things i am doing this semester

i might post this on mit admissions? probably not though

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i guess we can start with classes: 

• molecular basis of infectious disease (7.26) – really fun class where we learn about general principles of infectious disease. every week we have two theory lectures and read one paper to learn about experimental design and practical procedures. i did not have the biology prereqs necessary for this class so i was worried it would move too quickly for me, but so far it’s mostly been fine
• interactive music systems (21m.385) – this is mostly a human-computer interaction class where we write software to build apps that allow the user to engage with music in creative ways, the classical example being games like osu or guitar hero. it’s pretty fun, though i hear the workload ends up being high
• networks (14.15) – a math class about applications of graph theory to economics. this conflicts with two of my other classes and the lecture room is somewhat far away, so i don’t intend to ever show up to class (and it helps that all the homework and exams are online). this is probably the easiest of my classes
• parallel computing and scientific machine learning (6.338) – class where you learn to optimize multithreaded code with applications to scientific computing. it’s kind of like performance engineering (6.172) but taught in julia, with a lot more math and a lot less work. i think the content is interesting, though class organization hasn’t been very good. i’m also not attending any lectures for this class due to schedule conflicts, but there are good lecture recordings online so it’s alright
• emergent computations within distributed neural circuits (9.53) – this class basically tries to understand where emergent properties of brains (eg. consciousness) come from. of course, nobody actually knows the answer to this yet, so the class mostly focuses on models for neural circuit computation. i don’t have the brain/cognitive science prereqs for this class either, but i’ve done a lot of independent neuroscience reading over the past year and hopefully that will be enough

this is definitely the most difficult courseload i’ve had so far and i am not sure how well i will manage it. but one good thing about my schedule is that all my lectures are on monday/wednesday so the rest of the week is pretty free. i have banned myself from doing any schoolwork on tuesdays and thursdays during 9am-6pm; the intent there is to spend that time on other work like writing and research. speaking of which, two research projects: 

• the first one is to understand the relationship between web browsing and mental health. i think there are two main directions here: one is understanding what web browsing behaviors are reflective of depression, and the other is modeling the interactions between web content and an internet user’s mood. the eventual goals are to be able to diagnose mental health problems by monitoring browsing, and to augment the browsing experience in a way that improves users’ mental states. the prof i’m supposed to work with isn’t actually from mit; they’re a visiting professor from london and they’re not actually here yet so we haven’t had any in-person meetings so far
• the second one is to implement and optimize zero-knowledge circuits for elliptic curve cryptography. basically there are programming languages that allow you to create proofs that an object has certain properties without revealing any information about the object (eg. i can prove to you that my phone password is a prime number without revealing the password; this is called a zero-knowledge proof). anyway, you can build an app whose logic runs partially or entirely in zero-knowledge; however, the programming languages for this are pretty barebones and don’t have many existing libraries or features so i’m basically helping write an elliptic curve cryptography library. this is being done with 0xparc, a crypto research organization

this might end up being too much work for me to handle; honestly, i can’t really tell yet. i think i can make it work by a) giving up on making tiktoks b) dropping 9.53 if necessary c) spending a lot less time texting people. while trying to be more present during conversations i have started noticing just how inefficient and unsatisfying texting usually is (compared to calls or meeting in-person). i am not sure why it took me so long to catch on to this; perhaps it is because my primary socialization mode as a kid + teenager was texting

anyway, aside from that i want to learn the content for mit’s computer system engineering (6.033) course sometime this semester (it’s possible i already know most of it?), and my job this summer will involve lots of writing in c++/go so i should figure out how to become reasonably proficient in those languages. i recently installed github copilot and have had fairly positive experiences with it; i think it will also help me learn new programming languages faster

also, i’m very excited for ohms this semester! i think i may finally have succeeded in the longstanding goal of writing music that will make me cry when it is performed. i suppose we will have to wait a few months to find out if this is the case or not

during web.lab staff retreat we played hot seat and someone asked me what i was optimizing for in life. i only had around 5 seconds to answer so i said something about creating good art, like music and writing, and i think that was a very misleading answer because eg. i consider software to be art too when it is written with care. but i think i was looking for a term more general than art, and i am still not sure what it is?

last week i sat in the student center and listened to an extremely christian person talk about how everything was created by god and so everything is sacred and therefore you should dedicate yourself fully to your work because all work is sacred. that was not a line of reasoning i’d heard before, and the conclusion feels like something i’d expect from a hindu rather than a christian, but i think it’s a sentiment i agree with despite not believing in god. and i don’t think this notion of work should be restricted to traditionally productive or creative activities either; i think eg. loving and caring for someone is sacred work too. i used to think i usually found hanging out with people unsatisfying because it was unproductive, but looking back i think the actual problem was that most of those hangouts (or the people i chose to hang out with) were not conducive to being present and truly dedicating myself to the work of hanging out

there is so much work i want to do this semester, and i just hope i have enough time to get around to all of it