How to be cool, this semester specifically
This is a continuation of the more meta-level post title titled "How to be cool".
I'm a firm disbeliever in "set and forget" systems of planning; no matter how rigidly you think you've set your life up, they'll inevitably tend towards entropy, and blow up with time. This list should be flexible, and adapt with time. That said, here's what a super successful semester would look like:
Communication
Math
Coding
Network
Have more ideas
Run really fucking far.
Be a better friend
Become Filch
Good summer plans
Physics
Elaboration:
1. Communication
I think I often (especially recently) have had a hard time saying what I mean. I want to get better at this. I also want to be more composed, and harder to agitate.
MIT Speech and Debate club. I felt like high school debate made me much more eloquent and quick-thinking. Time commitment is 3 hours a week, plus most of a weekend for every tournament I decide to go to.
Social Hacking with Julie. This deserves its own separate blog post, but it's basically an activity where I upend past social anxieties by doing things way outside my comfort zone. Similar to 100 days of rejection. Time commitment: weekends, overlaps with social time. 3-4 hours every other week.
2. Math.
Math is super cool.
Probability/math club. We've only had one meeting, but this is basically just a group of friends (in the MAIA circle) who come together once or twice a week to talk about probability. We read the book on our own, do some problems, talk about confusions. It could fizzle, but there seems to be a lot of interest in it, at least right now. Hopefully around 4 hours a week.
18.102 (Functional Analysis), or 18.100B (Real Analysis) if I wimp out. Taking more theoretical math classes this semester. Will hopefully help strengthen my foundation in proof-writing and mathematical rigor. Also, functional analysis will theoretically build intuition in Linear Algebra, a field I currently think is very important.
18.065 (Matrix Methods in Data Analysis ). May drop this class for a CS class (6.1200, etc), depending on how hard I think my other classes will be. This seems to be a class where the value is very proportional to effort put in.
3. Coding
I want to get more fluent in coding languages, probably Python. I think that just writing more lines of code, and working through a lot of problems is probably the best way to do this.
6.101. Should have a lot of practice labs that improve my coding literacy. Just getting more lines of code under my belt.
6.120. Hoping to learn a lot more basic stuff about combinatorics, and see if I can get interested in programming on a theoretical level.
Interpretability Research. Not as many lines of code being written, more niche package debugging and high level thinking about transformers. But still helpful in a different way, and many parallel skills will be picked up along the way (ie MatPlotLib)
4. Network
I want to meet and know more people without feeling like the most superficial and vain person known to man
EA/MAIA Socials. I find these mostly pretty fun, and interesting people. So, it doesn't feel like time sucked out of my week. I'll probably go to ~1.5 every week
Telling people my name, and talking about each other more. I think I often error on the side of not asking people about themselves, or asking deep questions. I think this may be a better way to get to know people quickly. I'm inspired by my friend Uzay's natural tendency to do this, and will try and learn from it
Talking more, and sharing ideas with more people. In addition to deep, meta level conversations with people, I also want to have more object-level discussions. So many people around me know so fucking much about interesting subjects it's a huge waste if I don't talk about this.
5. Have more ideas
I think my brain is kind of lazy. I don't want to let the world roll by around me, as a passive observer. I want to dissect events, and think more about aspects of the world around me. There's so much interesting stuff out there if I actually pause to think about it.
This means listening to less music while I'm walking. I want to be ON, as much of the day as possible. But, sometimes I need to relax
Considering taking a really heavy reading class on Utopias and Dystopias. Involves like 12 books over 12 weeks. Would improve the number of ideas I'm exposed to. Only worth doing if I actually think about them
6. Run really fucking far
I used to run fucking far. I've been injured for a while. This semester, I want to run really fucking far.
I know how to do this. All I have to do is improve my leg. I'm currently doing PT for it. Will use my whiteboard to keep myself on track of this.
Then, I'll just run. There are certain people I know who are into long distance running, I'll probably try and train with them.
7. Be a better friend
This is really hard. The main reason is that I only have so much bandwidth. So, I can't become a better friend with everyone. It also feels somewhat fake to actively try and become better friends with people. Like my motivations aren't in the right place.
I want people to feel happy interacting with me. This involves talking with people about there own problems, and looking for ways I can help people.
8. Become Filch
I want to know all of the cool places around MIT.
This is not a semester project. Should involve getting as much knowledge as possible from other people who know about this stuff. Chaus is efficient, but I also want to find upper class men to talk to.
9. Figure out summer plans
I don't want to miss out on opportunities because I didn't think ahead enough
I also know what I want to do
This poses a slight issue
Solution: meet with Shreya (I think tomorrow) to come up with summer plan strategies
I'll also try and get something done to put on my resume before the end of the semester in CS. This could be the interpretability research I'm doing currently, or some other project that comes along
This is all I have for now. I'll hopefully do a semester in review after all of this.