- so putnam results came out and i got 8 10 10 0 10 0 / 10 9 0 10 10 2 which adds up to 79, putting me in 29th place and exactly 1 point away from getting N2 and making $250 😦 it’s definitely my fault for not solving at least one of A4/B6 and messing up A1 though. i guess this is not that bad considering how poorly i managed my time on the test
- i read coming home again by chang rae lee for 21w.022 and i thought it was pretty good
- went to yale to perform at bulldog dhamaal with ohms 🙂 it was fun and there were some really good dance groups. i think we were the best music group there which was cool and there was a very packed party afterwards
- also wrote an essay for 21w.022 and the structure is kind of garbage but it was due right after i came back from yale so i just didn’t have enough time to revise
- i finished my previous ohms arrangement (of older, by ben platt) and got positive feedback 🙂 and then ohms got cancelled for the rest of the year 😦 (see below) so we’ll resume next year i guess and i can make some improvements. just thought of a good idea for a new arrangement (mashup this time, of some bollywood song and some anson seabra song) so i’ll start thinking about that next. definitely learned about diversifying rhythms and choral parts and etc. though i need to work a lot on figuring out how to blend syllables
- went to the hro beethoven bash concert and it was great 🙂 not a big fan of the overture they played but violin concerto and symphony 5 were good
- i think ive been getting better at defending in chess. mostly because i’m bad at taking initiative so every time i go to chess club i end up having to practice defense anyway
- i spent this weekend doing the alibaba math contest first qualifying round. it was mostly computational, but i thought the combo/linalg question was nice: link and i got stumped by a probability optimization problem. we’ll see if i advance i guess
some more movies and shows:
- hotarubi no mori e was ok, but not particularly good. it felt similar to 5 cm per sec (see previous post) in terms of content, except it was handled much more clumsily. would not recommend although the ost is good. honestly you’re better off watching the you can be king again video which uses footage from the most important parts of the movie anyway
- star wars the third gathers: backstroke of the west is a funny re-narration of revenge of the sith! would recommend to people who enjoyed the original. the bad dialogue made me appreciate how good john williams’ score is- not just the well-known parts but also how it repeats motifs and functions as a constant backdrop in literally every scene
- hidden figures was a decent depiction of its subject matter (african-american women working for nasa in the 60s) but felt drawn-out and didn’t really have a clear narrative direction, so it more or less relies on the subject matter (which is very interesting and worth learning about) instead of actually good storytelling imo
- kiki’s delivery service was pretty good and very wholesome 🙂 reminded me a lot of howls moving castle and also of totoro to a lesser extent; in many ways it’s a mix of them i suppose. also definitely got a lot of vibes similar to the first episode of pokemon 😛
- alamar was alright. it has a lot of pretty shots of natural scenery, but the quality isn’t very great (or at least wasn’t when we watched it). there’s also minimal plot so i really dk what to make of this one; we only watched it for one of my friend’s friend’s spanish classes
- death parade was a very good anime (and only 12 episodes x 20 min = 4 hrs total 😮 ) ost wasn’t spectacular but complemented well with the show; pacing was perfect (the entire second half is good and the first half has just enough exposition and action to drive the plot) and characters were nice. the ending was completely unsurprising but also very sad and well-done at the same time and there are some nice metaphors 🙂 i think my favorite shows now are death parade, madoka, death note, code geass, naruto in approximately that order (and i havent watched any others 😛 ) eng dub is also available entirely on youtube
mandatory update: mit decided to virtualize and send all its students home for the rest of the semester due to coronavirus fears. having ohms and time with seniors and time in burton-connor (my dorm, which is being renovated next year) cancelled was pretty sad but honestly everything else hasn’t been a very big deal and will be back next year and i guess i’ve gotten better at handling these kinds of transitions (eg. see the essay i linked to earlier)
objectively (only because i’m fortunate enough to be able to relocate easily, of course) this is not a bad thing. i can still talk to people whenever i want (i suppose this is what brian gu calls being more deliberate about socializing) and it seems i’ll be able to put a very large number of hours into virtual research and other projects now, especially with pnr grades back. i haven’t left my room since getting home yet, but it’s practically impossible for me to get bored or run out of work to do as long as i have power and internet access, so i really don’t think i’ll have many issues with what is essentially homeschooling. im also actually getting more exercise stuck in my room than i did from going to pe twice a week at mit 😮 looking forward to getting a lot done at home 🙂
im now of the opinion that mit should have a mandatory current events class, or should incorporate it into every humanities class somehow. like idk the sheer ignorance of mit students on coronavirus before mit events started being cancelled was kind of unbelievable (the only real bloc exceptions to this were like bio majors ❤ and east asian international students, who from my experience are as a group relatively unknowledgeable on current events in general too…) the real goal here is to get people to care enough about the news for them to stay well-informed after leaving college and i think that a) this is very important, definitely at the very least important enough to swap 1 technical class for if it comes to that and b) many schools (eg. even a humanities class at my high school) do a dramatically better job of this than mit
also highly recommend this medium article the mit bio community seems to think 10-20% of mit has coronavirus, and i trust them on this topic more than any other student estimates, so i’ll do my best to stay in my room for another 12ish days (the only plausible scenario in which i’ll stop is if my parents give up i suppose)
A Slice of My Mind 