This year, I've developed a "throw shit at a wall and seeing what sticks" kind of mentality, which means that I've decided to try a number of things and hope that a couple will really work out. It has been much easier for me to work on more interesting things this year (versus freshman year) because I am more understanding of the resources that the environment at MIT offers and what I want out of my college experience.
One of my good friends, Jingwei, and I have been working on a research project under a computer vision professor at MIT. We have been meeting every week with the professor, who has been tremendously kind and supportive, and working on the project between ourselves a couple times a week. Although I don't want to talk about the project too much since it is still a work in progress, the project has given me something to look forward to and pool my energy into. It makes me feel as if my time at MIT has been well spent, and hopeful that something really great will come out of it. If the project works out, it should be a big deal, which is really exciting.
Something I also want to do more this year is travel. It's so much cheaper to travel as a college student, and Boston is in a central New England location with many interesting cities nearby. For example, last year Robert and I were able to go to New York City for around $40 for bus tickets, which is just insane considering it would cost at least a grand for my family to visit the city from Florida. Not to mention there are so many opportunities for students, such as hackathons, that allow us to go to cool places while paying very little.
As a result, Robert and I applied to a shit-ton of hackathons, went to Cape Cod to visit a friend in early September, and Johns Hopkins for Medhacks which you can read more about here. I also received a travel stipend and will be going to Scaling Bitcoin at Stanford on November 4th & 5th, so hmu if you are in the area then to hang out. One negative side of traveling every weekend is that I've been incredibly hosed and behind in every class I'm taking. This has been the first weekend since school started where I've had free time.
In other news, Jingwei, Robert, Jacob, and I entered HackMIT together with a quirky idea to build a Harry Potter sorting hat that classifies people into MIT dorms based on a series of questions. We figured this would be really fun to pull off, and there is so much dorm data out there that we could really use them to make accurate assessments. We got very little sleep that night, but the MIT Sorting Hat actually worked out pretty well; we had a working demo, placed in the Top 10, and won the Best Internet of Things Hack prize.
Placing in the Top 10 at HackMIT again this year was reminiscent of last year, and I sometimes think about how HackMIT last year set the tone for my time at MIT in general. It led me to prioritize personal projects and think about doing my own thing, which means reflecting on what is important to me and not doing things that seem important just because everyone else around me thinks they're important. It also means simplifying my life through removing all the noise and time-consuming activities that are meaningless to me, and adopting the growth mindset: the idea that knowledge & experience reap compounding benefits, and having the motivation to learn as much as possible.
A tidbit is that I dyed my hair last month! It was originally purple and green, but now the dye has mostly faded and my hair is mostly just bleached (blonde). It's interesting because I almost feel like I'm treated differently because of my hair, as if the more countercultural demographic of east side people are more comfortable talking to me, and I'm excused from judgement when I act in weird ways in class. I have to admit that I like the dyed hair aesthetic because it really lets you stand out amidst everyone with virtually uniform hair styles and fashion senses. I definitely would like to re-dye it in the future.
Another tidbit is that this year, my trio and I were assigned to take lessons under John Harbison, who is a well known composer and also an institute professor. I feel like Prof. Harbison's expectations are higher with regards to individual instances of bringing out more color. For example, we spent the entire first lesson on the first four pages of our Beethoven trio. I also feel like my fingers aren't as dexterous as they used to be because I hadn't been able to practice piano this entire summer, which is really unfortunate.
A tidbit is that I dyed my hair last month! It was originally purple and green, but now the dye has mostly faded and my hair is mostly just bleached (blonde). It's interesting because I almost feel like I'm treated differently because of my hair, as if the more countercultural demographic of east side people are more comfortable talking to me, and I'm excused from judgement when I act in weird ways in class. I have to admit that I like the dyed hair aesthetic because it really lets you stand out amidst everyone with virtually uniform hair styles and fashion senses. I definitely would like to re-dye it in the future.
Another tidbit is that this year, my trio and I were assigned to take lessons under John Harbison, who is a well known composer and also an institute professor. I feel like Prof. Harbison's expectations are higher with regards to individual instances of bringing out more color. For example, we spent the entire first lesson on the first four pages of our Beethoven trio. I also feel like my fingers aren't as dexterous as they used to be because I hadn't been able to practice piano this entire summer, which is really unfortunate.
To conclude this blog post, I'll share some pictures from Cape Cod, which was very beautiful:
