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.

I was told the other day that a positive externality is essentially where one person does something, and the cost is only placed on the actor.  Apparently a perfect example of this is participation in sections.  The teaching fellow will ask the class a question, and there will be an awkward silence, sometimes lasting up to thirty seconds.  Eventually someone caves and hazards an answer, or the TF gives the answer and moves the section along.

But actually attempting an answer is the positive externality; if your answer is correct, then you and the class benefit, because you’re forced to explain why your answer is correct, and your peers learn from you; if your answer is incorrect, the TF gets a little concerned and takes pains to explain why your answer is not correct.  Here, everyone benefits, but you “suffer the humiliation” of giving the wrong answer.

I’ve always been a little annoyed by these unnecessary silences, and in the past month I’ve tried to answer the questions when I thought I knew the answer, or when it was a binary question I would hazard a guess, just to move along so that we could learn more.  When I was right, there was never an overwhelming sense of satisfaction.  When I was wrong, I have to say it was embarrassing and definitely was not an experience I wanted to repeat.

This is sort of related to the practice of asking questions in lectures and sections.  This is even more frustrating to me, especially when the instructor specifically asks if the students understand what just happened.  Of course people are going to be confused by something when there’s a slew of facts shoveled on them, but for some reason no one wants to be the person to ask for elucidation.

I know I’m not the only person who doesn’t understand everything, because there have been a couple of occasions where friends in my section have thanked me for asking a certain question because they learned something from it.

I think the “smart questions” are the ones that bother me more actually, e.g. “Isn’t angular momentum just a clever trick, or does it have any deeper significance?” or “Do we prefer Lagrangian mechanics to Newtonian mechanics because the former is more beautiful?”  These are the types of questions that people ask to show that they have absorbed the material so completely that they need to show the rest of the class that they’re wondering about the deeper significance of every result.  Of course the less gifted students pick up on this, and often they scramble for these types of questions so that they can prove that they aren’t part of the lowly masses of students trying to just get by.  It’s a cheap trick to gain the professor’s respect, and everyone involved knows it but ignores it.

This is getting a little bitter.  I’m going to throw something in here to lighten the mood a bit.

So I feel like the issue is that for most of my classmate’s lives, they were consistently the best at everything they did, or pretty damn close.  THEN.  We get thrown into this high-powered environment, suddenly you’re on a level playing field with everyone, and you’re just not that special anymore.  For the first time in our lives, failing is an option, and it’s terrifying.  Eventually we realize that it’s very difficult to fail here, but we are still aware that there’s always someone better than us at what we love to do.  Luckily we can hide our grades from our peers so that there isn’t a direct comparison.  I think that the only place left to really compare yourself to others is in your section, where you discuss your insecurities with your schoolwork.  But here, it’s really easy to not have any questions; why would you ask him to go over that last step if you understood it in the first place?  I believe that the practice of not answering or asking questions is a face-saving technique that most Harvard students have adopted.

Like everything else here, the question-problem is wrapped up in the ego.  People don’t want to expose their inadequacies to their peers, so they hide in silence, implying the answer is so obvious it doesn’t deserve a serious consideration (apologies to anyone who this is actually true for; I’m looking at you, Danny.)

I’m guilty of this ego thing as well (or maybe I’m the only one guilty of it…) but I’m trying very hard to overcome it.  By admitting you don’t know something, you can open yourself up to learning it.  But the way sections are treated now makes it difficult to speak up when you really don’t understand something.

I guess I should include as a disclaimer that this mostly applies to my math and physics sections here at Harvard; for all I know people actually contribute to discussions in humanities concentration courses.

That is all, goodnight!

Highlights:

• There was a music-identification round (part of a larger trivia round), during which they rickrolled us and played awesome music like the Firefly theme, Korobeiniki, Do You Wanna Date My Avatar, and Dragostea Din Tei. Unfortunately, I was unable to correctly name Korobeiniki, as I have long held the misconception that it is called Kalinka. (I’ve been disabused of the notion before, but still couldn’t remember the right name.)
• There was a puzzle round; I spent the last half hour or so working through about 70 cases of one puzzle, looking for the one that satisfied certain conditions. At the one-minute-remaining mark, I had three cases left. I managed to eliminate one more of them, and then sent in the other two as answers, feeling sure that I had missed the answer. Instead, one of them was correct! I was both happy and sad.
• I was really excited to play Wii Sports Resort (there were supposed to be rounds in rowing, basketball, skydiving, and swordplay), and I was the only one on the team who’d played before, so we kind of figured I’d do them all. Then they said each person should only do one event, so we decided to be good competitors (they almost definitely wouldn’t've noticed had I done them all), and two other people did the first two events (I wanted to do swordplay). Then time ran short and the last two rounds were canceled. I was and remain severely disappointed.
• We were the highest-ranking Harvard team (the first five spots went to MIT). Success!
• Foosball. Playing with new people was fun. There was a left-handed table there (you shoot left instead of right); interesting, but it was also a really bad table.

So, Tom, what the heck are you talking about?

I’ve more or less alluded to this in previous blog posts (such as, in chronological order, pursuit, advance, funny, ‘trospection) but college has really helped me confront myself and my beliefs and such – not so much politically or religiously, but personally and emotionally. Living at home with my family was a sort of painful box for me; not because of anyone in particular’s fault, but because of my overall situation; and though I numbed to the pain and managed to “be good at stuff” to whatever extent university admissions folks think is important, it’s only since I’ve come here, living without my family, with my roommates, in a new community, that I’ve been able at all to address bigger questions.

I’ve been thinking about ways I’d like to change myself, become better, perform self-improvement — whatever the hell you feel like calling it — and the following “pieces of thought” (they happen to be cartoons) struck a chord in my mind.

I'd never carefully read the words in this comic until recently -- the bottom panels are pretty distracting.

The words sounded pretty but I never really believed I could apply them to myself.

And, with more levity! (and less seriousness)

This one's cute.

By now you can tell I'm a silly xkcd nerd.

That was a pretty intense xkcd interlude (thanks Randall!)

By now, dear reader, I’m sure you’re dying to know what I think, not what Mr. Munroe thinks, so here I go. This is hard to really describe in words, but here are my goals, as best as I can describe them:

To be honest, diligent; to accept defeat and take risks. To be proactive, and to explore. To open up and be free.

To take control of my life, in the face of pressures. To have the discipline and maturity to act when needed; to bring my actions in line with my heart.

To understand myself and the circumstances which have shaped me, my beliefs and opinions, my habits, my fears. To reflect and self-analyze so that I can overcome the ways I subconsciously and intentionally limit myself, and so I can discover what I really find worthwhile.

Heh, that almost sounds like a prayer. It’s what I want, though. As abstract as it all sounds, I think I might be making a bit of progress — but I’m struggling still. I think I’ve taken the first steps this school year: I joined the Kendo club (which is perhaps as much about self-development as it is a competitive sport), and the astronomy club (which, as I’ve noted before, is a pretty swell way to stare at the Universe while simultaneously introspecting in the peaceful, dark silence of stargazing). I took spontaneous leadership of a silly physics-related event and ran for office in physics club. Further, though, I’ve been getting more serious about my studies and about my learning process in general, doing my best to dig for true understanding rather than cheap grades. (I’m still struggling very much here — physics problem sets have been taxing my sleep at a very very high rate Thursday nights and I haven’t quite figured out yet how to effectively redistribute the load throughout my week; also, I’ve noticed that sleep deprivation makes me hate myself.) I’ve reached out a bit socially and made a few new friends (and, er, eroded my inhibitions somewhat when it comes to girls — ? This is an in-progress thing I suppose). A few small things here and there that I would never have been able to follow through on before. I’ve gained a bit of insight into what I might like to do for the rest of my life — and started to think very hard about all the things I’d like to do in the meantime. I’m starting to believe that the kind of career I end up with is far less important than the kind of person I turn out to be. (And yet I wonder whether maybe it’s only because I likely have almost certain “success” in my future that I can say something so naive.) These are all grand ideas, and I am a small person. Yet, I figure: I am young enough to still have time left to both think hard about this stuff and follow through on my conclusions; and I am finally old enough (?) to have the maturity and experience required to start work on these questions.

So! Anyways! This has been a long post, my dear friend, and I hope it wasn’t too tedious for you. My overall message, I suppose, is that the reason I don’t have specific goals is, mostly, because I don’t yet know what I want to achieve. But I know that whatever I encounter in my life, I’d like to have this new spirit to be part of me. Thank you for reading, and may you have a pleasant day. (:

Epilogue:

Some notes about myself today. I did a CS pset! It involved mad recursion, higher-order functions, and symbolic differentiation (I never thought I would program stuff like that!). Also, Charles and Duncan and I worked out. Tomorrow I’ll do some physics and maybe practice my saxophone. Hey, dear readers, quick note: We at the Blandfill really love you, and we love you even more when you leave comments! So please leave comments on our blog whenever you have a thought.

Final note: I listened to this song a bunch of times today and it is pretty swell!

After that he asked how to do quickselect, which I answered fairly well, and how to partition an array in place, which was okay, though I didn’t say it very smoothly. Then he asked a pretty simple probability question, which I sort of figured out how to do pretty quickly in kind of a neat way, but it was different from what he was expecting and I didn’t explain it very well, so that kind of fell down. I got the expected method with some prompting, but I really should’ve made it more clear that I actually knew what I was doing. I think he did somewhat recognize what I was saying, at least. Still, I think that was quite a trip-up.

“I will stomp on things to focus my mental energies, or ‘menergies’.”
– T-Rex

You can download the dataset (csv format) here.

Note: the hours slept are calculated for the night before, e.g. Sunday values correspond to hours slept Saturday night through Sunday morning.

Summary (hours):

As you can see, Danny, Duncan, and Tom have left-skewed distributions (the mean is less than the median) whereas I’m right-skewed.  I have the highest mean sleep time and the lowest standard deviation.  Tom has the highest standard deviation, and Duncan has the lowest mean sleep time.  Graph:

Days of the week:

We were also curious about our sleep patterns during the week.  Tom was usually very well rested on Tuesdays.  Graph:

Correlation Matrix:

Unsurprisingly, I am not very correlated with the others.  Duncan and Tom have the highest correlation.

My hours:

My variance increased over the semester.  Graph:

Danny:

Thanksgiving break meant a lot of sleep for Danny.  Graph:

Duncan:

I bet you can tell when Duncan had an astronomy lab write-up.  Graph:

Tom:

The wild roller coaster ride that is Tom’s sleep schedule.  Graph:

All of us:

Note: The cloud is being reset on January 1, 2010, so the links will no longer work  soon.

Charles’ Project:

An automated trading system analyzer written in Python3 (eventually going to be moved to its own domain).     http://cloud.cs50.net/~li15/fp/

Duncan’s Project:

A course selection tool that randomly selects appropriate Core classes.  http://cloud.cs50.net/~dwatts/final

Tom’s Project:

An interactive speech recognition program named “Hal Py-Thousand.”  Source Code:  http://www.blandfill.com/tomstuff/CS50.rar

Danny:

Look at the post below for one of Danny’s many projects.  http://www.blandfill.com/2009/12/13/gchat/

The result:

(Charles changed my GNOME theme to pink some weeks ago.)

Tom then wanted me to write a post about how I did it, so here it is. Without going into a description of the library itself, it works as follows: when it gets a message from one of us, it prepends the appropriate initial and sends the message to the rest of us.

I guess I can go a little more into the details of the library (especially because the documentation is pretty annoying). (There still isn’t really that much to say.) You run some commands in the library to create a connection and log in, then register a function with the connection object to handle incoming messages. I suppose I can add more description if anyone wants. Code.

So that I can get all the tags:
http://acme.com/jef/singing_science/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM0ib4GxLPw