first semester recap

by VulcanForge, Jan 1, 2023, 3:18 AM

One down I guess?

Classes
I uh, generally started putting dramatically less effort into classes as the semester went on. As in, I don't think I went to any classes after October besides bioethics (and MITSO I guess) oops.

18.701 (Algebra I): At some point I decided to just go ahead and read through Artin, which kind of removed motivation for attending 18.701. I hear the professor was really awesome though, so I guess I missed out a bit. The problem sets were also quite good, and definitely helped strengthen my understanding.
6.1220 (Design and Analysis of Algorithms): My initial excitement about this class quickly wore off -- in my opinion the lectures were quite poor, and I eventually realized that reading the notes was simply much more efficient. I also don't think the lectures aligned that well with psets/tests (which were basically just combo problems).
6.1010 (Fundamentals of Programming): I stopped going to this class after September. This was partially because I signed up for the 9am section.
my original logic was that this would force me to wake up early. However, no.
I think the main source of learning was intended to be the assignments anyways, so shrug.
24.06 (Bioethics): CI-H class; did not particularly enjoy. In particular, I felt like a lot of the ``philosophical" discussions were kind of silly to be honest. Also I still do not like mandatory writing.
MITSO: Music is pretty nice, even though I unfortunately do not practice as much as I should. It's more formal than the high school orchestras I'm used to, but I think I still enjoy this sufficiently that I'll keep taking it next semester.

Not Classes

I guess I survived the semester. My sleep schedule, however, did not -- it was very irregular for a while, though recently I've made some attempts to regularize.
I still don't do much in my room besides sleep, but I have been spending more time with the 3W Deep Lounge friend group.
Got to see some friends at mpfg which was fun
Got a problem on HMMT November
Helped run MIT Scibowl, which was quite fun; congrats to a certain Enloe HS
Took Putnam because why not -- solved around the first half of each day, guess it was entertaining
Self studied some stuff

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september -- college

by VulcanForge, Sep 30, 2022, 9:32 PM

Apparently I'm here now?

General Life Things
Socially, I've ended up mostly spending time with math people. I've definitely met a lot of other people, but to be honest, it seems kind of difficult to consistently talk to / spend time with people who you don't share classes/activities with. It also seems to require significant amounts of social energy, which I don't possess in very large quantities

I'm living in the 3W wing of Next House -- it's pretty nice, even though I don't spend much time on hall unless it's late at night (which I've been doing more recently).

Classes
I'm officially taking 4.5 classes this semester:

Algebra 1 (18.701): an introductory abstract algebra course, so far mainly focusing on group theory and linear algebra. I haven't learned anything new yet so far, ~~and have skipped lectures for the last two weeks oops~~. The problem sets have some pretty interesting problems though.
Fundamentals of Programming (6.101): essentially a class to get practice with python implementation. The assignments just consist of one coding lab every week -- so far my strategy has been able to speedrun these in a few hours on the weekend, which seems to work nicely. I guess implementation is decently entertaining (also seeing test cases getting passed is satisfying @wolfpack ).
Design and Analysis of Algorithms (6.1220): probably my most interesting class so far. I was originally taking 8.03 (Physics 3: Vibrations and Waves), but then I realized I could really just test out of that in January, so I switched to 6.1220. The class seems to be a hodgepodge of random mathematical ideas (there's no implementation involved), but it's still quite entertaining, and I am learning things.
Bioethics (24.06): Taken to fulfill humanities communication requirement. The topics we discuss are pretty interesting in their own right, and sometimes the readings are too. However, I don't particularly enjoy the ways the instructors' discussions, and it seems like most people (including me) in the class are just freshmen trying to satisfy a requirement anyways. Also I don't like writing essays
MIT Symphony Orchestra (21M.421): This is the half class -- the conductor is more serious than I'm used to, but the orchestra is quite good and I enjoy the music. ~~I need to practice~~
Badminton: Doesn't count as an official class, but satisfies the PE requirement; awang11 is also in this class, and it's pretty fun to just play badminton for an hour twice a week.

Overall, class load has been fairly light so far, especially since MIT grades first semester on Pass/No Record. It's been nice to have significant free time.

Other Activities/Adventures/Thoughts

I'm nominally a problem writer for HMMT
One of the meetings was at Harvard, so I got an excuse to make a trip over there
I went to see the BSO! They played the entire Holst Planets Suite, as well as Bach A Major Piano Concerto and a very cool contemporary piece. I'm also going tomorrow, Yuja Wang is playing both Shostakovich Piano Concerti
I've been trying to self-study ML recently off the public 6.036 Canvas page, how does matrix calculus work
why did everyone get sick in the first few weeks

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wait oops

by VulcanForge, Aug 1, 2022, 4:19 AM

month streak $\text{[math]}$

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Garbage Post

by VulcanForge, Jun 17, 2022, 4:45 PM

Apparently I am officially no longer a high schooler $^{\text{TM}}$ .
Accordingly, my last high school contest happened (ARML): some highlights I guess
- meeting small kids (wait, since when did rising juniors start to count as "small kids"? D:)
- spending all of team round solving p9 in a very convoluted manner
- throwing relays
- finally making ~~tiebreaks~~ CDR for the first time
- ^ending off my math career by losing a 1v1 against wolfpack. According to official results I lost to him by 1 second
- pretty scenery during traveling
I should learn biology for the purpose of not learning biology :/
physics
tswift

what's the point of life

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May happened

by VulcanForge, May 26, 2022, 4:06 PM

$\phantom{the sound of glass breaking.}$

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I should have an April post

by VulcanForge, May 1, 2022, 1:12 AM

Oh my, the things that have happened since last blog post

I did not make IMO ahahahahaha, I got absolutely destroyed
000 700
by USAMO. I honestly don't think I have/had that many feelings about this. Well, AMC series is finally over; it was truly an amazing journey. Much thanks to MAA for funding my childhood these past few years, and to everyone I've met along the way <3
I played in the pit of a musical which was really fun!
I got pressured by some certain people into making a final 16 bracket for March Madness, which somehow went on an 11/12 run before dying on final 4.
I got to informally perform a violin-viola duet except with two violins and two violas!
CPW happened, and it was quite nice! I got to meet lots of really cool people
if you're reading this, hi!!
, and I guess it was a little reassurance that things will probably be fine up there next year (I don't think I was particularly worried in the first place, but I guess the little reassurance was still nice ).
I took USAPhO and solved $4-\varepsilon$ problems; I honestly feel quite rusty, and it's a bit strange to think I might've had a chance to make camp if I kept practicing, but oh well. It's not like I'll have a lack of physics to do for the next 4 years
Science Olympiad states happened and our team got first, woo! I think this was the first in-person competition I've been to in an extremely long time. It was very nice to experience things again, and there was a truly insane amount of deja vu.
I took USNCO Nationals today, which I guess is my last olympiad, as well as possibly the last time I do any chemistry in a formal setting.
I wrote (the majority of) a math contest for middle schoolers, and a nontrivial amount of people actually came and took it, and I actually managed to generate a nontrivial score distribution!

Life has been slightly dominated by some chaotic issues which have driven me a little insane, but yes! Everything is fine! Wooo

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brain vomit

by VulcanForge, Mar 21, 2022, 2:22 AM

unrefined thoughts I vomited out

Let's see, where did we leave off

Heh, apparently it's no longer an option
we lost at regionals, in the process breaking our school's streak, oops

I feel ... surprisingly apathetic about this, considering the effort I was putting into this a few weeks ago? I'm not sure why; although I certainly wasn't obsessing over science bowl as intensely as, say, my peak obsession with math, I definitely didn't expect it to be this easy to move on after putting a significant number of hours into it over the past months.

Maybe this was due to some sort of defense mechanism preventing me from feeling sad, but I think there were some other important factors:
- At some level, I recognized that the competition was quite stupid/artificial and didn't really matter. In addition, there was the recent change of in-person nationals being limited to 8 teams and in July, which quite discouraged me in the days before the competition and probably caused me to care less about it. As a result, I think I only associated a relatively superficial happiness to the competition, instead of any deeper emotions
- Something else is that the team that beat us was my old team. The people on that team were the people who introduced me to science bowl
  in fact, I think that these people, along with some mutual friends, were the main reason I started doing academic competitions in general in middle school
  in 8th grade, and I played with them until I defected to ssm last year. As a result, I honestly feel ... quite happy for them? Something about the fact that we spent years dreaming together about beating ssm and going to nationals, and now that dream has finally been realized for them. And despite not being on their team anymore, I still feel sufficiently connected to that dream, so that when it was realized, I still felt a noticable echo of that happiness.
  
  Is this empathy?
for me to obsess over science bowl for the rest of my senior year.
I'm absolutely terrified
It legitimately feels like I'm going to die in 2 months.

This sound silly, but for the past 12 years, a very central part of my identity/self has been being a K-12 student. It has been engrained very firmly in my brain that I am a child — that is simply who I am. In around 60 days, the VulcanForge that currently exists will not anymore; a different VulcanForge will be on this planet, one who is not a child. It feels wrong to say that those two VulcanForge's are the same people, given such a big difference in such a fundamental characteristic. The child VulcanForge will be dead after living for 17 years.

Maybe I'm going crazy. Is the difference really that dramatic? I already live at a residential school, don't I? What's the big deal about Boston vs Durham?

I think there's not only the mental difference of "oh no I'm not a child anymore", but also the physical difference of leaving the world I've been in. There are some people around me who have been in my world for quite a while, as well as some people who, although I don't contact them much anymore, I know I could go see them if I ever really wanted to. Once May passes, I doubt I'll be able to see most of these people ever again, realistically speaking. In this way, the world I've known is going to quickly fade away, as I'm moved into another universe.

Of course, being in an entirely other universe is certainly an exaggeration — my family will still be there, etc. And I'm not claiming that this new universe will be worse than the previous one — there's some great people I'm finally going to get to meet, etc. But I'm an extremely sentimental/romantic person,
to the point where I try to supress it a lot of the time to stop myself from doing things that are unacceptably stupid
and I can't help but feel like I'm permanenty leaving behind some sort of home, a beautiful home that I love.

Well, what's the result of all this fear? I think the main thing that's actually affecting my life is that I'm not going to get to edit the story of my childhood ever again, so I should try new limited-edition things that I would like to have been part of my childhood. You know, the classic quote "die with memories, not dreams". If I'm going to die soon, then it's easier not to be scared of things — if they go badly, it'll be extremely temporary. The only future regret that could actually hurt me is stagnant inaction — anything else I could chalk up to childhood silliness, and feel fine about.

Somewhat (questionably) relevant Feynman quote (honestly, I don't care how relevant it is, I just liked it and wanted to share it ): link
of graduating high school.
Some ridiculous social shenanigans happened at school which I have $\varepsilon$ understanding of, and even less idea what do about (including whether I should do anything at all). whatever, it's fine...?
Our school musical is next weekend, and so due to the fact that I'm in the pit orchestra, I have a large number of rehearsals across the upcoming week. This is overall mildly exciting/entertaining.
It looks like I will be taking the usual 3 olympiads again this year, for the last time. Congrats to wolfpack and a.y.711 on making USAPhO!!
Continuing off the above, I'm fairly sure
no discussion of a certain Asian Pacific Math Olympiad
that I could theoretically still make IMO if I pop off sufficiently on USAMO. But for some reason, I really don't feel the motivation
Maybe this is burnout — I've started to feel like lots of math olympiad problems are quite finite/artificial/not actually that interesting.

Maybe this is maturity, recognizing that math competitions are quite silly in the grand scheme of things, and that the IMO is not some meeting of gods on Mount Olympus.

Maybe I just can't imagine myself making IMO.

Maybe I'm scared of making IMO, because I feel like I would let the USA team down.

I really don't know which of these reasons it is; honestly, probably a good mixture of them. But I really don't feel any anxiety for Tuesday/Wednesday, and in all likelyhood, I'm never going to feel anxious about a math competition ever again.
to obsess over things like this anymore. Even with all the comedy MAA has been providing recently — it's entertaining, but I don't feel any deeper emotions.
Peer pressured exercise is quite effective @awang <3
Apparently CPW is sometime soon
at this point you can tell I'm running out of actual things to talk about

Overall, although some stuff has happened in the past few weeks, it doesn't really feel like much happened; instead, I mostly feel apathy/boredom. Maybe those feelings are just the past few days overshadowing the rest of the past few weeks. But nevertheless, I currently have a noticable lack of things to obsess over, and so far have not been successful in filling that void.

awang has suggested I get obsessed about march madness, which I guess is something

please comment if you've read this far lol, it makes me feel good heh

This post has been edited 1 time. Last edited by VulcanForge, Mar 21, 2022, 2:23 AM

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Life is still going

by VulcanForge, Feb 27, 2022, 6:02 AM

F=ma Review
Allstate Orchestra

Sentimentality/nostalgia brought to you by Second Semester Senior $\copyright$ :

This was the first time since February 29, 2020 that I've gotten the opportunity to play in a good symphonic orchestra. I'd forgotten how much of an experience it is to do so. This also might have been the last time I get to do so (though probably and hopefully not; I'm just not sure what things are like up in Boston).

Perhaps the experience was also made more enjoyable than I expected due to me somehow ending up as 5th chair. I didn't put much effort into the (virtual pre-recorded) seating audition, because I thought I would end up in the back no matter what. But anyways, I ended up behind four extremelyprosweaty violinists who had already learned all the music. On the other hand, my stand partner and I had essentially only taken a look at the audition excerpt, and hence spent the day attempting to produce increasingly convincing bs while getting hard carried by the aforementioned squad. Despite this, Tchaik 4 Finale is such a great piece that the experience was quite fun. I really wish covid didn't exist so we could have 3 days instead of 1...

Perhaps some of the sentimentality comes not just from the fact that this is my last Allstate, but also due to me getting placed so highly. I've always thought that people like those four in front of me were in a completely different tier; maybe they are, and I just got lucky. But nevertheless, I'm not that far from them. Certainly if I had spent more time on music, I could've been "good" -- I could've been part of this community. Does that make me sad/regret anything? Instinctually, there's a little bit of feeling of missing out, but when I think about it, this is quite nonsensical. I think there's just a biological instinct of regret when you see a dead fig that could've been great if it were alive. But no, I dedicated my time and energy during high school to other things, things that were pretty great, and so I don't think there's a point in feeling tinges of regret simply due to unreasonable greed. One simply doesn't have enough time and energy in their life to chase all the enticing stars that beckon towards them.

Why am I making "life stuff" blog posts like these? I've been thinking about this and I honestly don't know. Maybe a nontrivial part of it is just to keep a record of things that my future self can look back on; but that's a diary, not a blog. More importantly, I feel like humans as social animals enjoy talking about their lives so that they have companions who understand them. Since I have no one companion who understands all aspects of me, I guess that a romanticized description of these posts is that they are an attempt to let some of you understand a small part of me.
HMMT happened, confirming that I am no longer capable of computation hehe
our school beat Enlose at scioly regionals woohoo
I have realized over the past few weeks, through a number of different events, that I am an absolute shptshow at anything involving leadership/organizations. In fact, I am neither a clown nor the entire circus; at this point, I'm the entire entertainment industry. I'm hesitant to make statments like "maybe I'm just not meant to be a leader" because I'm personally doubtful of strong assertions that certain things are immutable. But organizing things gives me so much anxiety ahhhh it's already hard enough to take care of my own circus life how tf am I supposed to take care of something that's larger than myself
I have made a somewhat successful attempt at shifting my schoolday sleep schedule to something like 11-6. Please ignore the time of this post. If the tone of this post seems like I am high, that is probably due to it being written entirely in the past hour.
science bowl grind continues

This post has been edited 2 times. Last edited by VulcanForge, Feb 27, 2022, 5:24 PM

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A thing happened

by VulcanForge, Feb 10, 2022, 12:55 AM

My sequence of previous AIME scores was $6, 9, 12, 6, 9$ .

Periodicity was not achieved: 1111 11101 1000 = 10. Misread P9 as "for any two colors $X,Y$ , the number of $Y$ 's between the $X$ 's is even".

Whoops I guess I will be testing whether TST group protection is a thing that exists!

The number of olympiads I am taking this year is still an undetermined number between $0$ and $3$ .

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As to not break tradition

by VulcanForge, Feb 8, 2022, 1:00 AM

Good luck have fun to people taking AIME I! Sit back and enjoy the problems

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Submit

contrib pls
by Heavytoothpaste, Sep 30, 2022, 10:12 PM
@below done
by VulcanForge, Feb 10, 2022, 3:31 AM
contrib plz
by PEKKA, Feb 10, 2022, 12:56 AM
<3
by Inconsistent, Jan 6, 2022, 4:38 AM
reap $\text{[math]}$
by brianzjk, Dec 21, 2021, 3:57 PM
reap $\text{[math]}$
by VulcanForge, Dec 6, 2021, 6:11 AM
September post plzzzzzz
by smartmonkey999, Sep 4, 2021, 4:00 AM
ok but how is he so good?
by centslordm, Aug 12, 2021, 2:40 PM
hey vulcanforge!
by smartmonkey999, Jul 29, 2021, 5:44 PM
science bowl nats for vf in 4 days wheee
by Bluedevils, May 18, 2021, 6:59 PM
sure! $\text{[math]}$
by VulcanForge, May 7, 2021, 1:01 PM
hi! contrib pls?
by pecan_pie, May 7, 2021, 12:33 AM
@below done
by VulcanForge, May 1, 2021, 1:36 AM
contrib?
by fidgetboss_4000, Apr 30, 2021, 1:18 AM
woah
are those cool kids who go to school for pros
@blitzy @devils
by VGoma, Jan 2, 2021, 12:44 AM
bindings of issac
by kevinmathz, Oct 10, 2019, 1:50 AM
whatta g0d
by claserken, Oct 9, 2019, 8:54 PM
no u $\text{[math]}$
by VulcanForge, Sep 21, 2019, 6:48 PM
so pr0 $\text{[math]}$
by GeronimoStilton, Sep 21, 2019, 4:27 PM
granted!
by kevinmathz, Sep 15, 2019, 6:36 PM
Ok can I have contrib on your blog
by VulcanForge, Sep 15, 2019, 1:36 PM
Hi Vulcan! Contrib pls?
by kevinmathz, Sep 14, 2019, 11:32 PM
no u \8char
by VulcanForge, Sep 12, 2019, 2:18 PM
How so op
by claserken, Sep 6, 2019, 2:35 PM
How you so op
by VulcanForge, Aug 25, 2019, 7:40 PM
How so op
by Stormersyle, Aug 24, 2019, 2:21 AM
Hi people
by VulcanForge, Apr 18, 2019, 9:11 PM
Second shout!
by claserken, Apr 17, 2019, 10:14 PM
First shout
by blitzkrieg21, Feb 19, 2019, 11:45 PM

123 shouts