hi people on the blogroll friendly reminder sign up for CALICO on april 26, 2025!!!!!!!!!!! really fun usaco like contest calico.cs.berkeley.edu

updates: i have sort of set up a blog on my website and this will probably be the last time i'll post on here. moreover i'm graduating college and starting work at a faang later this summer (yay). so i guess it's a pretty good time to look back here...

i reread this blog when setting up my new one and it's pretty cringeworthy. like holy was i really that pressed over ap calc or usaco, to the point i'd write long rants about it? i guess i've been pressed about my own things recently. last post on here i was complaining about eecs 126 or something, and after that i had recruiting and whatnot to worry about. but now that everything is (hopefully) in the past, i feel like i've been equally neurotic about my own things in college.

however i honestly feel like the only thing that even kept me grinding in college was this neurosis. the idea that if i stopped now, some nightmare scenario that i dreamed up in my own head would magically come true. and regrettably i have to say for much of high school and college that was a bigger motivator than actually being interested in the work i was doing.

for example usaco. i basically did it because i didn't want to end on a loss and i don't really think i actually enjoyed it very much. by the end i pretty much only did them because i was scared that somehow only being in usaco gold meant i was a failure of a person. and not only did this make me unmotivated to actually learn competitive coding stuff, it also made me more tilted during contests further hurting my performance! i definitely think i got wayyyy too worked up over this during covid to basically be wasting all my time spinning in circles om something i didn't really enjoy doing.

what did i enjoy doing during covid? didn't really do much sysadmin stuff and i really regret it because the very very little that i did interested me more than any usaco problem. and during college i decided screw algorithms i'm going to focus on that instead. although it's had its fair share of challenges and i've been pretty worked up over that sometimes as well, i feel like the systems classes i've done have been a lot more fun than the corresponding AI/ML classes. maybe this is because i know i haven't really done systems stuff before, so i'm less insecure about failing or asking questions.

although i did start exploring things more out of interest to learn in college, i still fell back into being toxic pretty frequently. most notably during the recruiting season i was pretty visibly downcast after getting not inclined from amazon (no RO) and thought that i would be absolutely cooked if i didn't get a job immediately after. every ghost/reject after a job interview just threw me farther down an emotional rabbit hole. thankfully i ended up getting a job early this semester. god knows what i'd be like still searching this many months in, but a very unwelcome return to the insecurity and prestige chasing from high school. honestly i'm pretty ashamed i let myself get hung up on that but oh well. we'll get it next time.

so as a tl;dr i feel like this blog really encapsulates the (very wrong!!) mindset i had in high school wrt my attitude towards math and coding competitions. i was solving problems and doing mocks for the sake of getting better results next contest as opposed to genuine interest in the subject matter for math and coding competitions. i've tried (and ultimately failed i think) to wean myself off of that mindset in college, but still found myself getting pretty irrationally tied up in things like grades and recruiting.

man i've said way too much on here too much yapping

if you are reading this from the aops blog roll and are interested in usaco like cs contests, sign up for calico! deadline is creeping up, it is fully online, do not waste any time!!!

anyways.

me struggling in my current probability class and unable to focus on work reminded me of something. so i will take one of like many tangents to post on art of problem solving

since the last mid semester update: everything turned out like ok i think. i do not miss the dorms one bit. found an apartment for good (by berkeley standards) rent and thus am no longer in the trenches. my sleep schedule's marginally better, but i still am unproductive and always find "one more thing" to do at midnight that then eats up 3 hours of my night. and that's the least of it.

but anyways, let's get into what classes i am doing. i said last semester that i was already on track to graduate in 3 years so i could just take it easy, but by "take it easy" i unintentionally, once again, picked up a very difficult courseload again. this KEEPS HAPPENING.

mcb 55 - plagues and pandemics
as with any 9am breadth class for which i have zero interest, the hardest part of this class is waking up. i have a pretty terrible attendance record because i just cannot be bothered to get lectured at about rabies again. please.

they also have mandatory participation, where you have to check into the class and do a poll for credit. so my terrible attendance is negatively impacting my grade. however, i do hear that it's virtually impossible to actually fail the class, which is what i am banking on right now. i however am not taking any chances since an F in a breadth class is pretty embarrassing.

math 115 - introduction to number theory
i thought this class would just be a chill requirement satisfier, since it is an introduction nt class right? there's even an aops class of the same name! well it's not comparable. at all. uses a grad textbook and lectures are densely packed with derivation after derivation to arrive at some pretty well-known conclusions.

honestly the problemsets are not hard, the exam was not hard and i think the class is binned. however i was spread very thin on this class one week due to midterms and i ended up failing the homework. oopsies!!!!

not sure about how the class will actually be graded but i did well on the first midterm, and as for any math class i have no idea what to expect for the coming midterms.

cs 161 - computer security
this is a fun class. i have a project design doc due tonight and apparently this project is brutal. however, concepts are quite interesting and the class is pretty straightforward? ig? exams were hard, but i did well enough to scrape by without too much fear for a bad grade in the class. this class has also taught me to never trust as much as a line of C code. as intended.

project is pretty difficult, but i feel like it's also kind of fun? maybe it's survivorship bias or smth since i went from understanding absolutely nothing to having a pretty good idea of how most things worked. not much problem-solving skill used in this class compared to math 115 or what comes next.

eecs 126 - probability and random processes
the last and by far the hardest of my 4 classes. it was like tame for the first 3 weeks, and i took that for granted and was not very present at lectures. that, however, immediately backfired on me the week before the midterm, and i ended up completely lost and realizing there were many, many holes to cover.

i am certainly not on track to get an A at this rate, and as material keeps piling on, it becomes more difficult to. this class picks up on basic probability and starts off with some review of distributions and previously covered probability topics, but the professor randomly decided to overhaul week 4's lecture with jointly gaussian distributions when he woke up one tuesday so the homework absolutely caught me off guard. that was probably the first (of many) major setbacks i've had this semester so far.

granted, the material is interesting enough as it is. going from convergence to information theory to markov chains felt like a natural progression if you wanted to understand everything about markov chains. however the class does leave a lot to do during psets and the lectures are very fast-paced, disorganized, and difficult to understand. the prof also reused his grad class stochastic notes to talk about joint gaussians after 3 weeks of lower div review, which makes pretty clear what goes on in his head.

so much new notation thrown at me with so little ability to decipher, and if the syllabus is right, it only gets more obscure from here. it's also all a wildcard because i have no idea what the point of any of those concepts is yet, but i have zero faith my prof will teach this section anywhere near understandably, though.

despite all that i think that information theory is kinda cool tbh. could be stockholm syndrome though.

general misc stuff
i think my attention span and sleep schedule have been utterly destroyed, either by the summer unemployment sesh where i just took two classes and was bored out of my mind the whole time, or by still somehow not being able to pick the pace up again after last semester.

i have to stop looking at instagram reels bro it is absolutely ruining my attention span and the amount of energy i start with each day. but along with other social media apps i cannot seem to drop it. it's absolutely terrible for me and i'm definitely not going anywhere until i can kick it aside. related to the first point

in other news, i got a stick shift car and driving it is honestly a great destressor. also makes grabbing groceries, especially from like ranch 99 and costco, much much easier. it's an old corolla, so as long as i treat it non-abusively it will not resent me. already did a bit of work on the car in what free time i have left. hopefully there are no long term academic or professional consequences to my actions.

I am about to drive to Emeryville to get food and clothes
but

I just signed up for the SICKEST courseload of all time!!

The lineup is:
CS 170 - An algorithms class

Basically just take all the knowledge I got from doing cp in high school, completely theorize it, and then add a bunch of concepts to the second half. I am honestly confident about the material for the first half, but I still need to study because it's probably gonna be different from what I think. And the way my sleep schedule going I don't think I will be studying that well

Math 110 - Linear Algebra

It's with one of the hardest professors in Berkeley's math department (Holtz) and the first homework is absolutely bodying me so I'm pretty sure I'm screwed. However, the material is not too far from intro linear algebra so I'm praying I'm fine. Math classes are super professor-dependent though, and Holtz is known for going on a lot of tangents and covering things far more in depth than intro classes get me used to.

Math 124 - Programming for Math

I didn't wake up for a single one of these lectures on god. But besides that I think it's a fun class that isn't too hard (it has an A- average). I need it for reqs unless I take 128A which is harder and in matlab

CS 370 - some pedagogy class that I need to take to become a TA

The reason I'm doing this one is pretty simple.

Anthro R5B - something about gift giving

I need this to graduate as well. Readings are long but sort of interesting also I was playing minecraft while reading so if I put my heart into it it will probably be fine right?

hopefully Welp... doesn't mind but let me just flex the best layout I've made so far

Just woke up to catch the dining hall opening so I'm just going to talk about all that's gone on during move-in.

Drove up to Berkeley at around 1:30PM, arriving just at 3. Not sure why I didn't leave earlier or schedule an earlier move-in, but that ended up working out decently because I could still eat lunch before going.

When I arrived, I was greeted with abysmal traffic and a pretty terrible parking situation. Got room keys but forgot about the orientation check-in so I just threw my room setup together and went to meet roommates. Around 2 hours after my parents left I remembered about the orientation check-in but they didn't need to be there so I was chilling!!!

Somehow we got the handicap-accessible room even though none of us are handicapped (yet??). This means no shelves at the door like the other triples, and no extra closet space like the corner triples. Everything has also been moved lower than the other triples, although we do have a nicer door handle than regular triples. We also have a light-up doorbell for hearing-impaired people who can't hear knocks, but it uses the same light as the fire alarm. I've been flashbanged multiple times because the flasher is closest to my bed.

I think among my roommates we got almost everything we need but our neighbors were bullying us for the lack of room decor so now I'm being pressured to get something.

i should certainly make another website to dump rants because using aops just isnt it

i basically only use aops for the blog feature anyways but it just aint the same as it was