• Danny and Tianyi both graduated last year
• We picked up a new roommate, Senan
• Tom and Duncan are applying for astrophysics/physics grad schools
• Senior spring!!!

After a summer in banking, I realized that I wasn’t actually very interested in finance.  I came into college with ideas of picking stocks for a career but grew disillusioned along the way.  Stock-picking is fun, to be sure, but I like it more as a hobby.  Banking and trading are not that related to fundamental investing, so I decided to focus on finding a tech or consulting job during senior recruiting.  Fall recruiting proved to be much better for me than junior recruiting, and that can probably be attributed to more interview experience and practice.  In the end, I got my top choice at a large tech firm, and I continue to feel very lucky.  Switching to computer science was definitely one of the best decisions that I made in college.

As for senior spring plans, Tom and I want to rent Zipcars every few weekends and explore New England.

I’ve been home for almost two weeks now, and it’s been very relaxing to be able to read and exercise on a regular schedule.

One positive aspect of recruiting (and probably the only one) was the inducement of self-reflection.  I have never delved so deeply into what my true desires are, and I feel more complete with regards to self-understanding as a result of the process.  Will investment banking be a good choice for me right after college, or will I be happier going with a startup?  Even if I am immediately happier working at a startup, which decision is better in the long term?  I suppose I’ll be able to answer these questions better after this summer.

And yes, I have been neglecting this blog for the entire semester.  It’s now summer, and I have a week of free time before I go to Chicago, but I’m not really sure what to do.

First, I would take easier classes. I came into Harvard a little confused about my academic talents, and I believe these miscalculations still affect my daily life. The first real test I took at Harvard (at least that I cared about) was the physics placement test. The idea was to help you decide if you should take Physics 15a or Physics 16; both cover the same basic material, but 16 covered it with mathematical rigor, and was notoriously much more difficult. I took the test just because I suppose, maybe to prove to myself that I was just as smart as everyone else in my class, or maybe I had this idea that I would actually use the grade to make my decision. I remember not spending too much time on it; it was an AP Physics style test, and was graded in the same way, so I would just look at the questions and answer them. I felt great about it, so when I saw Danny get up and turn it in after about half an hour, I decided, “Why not?” and turned mine in less than ten minutes later. It was only when we got our grades back that I realized my expectations were far off; Danny had received a 5, and I got a 2. Take note, my first failing grade at Harvard. Somehow I chalked the grade up to not preparing enough and being careless, but I wouldn’t make that mistake again! Next time I would be slow and steady and not be caught off guard.

So I enroll in Physics 16, and the night before the first problem set is due, I hole myself up in Lamont library and start shedding some wood. Lo and behold, I am absolutely stumped, and I go back to my room at 4am a man with much lower self esteem than before. Never again would I try to do a problem set all by myself. I started doing the homework assignments in a large group and having people explain to me the method rather than figuring it out by myself. It turns out that in physics, that is half the point, and I may have completely missed it.

So if I had taken 15a, everything would have been perfect? Well, no, but I at least would have been exposed to a gentler learning curve that may have propelled me to doing the occasional problem set with no outside assistance. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to do that, and I think I’m only just managing to go at it alone in Physics 181.

Second, I would not have taken Math 25. The professor was awful, there was too much work, and it turns out I don’t really like pure math. Occasionally I see something in physics that is relevant to the class and am glad I took it, but those moments are far outweighed by how miserable I was while doing those problem sets freshman year (although in the spring, it could have been the fact that I was taking five classes; also a mistake, but there was no way out at that point; I needed and/or am glad that I took those classes).

And I think that’s really it in terms of regrets. I think sometimes I could have worked harder and slept less, and that will always be true. Some people might say I spent too much time in the band or in the glee club, but I know that those two experiences have made my college career bearable. Glee Club gave me so much musical direction when I thought I had finished with serious music, and I met some of my best friends in that group. Band has clearly become a bigger and bigger part of my life, and sometime in the fall I will feel a huge crunch because of it, but I wouldn’t trade that for anything; the Band gave me the first close-knit group of friends I’ve had at school (excluding the blandfill) that didn’t turn out to be a bunch of douchebags, and I would gladly trade a couple points of the GPA or a top grad school for that.

This was pretty heavy, so have a video.

Ian McKellan Narrating the Ducktales theme song

Freshman year, our room was located right across the street from the 24-hour CVS, and I frequently made trips to buy a single item.  Since moving to an upperclassmen dorm, I’ve treated the four block walk to CVS as an arduous pilgrimage of sorts that is worth trekking at most every couple of weeks.

With Prime, instead of walking to a store, I just click a few buttons with my mouse and have items delivered in two days.  Something just feels weird about ordering a single pack of mechanical pencils online instead of walking a few blocks, but my physical laziness usually gets the best of me.

An aside: when buying food, Nabisco’s 100-calorie pack snacks are not really worth it.  I paid $20 for the equivalent of 28 ounces of crackers (although the portion control aspect of the packaging was successful).

Now, is this service worth paying for after the free period expires?  Unless I double my shopping frequency, probably not.

The GRE book I had (and probably most other ones) will tell you that you can’t copy in the essay editor, only cut and paste, and that you have to click some buttons to do those things. This is false: I noticed that Shift+Ins and Ctrl+Ins perform copy and paste as usual. I suspect that Shift+Del will cut, but I couldn’t remember that one to try it during the test.

This has been your DZHU™ PSA for the day. Thank you.

“Dear audio diary! Today I learned why we measure lifetimes in years and not ‘failed trips to Uranus where only corpses show up at the end’.”
– T-Rex

The next part:

A hypothetical second part of my trip:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/10/4/li-dropbox-quincy-over/

His name is Tianyi, and we picked him up at the beginning of the year.  The story goes, we wanted a quint in New Quincy, and we had to find a fifth roommate.  Tianyi had sent an email over the open list requesting roommates, and we happily obliged.

Charles actually met up with Tianyi over the summer a few times in Shanghai and confirmed that he is indeed an awesome person.  He will never tell you himself, but we’re saying it here: he worked for the Shanghai Sharks for the past year, so he knows Yao Ming personally.

More information can be found here.

Some pictures of my (messy) room:

I've been alternating between the beds, so they're both unmade.

The showerhead broke on the first day, so I had to spray myself with just the metal hose for a few weeks.

I asked the front desk several times to fix my showerhead, and the response was always, "Yes, of course. First thing in the morning!" I ended up jamming a water bottle cap in there to fix the hose in place. But still no showerhead.

If I didn’t have free internet access in my room, I probably wouldn’t spend any time in it. Not that I would permanently sacrifice waking up to sunlight for convenient access to Google News and email, but the internet provides a sufficient temporary placation of my needs.

In fact, internet access probably dulls my desires a bit too much. Every summer, I set goals of productivity: skim through some textbooks, read up on finance, learn more Chinese, etc. Before coming to China, I had this grand vision of working during the day, exercising or going out to eat with friends afterward and toiling away at books at night. The first two parts are fairly easy to accomplish, but the last requires much more willpower than I have been generating.

I usually return at about 8:00 pm, but after checking my email, going through my daily set of websites, handwashing my clothes (no washing machine) and showering, I am left with an hour before going to bed, but I’m pretty tired by that point and don’t care to do anything productive. That hour becomes consumed by surfing the web. I realize that no one ever became successful by being lazy, but for some reason, I have trouble motivating myself to take that extra step and go beyond what makes me comfortable. Yes, I realize that humans didn’t evolve to be productive during every waking hour (HarvardFML posts about spending the summer watching TV make me feel slightly better about myself), but it annoys me to no end that I cannot throw aside my tendencies to waste time, no matter the amount.

As a child and even up until high school, I believed that getting good at things would be fairly easy, and I wasn’t aware of how much effort was required to actually become proficient. I assumed that simply following the school math curriculum, participating in chess tournaments or playing pool would passively give me mastery of those skills, and I wouldn’t have to set aside extra time to acquire expertise. I was waiting for others to provide me with opportunities to learn, but what I really needed to do was actively pursue those opportunities.

A classic example was my attempt to teach myself programming in 9th grade; I only learned up to loops and conditionals (the most basic elements of programming), and then I stopped because I believed that it wasn’t necessary to push myself. My thought was that I would eventually take a structured class about the topic, so why bother? Chess was a similar situation; I incorrectly assumed that playing lots of games would impart new strategic and tactical knowledge upon myself. I realized too late (junior year of high school) that studying was a requisite part of improving my game, but I didn’t have enough time to devote at that point (or maybe I did but just squandered it).

As a result of my past naivete, I am frustratingly mediocre in all of the activities that I enjoy doing.

Recently, I’ve been finding myself stuck between two trains of thought. The first one is along the lines of “You’re already 19. What have you been doing? Magnus Carlsen is your age, and he’s the number one rated chess player in the world. When Ken Griffin was your age, he had written computer programs to price convertible bonds, and he had started two funds from his dorm room. All successful people have already proven themselves by this time in their lives.”

Fortunately, I can usually shake myself free from this kind of negative thinking (no one should compare himself to prodigies). My second mode of reasoning is slightly better: “You’re only 19. You’re still young, and you have the rest of your life to do things. However, you’re pretty average, and it’s too late to change that.” When I went off to college, I knew that I would be somewhere in the middle, but I never expected it to bother me to such an extent.

Ok, I really wasn’t expecting to write a serious post when I started off with my room, and I’m not even sure if my rambling was entirely coherent, but here I am. The (cliched) question is, where do I go from here?

I can’t blame internet access for my own lack of willpower. When I decided to quit playing video games freshman spring due to wasting too much time, Duncan told me that it most likely wouldn’t work because I’ll just find some other method of screwing around. This turned out to be very true. How do I get myself to just suck it up and work harder?

Quick recap of what has happened in the past four months since I last posted:

1. End of school year/finals. Housing worked out well for us. We all have singles next year plus a common room. Finals could have been better.

2. Family vacation in Hawaii. We drove through Hilo, so Tom and I were in the same city for a brief moment.

3. Internship in Shanghai.

I’ve been in Shanghai since June 11th, and I’m staying until August 25th. This is the longest period of time that I’ve lived by myself, but I feel good. My schedule is fairly consistent (for better or worse): get up, go to work, lunch break, get off work, exercise or go out to eat with friends, go home and surf the internet. One aspect of Chinese culture that I wish the US would adopt is the extremely long lunch breaks; I have a 2 hour break everyday that I use to eat, facebook and nap.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve realized that I would go absolutely crazy if I had to work in an office cubicle for my entire life. Sitting in a chair, staring at a computer screen for 7 hours a day for 40 years is not ideal (I probably spend as much time in front of the computer for fun anyway but that’s different, right?).

I gained seven pounds second semester, so my goal for the summer is to work it off. Gyms are relatively rare in China, and they’re usually reserved for the wealthy. Monthly membership fees can easily run up to 2000+ yuan (more than $300), more than the average monthly urban income in Shanghai. Cheaper venues do exist, but they lack quality. For example, I currently have a membership to a hotel gym; the weights seem to have been bought used from an old American gym, but the pool is 20 meters long (a decent size here). I’ve never swam so much before in my life. My form is probably incorrect (I’ve just been brute-forcing the breaststroke), so I’m going to have a friend teach me proper technique once we’re back at school.

I was originally planning on adding several more paragraphs, but I’m tired and suffering from stomach cramps. I’m still trying to figure out what happened: was it the raw cucumbers in my noodles yesterday, the bun I got in a convenience store, a bad drink, or something else? In China, just assume that all food has the possibility of being contaminated.

Now that I’m back in the blogging mood, I’ll be posting much more often.