Pardon the extroverted introspection.

I have recently realized that a good deal of my friends are college seniors. It’s not like I hadn’t realized until now that they were all a year ahead of me, but it becomes hard to ignore when all of them begin complaining about their theses, worry loudly what they’re going to do next year, and say they would choose a different concentration if they could do it all again. It’s this last one that really got me thinking about my past and my concentration. Would I be a biologist or historian if I had another four years to graduate? I truly think here that the answer is no, but that isn’t to say I wouldn’t do things differently. In fact, I have a whole list of things that I would do differently in my freshman year.

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

ownership and motivation: a blurb

I think I hate problem sets.

I don’t typically exhibit such strong emotions towards my schoolwork, but problem sets and me are not getting along. I look forward to the point in my life when I am free to never do a problem set again.

On the flip side, I really enjoy working on research projects when I feel like I have some emotional stake in the outcome. I think I do better work all around when I know that I’m working toward more than just a grade.
Case in point: I’m having incredible difficulty getting very far on this astronomy problem set, but feel really stimulated putting any work into my project proposal.

I’ll observe this trend going forward.
/blurb

salt

Hey guys -

a mostly unplanned, spontaneous post here. I stumbled across one LM’s blog and felt inspired and introspective for a moment, and remembered: my best thoughts come from channeling procrastination into self-reflection.

So: Life is, on the whole, pretty good. Being a junior is awesome; I’ve got this romantic relationship which I’m pretty much a fan of; I feel like I’m heading in a direction, and I am very, very happy that it’s a cool direction. And I feel like I’m making my own future regardless of what my past consisted of — my trajectory can forget its initial conditions.

(more…)

Amazon Prime

This is very old news by now, but in case you haven’t heard, students with a valid .edu email address are eligible for one free year of Amazon Prime, a service that provides free two-day shipping and would otherwise cost $80 a year.  When I first signed up for it, I never imagined that it would drastically change my shopping habits, both online and offline.

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

I doubt anyone will care, but I just wanted to get this out there:

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 MBTA

The first part of my trip to school today:

The next part:

A hypothetical second part of my trip: