Long overdue

Hello readers; I realize that it’s been almost three weeks since I’ve posted, since exciting things like meteor showers, drastic concentration changes, and creepy conversations online with strangers aren’t things that happen to me. But the rest of the Blandfill has been good to me and hasn’t heckled me for not posting, as I have done to them many times. So here’s my update.

Will Ramsey bit me today at the hockey game. It was refreshing and terrifying. (more…)

Omegle

Stars

This one’s for Rachel. Thanks for taking care of our wet music.

As Tom mentioned below, we went, along with a bunch of other people, to see the stars. (Nominally the meteors, but there weren’t very many of them.) I’ve got a little tripod, so I took some long-exposure (15 seconds, so not really that long) shots of the sky.

Cassiopeia over the horizon.

Orion.

Big Dipper.

This is the PLEIADES.

And now for something completely different.

This is awesome. Someone should do this for a CS50 final project.

‘trospection

Tonight I went out of town with Danny (and around 30 other folks who I didn’t know) to check out the meteor shower. There weren’t many meteors but the sky was real, real nice and I enjoyed trying to figure out the constellations and chatting about space with Danny. It was a really worthwhile experience – sometimes I miss the Milky Way and the vast expanses of land that accompany not-the-city.

Now, I have a CS exam tomorrow, but I went on this five-hour excursion anyways. As it stands, I haven’t done any studying besides attend a review session (and overhear Duncan listening to videotaped lectures online), and Charles tells me that this exam looks a lot harder than the last one. I’ll do my best, but I wouldn’t be surprised if all I get is 65 +- 15 percent.

People here really care about academics – or at least grades. There’s strong peer pressure to get good grades in things, even if you aren’t learning that much. I definitely think it’s a good idea to be an organized person who can study well and manage time well and be disciplined, and I also believe that there’s a lot to be gained, at a personal level, through really understanding lots of interesting and new things. But are grades themselves important? There’s certainly a correlation between getting high marks and getting lots of understanding, but I will always value the latter far more than the former.

So, understanding. Wisdom, perhaps. I have very little. But I think I’m yearning for it. Wisdom enough to know what to do with my life. And it’s nights like tonight that make me pause, gain some perspective, and think.

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Switching concentrations

Four days ago, I made the decision to switch to computer science.  I was actually very close to declaring econ; I was talking with an adviser to get my plan of study signed when he told me that I would have to add two more classes to replace skipping Ec 10.  This event was the catalyst that set off my decision to consider CS as a viable choice.  The decision to switch had been churning around in the back of my head for a few weeks, but I pushed aside those thoughts with the logic that I was already far enough on the econ track that switching would be detrimental to scheduling and to my future.

I want to go into finance after college, so I originally chose econ because Harvard doesn’t offer a business or finance degree, and I thought that econ was related to those fields.  As it turns out, the relationship is tangential at best.  (I also thought that skipping Ec 10 would give me a comparative advantage, but I have never been more wrong…)

I was already having trouble selecting econ courses to fill up my schedule because, surprisingly, classes like “Moral Perspectives on Economic Growth” and” The Historical Origins of Middle Eastern Development” don’t interest me at all.  The thought of adding two more made me cringe.

With CS, all of the classes that I have to take seem very interesting, and with an econ secondary I only have to take the classes that I want to take, namely Capital Markets and Corporate Finance.  One of my stat electives will also count toward the CS requirements, so everything just works out better.

My adviser told me that if anything, a CS degree can only help with getting a finance job; it can’t hurt my chances.  He also told me a story of a friend of his.  The guy graduated with a CS degree, worked for a startup firm that got bought out by Microsoft, made a decent sum of money, went to Stanford B-school, and is now working for McKinsey.  (Actually, is it sad that this sounds like an ideal life to me?  I’ll have to address this issue someday)

All of this being said, I’m still leaving the option open to switch back to econ in case things really don’t work out.

On an unrelated note, the weight room in our dorm is surprisingly stocked with equipment, and it’s really close and convenient.  I don’t know why I didn’t go earlier.