research #stem research #chemistry #canada goose #columbia college

[thisnerdsadventures]

the last two weeks

Just two weeks ago, my friends and I went out to Yamato’s for the first time. 

It was sponsored by our dorm, so we racked up a nearly $1000 bill. We had a great time, but the end of our brunch came, and a few of us took a walk to the common for a Bernie rally, and the others went to the BPL to study. Afterwards, we all wound back on campus, and went about our Saturday doing the usual psetting. The current source of stress was the cup of grapes situation that spiraled wildly out of control, but in hindsight, it seems so inconsequential now. Eleven days ago, my friend and I went to Harvard for the day to decompress from everything. It was a beautiful day - the sun was out, we were wearing our light jackets. We went for ramen for lunch, shopped at a shoe store, and searched hopelessly for hand sanitizer. I had promised to work on my UROP but felt I deserved a day off, as I had been working tirelessly for a while. We walked around, taking it all in, I talked about how I was excited for our dinner on Friday and going to Michigan later in April for a conference. It looked like things might get better. The next day, the rumbling started. Harvard sent an email forbidding international travel. We had heard of the situation intensifying in Italy, but we were still nervously waiting to see what would happen. There were crisis-related rumblings on top of the usual school stress and all the things that had not gone well this semester, and just like that, the next day, MIT took it a step further and cancelled all large major events and banned international travel.

This was the first shock. Just earlier that day, I argued with my friend about her decision to back out of our spring break Spain trip due to coronavirus concerns. But now, five hours later, I sat on the ground in my friend's room as the shock passed over me. Every group chat was nonstop. What about CPW? What about Senior Ball? What about Springfest? Our spring break plans were definitely in the gutter now. Every question sent chills and dread down my spine. I heard someone ask whether commencement would still happen, and I cracked, not being able to face this eventuality that I prayed wouldn't happen. The rest of the day was gone, lost to the questions and stress and emails that ensued from this notification. But there were still personal conflicts. Personal problems, academic stress bubbling up to the surface for weeks, and it was coming to a head. Our dinner just over a week ago nearly didn't happen, but luckily a few of us still went to Harvard for a wonderful time. Our conversations surrounded how Harvard followed our footsteps just a day later on cancelling major events and how changes were so drastic. We contemplated whether the policy would be extended and whether our summer plans would be affected, but decided that that was too far in the future to worry about. So we ran across Harvard in the 30 degree night, snow falling from the sky, enjoying our time, not knowing what was to come. I spent what would be the last weekend preparing for a case. I prepped nonstop and thought I did really well on it in class, just this past Monday. It was a beautiful Monday, we biked to Panda Express with nothing but light jackets and we wished that every day could be like that, feeling like summer had come early in Boston. The situation outside was worsening, and we were watching closely to see what would happen. My friends from LA were trying to convince me to go to San Diego with them for a couple days now that my Spain trip was definitely cancelled. Over Twitter, we found out Princeton closed first, demanding it's undergraduates not come back from break, but i went to bed that Monday early, to prepare for a full day of research to come Tuesday, as my Tuesdays usually go, unblocked to make progress on my research. When I woke up Tuesday, there was something wrong. I knew from the blast of notifications from every group chat on every social media account I owned. My Harvard chat was 100+ messages deep by 9:30am from their closure and eviction of undergraduate students. I sat up immediately in bed and opened the other group chats, trembling. Another group of my friends were already organizing storage and coordinating travel ideas in the case that we would also be following suit after Harvard. 

I dashed to my computer to access all the other texts and call my dad, who was still awake in Taiwan. He told me to calm down and to wait. But just 30 minutes later, a screenshot leaked, confirming our worst fears - we would also be leaving campus in just a week, moving out for the semester. all classes would be online. My stomach dropped. In my attendance-based class, 2/3 of the class was present, and most were on their phone, checking for updates. We all anxiously waited the rumored 1pm email that would make it official. Everyone knew at this point, and seniors were feeling it all now, the shock, the grief, the celebration already of 4 years on campus. My friends and I cracked open a bottle of wine and took pictures on Killian with the hundreds of other students partying until 5pm. At 5pm though, the email released. It was official. All undergraduates were to move out in a week.

My floor exploded - flights frantically booked. What about storage? I called my mom and she was on it - Sunday afternoon flight booked, same one as my friend. And there was nothing to do except stare out the window of my friends room into the Boston skyline and finish off my wine bottle. And like many of my graduating peers, I realized that my senior year was done, and that I had not even a week to say goodbye to my home and to my friends. I started sobbing, nonstop. I hadn't cried like this since high school. My head of house started up a video call to the whole dorm, and hearing them talk logistics made me cry harder, and when I thought I stopped, I checked my phone and found an email from my professor berating the administration and acknowledging our irreplaceable loss. I cried again, harder. would commencement happen? Even if it did, my dad wouldn't be able to fly into the country. I continued to sob at the thought. After two hours, I eventually found my way to my friends bed where I fell asleep next to her until dinner, and with my eyes no longer swollen from tears, I wandered down to the dining hall with them. We saw other seniors, who had also been crying, judging from the redness in their eyes and cracks in their voices. The pain felt numb for me at this point. My friends stuck around for a bit, and we played some video games. No one on the floor was working, as we all had too much going on in our heads. The house team worked tirelessly to organize storage, and few of us slept that night. We stayed up chatting in the lobby about our families and going home and afterwards lied in our beds, sleepless, staring at the ceiling. The next day, I had just one class to go to, as large classes had been cancelled already. The campus was buzzing with yesterday's events. And in that class, we said our parting goodbyes, and many of us teared up yet again. But we laughed so hard too in that class, as we shared stories from our case just two days ago and for a moment, we forgot our pain. We took a class photo before we parted ways. After class, we lined up for an hour, each and every student, to personally thank our professor. 

My senior friends and I shared many meals together, and we parted, saying we'd see each other once again before we left. I watched my best friend take her swim test and watched as giant friend groups of other seniors came and cheered on their friends, fulfilling their last graduation requirement. To watch everyone support each other in these trying times brought warmth to my heart. I went home and ate dinner with my floor family, as we sat on the windowsills and drank boba and ate grilled cheeses. I was exhausted though, so I planned to go to bed at midnight, but I received a message from my best friend - she no longer was leaving on Monday, she was leaving in just eight hours.

I ran to maseeh and helped her pack until 5am. We packed up her curtains and I held her as she cried because she thought her parents were going to help her pack up her last year, just as they helped her screw in her curtains at the beginning of the year. I helped her store her stuff in the student center and we threw out bounties of trash and food. After I left, I knew with a sinking feeling that I wouldn't see her again for a while. And she cried a few more times and left early Thursday morning. When I woke up, she was gone. So I started cleaning and packing. The first boxes arrived in the green living room. In cleaning out my room, I found stuff from my first days of freshman year, my 8.02 exams, my chemistry notes, old electronics projects hidden away in boxes. And it was finally the end of my road, and so it was time to say goodbye to them. I spent so long mindlessly throwing stuff out, I had forgotten to leave McCormick until I finally went down to the lobby to hang out. And I hung out there for two hours, talking to everyone and anyone. I did a boba order for the ballerz, and my floor did yet another free dinner, so we once again ate together, laughing over the copious amount of free food on the kitchen table. Five or six of us returned to chatting and laughing about studying at home with family around in someone's room. A friend of mine invited us over to play Smash at BC, so we went and played a couple rounds. We returned to slowly packing until 11pm.

Things had been looking ok, as my dorm had dropped large amounts of money in buying everyone nice food. But when everyone received the emergency message from MIT telling us to leave by Sunday instead of Tuesday on Thursday night, the dorm exploded. Group chats started going off endlessly, with rumors of students already being sick or being quarantined on campus. I ran to my friends room, where she was already on the phone with her family, rebooking her flight for Saturday. "Just two days?" I thought to myself. "Not even two days I have left now with her and everyone and this home." She hung up the phone and started spilling rumors of Boston Logan closing on Monday. I melted to the floor, having a full panic attack. The dorm’s chat, another dorm’s chat, and every friend group chat started inciting even more fear and panic with each additional rumor. My ears were buzzing and my vision was blurring as I continued sitting on the floor. GRAs were woken up and started doing rounds on each floor, even though it was well past midnight at this point, to check on all the residents, many of whom were gathered in clusters around the floor. I went downstairs to talk to my GRA when I received a text from my friend. Chills ran down my back - "California might shut down within 24-48 hours." I did the math. The flight I rescheduled to just an hour ago was in 45 hours on Saturday afternoon. I felt another panic attack creeping up on me, so I ran off to talk to my friend. I went back up to my floor, where people were still yelling in the kitchen. She was off to the side, frantically still talking on the phone. Once I had calmed down a bit, I pulled her aside and told her about these messages, and she confirmed them in another group chat, showing me essentially a screenshot of a screenshot of a message in an unnamed group hat. Speechless, I stood in the hallway with her facing me. I guess she didn't know what else to do but hug me and reassure me it would be ok, because we had hit the point of simply not knowing what to do but say "I'm so sorry" to each other, as if it would ease the pain. I stayed up till 4:30am packing. My other friend called me, imploring me to change my flight to Friday, just 12 hours from then. I asked her bluntly, acknowledging my lack of family around the country - "if I can't go home, where am I supposed to go?" She promised I could stay with her in Texas and I stared back in disbelief, that we would reach this point of possibility that we would have no place to go, but that people would be so nice to open their homes to others who simply had no other place to go. I stared at my hopelessly unpacked room, the half consumed cider on the desk, and my sheer exhaustion, which had been kept awake by adrenaline. I called my mom again, who I'm sure was also was sleepless and asked whether our neighbor had also changed her flight. She said she didn't know whether they were able to change it. The next morning, two people woke me up two different times. Early in the morning, I fought for laundry machines and finished up most of my packing. That afternoon, I hung out in the lobby with my friends again and screamed out the window on a beautiful day as we blasted BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY into the courtyard. My dorm had a senior sendoff, complete with a senior gift and confetti, and a walk to Pomp and Circumstance, which was touching, considering we might not get commencement at the end of the year. But having everyone there to celebrate our little community and watch us walk to receive our fake diplomas and take senior pictures meant a lot to me.

Shortly after, I went up to the penthouse to watch the sunset for the last time. I had watched so many sunsets on top of that rooftop, as it was my goto spot when things went wrong. And things had never quite gone so wrong as this time. I looked at Fenway, where I went to my first Red Sox game, and Prudential, where my favorite gelato place is, and over to the right where BU is, where my friends and I run along the Esplanade. Every building, I could pin a memory. I watched the cars run down the bridge, where my friend and I pulled an all-nighter and watched the most beautiful sunrise. I watched the river slowly churn along and thought about how much I would miss seeing this every day. To think that just two weeks ago we had been yelling at each other about taking grapes out of the dining hall, that we were angry at each other for doing A or not doing B or saying C, all these problems were so inconsequential now. When you have just a few days left with the people you love, you remember that being around them and laughing and smiling with them is the most important thing, bottom line. I wrote letters to my friends to thank them for being them and sealed them into envelopes for the next day, and returned downstairs to store my stuff in the storage pod and eat dinner. Afterwards, we lied on our bare mattresses and laughed until 2am. My friend returned from maseeh also late that night, her eyes red from saying goodbye to her senior friends. I said good night and see you tomorrow, for what would be the last time for a while. That last morning, I said goodbye to so many people. It didn't really feel like goodbye, or maybe it hasn't set in yet. I watched my first friend leave in her Uber, and I hung out with my other friend until she left just an hour before me. And then it was my turn to leave, as I said goodbye to all the GRAs and my area director, promising I'd be back. And I took that one last walk out the front door. Halfway down the driveway, I took one last look back at the building I called home for four years, a place that had changed so much since I entered it four years ago, but has also changed me so much too. I thought about where I met my friends for the first time, the midnight piano in the GLR, the many nights spent talking until late night in 4 and 5 west. But the car was waiting, so I turned back to my ride to the airport, and I gave my friend one last hug and watched her wave as I drove away, down Memorial Drive, one last time.

#m

[im-the-underground]

A Bitter Goodbye

By Caspar Kent

December 12, 2021

Welcome back everyone, I apologize for the missed post last week. I was busy with the end of semester crunch to finish projects, having a mental breakdown and helping a wannabe vigilante stay alive, you know, nothing unusual. On to the important things: campus news!

As you all may have noticed, campus activity has been in flux these last two weeks. We all came back from thanksgiving with an extra few pounds to our names then promptly hid away to study for the last exam (not 'final' exam, those are reserved for the coming week) or to finish the last pSet and try to bump our grade up a letter (or for some, simply keep them from dropping down). All this pressure was kept building as we were trapped inside by the cold and lack of sufficient snow to throw around. If I'm honest, I was expecting it to burst well before now, but by and large people have held on.

Outside of campus there has been renewed activity on the streets. Our wannabe vigilante, Polymetis, has decided to force me into helping her again and I guess that is better than the alternative. She has since taken down a few muggers and purse snatchers and even stopped a drug deal. At the beginning of the semester she didn't look like much but now, well, now she might end up actually saving someone's life one day. As much as I hate to admit it. There had been silence from the other end of the spectrum as Alexandrite, who has previously been referred to as 'The Eye', seemed inactive after the short team up with Polymetis. And unfortunately we have seem to have seen her re-enter the stage.

There was a body discovered on the north side of town with her classic eye watching over it when the police arrived. At that time, she was nowhere to be found, although I have a source who witnessed the event, but I'll spare you the details. I looked into the victim and found no connection between him and Alexandrite leaving more questions in the air. Did he deserve what he got? Was it worth it? These questions are yet to be answered and unfortunately will lie dormant for a while. As it stands I am finished with school work until the new year and have no finals so this will be my final post for the semester.

Thank you for standing by, readers- we’ll be back with more updates after the break.

#writing #oc #fiction #writeblr #vigilante series #tw murder

[hagiographically]

Hey libby, I just wrapped up my first quarter @ stan and i got kinda wrekt -- 3 b+ with a pretty light courseload. I'm not sure if it's bc I just really didn't get the material or bc I didn't work hard enough (more likely) but I'm kinda concerned how this will impact me + my premed goals goin forward. Plus I'm taking an objectively HEAVY load next quarter which is nerve-wracking. Any words of wisdom?

ya i can try to help! im not premed, so grades are different for me in terms of importance, but i def have the advantage of experience so heres whats worked for me or what ive heard:

i took a heavy load this quarter and i was super scared about how it would affect me too, but the biggest thing is staying organized. i am a really messy and disorganized person, but every time i got an assignment i would catalogue it (i kept all my to-do’s in an iphone note) and at least start it. it’s much easier to work on an assignment that you’ve already looked at and begun. i also opened and bookmarked a google doc for each class and kept notes there. this was good to keep all my knowledge and notes separate and also make sure i’d documented everything i needed. so i never fell behind on assignments, and would usually finish them one or two days before. this was huge for my stress levels! i rarely got overwhelmed. also, if there’s an easy/quick assignment, do it as soon as possible to just get it over with.

self-care is important, but productive self-care. like, if i wanted to go shopping instead of work on my thesis, that’s the opposite of self-care and would probably make me feel worse in the end. it’s important to take “you time” when you need it, but for me, self-care is just about making my tasks more enjoyable. like, sometimes i would drink wine while doing symsys psets, and that was great because i was still getting work done while also enjoying myself. (i would obviously go over the pset when i’d sobered up, but the nice thing about starting assignments super early is there’s no pressure to make them good – you can always go back and refine it.) or, i got really into taking mood supplements this summer, and that’s made a HUGE difference in my motivation. i actually like working on a lot of things now! or i would listen to some good music and drink coffee while working at starbucks in a lit outfit, things like that. if i put myself in a happy work zone, i feel way better and more into creating good output.

it’s important to have a work-life balance, but i would say that blending work and life is actually a better idea. like, most of when i saw friends this quarter was just working together at coho. and that was great, because i was able to be productive and social at the same time, freeing other time to do whatever i wanted/needed. this also helped me feel less overwhelmed because social obligations can feel draining/stressful when you have a lot of academic pressures, and also having other people around is really motivating for me. i definitely had to go out less & be less social as the quarter wore on, but not thinking about that as a chore was helpful. like, taking an early night can actually be pretty fun? i wouldn’t work on those nights, i’d just chill and listen to music and do stuff i liked, and then i’d go to bed at 10 and be up the next morning and be ready to work– whereas if i’d gone out, i would’ve been hungover and irritated till like 2pm lol. so sometimes you’ll have to say no to things that are ~less fun~ but i certainly don’t regret it at all and it was honestly probably better for my health. it’s all about how you budget your time. 

but mainly find out what works for you and do it. i realized that i do very poor work in my room unless i’m really stressed and have an assignment due that day. so if it’s your room, your lounge, tresidder, the library, alone, with people, whatever it is….find it and do it! it was super helpful for me knowing that i can only work with friends if we commit to not distracting each other, so i would often have to say no if i was really concerned about work. and that def helped me just knowing my own capabilities and how i perform best. my mood supplements and caffeine also help with this, because when i’m depressed i perform worse and i have no motivation. so that was some trial and error, figuring out how to be Less Depressed and taking effort to do those things. this and being organized are the best pieces of advice i can give, probably.

oh also! get help. i would have done Very Poorly in perception and symsys if i didn’t treat office hours as a religion (don’t know my final grade for symsys, but i have a 97 right now, and i got a 99 in perception). i wrote it into my schedule and went to multiple sets of office hours every week just because those subjects don’t come naturally to me, so i forced myself to learn the concepts over and over again until i actually knew them. i HIGHLY recommend going to office hours whenever you can – i definitely plan on it for stats next quarter. it’s actually so helpful and so good for your grades, like the TAs basically told us all we needed to know for homework and tests. and then, if office hours isn’t an option, talking to people who took the class/know the subjects, going online, or just like, getting a tutor is always really good. it’s always good to have extra help and support. like i said, if i had just gone through this quarter alone, i definitely would’ve gotten B’s (at best) in those courses.

i hope this helps & good luck!!

#advice #studying #i was supposed to make some post about getting a good GPA #bc i finally cleared 4.0 again \m/ #but my brain is still fogged i have a limited memory of how i got good grades also #i didnt really deserve them till last qtr #so #lol #grades #studyblr #stan #stanford

[realtalk-princeton]

Question for Clover: any advice for sophomore-fall MAE classes? I'm enrolled in 305, 221 and 223 and scared for thermo/diff eqs. Do you recommend any strategies? I'm also taking intro to neuro for the Robotics certificate, and a Politics class on the presidency, should I consider PDFing that depending on how it goes?

Response from Clover:

Those are the same 3 MAEs I took in the fall! I took them along with a STEM certificate class as well, and then a PDFO distrubution. I think sophomore fall MAE can be challenging because you’re really thrust into it all. I’m going to write about each one individually below, and then follow up with other stuff.

Thermo has a “reputation” of sorts because lab makes it “1.5” classes with problem sets, quizzes, and lab reports, lab grading can be harsh, and the subject matter can be generally difficult. The class starts off weirdly easy with sort of just “in = out” stuff... but around midterm season, things escalate fast. Be sure to be ready for this jump, and stay on top of it. Everything builds in the class, so (for example) if you don’t understand the process in a Rankine cycle when you first learn it, fix that right away. Go to office hours, go back through the notes, etc. until you learn that weeks content, because otherwise that confusion will compound and leave you confused the rest of the semester and scrambling to learn from the ground up come finals period (speaking from experience 😔). I think one of the most important things is to make sure all the terms that get thrown around in lecture mean something to you. For me, a big issue was I’d sit down for a given weeks homework all about “X cycle problems”, and could do them just fine— but I didn’t understand what I was doing, just going through the motions of that week. When an exam rolled around and everything was mushed together, I couldn’t parse how to solve the problem because I didn’t know what was what. So really staying on top of new terms is good too. Exams were hard but dw the curve is your friend. As for labs, they were graded pretty harshly our year— this is dependent on the AIs you get. I recommend trying to finish your reports early and go to TA office hours to get feedback on your reports before turning them in— this will help you to not lose silly points and play to the graders preference (some graders care a lot about decimal places, for example).

305 is some tough math and has an equally tough weekly workload. Howard Stone’s lectures were great for me at the beginning because I could follow along step-by-step with him. Towards the end of the semester when things got into PDEs, I shifted my attention more to his gigantic 400 page notes, which are super detailed and helpful. Most important of all though are precepts. A lot of 305 preceptors are awesome and post great weekly notes (one even posted awesome study guides for the exams). I think 305 is mostly about being sure to give yourself enough time to really work through the problem sets— they’re extremely valuable to your understanding, so you don’t want to rush. Exams in 305 didn’t really throw curveballs like MAT 201/202 did imo— very comparable to the problem sets. Finally: don’t get spooked by the 1st HW. It is very long, but dw they don’t all take that long (except towards the very end of the course).

Finally... 223. Amazing. Spectacular. Andrej is amazing. His lectures are engaging even for 1.5 hrs, as he gives breaks and also doesn’t just read off slides. The slides supplement what he’s saying with the big formulas/theorems, and then he does problems off to the side, which is awesome!!! Usually lecture is just content, but he shows you how to set up problems which is helpful if you like seeing steps being worked out. Now this might be because I’m more of a “physical object” MAE person, but I think the content made sense throughout the whole course, and on top of that... was very interesting and cool!! Problem sets can be tricky but office hours are useful for getting the set-up. Exams are very comparable to homeworks, nothing where you’re like “wtf is this”. Only qualm was I didn’t find precepts very helpful and fully stopped going after the first few. It was mostly specific to the AIs teaching it didn’t help me in terms of my personal learning style, so gauge for yourself! I will say that not attending didn’t have an impact on my performance in the course, but if I’d attended and been engaged, I bet it would’ve helped me “get” the homework problems faster.

For every class above, what I recommend more than ANYTHING is to make PSET groups! I cannot stress this enough. Have weekly PSET checking sessions, even if it’s different groups for each class— you’ll really need it. Helps so much for working through problems, checking your answers, etc.. can also be (imo) more productive than office hours because it’s a small group so you all move at about the same pace and you’re not waiting around for help. Also a convenient and wonderful way to make MAE friends who will be with you in coming semesters :’)

I know this was hella long but yeah just wanted to give a gist of my personal advice/suggestions. It can be hard for sure, and take up a lot of time, but staying on top week to week will help prevent “world collapsing” moments. That sort of brings me to the final point, which is definitely be open to PDFing if you need. Fall semester taught me the value of taking it easy where I can. I got over the hump of “ohhh but I always wanna give 101%” and dropped some commitments and prioritized my work in certain ways such that I could get sleep, do clubs, etc.. If you think a PDF will help you focus more on your MAE classes, I would encourage you to consider it, because your MAE classes will be most important at the end of the day.

[noheroes-allowed]

week 5

day 29: life is all the same? just hw and not finding motivation, and eating whenever I go downstairs to the kitchen to refill my water and subsequently feeling guilty for eating like 5 meals a day and also breaking my 9pm rule bc I get so hungry after runs, idk just trying to study for my prelim later this week but its really hard to just. get the momentum to do so

day 30: got a blister from running today which sucks, keep trying to wake up at 8 but it’s really not happening, was supposed to study for my prelim but I literally did so little work, listened to my lectures and finished the 4660 pset but like. I put so much work on my calendar to finish and I have not completed everything I assign myself since like last week

day 31: look. I just want to go cherry picking, my prelim tomorrow is for my money and credit class. and I’ve been trying to get the motivation to study the next chapter of the book but it’s literally on financial crises. and I just can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t. not when we’re going through one. not when my book uses the 2008 recession as an example and this one is worse. 

day 32: I had a dream the vaccine would come out in ith on sept 6, prelim was easier than expected

day 33: leafblower man returned, I made pb cookies wearing my jeremy sweatshirt and listening to his new album

day 34: a lot of b99, did some work for 4110 and completely lost on 4660, didn’t run, read the sky is everywhere for like 2.5 hours 

day 35: look I’m just saying why is there a correlation between dreams with him in it and sleeping well, today was hard. I got a grade back on an assignment and it was a 78% but I literally don’t know what I did wrong. I spent 30+ hours on this stupid thing. I can’t figure out the 4660 pset. idk what I’m doing with refactored rn. things are a mess and it’s making me a lot less motivated. 

#remarks #I mean. look these numbers cannot be right #I hate the progression of time hahahaha

[topolojack]

to do this week write equity statement, share with team (and hopefully mitigate future (present?) conflict) finish op ed laundry algebra pset prepare this week's recitations edit children case, strengthen colleges case, see about turning refugee subsidies into a case finish preparing multiplicative structures in k theory meet w debate partner for nyu read relevant lit and decide on environmental topic i think i might have a transatlantic policy group project in the near future? idk. not sure. which reminds me, catch up on the transatlantic readings go to nyu and debate! (and also enjoy my first time on manhattan) and then come back and study for my two exams next week

#jack does college #competitive yelling #im like really falling behind on responsibilities lately so hopefully writing things will help

[catchmesinging-blog]

MIT Blogger 3 Questions

What happened Tuesday?

The pencil slowly scratched against the paper as my heart beat fast and the mosquitos slowly pecked at my legs. I was drawing—wow, after how many years? I had stumbled upon an uncomfortable situation after all. A week in the same house as 8 of my cousins. A week with people I barely knew and people I considered very different from me. Thus, I did what I usually do when I don’t know what’s wrong—I let my thoughts flow through my hands. Either writing or drawing works. In this case, I let my pencil make the shape of a bull dog with a seal coming out of it’s ear. The seal looked worried, but over all, it looked like a coherent drawing, although a bit concerning. 

Imagine spending most of your life running away from an idea—growing up, in this case. Or at least thinking that “doing grown-up society things” made you fake and mainstream, and thus you should avoid them at all costs. Imagine that your friends are mostly people who challenge the norms, and then all of a sudden, you are expected to let others recommend you what to wear, say, and look for a party. Imagine spending years running away from people who sit down and gossip about each other’s appearences to then have them be your cousins. 

I am in Peru, and I decided to go on vacation with my cousins to a beach in the north for a week. Tuesday--the first afternoon. And I was already feeling confused. I had never drunk as much alcohol as them...I have a simple fashion style...why does it matter that your friend gained two pounds...why is everyone on their phones?? 

So it was Tuesday afternoon and I was about to go partying with my cousins and I was afraid. So I called my dad. There are two things that I do when I feel confused--I either let my thoughts flow or I call my dad/mom. Both provide wisdom. 

What is your current obsession?

I think I follow too many Broadway stars on Instagram. It’s Broadway. How can I not be obsessed with the thought of embodying a story through words, creating a whole world with my stories and the stories of others? Speaking from the heart, singing from the deepest parts of the diaphragm!! A yes, performance. My second love, next to reading (and my family). Although, since I started MIT, that obsession has diminished. I think it has to do with the fact that my mind thinks it will never get the chance to be this way—meet Ben Platt, sing with Sara Bareilles, go to the Tonys and perform, a thought that a year ago filled my heart with joy but currently feels a bit more like an aching longing while I do psets and look at STEM careers. 

The thousands of Bollywood songs I listened to, but now are just an old playlist on my YouTube account. The thousands of facts I knew about Shah Rukh Khan, how I dreamed of singing Hindi along side him. Yet, here we are. I still “heart” every Ben Platt post about his new tour around the country and cry (sob, actually, if I’m being very honest) when I watch someone singing to express their pain or joy for the first time. Because I believe in the arts!! And as much as some people might say that the arts have no place in front of science and facts and unquestionable ideas—why limit ourselves to that part of ourselves and not embrace the intangible?

Honestly, Broadway creates some really beautiful stuff. If those people ever have some free time, I’d recommend them to watch Lin Manuel Miranda sing Disney songs or belt Hamilton raps. Or to have them try it themselves. It’s the most beautiful feeling—standing on a stage, proclaiming the stories of others at the top of your range and knowing that everyone around you hears you. It’s liberating, it’s humbling, it’s purposeful, it’s beautiful :)  

 What is something vexing that you're currently wrestling with?

It’s hard for me to define what I’m struggling with—maybe that’s why I struggle with it so much :) But I think it is deeply rooted in my identity. My friend Enriko put it very beautifully in his last post in the MISTI blogs website (www.mistiblogs.com) –how, coming from a community where getting to MIT was rare and wonderful and amazing, and yet, how I had formed a whole identity surrounding this one goal. And now I don’t know what to do or how to act. 

Scene 1: High School Luisa is invited to a party.

*smiling and laughing with a friend*

Friend: Luisaaaa!! What are you doing this weekend? Do you want to come to a party?

My mind: Luisa, don’t. Don’t---NO, don’t you DARE go out this weekend, you have to finish this essay and you KNOW it’s going to take you forever so don’t you DARE. And besides, students like you can stay innocent and inexperienced and you’ll still be accepted. And you want to go to MIT so, just focus on this. You promised your mom you wouldn’t drink and doing anything else—heck no.

Me: But—but I haven’t gone out all year. A couple of hours wouldn’t hurt would it? Besides, I want to get to know this person better and I trust them…

My mind: Do you think this person likes you?? A person like HIM wouldn’t like a student like you. You can’t even go out very often. You are not like them. YOU are to stay home and sing and be happy and work with your heart and…done. You know what your goal is.

Me: I’m sorry, I can’t. I have a project due Monday…*resumes smiling*

Scene 2: Luisa is accepted to MIT

Friend: Congratulations Luisa!!! Oh my gosh, it was your dream school!! You are so smart, you are so amazing!!

My mind: *quiet*

Me: Wait, why am I feeling sad and lonely?

My mind: You never deserved this. You wanted to be a singer, yet you followed what was set for you. Look at all the wonderful engineers on the Facebook page for MIT 2021, are you like them?? You are an artist! You are being a sellout by going to that place!!

Me: Thank you! *big smile, pit of confusion in my stomach*

 And thus I am struggling with my identity. Sticking so strictly to my identity or “who I thought I was” closed doors that looking back, I would have liked to open. Was it worth it? Leaving behind so many things to go to college and maybe not “living my teenage years” like others? 

But this—this “Box” thing doesn’t work at MIT. MIT students are unique. They show me everyday that it is okay to be oneself, even if one doesn’t know who one is yet. And is opening up to the possibility of leaving old perceptions of oneself behind and embracing better ones, however frightening that might be. 

What will I decide to live? When I fall in love, what will I choose to do with my partner? What type of person will I love? What will my career be? What do I say to friends different from me? How do I reconcile my past with my present? How am I loyal to the values taught to me by my family yet open to new experiences?

These are the questions that vex me at the moment. Wrestling is a good word. Like a butterfly in her cocoon, I am wrestling with the outer layers I have held for so long and hoping that through lots of love, work, and trust--the future I will see with my new wings and experiences will be as beautiful as the childhood I carry in the deepest part of my heart. 

[realtalk-princeton]

How hard is the analysis sequence for intended math majors with little experience with proofs?

Response from Sushi:

Marty and Scipio should also reply to this question. I’m assuming you mean 215/217. I only have experience with 215, but I’ve heard 217 is just an extension of 215 except for linear algebra instead of single var calc so it should be similar.

TL;DR: It’s like sprinting for the entire semester, but the first two weeks are very much uphill, and the next 10 weeks are uphill but not as much. But at the end, you’ll have climbed a mountain, and depending on what you end up doing, it could be the tallest mountain you’ll ever climb at Princeton.

There is definitely a steep learning curve. The first two weeks will no doubt be the most difficult as you’re trying to find your footing among your peers who may come in with more experience. To give an example, there was a really simple induction problem on the first 215 pset, but I had never done induction before, so I inducted on the wrong variable and obviously got the entire problem wrong. But my teacher and grader were really nice and let me resubmit the whole problem for points back because it was an honest misunderstanding of how induction worked, and I had never seen such a thing before. Anyway, during these first few weeks it will be hard, but you have your instructor’s OH, problem sessions, and other students in the class to lean on.

Your pset and quiz grades will probably trend upwards for the rest of the semester, even though you’ll still have to put in the same amount of effort each week. I’m not going to sugarcoat things because the class will be hard. Unless it clicks for you early on, you will struggle, and the problem sets will take ~20 hours a week most weeks. But most people do struggle, even if they have proof experience, because at this point everything is new material. You will become friends over the pain and suffering of things like, your instructor assigning an extra problem the night before the pset is due, or weekly quizzes every Tuesday. 

That being said, over 50% of the class dropped when I took it, a couple after the first and second psets, and a large portion after the midterm. But it’s also ok to drop the class if it’s too hard. People decide that they either love the process enough to become a math major, or they decide it isn’t worth it and they want to major in something more applied. Which is totally fine, and the class is PDFable for this reason. 

I stuck it through primarily for grad school reasons (I realllyyyy wanted to drop by week 10), but by the end of the semester, I was surprised at how much mathematical maturity I had gained. It’s to the extent that I attribute a lot of my success in my research and other classes to having put in the hours in MAT 215 to learn how to do the type of problem solving thinking needed to do proofs. I’ve never had to take a class as hard as MAT 215 since then (except for Chinese, but that class is hard for diff reasons). Our MAT 215 is apparently equivalent to graduate level analysis at other schools. I ended up TAing MAT 215 too, so sure the class was hard, but I went from literally not being able to do induction to being on the other side of problem sessions the following semester. Also as Marty has mentioned in a past post, you can finish the rest of the math major without taking a class significantly harder than 215. So if you finish the class, you’re pretty set for the major. So what I’m saying is that it’s hard but rewarding, and you probably won’t have to take anything as hard as it ever again if you don’t want to. 

I would also recommend reading this old post that Marty and I wrote about how to take advantage of specific resources in 215 if you don’t have a proof-based background: https://realtalk-princeton.tumblr.com/post/178791203014/sushi-am-dying-in-mat-215-how-does-someone 

Response from Scipio:

This is a really great, comprehensive answer from Sushi. Personally, I didn’t have much proof experience before taking 215, so I spent the summer before practicing. A number of universities offer an introduction to proofs course. I’d recommend finding lecture notes for those classes and working through them. Practice proving everything they ask, even really boring, trivial statements. The lecture notes for 215 are online. Look at those and practice problems similar to what you’ll see in the course. Likewise, I bought Baby Rudin (Principals of Mathematical of Analysis) before I left campus and worked out problems from the first 3 chapters once I felt like I knew how to prove things. Baby Rudin is a fantastic resource, but it’s super dense. I’d recommend trying to get a grasp on basic proofs, set theory, and other math terms before you start working through Baby Rudin. I suppose you can’t buy it, but PDFs are available online. 

 All in all, I find proofs as sort of a mix between generalizing what you’re used to already in math and writing valid arguments from philosophy. My two methods for attacking problems in 215 were1. Whenever there is a ‘math term’ in the question stem, write out what that term means. Continue breaking down the terms until you get to a level that you understand. It’s tough for me to intuit what makes a set “compact,” so I would consistently write the definition, and make it something I knew how to work with (closed sets and covers). This really helped me build a strong intuition for a bunch of different concepts. Think sorta like working with sequences and series after you’ve done it for a while. 2. Draw pictures, work small examples, and find similar questions in the textbook. Typically, one of these three is super effective. When you’re working smaller questions, be sure to ask yourself conceptually why you can prove what you can in this case, and see how you can abstract this to the general case.

Hope this helps! 

[thisnerdsadventures]

year 2.... already?

idk how but im a sophomore and all the frosh are here

jaden smith was here today. he was apparently in 3.091. i know that they had small goodie bags last year to add to the class material, but i’m not quite sure what giving the students a jaden smith appearance adds.

anyways here is what i’m doing this semester!

classes:

6.009 - fundamentals of programming: seems like just a lot of coding in python for various applications. just finished a lab on image processing, and so far it seems manageable, but then again 6.006 hasn’t started yet and i’m assuming this was just a starter lab that probably will not be as bad as the future labs. The class seems pretty independent such that most of the class will be focused on just completing the labs, which is pretty chill. The class only meets a couple times officially every week, so that’s also a plus.

6.006- intro to algorithms: i’ve heard so much about this class and i’m kinda scared, but everyone I know has gotten through it somehow. just bought my knockoff paperback version of the book, and so far the first couple lectures have been ok. (I’m gonna get the first pset tomorrow and my life is going to go downhill fast but thats all right.) the first lecture was pretty intimidating actually, our prof said something about recurrences and i had no idea what a recurrence was, but i went home and looked it up in my book and understood it all right. this class will probably be my hardest class for the semester, and it hasn’t quite started yet, so i’ve found myself with some free time to write this post the day before the first pset releases.

6.036 - intro to machine learning: i’ve been pretty into machine learning since my urop ended this summer, so i’m pretty excited to learn more. Not a huge fan of the class structure since theyre teaching it flipped classroom style this semester (read/watch lectures at home, then come to class and do problems). Personally, I’d rather go to class for a lecture than literally sitting in a room doing homework when I could do that in my dorm room on my bed, but I see how it might be better for some people. Still, I think the content is really exciting and I think i’m doing well in the class so far. Thank god I had my research project over the summer because i got to experiment already with numpy and understand the high level point of machine learning (for instance, what the training and test data are, stuff like that).

intro to world music - taking this class for my HASS and CI-H, but it seems like a cool class. unfortunately i had to drop my other class because the first day of harmony and counterpoint II gave me serious anxiety and i couldn’t get into h & c I after reg. but apparently in this class we get to play various instruments and we’re also required to go see other world music performances, and it sounds like a load of fun! i’m also looking forward to writing about something else other than literature because i feel like i’ve done that all my life

other things:

still doing my job with the science fair and seeing if i can find a urop before direct funding deadline r i p. i’m trying to find something in comp bio, but we’ll see how that goes

i also applied for code for good and techx! chances i get into techx?! probably slim! but thats ok! i’m also doing house gov stuff and quidditch still. not doing adt dance this semester bc i missed auditions, but i’ll get back on that next semester def. i’m also going to be applying to a lot of internships and hopefully career fair will be fruitful, otherwise you’ll see me back on here posting deep stuff about imposter syndrome because that’s what happens here! [screams internally]

eh heh things are going ok i suppose. i just hope i find a urop. and an internship. [screams more]

#m

[thisnerdsadventures]

a couple notes on the semester

It is 8:30am on a Sunday - why am I up this early. Well the answer to that question is that I woke up with a splitting headache resulting from dehydration at around 6 and then spent two hours on Youtube watching food videos and deciding where to eat today for dinner. Really though, I’ve been on a rough schedule this semester, so maybe this weird sleep schedule is a result of night after night after night of late nights and coffee-dependent days.

I sometimes wake up in the morning and ask myself, “how did I end up here?” Not in a bad way, but more in a “how did I fail to get sleep again” way. I somehow ended up with a horrific weekday schedule, tryna cram around 50-60 hours of work/class/psetting into 4.5 days and then attempting to leave weekends freer for recovery, but I also end up doing too many fun things on the weekends (I know, the horror)

For instance, here are some of the fun things I’ve done this semester:

hike at crane beach! the nicest sand and clearest water within 50 miles of boston, guaranteed. although the hike was actually way harder than I thought it would be

biked to the potato memorial

went on the Maseeh boat cruise!

kayaked in the charles. <- This was particularly terrifying because when we tried to turn around, we kept on going around in circles and there was an honest fifteen minutes we thought we would be stuck in the river, but we made it back! Also we got yelled at by a guy whose boat we kept running into

Got lunch with my old team at googz. good to see them :’), counting down the days i can finally go full time LOL

house gov retreat, where we also attempted to go kayaking but then ended up going to tosci’s instead

went back to the aquarium for disorientation

caught up with a BU friend over sushi and visited my friend in Random

a couple of frat parties

there was one sunday morning we cleaned the exec closet which was a ridiculous endeavor in which we found a sports illustrated issue from 2008. this is definitely just one of those weird things that happen when you’re on exec for clubs

saw michelle wolf live for fallfest!

there was this one weird day that we ended up playing quidditch with the MSA and then ended up at the galleria and then i dropped $40 on a blazer at H&M

i can’t believe this many fun things happened in one month. and there’s only more to comE!!!!!

On the other hand, I mentioned that this semester has been a hell of a grind for some unknown reason compared to past semesters, but my running explanation for this is that my operating systems class ended up being 2.5x the amount of work and emotional toil that I thought it would be, and I already thought it would be pretty bad. The running joke is that I see this other GRA in my dorm way more than my actual GRA because she works on the same floor as this class’s office hours, and I live in office hours. Additionally, I’m pouring a lot of hours into my research (maybe like 2x what I was putting in last semester, when I was just writing the paper). And then there’s like clubs, and the ballerz, and interviews, and working out, and house gov exec, and model UN stuff, and other weird commitments I get myself involved with during the week, and then before you know it, you’re running around for 10-11 hours a day before you can finally come home and DO HOMEWORK.

Here are some slightly concerning things I have pulled in the last four weeks for my commitments - 

Last week, I was working on making all my figures in vector format for paper revisions, so basically sat myself down at 7pm and worked until 2:30am in the athena cluster on adobe illustrator without looking at my phone or facebook or anything. i had oreos, three computer screens open and coffee, I must’ve looked like I had lost it or something

the week before that, there was a 18 (10pm Wed -> 4pm Thurs) hour period where I had spent 14 hours working on a pset. This was also kind of bad

Oh, and in this 18 hour period, my friend and I had gone to the student center to buy coffee at 2:30am but (thankfully) verdes was closed, so we ended up sitting on the floor of the stud and screaming profanity

there was this one 48 hour period in september where I spent like five hours on Monday working on a pset, had a crisis at 3am, emailed my advisor like “i need to meet you i am having a crisis”, continued to work on the pset the next day for 6 hours, went to the meeting with my advisor, dropped the class from grad to undergrad status, and then stayed up until 3am again doing this other class’s pset from start to finish.

;_; you HATE TO SEE IT. anyways

some good things have been happening, and some good things are coming. For example, i just got this really awesome externship position and just got a potential match for next summer in NYC, so that’s all exciting! My friends and I also got accepted to hack Princeton, so we’ll be going there in November, and we’re planning this fairly extensive party for house gov, happening in 2 weeks. Model UN is going to Rhode island also in November! Ballerz games are starting next weekend and we’ll likely be putting up a blog post about it too, so I’m super excited to contribute to that.

Well. That was enough spouting thoughts. I think I’m going to go work out now, but a final note is I really liked this blog post from my friend. It’s all about brutal honesty here and how people here just love to do everything. and that’s probably one of the biggest “flaws”, but also the most beautiful thing about lots of people on this campus. Also can we just talk about the couple paragraphs: 

“Some people call Course 6’s sellouts. I don’t really think they are. You have a higher chance of job security, although not fully guaranteed, in pursuing Course 6. It has one of the highest average job salary when looking at first jobs post graduation. And, there’s a special program called M.Eng that gives you both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in five years, as opposed to the typical six. It is…pretty tempting.

But of course there are downsides, like the previously stated fact that there ARE a lot of Course 6’s and it’s probably going to be really competitive to get internships. Or that people are going to think you’re selling out, when in reality you do have a genuine passion for computer science. Or maybe you are doing it for the perks, but even then, that’s understandable since MIT really, really gives Course 6 some big perks.”

People close to me used to give me shit about being Course 6, and it took me many many moons to overcome it. I used to think about whether I was really maximizing the worth of my degree, whether I could be doing more, whether I could be in a more high-impact position or major. But at the end of the day, SWE stuff like what I was doing this summer, maybe it’s not going to cure cancer, but the work and the product were fucking cool. and it was fulfilling! Turns out I actually like coding and thinking about computer systems. And the people? so. awesome. and you know what? that should be enough. 

#sidenote i scrolled down a little more on this post and i didnt know what a constructor really was until like #my sophomore year lmao #m