We spent our IAPs in two different states, for the second time. We both did one-month long externships through the MIT externship program that the MIT Alumni association coordinates. It is a super cool opportunity that connects current MIT students to do work at companies that MIT alumni work at! There is a huge list of companies to choose from, and since this program is only open to MIT students, the application pool to these opportunities is much smaller. The program lasts a relatively short amount of time (4 weeks), so it is a great chance to explore a field that you are interested in, but are not sure if you want to pursue. Or, it’s also great for getting industry experience in a field that you know you want to pursue, but maybe have not gotten the chance to get your foot in the door through the oftentimes very competitive summer internship cycles. And if you end up not enjoying the experience, it’s not the biggest loss, since the program is so short. We actually only found out about this program last year after the deadline, so we knew we wanted to do it in our senior year IAPs, and we did! Here are our experiences:

Allan’s IAP 

My externship was in a VR company in Venice, California called Wevr (rhymes with Beaver). This company makes very cool VR experiences, like theBlu, which is an experience that immerses the user in a beautiful underwater story!

I was the only extern during the month, and I worked on a challenging R&D VR project. While I wasn’t able to fully complete it, I learned so, so much during the month! My supervisor actually placed emphasis on this being a learning experience, which I really appreciated, as it allowed me to feel enough freedom to try and fail. It did get frustrating at times, but overall, I still look back on the month happy with what I gained. 

Besides actual work, I got to do some fun things throughout the month! The first weekend, I went to Little Tokyo and The Last Bookstore with a friend who was also in the LA area doing an externship. The second weekend, I went to a great hot pot restaurant with the MIT alumni hosting my externship. And, in the last weekend, my host took me to actually experience theBlu! It was honestly breathtaking, and the most immersive VR experience I have ever seen. At some points, I literally had to repeat in my head “This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real.”  

random cottage I thought was really cute!

random fence that I liked

cool sculpture a little outside Little Tokyo

cute plushies in a store in Little Tokyo that I regret not buying

book tunnel from The Last Bookstore!

cool sculpture form The Last Bookstore

cute plants from The Last Bookstore

Previous Next

Danny 

My externship was in a start-up in Cambridge (basically adjacent to MIT’s campus) called Brain Power. They make AR applications on Google Glass to help kids with autism, ADHD, and Social-Emotional Learning Challenges. They have a great mission and their product, backed by peer-reviewed research, is making positive change in many kids’ lives! 

There were a total of 9 externs at Brain Power, 3 in Web Development, 3 in Product Management, and 3 in Unity Development. I was on the Unity team, and loved it! We were working on the same project that the full time staff was working on, and treated as standard employees. The Unity team was working on making iOS and Android app versions of the Google Glass apps that can be used as demos to show more people, without needing the Glass. Throughout the month I gained a lot more experience with setting up UI elements in Unity, writing scripts, refactoring code, and git version control (through many many merge conflicts lol). My immediate supervisor was very knowledgeable, helpful, and very open to questions, which was great. I left the externship feeling like I contributed substantially and learned/solidified skills! 

There were also some fun perks about the externship. Every friday we got taken out to lunch to local restaurants, all 4 of which were new to me and delicious! On the last Monday of the externship, we had an ice skating party, where the company reserved the whole rink for the employees and externs, and treated us to pizza and hot chocolate afterwards! We also had a really fun extern graduation party where we got Georgetown cupcakes (also delicious), certificates of completion, cards that we all got to sign (like yearbooks), and Brain Power pens, water bottles, and t-shirts! 

Aside from the externship, I went to see Little Women with some friends, went ice skating with another friend, and, since I was not on a meal-plan, did a lot of cooking!

all the externs on the final day!

Reflection

The experience of being apart felt pretty normal. Even though we’ve always gone to the same schools and lived in the same places, we have both gained a lot of independence since coming to MIT. The narrative we depict on the blogs may not emphasize it enough, since for the most part we write about our shared experiences at MIT, but between classes and extracurriculars we have probably spent as much time doing different things here as we have doing the same things. And this IAP was just another one of the different things. Overall, we are happy with how our IAPs unfolded, and we would really recommend the Externship program!

A couple nights ago, Shayna messaged our very miscellaneous group chat this:

HELL. FUCKING. YES.

For those of you who don’t know me, this is my dream. I watched the first To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before movie on Netflix at least 14 times over, if not more, and read the first two books over and over again. I love, love, love this series. I’m a sucker for romcoms.

And it’s ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE that MIT Lecture Series Committee has access to resources like this.

The moment I finished up the blogger meeting I ran to Lobby 7 to meet with Emma so we could take a Lyft to the ShowPlace ICON Theatre in Seaport, a super nice venue that made me feel very bougie.

In the Lyft, we excitedly chatted about classes (which is coming up in a blog post very, very soon!!!). Soon enough, we arrived at the gorgeous venue. We took the escalator to the top floor and talked to the lady at the front, saying we were here for the early screening. Yes, this made me feel very special. How often can you say you’re here for an EXCLUSIVE EARLY SCREENING?!?!?!?

She pointed us to the reception area where they were serving drinks and food.

I scarfed down the sliders and pizza because I went to the Z earlier today. The notebook is SO CUTE and Emma and I were just SO HYPED for this movie.

When 6:45 came around, we all rushed to theatre 6 to claim our seats. We were seated in the second row of the theatre, but honestly not complaining, I could’ve been sat on the ground for all I cared.

I was practically V I B R A T I N G at this point.

before

after

SO LET’S TALK ABOUT THE MOVIE.

I’m putting off my 6.009, 6.08, and CMS.100 work JUST TO TALK ABOUT THIS MOVIE.

**will not contain any spoilers**

I’ve read the books before, so I knew kind of what was going to happen, but it is SO MUCH BETTER watching the movie in a room full of fans. The moment the movie started I heard squeals and gasps of excitement and whispers and it just made me feel so cozy. I was so comfortable with just reacting (because when I watch a movie I’m into I AUDIBLY AND VISUALLY REACT).

This movie was so fun to watch. I made comments and such to the people around me who also did the same every time something adorable or awkward or cute or bad happened. I cried. I laughed. I giggled. I squealed. I aww’d. It was amazing. It made me want to be in love. It made me feel so floaty.

To give you a picture of the range of emotions this film made me feel, I: physically recoiled in my seat, kicked out my legs, bawled, sobbed, screamed, laughed, and so. Much. More. Ross Butler, if for some reason you ever read this, please marry me.

Please.

I’m an MIT student. I’m going to get an MIT Computer Science degree. Please love me. I’m single. I’m ready to mingle. Please bench press me. Thank you.

Anyway.

The whole movie was just an incredible experience and it was a much needed break from the stress of this week (more of that in a later blogpost). I’m really grateful I got the chance to go.

I just wanted to do a really lighthearted and happy blogpost to talk about some of the really cool parts about MIT, like the random movie nights we get or the freebies or the cool outings and adventures. This is one of them. This was something I’m really, really happy I was a part of.

I am SO EXCITED for the rest of the world to see To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before: P.S. I Love You and I’d LOVE LOVE LOVE if people either messaged me or commented THEIR thoughts on the movie for when it comes out (on the twelfth!).

(I swear I’m not sponsored by them, I’m just completely and wholeheartedly enamoured with this series. It makes me feel so light and fluffy and wholesome and happy. I feel like I’m allowed to just be a giggly hopeless romantic whenever I read anything or see anything related to this series.)

Anyway, remember to have fun and take breaks once in a while. Go out and watch some movies, or rewatch your old favorites. Watch them with friends and make sure you comment lots and lots!!!!

6.009 – Fundamentals of Programming

8.02 – Physics II (E&M)

CMS.100 – Intro to Media Studies

6.08 – Intro to EECS via Embedded Studies

6.042 – Mathematics for Computer Science

For all of IAP, I’ve been kind of fiddling with my spring semester schedule here and there. It’s gone through many, many forms, from 5 classes and a UROP to 5 classes and two UROPs and so on, so forth. I’ve decided on a schedule now that would look kind of gross to first-day-of-fall-semester me, a prospective Course 20 who detested everything computer science and could not imagine herself ever coding.

But here we are, taking three Course 6 classes (6.042, 6.009, and 6.08) plus a physics class (8.02). An ideal honestly would’ve been 3 technicals and 2 HASSs/writing heavy classes (I was planning to take a Women and Gender Studies course on queer literature), but I ultimately decided that it was better to try and check out 6.08 to actually see if EECS is something I’d genuinely like to pursue.

I wanted to document my thoughts of each class as this week goes on because I usually find that I’m blindly optimistic about classes on the first week (see: 18.01A, 8.01, 3.091) and as time progresses I grow more and more bored with the class and ultimately lose interest and motivation to do well in it, therefore doing the bare minimum and using PNR to my full ability.

Now, I don’t have that safety net of PNR and I actually, well, have to do decently in classes now, I need to take classes that genuinely interest me in order for me to stay motivated and active.

I think it’ll be really interesting to watch my perspective on each of these classes shift as time progresses, and maybe even comical at how quickly my positive outlook switches into annoyance and dread. This is basically what happened with 18.01A and 8.01 where I was so excited by learning concepts I was shaky on, then realized that the classes were far too advanced for my feeble mind and dropped into 18.01 and 8.01L.

Monday

8.02

8.02 was the first class of the day. I woke up around 10:20 and ate some shitty breakfast I scrapped together (it was like…watery oatmeal? I think I was supposed to heat it for longer but it was basically like oatmeal soup. Or cereal. Or basically just granola floating in almond milk that was slightly lukewarm and kind of gross. Really the epitome of self care right now). Aiden showed up on Loop at 10:47 and from there we departed to the TEAL room (I actively shuddered as I had to type that out). We met up with Jordan, who was in Aiden’s 8.01 TEAL group last semester (at least when Aiden attended…). We ended up sitting next to each other in the back of the TEAL room, table 12.

8.02 was just like how I remembered 8.01: L O N G.

Two hour lectures? Not my favorite. I spent the time well, though, seeing as I had taken notes on the lecture content the night before. I finished the prepsets for this week in class, skimmed over pset1 (which I don’t know how to do), and then proceeded to shop and brainstorm blog ideas since I didn’t blog last week. You can see some of our 8.02 nonsense here:

ass.

6.08

From here, Aiden and I rushed over to 6.08, a class we share with a l o t of our friends, which makes sense seeing as there’s over 400 people enrolled in the class. This is where some of the anxiety starts to kick in. I barely have any coding experience, aside from APCSA in my junior year of high school, a class I barely retained anything in, and my three-week coding extravaganza from 6.145. Walking into that class and seeing a whole lecture hall full of people who just looked like they knew what they were doing really freaked me out. I have this thing where when I don’t eat or when I get really stressed or wound up, my hands start shaking very, very noticeably. I struggle to grip on to things and write and oh boy, did my hands start shaking in this class.

The lecturer for 6.08, Joe Steinmeyer, is a pretty chillaxed, funny guy who gave a pretty interesting and entertaining first lecture. This ~somewhat~ eased my anxiety, but I’m still really nervous. 6.08 is meant to be an introductory course for those trying to see if EECS is the right choice for them, which makes me kind of excited because I’ve really been looking for some sign or class that can help me figure out if I really am a Course 6.

When lecture ended, Aiden dragged us to MIT.nano (because I quote: “the fourth floor has the best bathrooms and I have to use the bathroom) and I kind of sat, swirling with my thoughts. Lots of doubts. Lots of imposter syndrome. Lots of fear. 30 minutes later, Raymond and I left Aiden in the nice, cushy lounge of MIT.nano to return back to 10-250.

6.009

6.009 scares the fuck out of me. Genuinely and wholeheartedly. Basically zero coding experience + a lot of self consciousness when it comes to virtually anything + taking the class in a room full of people who basically already know what they’re doing = anxiety galore. Lots of it. Shaky hands Cami is back everyone and this time, she struggles to breathe and wants to run out of the room. Head empty, no thoughts, drop course 6, let’s go.

But in all seriousness here are some messages I panic sent to my friends in the first ten minutes of 009:

shoutout to her for calming me down<3

Once we got past scary logistics and grading stuff, I managed to calm down and take notes and really try hard to follow. It was nice because the majority of it was review and I was able to follow along easily. Our lecturer is a pretty wholesome guy. He wore a samurai pizza cat shirt.

End of the day recap

I am now sitting here in Loop kitchen, writing this post instead of, well, looking over lab stuff and doing exercises for 6.08 and 6.009. I have two (!!) UROP interviews tomorrow, as well as my first day of CMS.100, which I’m actually not officially enrolled in which a n g e r s me because I’m a CMS major please just give me my intro class it’s a major requirement PLEASE. But yes. First day thoughts:

• I’m very shaky. Both literally and mentally. I’m doubting a lot of the knowledge I have and it’s mainly because I have very smart friends in my classes and I’m scared of looking stupid. If you’ve read my blogs, this is a common theme. I often dub myself as probably the least intelligent in my friend group and this has left long-lasting implications. For example, I get embarrassed when I get things wrong. I’m self conscious when I have to discuss homework or code with them. I tend to not ask for help because I don’t want them to see how little I understand or the stupid mistakes I make that are glaringly obvious for them but not as much to me.
• I’m really excited to learn. A lot of this stuff is just purely uncharted territory for me. It’s a lot of things I’ve heard in passing (SQL, IoT, etc.) but never really knew what it was.
• I really, really want to do well. PNR is no more. PNR is dead. She’s gone. Dead in Miami. Found floating in a ditch with her eyes rolled back in her head and a party hat on because she died doing what she did best: carefree hard partying. And so I must now try my absolute hardest and bestest because GRADES are here and GRADES are scary. I want to do well. Please let me do well.
• 8.02 still is on PNR though ahahaaaaaa… @ Jordan & Aquila I’m so sorry if Aiden and I leave you hanging for Friday Problem Solving.
• I think for now I’m motivated. But of course, this is how it always starts.
• Unfortunate that classes started on my birthday because I spent the majority of my birthday anxious and scrambling to understand information rather than, well, like, celebrating it.
• Simultaneously relieved and scared to have Raymond and Aiden and Caroline in my classes. Of course it had to be the three people I’m least comfortable working academically with in our group to share classes with. (They intimidated me beyond belief and working with them makes me very nervous.) Yaaaay.

It is now 10:30 PM and I’ve been staring at the 6.009 lab for the past thirty minutes, still stuck on the same part. I’ve made progress little by little (thank you Adam Hartz and the 6.009 for the incredible response time to my questions. I’m forever grateful).

I’ve had a lot of thoughts about coding and my coding experience that have been building up for the past month or so and I’ve always tried to write about them, but never have been able to. Honestly, that’s the reason I haven’t been able to post that much.

I’ve been told that this lab isn’t even closest to being the hardest one, that the part I’m stuck on isn’t even the worst it gets, that this is such a simple and easy part. And I know. I know these comments mean well. I know they’re just trying to be informative. I know it’s not out of malintent. But god fucking dammit I’m so tired of having my computer science experience invalidated. I’m so tired of being told that my struggles really “aren’t that hard”. It’s the equivalent of telling a fourth grader calculus isn’t difficult. Eventually, yes, calculus gets easier and the concepts become easier to understand because you have an arsenal of experience from previous math classes. I, however, do not have that mind palace to grab from right now. All of this feels new to me, and so problems that seem so obvious and noticeable aren’t to me.

So this is a reminder to anyone to please be kind to your friends when they try and learn new things. Learning is so hard. And I’m so tired of having my experience muted or belittled just because I don’t have as much experience.

Anyway, after being on the verge of tears for the past three hours (even after I took a much needed trip to the Z to lift my frustrations), I’ve come to the conclusion that I have to try my hardest in my classes not because I need to, but because I want to.

I know I’m capable of finishing these classes; I’m just frustrated with the environment I’m in. Being around my friends who know so much already makes me feel constantly like I’m behind, even when I’m not. I think some distance could do me some good, maybe spending time with people who also are new to the subject and less experienced in code to show me that it’s normal to struggle. I’m really looking forward to going to my classes tomorrow and I’m really excited to go to office hours because God knows I need it.

For the past few months, I’ve stayed up late at night, staring at my ceiling, begging some higher being to make me smarter. To make me feel like I belong at this school because it’s February and even now I still feel like my acceptance was a fluke.

But I really hope this spring semester reflects a change in that mindset. That with office hours and relentless amounts of time put into working and coding and trying and learning, I’ll realize that I have the capabilities to make it not only as an MIT student, but also as a CS major. Because right now, my willpower is being tried, the most it has ever been, and it’s only the first day. I’m stressed, I’m anxious, I’m upset, I’m tired. But I will continue to try because that is the most I can do. Here is to tomorrow.

Tuesday

It is now 6:48 PM and I’m trying to remember all of my day so that this can be a relatively accurate recap, so please bear with me if it seems a bit scrambled.

I woke up this morning at 10am and climbed out of bed at 10:18 to put together some yogurt and granola, gobble it up, grab two tangerines, and head out at 10:50 to march on towards Building 1 for CMS.100.

CMS.100

At this time, I wasn’t actually enrolled in CMS.100; I was waitlisted. The class really wasn’t all that interesting, mainly just going over syllabus stuff. It turns out we have to lead presentations discussing texts each class, where we’re typically assigned 2-3 texts to read over before each class. The class evaluates different forms of media over time, starting with print then moving on to radio, film, social media, and gaming later on in the course. I’m really excited to be taking CMS.100 even if the first class didn’t really do much because it’s a well needed break from my technicals.

UROP UROP UROP

So I’ve been having a crisis lately where I don’t know whether to stay with the MIT Education Arcade or not. I love the lab with all my heart, but I wanted to try something new and do something maybe more directly related to my majors (CS and CMS). I found this opportunity with a group in the Media Lab that has a lot of promise and I had a really, really good interview with them. I really hope something comes out of it. I also interviewed with a super cool group that’s part of MIT.nano that also aligns really well with my interests.

So, I’m a bit torn apart because I think all three of these opportunities are incredibly interesting, but I just don’t know what to choose. I also don’t know how my timing and scheduling will work out, especially taking 5 classes, where 2 are pretty demanding and time-consuming (6.009 and 6.08). But I really need a third job because I think I’m going to have to buy lunch every day? And that’s not exactly kind to my wallet.

I really hope to hear back from the UROPs soon so I can make an informed and educated decision about my choice. I’ll probably go more in depth about which UROP I choose and why later on.

After this, I bought food yet again because I was hungry and walked over to Building 34 for my 6.042 lecture. Raymond’s been telling me nonstop about how difficult this class is, so I’m definitely pretty intimidated by it. Luckily, I do have some previous experience with the content, as I took discrete mathematics in high school. But unluckily, it was my worst math and I struggled a lot in that class on the high school level so I can’t imagine what it’ll be like here at MIT.

I really enjoyed this first lecture, actually. The lecturers are very well organized, easy to follow, and though the class is a bit fast paced and throws a lot of information at you in an hour and thirty minutes, I found myself able to follow along.

From here, I made an executive decision to postpone working in favor of going to the Z.

(Almost) End of the Day Recap

I have a 6.08 lab from 7:30 to 10pm (disgusting, I know) so my day isn’t quite finished, but I realized I don’t have any other time to write so I might as well do it now.

All day I’ve been thinking about my 6.009 code. I feel like I’m so close to getting this part done, and even though it’s just the first part, I’m really proud of myself for not getting too bogged down about it. I worked on it a bit in CMS.100 (sorry, I know I should be paying attention but c o d e) and honestly didn’t get that much done but I feel I’m close. Honestly trying to figure out what I should do tonight or how late I should stay up. I want to do more 6.08 exercises, but I also really should focus on 6.009, but I also have to do some readings for CMS.100 and a pset for 8.02.

So there’s a lot on my plate. Just thinking about even adding a UROP on top of all this stresses me out, but I need the money. The financial security that comes with having three jobs is really, really nice.

I’m really nervous for the 6.08 lab. We’re assigned partners and I have little to no experience doing hands-on EE stuff. I just really don’t want to let my partner down. Overall, a better day than yesterday. Really looking forward to 6.009 recitation tomorrow so I can get a little extra help with my code.

6.08

It’s the next day and I’m writing this in 8.02 (sorry) and I’m feeling pretty #bad about all my Course 6 classes. I don’t want to drop any classes because it feels like giving up but also I should love myself and drop a class but I don’t want to. This is stressful. I am stressed. The 6.08 lab was fine; I just didn’t finish. It’s really hard for me to adjust to starting from square 1 ( 01 Aiden saw me type this in 8.02 and he says he disapproves. He's a big matlab shill. He took an IAP course on it and now he thinks he's the best at it. What an asshole. or…zero I guess since everything indexes from 0 except for fake things like MatLab[/annotation note], oh my god look i’m making coding references HAHA IM AN ACTUAL COURSE 6 NOW). It feels like I don’t have as much experience in coding as everyone else so coming up with solutions is just much, much harder for me. I really enjoyed assembling everything and cutting wires and breadboarding (even though my wires were far too long and really messy) but when it came to the final checkoff where we had to, you know, actually code things, I struggled a lot.

I remember walking back into Loop and asking to see Raymond and Aiden’s code since they both got the solution and Raymond’s code was just something I wouldn’t have even considered and it was so neat and nice. Aiden also came up with the solution, but his was something I could understand a bit better.

Anyway, it’s just very disheartening to have to start back here and constantly feel like I’m playing catch up. It’s hard for me to tell if this is what challenge is supposed to feel like, or if this is far outside the scope of what I’m prepared for and I should drop the class now and take it in my sophomore year when I have more coding experience under my belt.

Wednesday

Before I even mcfuCkin say anything, LOOK.

look.

LOOk.

I PASSED. I PASSED!!!!!!!!!!!! I PASSED. I can sit in 8.02 without any qualms.

8.02

Woke up cozy and warm in my bed at 8:30. Went back to sleep. Woke up at 9:45. Browsed the phone. Out of bed at 10, got ready for the day, ate some breakfast.

Side note: I’ve been consuming SO MUCH FOOD. I’ve started going to the gym six times a week instead of four to get rid of extra steam.

Aiden, Jordan, Aquila, and I walked into 8.02 to find our table in the back occupied by HEATHENS (jk if that was you ur good) and we instead walked to the front of the room.

It was a relatively chill class, I learned a lot and asked my group for help with understanding.

I’m feeling really good about 8.02 and I’m excited for the rest of the class.

6.009

I’ve been told that 6.009 is very “optional”, meaning labs, recitations, lectures, etc. are pretty much useless if you already know what you’re doing and you can skip them all.

I do not know what I’m doing.

I went to 6.009 recitation but I think I’m going to use recitations more as two hours of focused, uninterrupted coding, rather than paying attention to tutorials.

I was actually really productive in this time, getting unstuck from the debugging part.

6.042

6.042 recitation was really, really fun. I was able to follow the information relatively well and solve the recitation problems given out in class and even participate actively in the class. A really good way to end the day.

End of the Day Recap

I wish I was more productive this day, but instead I went to an early screening of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before: P.S. I Love You as a little treat to myself for a very stressful start to the spring semester.

The movie was amazing and was a nice escape from the bubble that is MIT. I ended the night by finishing up some CMS.100 readings and then went to bed.

Thursday

Typing this in the morning so:

Woke up at 9:30. Read MIT confessions. Went back to bed. Got out of bed at 10:15. Got ready, ate some Nutella on toast, and headed out. It’s snowy and wet and cold. Why??? WHY???

Goals for today:

• finish 6.009 lab
• do 6.08 exercises
• look over 6.08 lab01a code and try and fix it

CMS.100

I’m typing this in the middle of my CMS.100 class and, gonna be honest, feels really awkward and tense right now. We’re in that stage where we are all in a relatively intensive discussion based class but we’re still very much strangers so it’s hard to be honest and open with our thoughts and opinions when we don’t really…know each other?

Hi, okay now it’s Friday but I’m still going to recap the day.

So funny enough, right after I said we don’t really know each other, our professor had us do an opener where we had to discuss our “guilty media pleasures.”

I said mine were trashy reality TV shows and Taylor Swift.

Here are some notes and quotes I gathered from our discussion.

(I sometimes write my own little comments I come up with in my head. Please don’t judge me for watching extraction and surgery videos…I find them fascinating and very satisfying.)

I really thought it was insightful because we really tried to identify why we classify these things as guilty pleasures and why some things are just simply pleasures. Sometimes it comes down to ethics, other times these things just weren’t “made” for us, most of the time it’s because it’s just not socially acceptable.

It really made me warm up to my CMS.100 class and I actually volunteered to lead discussion for our next lecture so I’m really excited!

6.042

From here, I ran to the third floor of the Stud to join the first rush event for WILG! There’ll be a blogpost on my rushing experience (I’m planning to rush WILG, DPhiE, and PiPhi) probably out some time next week. I grabbed some smoothie drinks, talked to some friends, and headed to my resume meeting at the CAPD office.  This will also most likely be another blogpost.

Afterwards, I went to my 6.042 lecture and it was pretty standard. I worked out and then went to Stud5 to fix my code from 6.08’s first lab that didn’t quite work. I watched a video explaining button toggles and implemented it into my code and felt pretty confident. I then went to another WILG event (pizza in the Stud) and talked to some WILG members!

6.08

I was really nervous about this lab, especially seeing as I didn’t finish the very first one. But I happened to be partnered with a really smart guy who knew what he was doing and didn’t make me feel nervous or ashamed that I just happened to know less. Being in this comfortable environment made me feel a lot better and I actually ended up being really, really productive. The first part of our assignment was to read about how systems connect to Internet and actually pull up pages on the Internet. It was a pretty hefty couple of paragraphs and our first checkoff assignment was to explain how it all worked. There was some stuff I was pretty fuzzy on, so I shyly asked for some clarification from my partner, who happily explained.

Soon, a person came to conduct our checkoff and my partner eagerly explained everything while I kind of quietly sat and nodded. The person then turned toward me and asked me a question, but I remembered because Jay (my partner) had explained it earlier! So it was really nice just to see things work out and to see that I was actually retaining information.

From there we had to draw out a diagram of how our code would work. Essentially, we were creating a system that, based on the number of successive button pushes, would pull up a fun fact about said number of pushes. If the button doesn’t register another push within one second, it will pull up the fun fact.

This is the diagram I drew:

I had Jay verify it because I’m still very nervous and unsure of myself when it comes to these kinds of things. He said that that’s exactly what he has and that I was on the right track. Yay!

We both got our checkoffs and then came time for the final checkoff: actually writing the code.

I was actually able to do this part relatively easily, asking here and there for clarifications like “what does %s mean?” and “my timer isn’t working, should I implement it differently?” and my partner really, really helped me. He gave me the idea for doing:

if (millis()-timestart > TIMEOUT) {

}

rather than doing:

if (millis()-timestart < TIMEOUT {

}

Essentially I used this for my timer. If that time [millis()-timestart] was greater than 1 second, I would move into the next state REQUEST, which is where I would pull up the actual fun fact page.

Had I done it the other way, it would’ve been a bit more complicated.

End of the Day recap

It was pretty shitty because I went to bed at 2, frustrated that my code for 6.009 didn’t work. I decided here to wake up at 8am and go to office hours from 9am-3pm, with a slight break in between for 11am-12pm 8.02.

Friday

Hey ho it’s Friday but also it’s still me typing from above. I forgot to type in the stuff from yesterday so I wrote all the Thursday things today. Sorry about that.

Anyway.

I woke up at 8. Scrolled on my phone until 8:30. Got up, got ready, and headed out straight to 4-370.

So, I’ll go back to my coding experience after I really quickly touch on 8.02.

8.02

Friday Problem Solving! We’re given a packet of questions and we have to work in teams of three to solve them, show the solution to a TA, and get checked off. Once the packet is complete, we are free to leave.

I’m pretty slow at physics and I really enjoy writing everything out. I write out all of my code before ever putting it in code first and I write out all the equations and things for physics rather than doing it very fast.

Aquila and Jordan are VERY fast. I’m grateful, but I just feel like a dead weight. Luckily, Aquila is nice enough to cater to all my stupid questions and answer them patiently. Thank you, Aquila!!!

So, this is a reminder for myself to go back and read over all those 8.02 problems and do them myself because they moved a bit too fast for me to comprehend.

6.009? is not 6.00-fine.

So! Let’s talk about code. 9-11AM I worked on writing a way to calculate the kernel or whatever of a pixel. I show my code to 3 or 4 different people. They say it’s fine. It should be working properly.

Okay.

12PM hits. I realize there are no office hours for 6.009 from 12PM-1PM. I am now sitting in the Stata Center waiting for 1PM to come around since 6.009 office hours are from 1-3PM in 32-123. I try to read my code and figure out what’s wrong. I see nothing wrong.

Then suddenly all the stress and frustration of this week get to me.

And here I am, fucking breaking down in the middle of the Stata, sat at this table. I am sobbing, but trying really hard to make my sniffles quieter and my tears unnoticeable.

Angrily and perhaps a bit defeatedly, I open up the Common Application website. I make an account. I add transfer programs. Maybe 6 or 7 schools. I am broken. I am tired. I am sad.

I think this is the peak of my imposter syndrome so far. Claire walks in and asks if I’m okay. I wait a couple of moments before responding because I know if I try to talk, I’ll just cry more. She just comforts me.

I tell her that this school is hard. And that I feel stupid because everyone is able to grasp solutions so quickly and I am not. My friends finished this lab within the first two days. And here I am 4 hours before deadline still stuck on the third part. And I am broken. And I am tired. And I am sad.

She says it’s okay and that 6.009 is a really hard class.

I nod.

She tries her best to debug my code. She fixes some noticeable errors (I wrote image[‘height’] instead of image[‘height’]-1).

1PM is here. I go into office hours. I am 35th in the queue.

To be fair, 6.009 is a hard class and they have very little TAs for such a large population. I don’t mind the waiting. I really appreciate all the 6.009 TAs for everything they do. It’s a tough job.

Finally, I’m up. A TA approaches me and she reads through my code. She sees nothing wrong with it. She says it’s perfect and it’s really neat. She scrolls to the bottom.

“Oh, that’s why. You haven’t been saving the image properly.”

My stomach fucking plummets.

“Yeah, just put save_image(result, “test.png”) instead of save_image(im, “test.png). You’ve been saving the original image this entire time.”

I don’t know whether to be angry or relieved. Angry that I wasted my time? Yeah. Relieved that my code wasn’t actually shit? Yeah.

Okay, it is now 2:00 and I have an hour left to finish parts 4, 5, and 6 before I have to go to mandatory 6.042 recitation and this lab is due at 4.

Caroline gets my panicked texts and comes over. She helps me a lot and I’m really grateful.

I end up finishing the lab at 3:11 PM. I’m late to my 6.042 recitation, but hey, I passed all the cases. I don’t get my checkoff done; I’ll save that for Sunday.

6.042

I walk into 6.042 a little late but I still manage to get my name down on the attendance sheet and grab a recitation paper. It’s talking about how to write proper proofs. It’s things like prove log 2 base 3 is irrational and whatnot. I took discrete in high school and I was awful at it, so I really want to try and do well in 6.042. My group is pretty cool (Kidist is in my 6.042 recitation!!!!)

End of the Day recap

So let’s talk.

Today has been a lot. A LOT. A lot. I’m really grateful for everyone who offered me help with 6.009. (Thank you to Caroline, Quentin, Claire, Raymond, and probably much more who helped me with my code.) I cried. I almost transferred (the applications are still like half filled. Honestly don’t know what I’m going to do there…probably another blogpost on this. Imposter syndrome hours.)

I didn’t eat at all today, aside from this morning. I did not drink water at all today. I realized this when I almost fainted/fell down (up? I was exiting 32-123) the stairs when I was walking to 6.042. That’s pretty bad.

Don’t worry, I grabbed Beantown right after 6.042 recitation. I skipped the gym because I just didn’t think I was in the right headspace for a push day today, though I really love push days. But yeah, school is…hard. MIT is challenging. A lot of it is a mental game, though, rather than academics. At least for me. It’s really a challenge of my resilience and belief in myself. I’ve always had a weak mental game. I get fazed really easily. The moment I think something is going to go wrong, I kind of self-sabotage. I constantly tell myself I’m bad at coding and I always compare myself to the progress of other people, so it can be especially disheartening. Being friends with such competent, capable, and intelligent people makes me realize how behind I am. It’s a vicious cycle. I love my friends, they give me help, but then I realize I’m kind of a useless sack of shit.

I know, that’s toxic. I’m trying to fix it. I want to take time to relax and rest today, but I have a lot due.

A brief to do list:

• start 8.02 pset. Try and finish it by Sunday night.
• 6.08 exercises! they’re due by sunday night and i’m going to try and do them tonight
• 6.009 lab. yeah fuck u buddy im gonna try and finish u AS SOON AS MCFUCKIN POSSIBLE. i want to get this one done by tuesday.
• CMS.100 readings and presentation prep – honestly, lower priority. this is my fun class. going to probably do this sunday night or monday.
• 6.042 pset – this is very scary. going to go to so many office hours for this one.

I am very nervous for this second semester. If every week is going to be like this, I do not know how I’m going to do. This week featured the highest of highs (finishing 6.08 lab an hour early, watching TATBILB:PSILY) and the lowest of lows (shaking from anxiety, fainting from lack of self care, breaking down and almost transferring). It is the greatest test of my resilience yet and right now I’m just trying to take it a day at a time and try my very bestest.

Happy weekend!

Last semester was pretty rough, and I vowed to make this semester different. I tried to get into a fifth class and didn’t (it was too oversubscribed), so instead I’m taking four classes, of which only one is likely to be horribly difficult. I’m hoping that the lowered courseload will help, although it’s a little hard to tell, because the first week of the semester is always calmer than the ones that follow. For now at least, I’m chilling — and this chill, combined with the delightful chill of my IAP (and further combined with reflective time at the gym while I work out) has got me thinking.

I’ve come to this realization, over the past six weeks or so. I thought I always knew it, but I clearly never did: taking care of yourself and putting aside time for yourself is not just a necessary evil. It is good, and fun, and right.

I thought I believed this before. I didn’t. My brain was secretly thinking something along the lines of “oh, well, if you need time to take care of yourself, then I guess you have to do it. And each person might need to set aside different amounts of time, and that doesn’t make them better or worse as a person — but of course, it’s better to be able to set aside less time, and focus on doing instead of living.” I felt like the best way to approach life was to fill it with as many things as you could without making yourself sad. Because filling up your time is what lets you learn new skills! and try new things! and have new experiences!

And, you know, all that stuff is pretty great. But actually, there’s so much that you can gain from free time — different things, and equally valuable to those that you gain from full time.

Each of us should not fill our time as much as we can, but as much as we want to; and it is not better to fill it more, or as much as possible, but it is better exactly and only to do what makes you happier — with the knowledge that there are so many kinds of happiness, and it is nice to get to try them all. I like knowledge, and experiences, and learning new things, but none of these holds more meaning than happiness. And why maximize a proxy value for a quantity when you could maximize the quantity itself? To leave space in a schedule, to work out and think, to walk places more slowly than everyone else and stare at the sky — this is its own good thing if what it creates for me is happiness. It does not need to be stolen from other activities; it has its own intrinsic right to be alive, to take up space in my life. I want it and love it for itself, not just because it’s what lets me keep living and doing everything else.

I think this is what my parents have been trying to tell me for the past eight or so years. I think this is what some upperclassmen have been trying to tell me since CPW. I always nodded, agreed, it made sense to me. But I didn’t realize that I didn’t really believe it, because I made my life choices as if it were false. (As opposed to now that I know it for real, when I am relishing my free time, my slow moments, doing things unproductively and inefficiently…)

Thinking about the time it took me to reach this realization led me to a realization on realizations. When children learn their native language, they need, of course, to hear adults speaking to them. A child who is deprived of input won’t be able to learn. And yet, a child who is spoken to twice as much as another child will make the same kind of mistakes at about the same age, and master the same parts of language at about the same age. The input is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. What they also need is time: if a two-year-old isn’t ready to speak a certain way, you can’t make them learn it. All you can do is help them keep living, until they turn three and a lightbulb goes off in their head.

I never thought I was done growing, but I think I thought most of what was left was about acquiring knowledge & changing physically. Instead, there were so many dark lightbulbs in the back corners of my brain, waiting to light up and make me realize that something is not as I thought it was. Like a child learning a language, other people are only part of the puzzle for me; the other part is time to think and discover on my own.

And it turns out that this feeling doesn’t scare me like it used to. Freshman fall, in a blog about realizing that I didn’t know myself as well as I thought I did, I wrote “I miss being able to walk through the house of myself in pure darkness and never miss a step.” Now… I mean, sure, knowing myself well was nice. But this is also pretty cool — this idea, which perhaps should not come as the surprise that it does, that we are not fixed human beings once we graduate from high school; that there is so much left to sneak up on me, to change the way I think and who I am.

Over the past year, I’ve started to like eating new foods, trying new combinations of flavors, and doing things I’ve never done before. And in the same vein, I’m also so excited to try out these new “me”s who are coming. I haven’t met them yet. But I will.

This is a short appreciation post for fun., one of my favorite bands. I like their songs because they’re lyrically strong. Here’s the second chorus from Be Calm, the opening song on their first album:

Oh, be calm, be calm
I know you feel like you are breaking down
Oh, I know that it gets so hard sometimes
Be calm
Take it from me, I’ve been there a thousand times
You hate your pulse because it thinks you’re still alive
And everything’s wrong
It just gets so hard sometimes
Be calm

This is rather a mood right now. It feels as if my schedule this semester doesn’t have a lot of free time. Objectively, I know this isn’t true; my Mondays and Tuesdays are rather bad, but from Wednesday through Friday all my academic stuff happens between 11 AM and 3 PM.

I guess part of it is just because my classes haven’t gotten in the correct rhythm yet. I couldn’t find a classroom on Tuesday morning and had to run to get there. I went to an extra lab section on Thursday than I should have. My psets all came out at different days than they normally would, which messed up the times I allotted to work on them. And then I was out the whole weekend, from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, for an ESP retreat.

It’s been a lot these past few days in contrast to how much free time I had over IAP. I feel like I can keep going, but I also feel like I am running on energy that’ll be spent. That after this streak of work, I’m going to crash. You hate your pulse because it thinks you’re still alive. That’s the kind of sentence I wish I could write.

Maybe this is just temporary, and it’ll feel like my schedule’s less packed as the semester goes on. The rhythm will settle in, the schedules will stabilize, I’ll have less weekends where I’m busy the whole time. I don’t know what’ll happen, but it’s too early in the semester to say.

Here’s At Least I’m Not as Sad (As I Used to Be) from the same album:

So I left, that is it
That’s my life, nothing is sacred
I don’t keep friends, I keep acquainted
I’m not a prophet, but I’m here to profit

It’s not that I avoid making friends, but I don’t really talk with a lot of them any more. Maybe this is my fault, but I feel that part of it is just because of distance, and maybe distance doesn’t really make the heart grow fonder. Or maybe this is part of the natural cycle of losing and gaining friends when I move between stage of life.

I don’t keep friends, I keep acquainted. It’s not that I try to lose friends, but it’s hard to put in the effort to keep them. And sometimes, I think about what it would be like if I didn’t go to MIT, if I went to college back in the Philippines, and if I did put in the effort to keep the friends I made in high school.

But I left. And that is it. Nothing is sacred. If keeping long-lasting friendships really is important to me, why can’t I make the time for it?

This part of the song comes near the end, acting as the climax to the song. The setup is that Nate runs into old friends. The chorus is a single line, at least I’m not as sad as I used to be, sung in such an upbeat tune. Sometimes, it feels like that’s the only thing I have to report to old friends: I’m doing better now, I still get sad, but at least I’m not as sad as I used to be.

Lastly, here’s Take Your Time (Coming Home):

One more thing, I keep having this dream
Where I’m standing on a mountain looking out
On the street, and I can hear kids in low-income houses singing
“We’re through with causing a scene”
But, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know what it means
But I too, I’m through with causing a scene

I used to dream of being a positive force of good to the world, of doing something good that’ll change the lives of millions of people for the better. I used to feel uncomfortable with the fact that I’m not doing the best I can to achieve this goal. I used to think about the many, many things I could have done, the things I could be doing, if only I wasn’t constantly unable to concentrate, or if I had the energy to put into bettering myself, or if I actually sat down and thought about what to do to achieve this goal.

I’m not sure that I want to do that any more. I don’t know what changed. But now, when I think about what I actually want to do in my life, this doesn’t feel right.

These are emotions I don’t think I want to get all out right now, and probably deserve a post on its own. I guess the overall sentiment is I’m through with causing a scene. It’s okay if I only save one person, and it’s okay if that person is me.

Here’s a playlist of these songs, along with some of my other favorite fun. songs:

And finally, here’s a reminder to fill out your FUN form! The deadline is on February 15, but it’s probably a good idea to not do it on the last possible minute.

Even though we’re only two weeks into the start of the Spring semester, I have already taken a final exam. In the midst of sitting down for first-days of classes and reading through new syllabi, I also frantically wrote flashcards for myself and tried to teach myself course material I hadn’t seen in ages. It’s an interesting combination; the beginning and the end of a semester, condensed into a single week. So, how exactly do you get something like this to happen?

Final exams and projects are usually at the end of the semester, occasionally mid-semester for half-semester classes. And, normally, you have to show up and actually take them, or actually complete the project. However, sometimes, situations outside of your control can make getting out of bed to complete your final really hard, or even physically impossible. Think: getting a really bad case of mono, being bedridden for a month and your mom having to fly in to take care of you in your dorm room. Or, your dorm is in the process of being closed. Or, you’re just dealing with a bad depressive episode.

The old life curveball, so to speak. In any case, it may seem like there are only two options in situations like this: first, to drag yourself to the final anyway in whatever state you’re in, realize that whatever has been making your life hard has also made you unable to FOCUS or STUDY, and promptly bomb the test, possibly failing the class and definitely tanking your GPA. Or, option two, realize that whether it’s your body telling you or your brain, you Will Not Leave This Bed, and simply do not show up for the final. As the time ticks away and you lie in your bed, your TA or Professor will start to notice your absence and wonder what’s happened to you. After not hearing from you, they⁠01 probably, I’m not a TA or a professor decide that you don’t care about the class, and mark your final grade as an O, for Absence.⁠02 certainly not A, for “I’m doing great!” Then, you see the O on your transcript, thinking nothing of it, until you realize that it counts the same as an F, and your GPA is tanked yet again. Even this isn’t the end of the world, since it’s not quite an F, it’s just an F until you fix it.

Luckily, there is a third (more reasonable) option, that just involves a little bit of planning.⁠03 as much planning as you can do when Life’s Coming At You FAST Here at MIT, there is a system in place called Excused Absences, or, an OX. During the last two weeks of the semester, if you are thrown an unfortunate ball, and have up until that point been doing pretty Okay in the class of choice, you can get that final excused, whether it’s a paper or a project or an exam. Some questions asked. The professor still marks you down as an O, for not showing up, but someone over in Student Support Services will add an X and make it a pair. In my circles, it’s a pretty well known resource, and another blogger has even talked about it before. It’s nice, really – MIT may be an academic hellscape sometimes, but at least you can confirm that they don’t actively want you to fail.

Excusing

So, let’s flash back to about April of 2017. Things were starting to bubble up in my personal life, I spent a lot of time running back and forth from meetings with admins or student leaders or the House Team at Senior Haus, and I was spending a lot of my time more focused on the state of the UA⁠04 undergrad association Elections than I was on my classes. One night, I stayed up late to help paint a banner for my friend who was running, and we went out in the dead of night to hang it in Lobby 7, even though I had a problem set due the next morning.

Flash forward a few days, I dropped the class in question, thinking it would make my problems go away. In some way, it did, as it lightened my load and extended the days of my life where I didn’t have to try to learn how to code.⁠05 i did eventually, last semester, but i pushed it to the end! But, in most ways, it didn’t, and the stress and general I-don’t-want-to-do-this-anymore feeling started to pile up to the point where I wasn’t fully engaged in my other classes.

One particular class, 4.605: A Global History of Architecture, required weekly blog postings about various architectural topics, such as Islamic mosque design or ancient stone-carved temples. Around this time, I stopped doing them, instead choosing to focus more on my other classes and responsibilities. I didn’t think about how my grade was being affected by it; to be frank, I didn’t think of the class at all. I spent a lot of this time period obsessing over any small detail that I could latch onto and still get the sense that I was being productive—what food we would order for a House meeting or planning a Senior Haus/East Campus Formal and what cupcake designs I could come up with. Anything to keep my mind from focusing on the Actual Problems.

Now, in May, as things started to get progressively worse, I finally realized how unprepared I was for my final. All my other classes had projects (most of them group projects) due, and this was the only exam I had to take. A project, I could push through, but an exam? We had quizzes in the class, and I did poorly on them, banking solely on my mid-semester presentation on the Hagia Sophia for a passing grade. Not to mention, I had tuned out so much of the material during lectures in my generally distracted state.

When dead week rolled around and I had been too consumed with Everything Else to study, I started to panic. It was far too late to drop the class, and I needed it to complete my minor in Course 4,⁠06 architecture so I couldn’t just blow it. I had heard of other people OX’ing classes for various reasons, but so much of it felt like my own fault, like something I had to deal with on my own. For days, I ruminated over various ways I could rectify it instead of actually rectifying it.

Two days before the exam, I emailed my TA and professor asking if I could get my final excused as an OX, copying the deans I had spoken to at S^3.⁠07 student support services The day of the final, I hadn’t heard back from him, and laid in my bed through the scheduled exam hour hoping it was going to be alright. A few days later, I had a nice OX lined up on my grade report.

Interim

Getting a final exam excused feels like a weight being lifted off your shoulders, and then that weight getting placed by your feet so you remember you have to pick it up again later. The more important part is the fact that it’s a break, though. Sure, it’s visibly there. Until the OX becomes a grade, it’ll remain there on the transcript, filling you with regret the longer you wait to do something about it. But, at least you can rest for a bit, recharge, and lift that weight when you’ve recovered some of your strength.

Besides being there, it doesn’t really do much of anything. It’s like a ghost, loudly taunting you but unable to actually to actually touch you. Your GPA remains exactly how it was, and you can’t get credit for the class, as if you had never even taken it. In theory, you can just graduate with OXs, and they won’t negatively affect you save for a few questions from curious future employers. But, odds are, you need to take the class in order to fulfill some graduation requirement, so that’s not a likely option.

Resolution

The OX was one of the many things that hung over me as I came back to MIT, reminding me constantly of the time then and who I used to be. I wanted to get it over with, but I also wanted to be smart and spend time reviewing the material. I decided to wait and see how my first semester went before trying to fix it, instead resolving to spend my IAP simultaneously studying and applying for summer internships. I emailed my former professor in December asking to finally take the final and resolve the OX. We coordinated over email for weeks, deciding on a date, me frantically pushing it back to the first week of class because I didn’t feel ready.

Much to my personal disappointment, I didn’t study all through IAP like I had planned, and as the date approached I felt the looming anxiety more than ever. The very real possibility of failing the class and having to retake it, and having my GPA suffer entered my mind, fueled by the fact that I didn’t even know how I was doing in the class beforehand. I emailed my TA from then, practically begging to see if he had study material or anything that would help me do well on this final.

I spent two years not thinking about architecture history, and then I condensed a semester’s worth of classes into two weeks. I made flashcards for specific terms and places, speed-reading through the textbook and lecture notes, quizzing myself occasionally in between. There were practice problems online, which I spent one late night before the final answering again and again and again until I was nearly certain. To my absolute shock, I think I learnt more in the two weeks than I had while I was in the class, memorizing definitions and how to draw terms like sotdae and lingam and narthex and pendentives.

When the final came along, I experienced what has been a relatively new feeling for me—feeling prepared to take an exam. In just three business days, my grade was up and the OX effectively gone from my life. It still shows up on the unofficial grade report as OX/Grade, but on transcripts it’ll just show the grade. So, effectively washed away, taking all the lingering stress with it.

And that’s the whole process! I managed to bring my grade up an entire letter,⁠08 to my shame, i discovered when my professor emailed me my exam grade that my prior grade was… not very good which makes me question how badly I would’ve done if I took that when I was supposed to. I’m grateful for the moment of reprieve, if one can call 2 years a moment. It’s interesting to note all the ways I’ve changed as a student, but it becomes so clear in an example like this. At the same time, I can’t help but wonder If I could do it now, why couldn’t I do it then? There’s no way of telling. But, most of all, I’m glad it’s finally over.

Let me preface this post by saying: I don’t think I’ve figured out MIT quite yet. I think I’ve definitely gotten better at being an MIT student as time has gone on, but I definitely haven’t gamed the system yet.

That being said, this is definitely the semester in which I think I’m going to do the best that I’ve ever done at this school, and I’m super excited for everything that I have lined up!

This sort of breaks down into three parts.

Classes

I’m super excited for my classes this semester (and for the rest of my MIT career, honestly) because I’m finally done with the Course 6 foundation and header classes! This basically means that I never have to take a specific Course 6 class ever again, which I’m ecstatic about, because I didn’t particularly enjoy many of the required classes.

Here’s what my schedule looks like for this semester:

look at all that empty space

6.809 (Interactive Music Systems) – This class is taught by one of the founding members of Harmonix⁠01 the guitar hero company , Eran Egozy, and it’s all about music and audio technology. The final project is to make a music *experience*⁠02 i'm probably going to join a team making a game, typical of some sort, and it’s a really fun and different class from any Course 6 class I’ve taken before. Joon’s in it with me too!

6.902 + 6.911 + 6.912 (GEL) – GEL is the year long engineering leadership program for juniors, and it teaches you how to be a good leader as well as a good team player. I don’t know if my leadership skills have improved significantly, but I have been thoroughly convinced that I can improve them with practice. The lab class, 6.911, is pretty fun and the engineering design class, 6.902, is the intro to design class that I need to understand the basics of being a product designer.

6.835 (Intelligent Multimodal User Interfaces) – 6.835 teaches you about all different types of user interfaces and different ways that you can interact with them. We’re currently learning about how computer systems interact with pen strokes, and our first assignment is to write code to analyze properties of pen strokes (like where the ‘peaks’ are, where the pen is going the fastest/slowest, etc…). It’s pretty cool, and I’m excited for the final project, which requires combining many of the different UI modalities we’ll be learning about in the class.

CMS.362 (Civic Media Collaborative Design Studio) – This class is super cool and totally unlike any other class I’ve taken at MIT. It’s a collaboration with an architecture class to design and create stories around collectives⁠03 think co-ops , and it requires thinking about the humanities in a way that I’ve never really considered before. I’m in a group called CarePod, which is an initiative by an organization my professor started to provide “a cooperative, urban-scale housing solution promoting collectivized home-ownership for caregivers and quality care for elders”. Plus, apparently our work will be presented at the Venice Biennale⁠04 one of the biggest art shows in the world and our names will be in the credits?!?!? which is WACK and I didn’t even know that opportunities like this were available at MIT. I’m super excited to see how our project develops!

6.S898 (Democratizing AI through K-12 AI Education for All) – I’m sort of double dipping by taking this class. It’s my PI’s⁠05 the professor who heads the lab I UROP at class and involves a project that I’ve done a lot of work for as part of my UROP. But it’s good to get a formal look into the work I’m doing, because as a UROP, I sometimes just get thrown into things and have to learn how to swim. I’m hoping to create a cool project around deepfakes and internet safety in the modern day.

These are all pretty different classes with different fields of material and different projects. But the one thing that ties all these classes together is that I really, really want to be in all of them. I feel like this semester is what I came to MIT for – to learn a bunch of really awesome things and create so many awesome projects. I’ll be working on exciting projects in literally every single class⁠06 which was my goal, since I'm probably applying to the Media Lab next year and I want them to think I'm cool... , and while that will totally make the end of my semester awful, I’m psyched to see the final products and be proud of all the things I had to learn to create these cool things.

Jobs

Some of you might remember my post from last semester about jobs. If you couldn’t tell, I was very stressed last semester about not having a job in hand. Junior year is *the year*⁠07 because it's likely that you can turn the internship into a full time return offer to get an internship and I was indescribably depressed⁠08 i may or may not have staked my entire self esteem on the concept of having a job, but that's a blog post for another time about not having a job offer lined up while all my other friends did.

IAP rolled around and I was still interviewing at a few places, which we will called Companies A, B, and C⁠09 companies A and C are both gaming companies, and company B is a not at all gaming related company . I got rejected from Company A during the first week of IAP, and spent the entirety of a Tuesday-Thursday interval crying about it. That same Thursday, I had a final round interview for Company B, which I REALLY wanted to work for⁠10 the position was perfectly suited to my interests and i really loved the culture of the place , and I was thrilled because I nailed the interview harder than any interview I’ve had this season. I didn’t hear back from them for a while, which sucked, but I had another interview in that interim with Company C that I didn’t really think would go anywhere⁠11 spoiler alert, it did, and i got a final round interview while i was waiting for company B to get back to me . As I mentioned in my jobs post: I am TERRIBLE at coding interviews. I’ve definitely gotten better⁠12 there is definitely some element of practice makes perfect in coding interviews since the beginning of the year, but I still have a long way to go before I can confidently sit through a coding interview. I definitely regret not applying to more places sophomore year and going through more coding interviews just for practice, but definitely not complaining because getting an offer from PlayStation was pretty dope.

On Monday, the first day of school, smack in the middle of my 7-10 class, I got rejected from that job I had really wanted. I was totally devastated and went to bed right after class really upset. I think they just wanted people will more UX design experience than I had, which is totally reasonable, but since I had done really well in the interview, I thought I had a good shot.

The next day, still recovering from being depressed and upset, I had a final round interview with Company C. It was the last interview I had going for me, and was also the last interview I would probably do for the entire jobs season. That was the only consolation I had, to be honest, because I wasn’t expecting to do super well on this interview. But after a lot of very kind words from the recruiter⁠13 literally the best recruiter i've ever had or probably ever will have, she was an actual lifesaver. recruiters are so important who worked with me to get all of these interviews for Company C, I did pretty well on the coding interview despite the question being a weak point of mine, and had an amazing behavioral interview with my second interviewer. It overall went pretty well, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up since I had still gotten rejected from Company B after nailing their interview. So I went about my day, reflecting on how that was my last interview for the whole year and that, at the very least, was something to be happy about.

But the next day, on Wednesday night, right after fencing practice, the recruiter called me and told me that I got the job!

at long last, i got to make my “i got a job” post on linkedin

If you couldn’t tell from that picture – Company C was Twitch! I’ll be working at their headquarters in San Francisco this summer on the Video Distribution team :) I’m super excited to be back in the industry, and honestly, I think some higher power was watching out for me here in getting me this job. Although I really wanted to work for Company B, they weren’t a gaming company, and I’m glad that I get to stick with the industry because at the end of everything, I love games and I want to contribute to their future in some way. Sidenote: I’m also going to GDC⁠14 the Game Developers Conference, the biggest game industry conference in the world! it's a whole week in san francisco and i'll be going to all sorts of talks and networking events and absorbing all of the amazing energy this year, which is definitely the cherry on top of all of this good news :)

I’m still SHOOK that I got this job – everything happened really fast. I accepted the offer the day after the recruiter called me, found friends to live with within the week, and we secured our Airbnb for the summer yesterday. Less than two weeks ago, I had literally no idea that my literal last interview for the season would turn into a job. I wish I could somehow reassure myself two weeks in the past that everything would be okay. I’m glad it all turned out okay.

Being More Productive (or attempting to)

Due to a series of coincidences⁠15 my boyfriend got back from GTL Israel very jetlagged, but decided to utilize the jetlag to get up early every day, which therefore means that I also am forced to get up early every day when his alarm goes off , I’ve been waking up at around 9 am every day this semester! Which is REALLY something for me, the quintessential night owl. But I’ve been a lot more productive, and the extra two hours in the morning to cram work in is honestly pretty nice.

I’ve also been trying to schedule my friends into my calendar more instead of just sort of aimlessly hang out in lounges messing around. Last semester, I didn’t really see a lot of my friends, which I don’t think is good, but I also don’t want to waste time not really productively spending time with them. So instead, I’ve been going out to dinner or drinks with friends in small groups or one on one, and I feel like it’s been a great way to catch up, but also to explore new food places and get to know the city better.

The title of this post is how I feel about this semester, and I guess about my life at this point. I’m glad that I have some sort of direction that I’m going in, as compared to the first few years as a student here. I literally had no idea what I was doing for the entirety of freshman and sophomore year. I’m glad I’ve started to figure things out and that I can contribute meaningfully to all the projects that I work on.

In short, I’m really excited for where this semester will take me. Stay tuned!

For our very last semester at MIT, and our very last course 6 class, we are taking 6.910 Independent Study in EECS!  We really wanted to continue learning and practicing the concepts from 6.837 Computer Graphics, which we took last semester, but 6.839 Advanced Computer Graphics is only offered in the fall. So constructing an Independent Study seemed like our best bet to be able to spend our last semester at MIT pursuing and learning the topics we want to. We just recently got everything approved, but it was a PROCESS. And looking back, we probably made some mistakes, which made the process more complicated/drawn out than it had to be. So yeah, here is how to (im)properly get an independent study, a sequel to the list we made in this post.

1. Come up with an idea for a project
2. Find a few potential professors (preferably including professors you have taken classes with) that could advise you in completing your project
3. Email one professor
4. Email another professor because the first one responded saying he’s too busy this semester to be a supervisor
5. Decide to go to the second professor’s office to ask in person because he does not seem to be responding to your email
6. Notice that he is not in his office and ask a grad student who works in the same area if he knows when said professor is usually in his office
7. Check back later that day at the time the grad student said, and see the professor is not there
8. For the next two days, do the same thing because the professor has still not emailed back
9. Email a third professor because you are starting to lose hope of getting in contact with the second professor
10. Also, email your advisor just to make sure that this independent study can count towards your major if you get it approved because you haven’t really heard of anyone else doing this
11. Try checking the second professor’s office again and get noticed by a different grad student, who at this point has seen you roaming the halls multiple times and tells you to come back the next day because the professor will surely be around
12. Go back the next day and finally spot the professor in a meeting with someone 
13. Meanwhile, get spotted by the same grad student, who very generously offers to briefly interject the professor’s meeting to try to get you a few minutes of his time after he finishes
14. Wait around for ten minutes as the professor finishes his meeting
15. FINALLY meet the professor, introduce yourself, explain your idea, and ask him if he has the time this semester to supervise an independent study
16. After all that effort to track him down, be sad when the professor says no, because he is too busy
17. Try to stop by the third professor’s office because he has still not responded to your email, but he is not in his office
18. Go back the next day to the third professor’s office and see that his door is propped open
19. As soon as you walk past, get surprised as he opens the door and greets you
20. Ask him if he has a few minutes to spare, and when he says yes, ask to explain your idea and ask if he has time to supervise you
21. Get hopeful when he says he doesn’t have time to do it alone, but if any of his grad students would be willing to help supervise, he will sign off on the papers
22. Leave the meeting thankful and hopeful
23. Wait thirty minutes
24. To your amazement, a grad student very willingly sends you an email! Hooray!
25. Set up a meeting with the grad student for the following week
26. Go to the meeting and get very excited about this independent study because the grad student seems very willing to help and also has a lot of incredible experience in the exact area you were hoping to do the independent study in
27. Ask him if he would be able to get the professor’s signature on the forms you need to get signed
28. Be very relieved that you do not need to do anymore professor tracking, because the grad student has a meeting with the professor the next day anyways, and said he would just get the forms signed then
29. Be happy when you get an email confirmation from the grad student that the professor signed the forms and arrange to stop by the grad student’s office the following day to pick them up
30. At this point, you kind of forgot that you sent an email to your advisor last week about the independent study
31. Get VERY STRESSED when you receive an email from your advisor saying that independent studies typically do not get approved for 21Es
32. Respond immediately asking to set up a meeting because you are fairly sure that this may have just been a misunderstanding
33. Set up a meeting with your advisor that will unfortunately only happen in three days from now
34. Also set up a meeting with your humanities advisor for the same day to double-make-sure you will graduate and have all your requirements filled 
35. Dread the wait time, but have faith that it will all work out, and think of a back up plan.
36. Come up with the back up plan if the independent study does not in fact get approved (which involves taking another course 6 class that you are not particular interested in but works well with your schedule and is tangentially related to what you want to study)
37. Go to the first meeting you scheduled with your humanities advisor and get the thumbs up from her about requirements and a confirmation that you will indeed graduate 
38. Go to your second meeting with your course 6 advisor, nervous because this one is higher stakes, and celebrate when the advisor reads your proposal, really likes the idea, and with basically zero hesitation changes her mind and apologizes for making a rash decision that may have stressed you out
39. Last but certainly not least, fill out a very big add drop form (which happens to be the third one you already submitted since the start of the semester)
40. Take a deep breath knowing that after two weeks of a lot of emails and chasing professors and bureaucratic-hoop-hopping, your schedule is finally set in stone and you are very happy with the prospects for your last semester at MIT!

The last two weeks have been a Ride. We think that the main thing that made it so drawn out is that we staggered the emails to the various professors we had in mind, as opposed to emailing all three at once. And on top of that, we didn’t even stagger our emails correctly. We should have emailed the professors whose classes we’ve taken, before emailing professors whose classes we haven’t. In the end, the professor that ended up being our supervisor is the professor we took 6.815 Digital and Computational Photography with, but he was the last professor we reached out to. The last thing we did incorrectly was asking our advisor about independent studies over email, as opposed to off the bat asking to schedule a meeting with her to discuss it in person. Sometimes, things can get misconstrued or misunderstood over email, and it just takes a conversation to get them sorted out. We hope this will help someone else not make our mistakes!

We honestly are kind of shocked this ended up working out, but this experience showed us something really important — persistence. There were so many times throughout this whole list of steps where we literally just wanted to take the easy way out by signing up for a different class that would just fill the requirement we needed. But, every time we thought about how much we want to continue learning computer graphics, and how cool it would be to do our independent studies, we kept pushing through. And, we are so happy we did! 

i had SUCH a nice President’s Day weekend. a lot of it was consumed by Mocha Show,⁠01 my urban dance team’s annual performance. we had two shows, both at 10 pm on Friday and Saturday but as a whole, it was lovely. here’s what i did!

Friday:

our first Mocha Show performance was on Friday night, so a good portion of my day went to setting up decorations, doing some last-minute rehearsal, grabbing dinner as a team, and putting egregious amounts of stage makeup on. then, it was showtime! i was pretty nervous because 60+ hours of practice and set-up had all led up to a two-hour performance, and i really didn’t want to fuck it up. also, my parents were coming from New Hampshire to see me, and they had never watched me dance before! 

decorations outside Kresge Little Theater

thankfully, everything went well. the only mistakes i made were in the sections i choreographed (the irony…). my parents really enjoyed the show, even though they were a bit out of their element at a 10 pm college event. also, my SO got me a box of chocolates and a pineapple instead of a bouquet of flowers, which made my night even better

onesie set!! (pc: Maxwell Yun)

Saturday:

my family line from the Sloan Business Club grabbed brunch at an adorable restaurant! it was sunny but bitterly cold out, so as soon as i got home, i bundled myself in a ton of blankets and napped. the rest of the day passed in a delightful bliss, and then it was call time for Mocha Show again. i knew what to expect this time around, so i was less nervous and more excited since a lot of my friends and Mocha Moves alumni were coming to see the show. 

the energy at this show was INSANE. Mocha’s chant⁠02 Mocha what? Mocha what? Mocha what? Moooves was butchered by the overenthusiastic audience, who screamed over us so loudly that we couldn’t hear our captains at all. i’m not mad about it though—i’ve never performed for a crowd with so much energy before. 

the show went by in the blink of an eye; with each dance, i felt so enveloped by the excitement of the audience that my mind shut down and my body moved on its own. costume changes were probably the only conscious movements i made in the whole two hours of showtime

your favorite Mochanics 

after it ended, we thanked everyone, took lots of pictures, and partied with alumni and friends until an ungodly hour :’)

this was probably was one of my favorite days of the year so far!

Sunday:

i woke up around 11 and eventually dragged myself out of bed to “strike” aka clean up the theater, take down the lights, and roll up the dance marley (which, as it turns out, is one of the most arduous tasks ever). it only took a few hours, so i was able to make it to the 2 pm showing of The Vagina Monologues. 

The Vagina Monologues is a play about female sexuality and empowerment by Eve Ensler. it’s composed of a series of monologues and group pieces that range from funny and lighthearted to heavy and powerful. some monologues are performed each year, and some are written by students about their own experiences with topics such as sexual assault and eating disorders. the cast is incredible; every individual is passionate about casting light on important facets of the feminine experience. i really wish i could’ve participated in the production, but Mocha Show conflicts with its other showings, so…

i wasn’t really in the mood to work after seeing VagMo, so i spent the rest of my day hanging out with friends and rewatching Perfect Blue, an animated psychological thriller that i love. 

Monday:

catch-up day…! due to my crazy dance schedule for Mocha Show, i was behind in three of my classes, so i had an obscene amount of homework to do. i have a weird and unhealthy tendency to keep procrastinating on work until i can get fully caught up on prior material, so i keep falling farther and farther behind on things until i panic and get my life together.

yeah, i need to fix this lmao

i also spent some time choreographing a bit of a dance for Dance Troupe! i’m co-choreographing the beginner hip hop dance this semester—the set is party-themed, and the songs include We R Who We R by Ke$ha, SexyBack, and Like A G6 (aka middle school bops).  later, i taught the choreo at our first Dance Troupe practice, which had around 40 people and was pretty difficult to manage, but also a lot of fun. warming up to a Yung Gravy song might’ve been my peak

at the end of the day, i felt a vague sense of dissatisfaction that likely stems from a variety of things—how i’m not caught up with my work or spending enough time with a lot of my friends, or how i’m eating out too much (unhealthily at that) and not keeping my room clean for more than three hours at once. also, i hate that i only have one creative outlet—dance—since i no longer have time to read or paint or do any of the things i enjoyed in high school.

but all these problems are definitely fixable. so imma do it ASAP

see you in a bit :)

Oooooooohhhh boy. A new semester has begun! I know this post is kinda late, but I thought I should wait until my schedule was FINALLY set in stone before I regale y’all with all the details. I officially got off the waitlist for my gym class, so everything’s set!

Scheduling classes this semester was a bit of a struggle. First of all, I got a little off-track during Independent Activities Period (IAP) and nearly NR-ed (no-recorded) the two classes I was taking in January. The “P-NR mindset”⁠01 The attitude that your grades don't really matter and you should do the bare minimum needed to pass your classes, usually resulting from MIT's pass/no-record policy for first-semester freshmen can be really great during your first few months at MIT; I really enjoyed building an identity and confidence that didn’t depend on my grades. At the same time though, it’s kind of crazy how a student who was pretty much at the top of their class during high school can slip so far into academic apathy that they forget about their 6.145⁠02 Brief Introduction to Python. It's a short class that runs over IAP and gives you the pre-reqs for a lot of course 6 classes final and end up taking it online in the middle of the woods on two hours of sleep (yes. I did that. It wasn’t good). I didn’t even dare pick out my STEM-based spring semester classes until I knew whether or not I’d passed 6.145 and 18.02A⁠03 A multivariable calculus class that runs into IAP .

On the other end of the academic spectrum, 21W⁠04 MIT's Writing course/major classes are HARD to get into. In the poetry workshop I eventually lost my spot in, a girl sitting at my table on the first day said “everyone knows that you need to pre-register if you even want a shot at getting into these classes”. Well, this was news to me! I was left scrambling at the last minute to try and get into a writing class, and eventually found myself emailing the professor of 21W.755, Reading and Writing Short Stories. On the first day of class he made it clear that about half of us would be cut from roster. I was NOT going to go through that again and I knew I would DIE if I was left without a 21W for a single semester and the lecture was so freakin’ exciting and ahhhhhhh I just wanted to writeeeeeeeeee!

And then I had a realization: I want to be a 21W minor, if not a major.

SO I spent the rest of that day darting from office door to office door trying to get someone to make me a 21W minor. Apparently you can’t do that sort of thing in one day, but I managed to get someone from the writing department to vouch for me so I GOT A SPOT IN THE CLASS and I’M 50% HASS⁠05 Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences BOI NOW. 

Once those were all set, I knew I wanted to try and sneak into a gym class. And I did! Because I hate myself (or maybe love myself?) I put myself on the waitlist for High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). You basically do really hard things really fast for a small amount of time with an even smaller breaks in between. I secretly love really intense workouts -something about meditating on the utility of pain or whatever- so I was pretty jazzed when I got added to the official class list. Wish me luck?

So without further ado, my schedule!

Classes:

• 8.02: standard MIT Physics II (i.e. electricity and magnetism). My professor is great. My TA is GREAT. My small group for TEAL is SUPER GREAT. Big ++.
• 6.08: Introduction to EECS via Embedded Electronics. This is my first lab-based class! There’s just one hour of lecture a week compared to five hours of lab time. We get to play with wires and Arduino for a few hours, which I think is super fun and interesting! I feel like I learn so much more so much faster when I get to work with my hands.
• 6.009: Fundamentals of Programming. I can already tell that this class is going to kick my ass, but in a good way. This class comes after 6.145 or 6.0001/2 pretty naturally, but the learning curve is a steep boi. I was forced to learn many things and attend many office hours the last two weeks, which I guess is kinda the point. I feel like this class is just throwing us into the deep end of the metaphorical pool and everyone has to decide if they’re gonna sink or learn how to swim before they drown. Which I guess is a way to learn.
• 21W.755: Reading and Writing Short Stories. It’s exactly what the name says it is. It’s nine hours of homework a week. It’s going to destroy me and I literally can’t wait.
• 21M.600: Intro to Acting. This is kinda just a taking-it-for-fun class. I took acting classes all throughout high school under some really talented teachers, and I wanted to see what it would be like on the college level. I’m also taking it with one of my good friends who’s a senior, so it’s nice to do something fun together before they graduate :(
• HIIT Gym Class. Two hours a week of training. Many more hours spent too sore to walk up the stairs of East Campus

Put together, they look like this:

Also look I’m actually using a calendar now :)

This set-up is really dope for me. Mondays and Fridays are pretty low-volume, so I can ease myself into and out of the weekend. Sure, my Tuesdays through Thursdays are pretty packed, but I’m okay with that.

Things that aren’t classes but take time:

• My job: Not a UROP, just a run-of the mill job. It’ll be nice to make some money
• Caving club: not a super-huge time commitment, but I love this stuff so much. Hopefully I’ll be writing a caving club post soon!
• Staying in shape: One of my goals this semester is to start running on a regular basis again (yes, on top of HIIT). I want to work up to a 10k! I can already run about 5 miles consecutively, so I’m reeeaaaalll close.

Just a quick note: Things that aren’t on my schedule are 1) MTG, and 2) a UROP. After my little IAP almost-slip-up, I want to make sure I’m giving myself the time to succeed now that we have grades. I’m all about that work-life balance, so although I love the idea of doing those two things, I think I’m gonna wait just a little longer before I add anymore to my plate.

So yeah! Here I am, second semester. Come get me. I dare you. Fight me. COME AT ME BRO.

A little while ago, I got my first(?) mention on MIT Confessions, and exploded with laughter in the middle of my physics lecture as soon as i saw it:

I thought OP probably was a reader of the blogs, because if you know either Nisha or me in real life—even tangentially—you’d probably realize that we’re related. More than a few people have approached me assuming that I’m Nisha, and I hear “Ankita, I thought I saw you at East Campus but realized it wasn’t you” nearly every other week.

Well, it turns out that looking like twins, being from the same small state, and having the same damn last name isn’t enough—at a blogger meeting, we were laughing about the confession, and a Blogger Who Must Not Be Named came to the realization that Nisha and I are, indeed, sisters. As unprompted as this epiphany should have been, I’m actually pretty happy that they had no idea of this fact; clearly, I’m doing a decent job of distinguishing myself…?

PROOF!

To be fair, we’re completely different. I’m more outgoing and extra, while she’s more laidback and chill. I’m chaotic and memey, and she’s…a functioning adult, I guess?? I dance and she fences, and we live on opposite sides of campus, so our social circles barely overlap. In fact, our lives don’t overlap much; I’ve bumped into Nisha around campus a grand total of three times in all these months here.

This is nothing but reassuring to me. When I was considering going to MIT, I was afraid of being “Nisha’s little sister” forever; we’ve been going to the same school for most of our lives, so I wanted to finally separate myself from her in college. With good reason—in high school, we both were captains of the math team and quiz bowl teams and presidents of the Japanese Club; we took the same classes and had the same teachers and guidance counselor. The impressions most people had of me were shaped by Nisha, which was never a bad thing, just frustrating. I desperately wanted to distinguish myself in some way, but I always felt that she was better than me at math and Japanese and writing and quiz bowl and everything else I was passionate about. 

And as a result, I was really fucking insecure. I trudged through high school with the belief that everyone was comparing me to my sister and pointing out my inadequacies. When I finally applied to MIT, I told myself not to expect too much since I was an inferior carbon copy of her: Nisha, but more random, irrelevant hobbies and less STEM; Nisha, but notably less accomplished. And as soon as I got in, I was accosted by a lurking suspicion that it was because of sibling legacy.⁠02 spoiler alert: this is not a thing

It was a strange and unsettling brand of imposter syndrome. It plagued my thoughts for a while, but when I thrust myself into the world of adMITtance (aka the MIT Class of 2023 Facebook group), I stopped thinking about it. My perspective hasn’t changed since then—who cares if I belong here or not, I was admitted, so I’m intent on making the most of it. Here at MIT, we’re [hopefully] all so busy getting work done that we don’t have time for high school-esque drama or petty judgments of others’ success. Hell, I definitely don’t have time for sibling trauma anymore…not that I give a damn about making comparisons between Nisha and I since we’re pursuing such different things. 

My metrics for success have entirely changed. I’m my own person now! I have a different set of activities and classes and friends, and it’s wonderful. I can’t say I’ve become much less reliant on Nisha since I ask her for advice pretty often, but hey—what are older sisters for? 

I’m really proud of Nisha for all her accomplishments, and I’m glad that she’s found her space here. I’m grateful for how supportive she is; even though she criticizes a significant number of my life choices, I know she has my best interests in mind. It’s great to be able to rely on someone on campus, but it’s also great that I’ve formed my own identity here. 

OP, hope that answers your question :)

This past weekend was a 3 day weekend because of President’s Day!

Being from southern California, I’ve been pretty dissatisfied with Boston’s food opportunities. There are some great places I’ve come to find (Courthouse Seafood, Cafe Luna, Mainely Burgers, Boston Burger Co, that one ramen place in Porter Square), but also I’ve left behind a lot of good food places I really enjoyed (Umami Burger, that one tteokbokki place in Cerritos, Baekjeong, and some really good sushi places).

One thing that I’ve missed above all, however, is Chick Fil A. There are no Chick Fil A’s in Boston. The closest one is in a town called Dedham, MA.

My craving for Chick Fil A had built up to the point where, when I awoke on that fateful Monday morning and stomped upstairs to Loop kitchen, I announced, “I want Chick Fil A. Let’s just go. Let’s go RIGHT now.”

Raymond said sure why the fuck not.

Aiden looked pretty unconvinced, claiming it was his work day.

And Mariia? Mariia, my beloved, sweet, green-haired vegetarian roommate, said, “Yes! It’s the once a year time that I can break my streak⁠01 Her vegetarian streak. .”

I was shook to my core. I knew that this was the chance of a lifetime, that there would never be another opportunity like this for the rest of the year where Mariia would come out with us to Consume the Meat. “This would be my second time having Chick Fil A.”

After some convincing (“Aiden, Aiden…the mac and cheese. The mac and cheese.”), Aiden finally caved and agreed to come along with us. Within two minutes, we were bustling out the door and hopping into a Lyft, embarking on our 40 minute journey to this mysterious Dedham, MA.

The forty minute Lyft ride was actually really peaceful, despite being crushed against the car door and Raymond’s obnoxious manspread.  He wasn’t actually manspreading, but he’s just very broad. Regardless, it was very cozy in the Lyft. I stared outside the window, watching concrete buildings and and city lights transform into sparsely spaced cottage homes, lakes, and hillsides dotted with trees. The ride made me really appreciate just how beautiful Massachusetts is, having only seen small bits and pieces of it.

“Have you heard of that car game, where every time you see a cow you say cow and it adds to your farm but every time you see a graveyard, all your cows die?” Mariia asked.

“Oh yeah! That’s pretty weird. I don’t know if we’ll see any graveyards or cows, though,” I replied.

Oh how wrong I was.

About 35 minutes into the car ride, we noticed something…strange. There was a graveyard. “Huh, that’s pretty coincidental. Isn’t it funny how Mariia mentioned that cow graveyard game like ten minutes ago and now we’re running into one?”

But then after that graveyard, there came another graveyard. And another one.

And another one.

In Dedham, Massachusetts, there are apparently five to seven graveyards all within two minute walking distance of each other for no apparent reason.

“God, this feels like a fucking horror film. Four idiot teenagers go out on some stupid quest for chicken nuggets and end up in some apocalyptic town where they just have this mass need for graveyards.”

By the time the app said we were two minutes away from the Chick Fil A, I realized that we were somewhere off a pretty empty highway in the middle of nowhere.

“You wanna get dropped off…here?” our Lyft driver had asked unsurely. Yep, that’s exactly how I felt.

“Uh…uh,” I had stuttered, looking around trying to find any sign of that Chick Fil A. I remember awkwardly scouring around until I saw the red letters in the distance.

“Oh yeah, just pull up there.”

Our Lyft driver pulled up to the CFA and we eagerly got out of the car only to be struck by another “Holy shit we’re literally in a horror movie” moment because guess what?

There’s a fucking graveyard behind the Chick Fil A. The parking lot is completely empty, save for a few cars scattered in front of a large store we had never seen before called “Ocean State Job Lots.”

We had been so spooked and disheveled by this strange surrounding atmosphere that we almost even get run over by a car, going at FULL SPEED through the CFA drive thru. This does not bode well.

Perhaps we should’ve taken this as the first sign that Dedham, Massachusetts did not want us inside of it, but our want for chicken outweighed our common sense.

The moment we enter the Chick Fil A, we forget about all the creepiness and strangeness of the town entirely and instead embrace the sweet, sweet comfort of Chick Fil A’s interior, with its colored cups and red chairs and employees that seem to embody home.

We excitedly get in line and order. I ordered medium waffle fries with eight count chicken nuggets with Chick Fil A sauce, mac and cheese, and a cookies and cream milkshake. Raymond orders two deluxe chicken sandwiches. Aiden also orders a sandwich, fries, and a cookies and cream milkshake. Mariia orders chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, and a strawberry milkshake.

And for about five minutes, we’re all completely silent as we engorge on this Chick Fil A, save for a few “Oh my god I missed this” and “Holy fuck it’s so good.”

I swear I’m not sponsored by CFA; I just really missed it. Like, I think about waffle fries and Chick Fil A sauce a lot. That’s such a good combination. Holy shit.

Once we finished our meal, we realized we had nothing to do except explore this unholy town. So we made our way through the parking lot to Ocean State Job Lots, which basically was just a giant store with pretty cheap prices and sold virtually everything.

But as we exited the heaven that was Chick Fil A and entered the strange purgatory-like reality that is Ocean State Job Lots and, more specifically, Dedham, MA, I realized that this town really, really did not want us in here. As we walked through the store, I noticed something strange. Customers would actively stop and watch us when we walked by.  It’s like in video games where you have to blend in and pretend to be an NPC because people are trying to figure out who the real players are versus NPCs, and those people could definitely tell we were not NPCs.

We just weren’t quite from…Here.

The store itself is also pretty cursed, but also pretty cool. It’s almost haphazardly arranged, but organized enough so that you know it’s intentional. For example, one shelf switches from selling winter gear like coats and jackets to bras and underwear to selling shovels and digging equipment. It was bizarre.

Occasionally there would be announcements over the intercom where everyone would then respond by stopping whatever they were doing and exclaiming a great “HURRAY!” before continuing on as if nothing happened.

We ended up wandering over to the pet section to buy something for Loop kitchen-side cat, Zella, and a lighter for Loop kitchen.

Once we purchased our items, I told everyone that the map said there should be a mall around here so we set off on our way towards the mall.

On our way there, we passed by some very strange occurrences. There were other restaurants and stores in the vicinity such as a Chipotle, Five Guys, Uno’s, and grocery store. Firstly, the grocery store was extremely cheap. That wasn’t exactly spooky, it was just really bewildering to know that Cambridge and Boston was charging us at a near criminal rate. Awful. But, every single other restaurant we passed by, excluding Chick Fil A, was empty. No customers, no employees, nothing. Zero sign of life. It was as if the life force of this town was Chick Fil A alone. It was absolutely bizarre.

“The only thing that would really make this funnier is if we saw some like really offpace shit like an abandoned creepy hospital or something,” one of us had commented earlier in the day when we started to notice how strange Dedham was.

Well, we kept walking and lo and behold there was this pretty unfortunate prison-like hospital next to what seemed like an abandoned factory that was gated off. Go figure.

We took some pictures and was just utterly amazed by how everything seemed to perfectly mimic this horror movie scenario, before continuing to walk to the mall.

Except we never found a true mall.

Dedham’s definition of a mall is a Lowe’s, DSW, GameStop, and Old Navy all placed next to each other. Spoiler alert: this is not a mall. After futzing around and browsing Old Navy, we ultimately decided it’d be best to go to a real mall, so we Lyfted back to Cambridgeside Mall and did some shopping in H&M before heading home. As soon as I got back to Random I ran to Kita and Caela’s DT practice (yes!!! I’m in a dance group WOWOOAHOHWOAHOW!!!!)

So yes, this was my much needed day off. Am I horribly behind on work? Yes. Do I regret this excursion? Absolutely not.

We’ve now sworn it to be our President’s Day tradition – a nice outing to the forever cursed town that is Dedham, MA for some good, good chicken. Hopefully next time all of CRABMEATS can come!

Enjoy some photos from the day.

HEAVEN HEAVEN HEAVEN HEAVEN

look at the fucking graveyard what the fuck

absolutely bizarre

look its like idk man its a bit spooky

this is the abandoned factory like thing i was talking about

Previous Next

One

Naubos na’ng kaluluwa
Pinilit kong tumulad sa
Kanilang lahat na
Tila patay na ang diwa

My soul’s run out
From trying to be
Like everyone else
Whose spirit seems dead

There was a time, last year, when I really wanted to do an internship over the summer.

I don’t know what, exactly, made me feel like I wanted to do one. I knew that I didn’t want to spend my summer at home, and that it would be nice to make some money. The way my financial aid works was that I was expected to contribute an amount based on employment through the school year and on expected savings through summer employment, so I guess I needed to make money somehow. I also thought it’d be nice to have a little more runway throughout the school year.

The Fall Career Fair happened in September, and I didn’t really actively try to look for an internship, although several of my friends did. I talked to a couple companies, asked about which ones had opportunities for first-years, dropped off my resume in several places, and filled out interest forms. But mostly I just collected free stuff.

Later in the year, during November and December, I sent out maybe ten or so applications, none of which I cared a lot about. I thought that, maybe, if I got an offer from one of them, then I’d strongly consider doing an internship there.

I was kind of disappointed that I didn’t get any callbacks or anything; for a lot of them I just never heard back again. It seemed even more disappointing when my some of my other friends, who were first-years just like me, did get callbacks and offers. And while I was happy for them, I couldn’t help but feel a small bit of envy.

At the time, it seemed to be impossible for me to get something to do over the summer. I remember thinking that if someone, anyone, gave me an offer, then I’d just take it. I was so utterly convinced that if I didn’t get an internship, then I’m a failure of a person.

And I get it! It’s literally just my first year here at MIT. It’s not as if all of my friends are doing something, because that just isn’t true. I’m not going to irreparably damage my life even if I don’t do anything this summer. And it’s not like I was desperate, it’s not like I was really trying, it’s not like I wanted one that badly or was hurt that much. It was just a passing thought.

But why was that thought there in the first place?

Two

Araw-araw bumabangon
Na ’di alam ang dahilan
At para bang gumugol lang
Ako ng oras sa wala

Waking up every day
Without a sense of purpose
I’ve spent all this time
For no reason

MIT has an office called CAPD, or Career Advising and Professional Development, which aims to help students and alumni with things surrounding employment. They review resumes, help run career fairs, have infosessions about job hunting, that kind of stuff. Towards the end of January they posted that they were holding mock interviews, specifically aimed at first-years. I signed up for one, not really knowing what to expect.

The guy who talked to me was an alum, who graduated several years ago. We conducted a mock interview, and when I didn’t know how to begin, he asked me what I, ideally, wanted to do this summer. But I don’t know what I want to do, so that didn’t make it any easier to answer. I picked something anyway. I said that I was considering doing something maybe related to education.

We did the rest of the interview. He asked me about my background, asked me to talk about a specific time when I took initiative, asked me to demonstrate explaining a concept. He gave some helpful advice, the most memorable of which is to aim to answer the question within the first few seconds, and to gauge whether the interviewer wanted to hear more or not.

I shared to him that I felt absolutely clueless as to what I wanted to do that summer, much less what I wanted to do after I graduated. He reassures me, and tells me that it’s fine, and that I’ll figure it out. About how the job interview process, and all of the stuff surrounding that, isn’t just about looking for an employer that’ll hire you, but looking for an employer you want to work with.

For some reason, the thought felt so novel. I had a choice of what I could do. I’m not bound to whoever wants to hire me. It’s a sentiment I’ve heard in so many different forms before, but before that night, I’ve never heard it so clearly and plainly expressed.

Registration for the spring semester happened shortly after that. MIT students need to take several STEM GIRs in order to graduate: a biology, a chemistry, two calculus, and two physics classes. The students in the class of 2022 and 2023 were put on an experiment, where they could choose to take three of these on Pass/No Record any time before they graduate. Because of that, I’ve decided to take biology and chemistry later on, probably in sophomore fall and spring.

My adviser told me that he discouraged me from doing this. He posed the question—what if I found out that I liked biology, or chemistry, and decided to pursue a career in that instead? It would have been better, then, if I knew what my major would be earlier.

And while I’m fairly certain I won’t enjoy a career in either biology or chemistry, it stirred up more questions about things I’ve been thinking about recently. What do I want to major in? How will that tie in to what I want to do in the future? And what do I want to do, really?

On the Friday of the first week of class, I went to one of the faculty lunches that the First-Year Office arranges. It was with a professor in Course 1, which is Civil and Environmental Engineering. We didn’t talk about engineering at all. Instead, we talked about deciding our majors, and in careers.

We talked about the virtues of exploring widely and trying many different things, but also of doing something deeply and getting a lot of experience with one thing. We talked about taking our time, and he said that we shouldn’t compare ourselves to others, because we would always feel like we were going too slowly.

I get that all of this advice is well-intentioned. I get that all of it is supposed to make me feel okay about not knowing what I’m supposed to be doing right now, and that it’s totally fine if I don’t have everything planned, and that I can take my time to figure things out.

But despite all of that, it still feels overwhelming, in the sense that it only prompted me to worry about these things even more.

nakakapagod na. it’s exhausting, in the sense that it didn’t used to be. screenshot taken from naubos na

Would I really pick a company just because they align with my values? Does it make sense for me to think about that right now, even when doing something as seemingly inconsequential as picking somewhere to apply to, or do an internship with? And what are my values? What are the things that I care about?

What’ll make me happy?

Three

Ano ba talaga?
Ano ba ang halaga?
Ako ba o sila?
Sino’ng mas mahalaga?
Sino ba?

What is it, really?
What do I value?
Is it me, or them?
Who’s more important?
Who?

My answer to the question, what do you want to do in the future, has always been something like this: Oh, maybe I’ll go into grad school and do math or CS research. Maybe I’ll go into finance, maybe I’ll be a software engineer. It’s a well-paying job, and if I pick the right one, I’ll feel like I’m making a difference in other people’s lives, right?

Now that I stop to think about how I got these preferences in the first place, I realize that I only say these because it felt like the “default” option. Somehow, it felt natural. It felt standard. It felt conservative. But above all, it just vaguely felt like the right option for me.

I was aware, to some extent, that I picked this up from others, but I didn’t consciously realize this until I read this piece that Brian C. ’19 wrote:

I felt unquestioningly for a long time that I was suited, maybe even somewhat obligated, to continue studying math (doubly so because math is an absurdly flexible major at MIT) and to pursue a “math career”: if not pure math research, then research in an adjacent field like computer science or economics, or some comparably logicky or quantitative endeavor like finance or software engineering. I felt I should be looking for other people who did well in math contests and doing things similar to what they did, which in most cases happened to be all of the above.

In the moment, of course, it’s not that I consciously think that. It’s not that I think, yeah, I want to do a software engineering internship this summer because all of my friends are too. It’s more of generating explanations for why I didn’t want to do anything else.

Why not become a writer, if I love writing so much? Because getting published is hard, making money is harder, and being consistent is the hardest of all. Why not be a high school teacher, then? Teaching high school students is something I’ve loved doing since I was in high school myself. But part of me holds back, and wonders what a shame, then, to go to MIT and be only a high school teacher.

Then here, why not dedicate myself to writing textbooks, or do something about research debt, which is an issue I care about? It’d combine my interest in math or computer science, in teaching, in graphics design, and it would address what I think is a huge problem. But it’s not as if someone says that they want to become a textbook author. That’s not a job. Not a career.

And these reasons feel fake to me now. I could very well dedicate my life to, say, research debt. I could be a writer while picking up tutoring jobs on the side, if I really did love writing that much. And only a high school teacher? Where did I get that idea from? When did I start viewing teaching in high school as such a low profession? I literally could not be here, right now, if not through the kindness of all of mine.

Now that I think about it, I realize that all of these are borrowed reasons. Explanations I’ve picked up from other people over the years that I’m now applying to myself. Not reasons that I’ve come up with independently, because if I did, I probably would have gotten different conclusions.

And it’s easy to say I shouldn’t compare myself to others, and it’s easy to say that I should find my own path, and it’s easy to extol innovation and being unconventional. But putting it into practice means going against resistance.

It means having to deal with this imagined disapproval from others that I’ll get if I do choose an unconventional path, if I do decide that I don’t want to go into grad school or software engineering or finance. It means bearing the risk of doing something I haven’t seen other people, or at least people I know personally, successfully pull off. It means actually having to look at myself, and think about what I want to do, which is infinitely harder than copying what others are doing and borrowing their reasons for it. And when other people accuse me with what a shame for you to go to MIT and only do this, it means standing up for my reasons.

I can’t pretend that I don’t want approval. I feel hurt when other people don’t like my choices.

But how much does that really matter to me? How much should that matter?

Whose approval do I care about more: mine or theirs?

Four

Lagi na lang pangalawa
Sa karera ng buhay
Iniwan na, ito’y sumpa
Lagi na lang pumapalya

Always second
In the race of life
Left behind, it’s a curse
Always failing

So what do I enjoy? If I could shrug off all practical reasons for choosing a job, then, what would I pick? I’ve been so far removed from this question that I actually don’t even know where the answer would start.

xkcd career, cc-by-nc 2.5

The concept of doing something I want is just so foreign. I’ve been told, for example, to take classes that I’d enjoy, but I feel like I just picked my classes this semester based on convenience. I intentionally didn’t pick classes I was interested in because the lectures were before 11 AM. I’m taking three classes just to tick off requirements.

Sure, the other classes I’m taking, I’m taking “for fun”, or because I’m actually interested in them. But I only picked these classes because I knew a lot of other people who are taking these too. For 18.218, Topics in Combinatorics, for example, I realized on the first day that I knew a third of the people in the room! Although I’m not sure if this is a bad thing, it doesn’t really work with finding my own path and all that jazz.

Most of the enjoyment I currently get, I get out of my everything else in my life. I love working with MIT ESP, because I love teaching. I really enjoy dancing with Tech Squares. I love board games, and puzzles, and the people on Floor Pi, and all of my friends in general.

My priorities have shifted to the point that I care about these things more than keeping up good grades. Sure, I do care about doing well in my classes. But I’ll procrastinate on doing work if it means getting to spend a couple more minutes in the lounge playing TIchu. Or, if I had to choose between going to lecture and grabbing lunch with a friend I haven’t seen in several months, I’m probably going to skip lecture and ask notes from my friends later.

And I wonder how my priorities will change over the next few years. How much do I care about finding a job that I like doing? How much do I care about making a positive impact with my career, or about feeling I’m doing something meaningful? How much do I care about keeping in touch with my friends, or about getting to do puzzles and play board games and having free time, or about how much money I’m making, or about how good I am at my job? Which of these do I care about the most, which of these do I care about the least?

It’s a step up, I guess, from focusing too narrowly. As someone who’s struggled financially, I used to put a lot of weight on having a good salary. As someone who used to worry about being approved by others, I used to put a lot of weight on having a high-status job. But I realized, and cue the Disney music, that these things matter less to me than being satisfied with what I’m doing and being able to fit my job with the rest of my life.

And I realize, now, that it’s an incredible amount of privilege studying at MIT grants me. The fact that how much money I’m making isn’t my top priority is a testament to how privileged I am. It would make me feel guilty, in a sense, to be dealt so much privilege, if I choose to do something that wouldn’t be helping others. So I care about that too—I care about helping people with my job, and about helping people really well.

So yes. If I end up making the same choices as I would have otherwise—if I end up wanting to do software engineering or math research or finance—if I make the same conclusion as other people I know—then so be it! The value doesn’t just come from whatever career I pick, but also in the process I go through finding one, right?

Five

Naubos na’ng kaluluwa
Hindi naman nakuha ang
Malinaw na hinaharap
’Di na marunong mangarap

My soul’s run out
I didn’t get the future
That I clearly looked for
Don’t know how to dream anymore

So—why was that passing thought there in the first place? Maybe it’s just because I put undue pressure on myself to be like others, when I’m dealing with questions that are inherently personal. And maybe that imaginary pressure I was subjecting myself to faded because I realized this. That I was in no particular pressure to do something right now, and that I had time to figure things out.

I was talking to a friend, also a first-year, who pointed out that he felt he didn’t have time. We were comparing MIT to summer camps. He said that MIT felt much more important, and that he didn’t feel comfortable wasting even a single week here. In MIT, he had to make important choices. His priorities included figuring out what he wanted to do in the future as early as possible, because he was interested in so many different things. And that because it was so important, he felt like he needed to do an internship to rule out some of the things he was interested in.

I disagreed. I said that MIT and the summer camps I went to felt similar, in that I lived next to my friends, which was so different from anything I’ve ever experienced. That I was free to spend a lot of time hanging out and getting to know people. And I felt that life at MIT felt slower, and somehow, less important. As if my priorities have shifted to the point that “real life” felt more “fake” than everything else, and because of that, I didn’t feel like planning what I wanted to do this summer was so important.

He notices that this isn’t a response to his point—why didn’t I feel like I needed to figure out what I wanted to do right now? Sure, I’m thinking about it, but he implied that I should be prioritizing this issue more than I currently do. He said that I should be trying more things in order to find out whether I like them or not. And that this, then, should be a reason why I should do something this summer to figure that out, whether it’s an internship or a UROP or something else.

I didn’t really have a good reason why. I just felt like it wasn’t that important of an issue. I felt like it was important to figure out what my priorities were first, what I was looking for in a career, before I actually try things out to see whether I liked them. And I felt like I just really did have a lot of time—I had seven more semesters, and it wouldn’t be bad if I graduated without having figured out what I want to do, right?

He argued that maybe it is bad. That seven semesters isn’t actually a lot of time. That I couldn’t possibly have a reason, and that these are all just things I’m telling myself, and that there isn’t any possible reason why I shouldn’t feel this sense of urgency. That maybe my conclusion, I don’t want to look for something to do this summer right now, came first, and that all of this reasoning about priorities came later.

In other words, maybe I was just saying all of this so that I had an excuse not to try. And I said that maybe the real reason I didn’t want to try was because I didn’t want to see myself fail.

He said that felt like a truer reason than anything else I’ve said.

Six

Hanggang kailan ipipilit?
Hanggang saan bago tumanggi?
Hanggang kailan magsisisi?
Hanggang kailan, hanggang kailan?

How long will I force it?
How long until I say no?
How long will I regret?
How long, how long?

I’ve been working on this post on-and-off for around two weeks now. During the early drafts of this post, Oh Flamingo, one of my favorite bands, released Naubos Na around a week ago. I heard about it when this tweet popped up on my Twitter feed. It was pretty appropriate timing, since I was planning to write this post in the first place, and the song’s lyrics really resonated with the point I’m trying to make.

So there I was, right? Lying in bed, exhausted after my last class of the day, with all of these things about career and friends and priorities fresh on my mind.

I watched the music video, and by the time it ended, I was crying.

This semester I’m taking 4.110 Design Across Scales and Disciplines, a class inspired by Charles and Ray Eames’s short film “Powers of Ten” which features weekly lectures⁠01 Last week we heard from Skylar Tibbits of the Self-Assembly Lab; this week we heard from David Sun Kong of the Community Biotechnology Initiative. from designers in various disciplines who work at different scales and lab sessions where we refine our own design skills in a series of increasingly complex assignments. As someone with no design background at all and minimal interest in design, I’m taking this class as an intro to the field and also because I need one more HASS-A⁠02 art class to complete my distribution. The first assignment is called “Critter”: the goal is to optimize a tennis-ball-sized creature through a series of additions or deletions in physical traits or behaviors over the course of fifteen days. At four separate times, the TAs for the class emailed out “emergencies,” or sudden environmental changes to which our critters must adapt. The assignment isn’t about making something that would exist in reality or even evolving something realistically; I think it is mostly a creative exercise (so don’t make fun of the stupid science I’m doing here). Here is my critter.

My critter begins as a simple translucent layer of tissue that attaches itself in the crooks of trees using anchors that also function as siphons to tap xylem and phloem in the tree. The web secretes enzymes and a sticky substance which traps and digests insects that fly into it. Webs are prone to accumulating indigestible dirt and debris, which makes them more visible and less capable of trapping nutritionally valuable prey.

Day 2: Pocket

In transitioning from a Web to a Pocket, the critter has developed increased bodily elasticity that allows it to dip in the middle, forming a pit in which it can trap and digest slightly larger creatures (maybe even some small critters) that fall in. Eventually, the Pocket bursts open due to its contents exceeding the capacity of its central pit. These bursts typically result in the birth of one or more additional Pockets—pieces of Pockets can regenerate when they are ripped apart (like how cutting a starfish up can give you more starfish than you started out with). Nevertheless, sometimes the bursts result in two non-viable fragments, unable to form a necessary attachment to the tree and incapable of creating that crucial central pit.

Day 3: Pocket

Pockets have now developed a layer of muscle. This allows them to compact their inner contents to reduce the incidence of fatal bursts; additionally, the muscle confers the capability to move randomly in search of a spot to anchor on the tree. Pockets have no capacity to sense, so they must find an anchor spot in a very brute-force/trial and error manner.

Day 4: Pocket

Emergency! A volcano has erupted relatively close to your critter‘s habitat! Though they are far enough away to not feel the effects of flowing lava, ash and debris blow up into the atmosphere for days, creating a dense haze and dimming the sun.

An camera-aperture-inspired hole has formed at the bottom of the Pocket’s pit. This allows the Pocket to release its contents if it collects too much ash and debris. This is also advantageous for the pocket to release indigestible material that accumulates over time and causes bursts. Without bursts, however, Pockets cannot reproduce.

Day 5: Sliding Pocket

Pockets, now Sliding Pockets, have begun to reproduce by replicating themselves on the inner lining of their pits and then sliding off of one another like a couple of plastic cups. This creates an interesting mother-daughter dynamic because Pockets that slide off often anchor near to their daughters due to incomplete detachment of their anchor points. The daughter can “feed” the mother by dropping prey or water into her central pit.

Day 6: Pocket Vine

Attached systems of mother and daughter Sliding Pockets form colonies that stretch up and down tree trunks. The “vine” acts at times as a single organism, with lower, well-fed Pockets contracting to expel trapped prey into the pits of higher up pockets that have begun to wither. Ground critter bones have been found in Pockets as high as ten feet from the ground.

Day 7: Pocket Vine

Emergency! After the volcanic disaster, a dense smog has settled in the atmosphere, with no signs of clearing in the next few weeks (months? years?). The smog is believed to have been caused by the volcanic event, but has now trapped other pollutants/gases being produced by local industry. Along with decreased access to sunlight, the air has become too polluted to breathe without dangerous long-term health effects. Some critters have started making masks for themselves, but some have started to evolve…

Pockets that have trapped seeds now begin to secrete nutrients that allow the seeds to grow. Plants growing in the central pit filter the air around the gas exchange membrane of the Pocket’s central pit, allowing the critter to continue to breathe despite the smog. Some pockets have been observed releasing their cultivated plants onto the ground, causing tiny green plant patches to spring up at the bases of Pocket-colonized trees.

Day 8: Travelling Vine

Using their muscles, the Pockets have begun to exit their home trees and creep along the ground where prey is more plentiful and the air is slightly cleaner. In the process, some Pockets end up burrowing into the ground to set up traps for other critters who come along to eat the plants living in their pits; any critter that approaches is vulnerable to falling in. Others crawl along the forest floor, clearing paths in the ash and debris.

Day 9: Scaly Vine

Emergency! Sun finally found its way through the smog. Air has suddenly become translucent again. Even though visibility has changed, the critter found himself/herself/itself laying down in vastness of debris, accumulated waste. How does the critter accommodate to live within the scrap?

Well, my critter doesn’t have eyes, so visibility doesn’t matter much. The accumulated waste, however, has proven problematic for my soft, smooth chains of Pockets. To protect against getting impaled, they have developed a layer of scales⁠04 if only I could design across them as armor.

Day 10: Scaly Vine

The Scaly Vine has developed olfactory capabilities to guide it through a minefield of predators and debris. This allows it to hunt actively, rather than relying on prey to fall into its pit. Additionally, because the Pockets can now smell other Pockets, they are able to avoid one another and prevent getting tangled up like rat kings.

Day 11: Vine Fish

The Scaly Vines of Pockets have used their sense of smell to navigate toward bodies of water, where they are able to rinse themselves of ashes and dirt, hide from predators, and eat critters that live in the water.

Day 12: Kissing Cactus

Emergency! After evolving among waste for a few days, your critter has been captured by another living being, and taken 3,000 miles away. Your critter’s new habitat is fundamentally different from what it used to be:​ the space allocated to your critter is limited, and the captor only provides specific resources. How does your critter react to captivity?

My critter was carried from the forest to the desert by some kind of bird. (What a shame; it was just getting used to swimming around in the water.) To keep from drying out, pairs of Pockets have begun to fuse together at their main opening. Somehow, the fused Pockets are able to exchange bits of DNA to one another when in this “kissing” conformation, increasing genetic diversity in the population.

Day 13: Stack Cactus

Pockets, in their duplex form, have begun to cope with their captivity by reattaching into colonies. This time, the connections form between “apertures” such that they stack into towers, or “Stack Cacti.” Critters that scale the Stack in search of water or bugs to eat can be trapped in the topmost chamber of the colony; the colony works in concert to distribute the swallowed critter to each subunit as determined by its nutritional needs.

Day 14: Disk Cactus

Other critters, who have developed hands and a desire to “play,” have taken a liking to my critter. They rip Disks off of their stacks and toss them like Frisbees around the desert. Disks are now dispersed throughout the desert, free to roam if only they could.

Day 15: Roadrunner

Lonely Disks, in search of others, food, water, life, experiences, feelings, new ideas, something to break the monotony of the desert, have flipped onto their sides and now roll through the desert like tumbleweeds with a sense of direction. Hopefully they find what they’re looking for.

Some notes on the process:

I wanted my critter to be a little different, so I made it more of a plant than a furry little mammal (what tends to come to mind with the word “critter”). The instructors suggested starting with a very simple critter to have a lot of freedom in adapting it, so I started with a literal sheet of cells.

I also wanted to avoid making it like a pet or anything you could easily look at as human-like. To this end, I refused to give it eyes, made it more radially symmetric than bilaterally symmetric, and didn’t give it limbs.

It would be too easy⁠05 and also maybe too obvious to simply declare “Now Critter can walk.” Therefore, I tried to make my changes incremental enough that I could conceive of them happening in nature like that.

This was a fun little exercise, though I hope the scaly bastard doesn’t haunt me in my dreams for making him Like That.

The last post I made was kind of a lot. Even beginning to write this post took way more effort than it normally would have. Anyway, I’ll continue my theme of talking about my problems in public, and I’ll walk you through my mess of overcommitment so far. February has just been a blur for me, and I feel that, until last weekend, I didn’t really have a day that was free.

During January, ESP was asked to clear out the room where we stored all of our class supplies. This took us an entire day and involved putting seven shelves’ worth of class supplies in boxes and moving them to another room. Then on the first weekend of February, the weekend before the semester started, we moved all of them back and organized them this time. It was tiring, but now all of our class supplies are neatly organized and labeled and it’s actually really nice.

Classes began in full swing on Monday, while I helped with recruiting teachers for Spark, which is like Splash but for middle schoolers.⁠01 More specifically, imagine a thousand or so middle school students coming to MIT to take hour-long-ish classes taught by people in the MIT community for a weekend. My day-to-day for February was pretty full. Apart from classes, I’m a lab assistant for 6.036 Introduction to Machine Learning, and I’m going to waltz classes on Monday nights, Tech Squares on Tuesday nights, ESP worksessions on Wednesday nights, and an A1 square dancing class⁠02 So it turns out square dancing has different <em>programs</em>, going from Basic 1, Basic 2, Mainstream, Plus, then A1 and A2 making up Advanced, and C1 through C4 being Challenge. No, I am <em>not</em> learning too much square dancing. on Thursday nights.

The second weekend of February was the ESP retreat, where we drove up to New Hampshire in the freezing cold, and it was really fun. That Sunday was the first Floor Pi meeting⁠03 The floor I live in on East Campus. in the spring, where we elected committees. I was again serving on TeaComm, which runs teatime on hall every few days, where we have tea and talk about stuff.

Through the next week were preparations for HMMT February, a high school math competition run by Harvard and MIT students that I volunteer for. We stapled problem sheets together, organized team envelopes, cut labels, all that stuff. East Campus was also beginning its preparations for CPW and REX,⁠04 Campus Preview Weekend and Residence Exploration, when dorms and student groups host lots of events. and I submitted several events that I wanted to run with Floor Pi.

HMMT February happened on the third weekend. That was also a lot. I served ice cream and ran an origami event on Friday night, graded all day on Saturday, went to a wrapup meeting on Saturday evening, hanged out with friends on Floor Pi later that night, and cotaught a class with Hahn on how RSA worked.

On Sunday began Spark scheduling weekend, where I helped schedule the hundreds of classes being taught for Spark. I had dinner on Sunday with some friends who came over for HMMT, and then had a meeting with the Filipino Students Association to decide what we were going to do this spring. Then we played a round of Only Connect⁠05 A British game show. Floor Pi likes writing Only Connect-styled problems and playing them with the hall. on Floor Pi that Yannick wrote.

So yeah. Three back to back to back weekends of activities.

I gave two admissions tours on Monday. A friend told me later that week that someone they knew went on a tour I gave, and that person said I was a really good tour guide, which made me feel good. Spark scheduling weekend continued through Monday afternoon, where we wrapped up some loose ends, and then had dinner together. There was Fruit Bowl⁠06 Another Floor Pi tradition, where we come together and eat fruit. on Wednesday, and my first midterm of the semester that Friday.

And that weekend—last weekend—was the first weekend in a while that I felt like I didn’t do anything. Friday night, I went to a LARP⁠07 A live-action roleplaying game. See the Assassins’ Guild wiki: <a href="https://assassin.mit.edu/web/What_is_LARP%3F">What is LARP?</a> run through the Assassins’ Guild. My character was apparently a ghost, which I only found out two-thirds of the way into the game.

No alarm woke me up on Saturday. I spent some time working on psets, but I mostly did other stuff. I sang Ang Huling El Bimbo for an International Mother Language Day event. I went to Epsilon Theta⁠08 Not a frat, but an independent living group. Culturally similar to Floor Pi. on Saturday evening, did some puzzles, and slept over. On Sunday afternoon, I learned how to play Stone Age, another board game, and ran another round of Only Connect on Floor Pi that I cowrote with Wayne.

And that brings us to this week. We had a meeting about Mystery Hunt 2021 on Monday. A game of Live-Action Mafia,⁠09 A game that involves sneaking up on people and tapping their shoulders to make “kills”, a lot like the party game <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf_(social_deduction_game)">Werewolf</a>. which is another club I’m involved with, started on Tuesday. I replied to a lot of emails this week, because Spring HSSP,⁠10 A multi-week program of a series of classes running for six Saturdays, for students in seventh through twelfth grades. another one of ESP’s programs, is beginning this weekend. The Filipino Students Association’s general board meeting will happen on Friday night. And I’m giving a lecture on calendar math for Spring HSSP.

I’m eight hundred words into this post and the only thing that’s happened is me talking about what I did this February. Note that I haven’t even given any interpretations! I haven’t even mentioned what I feel about all this, or discussed the other things going on through my mind, or mentioned a single class I’m taking. And I think this is pretty clearly a sign that I’m doing a lot.

I feel that even if I did drop some commitments, I would just replace them with other things, or personal projects. I feel that at this rate, I’m just going to keep doing things until I forcibly burn myself out. But I don’t feel like I’m going to burn out. I don’t feel like I’m going to break.

And I enjoy all the things that I’m doing, which is great! I find fulfillment in my classes, and my extracurriculars. I feel like I’m actually doing something, like I’m helping, and I like it because it makes me feel like I have control over things. Yet it also sucks, in a weird, perverted sense, because I don’t know which of my commitments I would drop if I needed to.

But do I want to drop things in the first place? Do I really want to spend more time being alone? Maybe the reason I’m doing so much is because I’m avoiding being alone, I’m avoiding having free time with just myself, that I want almost every waking moment doing something, or hanging out with someone. Maybe I’m doing it to avoid the thoughts that I’d get when I am alone, thoughts I’d rather not entertain.

That’s it I guess. Oops. I promise I’ll write something more substantial next time.

I am heartbroken to tell you that this morning we learned Gisel, a beloved member of our team, died unexpectedly yesterday. 

If you’ve applied to MIT this millennium, you probably interacted with Gisel, who was stationed at the front desk in room 3-108 for the last 20 years. If you called the office, she probably picked up the phone and connected you to the admissions officer on duty. If you emailed, she likely responded.⁠01 In fact, she sent almost 8,000 emails to students, teachers, guidance counselors, and others over the last year alone. More than 42,000 over the last five years. When I tried to go over that, our fancy email server analytics system crashed. If you were an elementary school teacher who wrote asking for a poster of MIT to hang in your classroom to inspire your students, Gisel is probably the person who put it in an envelope and dropped it in the mail. If you were an admissions officer who realized, on the plane to some far flung recruiting region, that you forgot to pack your fact sheets, she’s probably the one who shipped extras overnight so they’d be at your hotel in the morning.⁠02 As you can probably imagine, she frequently won OVC Appreciation Awards that staff can give to each other as a thanks helping them out in a pinch.

Gisel’s kindness towards others was not limited to her professional responsibilities. If you were the partner of a new faculty or staff member from abroad, and if you were lucky, you might have been matched to Gisel through the language conversation exchange to help you learn English and acclimate to MIT. If you were someone who had worked in the office and were leaving to take another job, she might have knit you a small beaver to remember MIT by. Her latest, unfinished, knitting project was a tiny Baby Yoda.⁠03 I'm not actually sure if Gisel had ever seen anything from the Star Wars universe; she just thought it was cute (and she was right).  

a knit beaver gisel made for jessica ch’ng when she left the office (pc jessica)

Gisel was an integral member of our team and our mission; our work over the last two decades would not have been possible without her. She was what every institution needs: a maintainer, one of the people who quietly, consistently, reliably⁠04 </span>She was usually the first one in the office and the last one out. Earlier in my career, I remember once asking a senior colleague what Gisel's job was, and them telling me, simply, “well, she's always there.” And so she was; and now she's not. kept the office — and the Institute — going. 

And so I wanted to write this, on behalf of all of us here at MITAdmissions, to publicly thank and remember Gisel, and to honor her kindness, her conscientiousness, and her years of selfless service and warm friendship to her colleagues, to the MIT community, and to our applicants. 

I also wanted to explain to our applicants why, if you call or email us in the near term, you may not get quite as quick of a response as you typically would, both because Gisel herself is not around to help as she so tirelessly did, and also because the rest of her team is grieving her loss. To be honest, we’re all in a bit of shock, and it’s going to take a little bit of time for us to get back up to full operational and emotional capacity. We appreciate your patience while we do so. 

If you have a fond memory of Gisel that you’d like to share, please feel free to do so respectfully in the comments below. I will update this post as we have more public information to share on how we might collectively honor her. 

Miss you always, Gisel. 

As many of you know, Random Hall has come to represent much more than a dorm to me — it’s a living space that houses some of my most favorite memories, events, and people, and it’s an integral part of my MIT experience.

This past Saturday, February 29th, I experienced something that I will not be able to experience ever again in my undergraduate life here at MIT: Random Hall’s birthday.

Random Hall was officially dedicated on February 29th, 1968⁠06 A shame. One year away from a truly glorious date. . Random Hall also has a tradition of performing a birthday dirge, as opposed to a birthday song, where we stomp and clap rather obnoxiously to celebrate one year closer to death.

Every four years, when it’s Random’s birthday, the entire dorm goes on a great excursion to Lobby 7, stands in a circle, and performs the birthday dirge.

I was actually in the middle of giving a tour of Random to a friend when I realized the dirge was happening, so I took her to come dirge with us. It was a really wholesome time and it made me really proud to be a part of the dorm!

This year, since Random turned 13, Ilani, a resident of the dorm, helped organize an official B’ Mitzvah for the dorm.

Enjoy some photos from the day:

birthday cake pt 1!

birthday cake pt 2!

a nice random hall hack in lobby 7 to celebrate the magical day

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Note: I know literally nothing about food. I love food, but have very few nuanced opinions about it. 

I mentioned this briefly in a previous blog post, but I’ve been trying to see more of Boston and Cambridge this semester. My method of doing this has been going out to new⁠01 and not just Le's in Harvard Square or The Friendly Toast in Kendall, which are the only restaurants I used to go to before restaurants and bars with my friends. This month, I actually managed to rack up a LOT of new ~culinary experiences~, and I’ve gotta say that going out to dinner with my friends has been a much more productive bonding experience than just sitting somewhere and psetting together for hours on end.

So here’s a list of restaurants/bars that I patronized this month – they’re all excellent and I would highly recommend trying literally any of them out :)

The Painted Burro – This was where I went with my boyfriend to celebrate his return from GTL Israel over IAP! It’s a cool Mexican place out in Davis Square⁠02 Tufts has Davis Square, we have Kendall Square, and Harvard has Harvard Square because of course they do , which is pretty far out of the MIT bubble. We had *really* good margaritas and some truly fantastic tacos, and also got the added bonus of getting to watch the SuperBowl on the bar TV. Not that it was very interesting, though, because the Patriots⁠03 GO PATS weren’t in it. 

the bar + the superbowl

The Mad Monkfish – Mad Monkfish is an Asian fusion place that used to be called Thelonious Monkfish for whatever reason, and I haven’t been able to stop calling it that even though it changed its name like more than a year ago. It has amazing sushi combos as well as really solid Asian food. I got their tonkatsu and enjoyed it a lot. We also shared a GIANT glass of some sort of pineapple alcohol. Like actually giant. It was bigger than my head. 

i was not kidding

The Muddy Charles – The Muddy is possibly my new favorite place on MIT campus. It’s the grad student run pub in Walker Memorial, which means I can LITERALLY see it from my window. I go here all the time with all sorts of different groups of friends/coworkers. If I could compare it to anything, I would say it’s super similar to how The Three Broomsticks is described in the Harry Potter series, although the Muddy sadly doesn’t have any butterbeer. They do have six dollar pitchers of beer, though :,)

(I go to the Muddy all the time so I don’t have any pictures of it because going there is barely an occasion anymore, oops lol)

5 Spices House – 5 Spices is a pretty well known restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown, but they have a location in Cambridge on Mass Ave now! My friends and I wandered in here by chance after discovering that the brunch place we had been trying to go to was closed, and we were not disappointed. The serving sizes are VERY large and the prices are very low. 

Roxy’s A4CADE – This is definitely my favorite place that I’ve been to all month. Roxy’s is a (truly amazing) grilled cheese place by day, and turns into a barcade at night. I didn’t play any of the arcade games because I am not good at them, but the vibe and the drinks are next level. 11/10 would go again at literally a moment’s notice. It does get super crowded later in the night, though, so definitely go early :)

the simpsons and arcade games, literally a perfect place

Little Big Diner – Joon and I took the Green Line all the way to its farthest reaches to go here. Little Big Diner is located in Newton, a fairly affluent suburb of Boston, so the ramen here was pretty expensive, but we agreed that it was totally worth it. One thing we also noticed⁠04 and were careful to only talk about in Japanese was that we were *literally* the only Asian people in the restaurant, including the cooks and the waiters. The ramen was amazing though :P

a picture of joon taking a picture of ramen

Shojo – Shojo is a really cool fusion place in Chinatown that is known primarily for its HUGE whiskey collection, but also has amazing food. Joon recommended that I try the kimchi fried rice and it was a solid 13/10. I think the revisit value of Shojo is really high because there are tons of different entrees and none of them cost very much, so I’ll definitely be going there again. 

an ~aesthetic~ old fashioned

The People’s Republik – This place is literally exactly what it sounds like: a Soviet Russia themed bar, lol. The drinks are really cheap⁠05 probably because a lot of grad students live around Central Square and also really good. The decor is also…something else. It’s very red. Go figure.

my friend’s iphone 11 takes very aesthetic pictures of drinks

Restaurant Week just started in Boston today, so I’ll definitely be visiting more food places. Stay tuned for next month’s food blogging!

In my New Year’s Resolutions post, I wanted to make a promise to blog every week. Obviously, that hasn’t happened. But I’ve also had weeks where I’ve blogged twice in a week so it basically makes up for it. I realize now that I’m a blog behind so enjoy this extra little blog.

I just wanted to update with some thoughts and things since the spring semester’s started.

1. I dropped 6.009.

So, after much deliberation and consideration and talking with people, I made the ultimate decision to drop 6.009. I have decided that taking five classes at MIT on top of a UROP and extracurriculars is hard. Don’t take five classes unless you a) know you can handle it or b) absolutely have to. But even with (b), I don’t recommend it. Ever since I’ve dropped it and returned back to four classes, I am much happier! I have a lot more time in the day, now. I can use the time to go to the gym (I now work out 4-6 times a week rather than just 4!!!) and spend time with friends.

2. I’m continuing my UROP at the MIT Education Arcade.

Also after much deliberation with this one, after getting a different UROP in the Media Lab, I decided to keep my UROP with the MIT Education Arcade. I just found that I really liked the environment of the Education Arcade a lot more, and working with Meredith (my supervisor) and Melat (another UROP) was something I wasn’t quite ready to give up yet. At my UROP, I’m currently in charge of researching effects of previous gaming experience on gaming performance, as our research has to do with the effects of VR on learning. It’s really interesting and I never really thought I’d be all that into edtech but now it’s a field I am considering to pursue in the future!

3. I really, really like 6.08.

6.08 is my Intro to EECS via Embedded Systems class. Every week, we’re given design exercises, which essentially are these mini-projects with some specifications but no directions on implementation. Design exercises have ranged from making our own digital watch interface to making a system that returns weather conditions to trivia games.

Here is one of the design exercises I made for the class:

Please don’t roast me for the bad wiring. I have never worked with a breadboard prior to this semester.

Anyway, the class is difficult, but I think it’s the perfect level of difficulty. It’s difficult enough where you’re going to struggle, but you know it’s not impossible. This class honestly is the class that has shown me that 6-2/6-3 is a field I can enjoy and explore. I’ve learned so, so much in the five weeks I’ve been in this class, and it’s improved my confidence in my coding abilities so much. Had you told high school senior year Cami that she would be doing this kind of stuff in only a year, she probably wouldn’t have believed you. Prior to MIT, I only had about a year of coding experience under my belt, but kind of like..half-assed coding experience. It was basically a lot of me complaining about code, saying that APCSA was stupid, and that I will never ever be a computer science major ever.

Well, look at here we are, stupid bitch. You’re a CS major, you can now code in C and Python, you know how breadboards work, you’ve done a bunch of fun labs and exercises, and you’re enjoying it a lot.

But in all seriousness, while it isn’t always fun and games (I have legitimately cried because of how frustrated I get when I don’t understand how to do an exercise, or when my design exercise code breaks), 6.08 has taught me so much.

Also, Joe Steinmeyer is an absolute god. His lectures are incredibly engaging, entertaining, and fun, and I look forward to them every week. I highly, highly recommend taking 6.08 if you’re looking to see if 6-2/6-3 is for you.

4. I’m making an effort to be more social.

This is something I really wanted to do a lot more in second semester! I’ve been rushing joining more groups (I joined DT this semester!) and going to more events (I’ve partied three weeks in a row. Perhaps this is not a good thing). It’s really nice to walk around and know people and see familiar faces.

5. DT showings are next week.

DT first showings are where everyone gets together and performs their dances to update the event coordinators on the progress of each group! It’s a good time and it’s exciting to see everyone come together and perform.

6. Holy shit, I need to cook. Please. Please someone scream at me to cook.

I…I haven’t cooked. We’re out of snacks. I’m going this Friday to buy groceries, but like. This is concerning. Someone please yell at me to cook. Thanks.

7. Have I mentioned I’m in fencing…?

I’m taking fencing. I hid the fact I was in a PE very briefly because I have this thing of when I tell people things, I never do it. So I made sure not to say anything until after I started actively going to the class (this also means that I…have a lot of blogposts in progress but I can’t really say anything because I’m scared I’m going to say something and then it ends up blowing up in my face. So. More posts on current things happening in my life probably in a month or so).

Fencing is so fun! I like it a lot. I hope to take pistol next quarter, so I guess I’m working my way to a pirate’s certificate. I’ll probably take sailing next Spring and I’m unsure for when I’ll find the time to take archery. You should actually check out some of MIT’s PE classes. They’re super cool.

Anyway, that’s really it from me. Hope this makes up for the fact I haven’t blogged in a bit! I really do miss it. It’s just really hard to figure out what to write about when I can’t really write about what I’m doing at the moment because that means I’ll flake on it. But some of the things I really, really want to blog about are going to be ending in about two weeks or so, so I should have some blogposts about those things up in a bit.

Meanwhile, it’s midterm season! I have 8.02 midterm this Friday and then 6.042 next Wednesday. I am nervous. 6.042 is going to be my first official midterm on grades. Exciting, but simultaneously terrifying.

We’re well into Quarter 3 and my first midterms are quickly approaching, so to procrastinate for them, I’m going to talk about my spring semester. Without further ado…

Classes:

18.065 (Matrix Methods in Data Analysis, Signal Processing, and Machine Learning)

This class is taught by the legend Gilbert Strang, whom you may know for his 18.06 videos on MIT OCW. These videos saved me when I was taking Linear Algebra in high school, so I sent Professor Strang fanmail, and he responded to me recommending that I take this class! I’ve been waiting to take it ever since.

This class definitely meets my expectations. I haven’t taken a math class since Linear Algebra in my junior year of high school, so reviewing important concepts took a while, but the class is really well-paced, so I didn’t struggle too much. I can’t wait to leave the realm of matrix methods and learn how they’re applied to probability and statistics, deep learning, and optimization.

21G.038 (China in the News: The Untold Stories)

This class is fascinating. I decided to take it because it will (eventually) contribute to my Chinese minor and also because it’s a CI-H. I, uh, I needed to take one of those or I’d be put on a credit limit next fall.

I had a bit of a rocky start in the class, but now that I’ve gotten used to it, I love it. It’s really, really interesting. It focuses on the politics of framing—in other words, how people, whether consciously or subconsciously,  choose to portray issues. The first unit was about reframing Mao Zedong, who is illustrated in a very negative light in the West, and the current unit is about various elements of Chinese culture. I’m loving this unit because the similarities between Chinese and Indian culture are pretty profound, and making comparisons between Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and American culture is really intriguing. 

Also, the assignments aren’t like anything I’ve experienced in a class before—the homework for each class is to do readings/watch documentaries and to write two questions about the content that show your critical thinking. We then discuss everyone’s questions in the next class. It’s a lot of fun!!

21G.102 (Chinese II)

…And now for the actual Chinese language part of my minor! This class meets every day except Wednesday for an hour, and even though I thought it would be impossible to wake up at 10 am, it’s totally doable. I’m actually happy to come to class since it’s super engaging; I already feel my Chinese improving. There’s homework every day, and we also have to memorize 6-7 line dialogues before class quite often, but it’s not hard at all—the homework takes a maximum of 30 minutes every night, and I memorize the dialogue on the 10-minute walk to class. Overall, the class seems like a lot more work than it is since there’s homework every day, but I like how doing it gives me a chance to decompress every night. 

Also, the class is frickin hilarious, no joke. It’s such a friendly environment that everyone can attempt to say things at any time, which means that there are a lot of slip-ups that have me dying with laughter at least once a day. 

15.276 (Communicating With Data)

This class is a CI-M (aka a communication-intensive in your major) so damn, I am COMMUNICATING this semester. It’s pretty chill and it covers some essential skills in being a functioning human in the workplace, which is lit. A lot of it is intuitive, but having multiple opportunities to put everything into practice is nice. Also, I love that we get to work in groups since I haven’t gotten a chance to do that in a class here yet.

It’s also a Sloan class, which is nice because Sloan has a lot of good places to work. It’s overhyped as being really far from campus, but it’s just a five-minute walk, so…

8.02 (Physics II)

Oh, jeez. I’m really behind in this class and there’s a midterm in two days…but we’ll figure that out soon. 

8.02 is in good ol’ TEAL format, so we work in groups and answer questions during class. Again, TEAL is effective for helping people apply concepts to problem-solving, but when you have no idea what’s going on, it’s pretty ineffective. I’ve missed a lot of lectures because 1. I was sick for the first two weeks of the semester and 2. I fell so far behind that going to lecture was essentially meaningless.

and i oop

I took AP Physics I in high school, so I kind of knew what I was doing in 8.01. 8.02, on the other hand…yikes. I really just did not know what was going on for the first three weeks of this semester. There hasn’t even been that much content covered so far, which is the scary part…but I’m using the many resources available to catch up before the midterm!!

pray for me lol

Extracurriculars:

Cardio Drumming (PE):

Yall. You should take this PE class. It’s incredible.

Cardio drumming is quite the concept—you basically use drumsticks to drum on a yoga mat to hype songs. As you drum, you do ab curls and squats and a ton of other exercises that I would hate to do in literally any other context. 

IT’S SO FUN. NO JOKE. I am ENJOYING doing cardio!!!! I look forward to every class!!!!!!!!

Also, the teacher is lovely and extremely accommodating. She has so much energy and an AMAZING taste in music.

TAKE THIS PE I SWEAR TO GOD YOU WON’T REGRET IT

Mocha Moves:

Yep, I’m still dancing :) Mocha is only six hours a week during the semester, which seems very light compared to the 20+ hours a week we had to endure during IAP…I love Mocha so much and am really excited for another semester on the team!

Dance Troupe:

I’m both choreographing and dancing in DT this semester. I’m choreographing the beginner hip-hop dance with my living community big (who is also the DT president), so we can hang out in a kitchen and make choreo, which is hellaaa convenient. Choreographing and teaching is SO much fun! It’s tiring since there are over 40 people in our dance, but seeing how much everyone is enjoying it makes me really happy. 

(CAMI IS IN MY DANCE <3333)

As for the one dance I’m in, it’s a fusion piece that’s being choreographed by a lot of cool people, so I’m v v excited about it. 

Transition Team:

I’ve talked about this before, but Burton-Conner is being renovated, which is a BIG sad. All the living communities within BC are being split up during the two-year period of renovation, so student voices during the transitioning processes are integral to preserving the dorm’s culture. We meet every two weeks to share updates on the transition and to discuss how we can help the student body through this process. Being a member is hard since it breaks my heart that my living community is being split up, but it’s really, really important.

Burton-Conner Vice President:

Ayy I’m on exec! Currently, I don’t have huge responsibilities besides attending UA Council meetings, helping the president out, and staying informed about everything going on with Burton-Conner, but that’ll change when the transition gets more underway…

Global Languages Advisory Group:

Since I’m a Chinese minor, I was invited to join an advisory group that helps the Global Languages department figure out how to better meet student needs. It’s a really chill commitment that has the potential to help a lot of people, which is great. We’re currently working on planning World Languages Day (April 8)!

21G.012 (Exploring Globalization Through Chinese Food):

I TA for this class! It’s a 1-unit freshman exploratory class that my professor from last semester teaches, so she invited me to help her out with it. The class is suuuuper chill—you basically get to eat Chinese snacks and learn about various aspects of Chinese culture. There are only six lectures and also a free trip to Chinatown and a cooking workshop, so it’s a pretty incredible deal. 

(ALSO CJ IS IN MY CLASS AND HE’S A STELLAR STUDENT)

Sloan Business Club Social Chair:

I get to help plan cool events for cool people :) 

…and that’s, uh, it!