The Benefits of Bad Logic

Happy new year!
I've been reflecting upon the past year, as I normally do come the various new years, where "year" is just the set of time between declared new years, the last of which occurred around the time of my last entry. It's only been a few weeks, but it feels like a year, so I suppose it will suffice for such.

I apologize to anyone I have wronged over the past year--under any definition--over this time at MIT, the past 365 days, or ever for that matter.

I'm really happy with my life at the moment and I really love it here.
Why this place is amazing:
*~*There are always people awake...there are plenty of people on my sleep schedule and some on even weirder ones...
*~*Opportunities! Just consider the career fairs, UROPS, etc.
*~*There are so many activities one can quickly get involved with; I even picked up a new sport!
*~*Mailing lists...reuse, freefood....
*~*Suburbanites find public transportation pretty amazing
*~*Zephyr!
*~*Certain activities after dark...those things you always wanted to do as a child? Now that you're grown up, they're actually still as awesome and now possible on even greater proportions.
*~*Homework help...there are always people around willing to help: people who took the class before and actually still remember how to do it, as well as TAs and fellow classmates.
*~*Problem sets! Yes, I love them too. Perhaps it's more of a love-hate relationship, but some of the problems work out really nicely.
*~*There's drama not infrequently in my life, and there are always people around to talk with, to hug, or just to relax and calm down with.
*~*I can act as I want, wear what I want...pretty much anything is acceptable here. There are also always people weirder than you, such that things usually deemed not-normal are not even noticed....

In twelve hours I leave for MIT. I've been looking forward to this day for a long time and I'm overjoyed about all of the opportunities I'll encounter there. I find the idea of college exciting in general, and after spending a month or so there this summer, I am further convinced that MIT is the perfect place for me. I'm looking forward to the classes, the people, the activities, even the problem sets...

Which isn't to say I'm not terrified.

In a flash, the past eighteen years don't matter. Any status, any reputation, positive or negative is gone. No one knows what I did in high school, nor does anyone care. For the most part, its freeing; it's not as though I liked high school very much or the character I was somewhat cornered into after spending 13 years with the same people. At the same time though, I'm suddenly left without any basic reference point. Where's my identity?

I'm going to a tech school. It's full of like minded people. For the most part its gratifying, to "fit in" for once, without acting... However, at the same time, I never wanted to be "normal", to be just like everyone else. How do I maintain a distinct identity here, in a sea of similar strangers who don't know who I am or who I've been? I'm sure given time, I can reassert some sense of self, but I worry about the next few days.....

***Best wishes to the class of 2011! I wish you all a great beginning to your college adventures!***

I drove up to her apartment in Clifton Park for the first lesson. She was 52, retired, and eager to learn English. I was 17, just entering the work force, and eager to learn Chinese. A perfect pairing, it seems at first, until one realizes that we have little way of communicating. Her daughter was there at the first session, to facilitate and translate, but we would be on our own in the future, divided by a huge language barrier, but united by the common desire to learn. How much of a language can one pick up in a single summer anyway? This, I’ll see...

They were surprised at how fast I was learning. We covered basic pronunciation in a matter of two hours, something which apparently normally takes weeks. I wasn’t too surprised though: I tend to subconsciously pick up accents. Normally, this just gets me in trouble, but for once it was rather useful. Unfortunately, the rest of my lessons won’t progress at this rate. It’s too bad my affinity for accents doesn’t extend to language as a whole.

There were other languages passively at play. I spelled out sounds and syllables in sign language, another thing I tend to subconsciously do. As I stumbled through the elementary reader, I could hear children playing outside the window, their shouts in Spanish.

Interestingly enough, even Hebrew started popping into my head. When I was trying to think of examples of English words that included different sounds, various Hebrew words came to mind instead. I assume that the Chinese I was just working with had triggered some foreign language region of my brain, though no Spanish words popped up, and I know far, far more Spanish than Hebrew.

There were some difficulties. Certain vowel sounds in Chinese simply do not exist in any language I have used before. Likewise, certain consonant sounds in English, like the r and the v, do not exist at all in Chinese. We had a lot of trouble trying to pronounce these, exaggerating how to properly shape our mouths until we both would burst out laughing. These jokes we shared, without need for words.

At the end of the session, she started to tear up. What was I doing wrong? I turned to her daughter for an explanation. She laughed. “Mom is so shocked. She’s having trouble believing that she’s really going to learn English.” I smiled, another universal communication. We exchanged thank yous and good byes, in both languages.

I visited Princeton for a little over 24 hours.

I had more independence than I probably should have, wandering an unknown campus at all hours. I had the phone numbers of several friends, but no cell phone of my own from which to call. None the less, meetings were arranged one way or another. I attended a wide array of classes and observed as Jen and her friends scrambled to finish up a problem set. I had a million concerns, but none quite all that urgent, so I pushed them away and I watched. But I learned the most just wandering--teaching to an empty classroom at 1am in Fine, crashing on a sofa in Jadwin at nearly 5--things fairly reminiscent of this summer (and fairly prescient of times to come?)

As I traipsed about campus, I wanted to be a college student, and as I wandered Fine, McDonnel, and Jadwin, I wanted to be a grad student. However, in reality, I don't want to be these things quite yet. As much as I've been wanting, counting down the years until college, now that it's only months I want time to slow down. Not that the reasons for this counting down have gone away; to the contrary, they've intensified as of late. But rather, they matter less when I know the time is limited. And perhaps they matter less, when I build these relationships outside of everything: some alternative reality of mine I escape to, perhaps too far often. Simultaneously, there is so much I want to accomplish first....

Dare I not write on math competitions?

The mathcounts chapter competition was at GE Global Research Center, which has intense security. I drove up to the guard tower, and the guy asked me if I was one of the students. Now, I know I look younger than your average coach and I even have a tendency to blend right in with the middle schoolers, but I was driving.
The homeschool team came in first again. Only, this time I was coaching the homeschool team after Farnsworth had kicked me out for indeterminate reasons. All four of our kids were in countdown!
Last year's AMC score > this year's AMC A score > this year's AMC B score I'm progressively getting worse
Tomorrow I leave for HMMT (after math tutoring in the morning and mathcounts coaching in the afternoon)

A conversation I had with my brother some night at 1AM, shortly before the midterm frenzy began:

Michael: I can never really tell how much work you have because you're always busy working on 'stuff' and half the time it's not even homework.
Me: Yeah, right now I really don't have much school work. It's mostly outside projects.
Michael: Beth! School should come first!
Me: No. School shouldn't ever come first. Well, maybe in college..... Though really, most of the better things I've done-the sorts of things that get you into college-have been outside projects. They're normally academic related, but not actually school.
Michael: I'm screwed.

Thoughts? I suppose it depends on what school you go to, though these words certainly apply here.....
On that note, break was very productive.

Happy new year, one and all. Now, I define new years whenever its convenient to do so, but this Gregorian new year does mean something to me. The only other year for which this is true was 2000. Throughout the '90s, we knew 2000 was coming-the clear change of the numbers was a major milestone in time. (Some folks made a fuss about 2001 being the actual change of the millennia, but this was irrelevant to me. I'm not Christian--but I do like numbers :-) ) Once again, 2007 was a year talked about long before it happened--my high school graduation year. As far back as 2000 in fact, we would be referred to as the class of '07. It was forever distant then, but here we are today. 2007.
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May you accomplish things you've never even dreamed of this year.
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I felt it was time I posted again....
(Based on a number of promises to post some time eventually, a couple of the sorts of events which used to prompt me to writing, and basically telling someone to go read my entire livejournal rather than repeat what I had written there to him)
Been a year; Feels like five....

Chronologically, more or less:

I had a lovely Boston trip: Cool Splash classes, lots of fun college-visiting, thought-provoking conversations with friends and friends of friends (as generally happens on these sorts of trips), and an immense feeling of being back at home with my first step into the infinite...
I've been accepted to MIT & UChicago!
Princeton Math Competition: Good rounds and bad rounds, random bouts of nausea and overheating, massive disorganization and bad planning, lots of old friends, and a delirious car ride home.
If you have not done so already, checkout www.nonemptyset.com, an awesome new math competition for middleschoolers ran by nightsword04 and me (ok...mostly nightsword04 )
Another great site to visit is albanyareamathcircle.blogspot.com
!חנוכה שמח

Right now, I am at RSI.

If you wish to send me a letter or a package (hint hint, my birthday is July 18) you should send it to:
Beth Schaffer
1052a
Simmons Hall Dormitory
229-243 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA 02139

Edit: This is not friends locked because as soon as the RSI people update their public webpage, all of this information will be accessible there anyway.

There's a lot going on right now and I'm not really ready to write anything intelligent yet still succinct about it.
Some brief comments however:
1-This is a cool place.
2-These are awesome people.
3-We get a ridiculously high amount of tech money.
4-Bunk beds without guardrails are only kind of scary.
5-Sometimes taking the stairs is faster than taking the elevator. Even when you're on the 10th floor.

In other news: I passed my road test last wednesday. I am better at parallel parking than normal parking.

I had my last exam today. It was also the last time I write a dbq or take a regents ever.

People ask how the year has went and I find myself describing it as a series of exams…The saddest thing is I don’t remember most of the stuff I crammed for those exams anyway.

Many gush every year “I can’t believe it flew by so fast!” I never feel that way anyhow, but this year felt approximately 3 years long. At the same time though, I can’t really remember what happened. Don’t mistake-I have many distinct memories from the important to the trivial of this year. But at the same time, a lot of it is just…a blur….Ex: If you ask me what else happened during the month of January, I can’t tell you.

This year has also been more emotional than ever before. I’m quicker to laugh, I’m quicker to tears. (my brother says that’s all girls) However, that’s only for the little things. Anything big, I compartmentalize like crazy. I give myself the illusion of not caring.

So in conclusion, I’m glad this year is over….Not that I didn’t have fun….But it really just needed to end…

More ARML:
(Did I say this was supposed to be funny? Most of it’s not. Most of it’s just there.)

Me: Malinda!
Malinda: Hi! I’m sorry! I forget your name…
Me: I’m Beth-
Malinda: Oh!! You’re woodsywild!!

Me: Hi! (jumping into the middle of a group of students)
Julia: Oh, wow, hi Beth!
Coach person: I’m sorry, but I’m taking a head count here, so if you could just…
Me: Oh, sorry! (while running off)

Drew: There’s a group of pink shirts over there
Me: So there’s a good chance that’s Yasha’s team

Josh (over the phone): So, where are you?
Yasha: We’re all standing in the middle of a black top. Oh, I’m not good at this. Here, you can talk to Kevin (passes cell phone)
Kevin: It says here, lot 82…Nooo, I don’t know where that is either...
(a few minutes later)
Kevin: Hi Josh. No, we’re still at lot 82. We’re standing in the middle of a parking lot…

It was exciting finding mathcamp people (My awesome roommate Ruby, Yasha, Andrew, Yuri, Kevin, Sho, Drew-noooo wait-I didn’t need to find him, Malinda, Tom, Josh, Jeremy, Julia, Sarah, Sarah, Aki, & Shera).

>>I didn’t check my email for almost 3 days! It was really scary. I felt so disconnected.
>>I’m such a rebel. I snuck into the guys’ dorms to play mao.
>>Our hot green t-shirts bore a strong resemblance to the 2004 shirts…
>>There were some cool random roommate pairings. These two really sweet but slightly eccentric girls were paired together, as were two guys who were really into calculator programming.
>>I had forgotten how difficult it was to do the social thing for an entire weekend. A couple of hours is fun and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. However, the whole weekend can be a little exhausting, though I did manage to hide behind my camera from time to time.
>>According to some of my teammates, things like 10! And sin9 are “common knowledge”.
>>Apparently attracting creepy guys at math gatherings is now a regular thing. I think this is number four. But this one was the worst due to the physical contact that reallllllllly needed to stop.

This will be the thoughtful ARML post, the funny one (though already written) will be posted in a few days.

We came in fifteenth, which is cool for the entire nation. We were 6 points behind NYC. Every year, we try to beat NYC. That’s the primary goal. We get closer each year. But I really wish we weren’t so close because I did abysmally on the individual round. It was pathetic. Nice people tried to point out that it was not my fault because an individual score six points higher than mine was impossible. However, if you include other rounds where I could have/should have done better, you really do reach that threshold. It’s one thing to do poorly on my own thing, but another altogether when it impacts the team. And I felt so bad too, when there are people there who practice three hours a day and wanted to make MOP and were really hard-core competitive about ARML, and here they were not achieving these goals. And who am I to get in the way for practicing 3 hours a week on Sunday, and around 3 hours altogether the rest of the week because such time does not exist in junior year and I don’t seem to be quite so obsessed this year, though what am I obsessed with? I suppose, I can never figure it out at the time. Although it would be worse were it a team like AAMC that I feel extreme loyalty towards. But I digress. Coach Reuter and the girls were really nice and they did help cheer me up. But you wind up with these conversations, and what can you really say?
Girl: You did better than me! (trying to be helpful)
Me: Well, I did better last year, so…(though not precisely what I meant)
Girl: Oh! I did better too! It’s ok.
But what am I to say here, when I really mean, “I expected to do better than you. I generally do better at these math contests so I have a higher standard to achieve. Like, people expect that of me, and I expect that of me”. But one can’t say that nicely even when one doesn't mean any offense at all and one sincerely thinks that the girl did well.

TBC, because as I said, no one feels like reading long lj entries.

How great it felt to be in the water again today! I seriously hadn’t been swimming in months due to cramming for the SAT, then APs, etc. Ech, I’m so out of shape. But it really was so wonderful. I had forgotten the fluidity of the water and the fluidity of my thoughts while I’m in such water.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

There were two deaths this past “week”: one of someone I barely knew and one of someone I didn’t know at all. These wouldn’t have bothered me much were it not for their strange coupling with the one “year” anniversary of the death of a man I knew well and a near-death incident of someone else I know very well. The cumulation of these events resulted in a week marked by solemnity, sorrow, confusion and hope. Why these sensations at sixteen?

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

I was talking with a Christian friend of mine and she seemed shocked that I would be seeing the Da Vinci Code at Shera’s birthday party the next day. She had heard that it was a horrible anti-Christ movie. I explained to her that this really wasn’t so and that everyone knew that the story was one of fiction. Later, she asked me what the movie was about. Apparently, she had not looked into it herself and had just taken her church’s word that it was very bad…

Note: The movie isn’t really all that amazing, though the book was certainly above average. I’m not sure what all the fuss is about.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Hyperventilating addendum:
This really does scare people. One would think that running the mile would be a good enough excuse for such hyperventilization, but apparently not.

In case anyone still doesn’t know (I basically went around complaining for the past month although I know it’s my fault) I took 6 APs and 2 SATIIs (

nightsword04, my heart goes out to you) Analysis:

I found all of the humanities tests easier than all of the math/science tests. Since when does this happen?
I was the only person for some of the tests. What fun.
The US history SAT is amazing. Everyone should take it.
The AP Physics C tests are ridiculously hard. Good luck.
Distraction often ensures. These include Principal Piccirillo’s “Words of Wisdom”. Now, I’m all for quotes. I spam everyone I know with ecards, often containing quotes, on every trivial holiday. However, it’s different when the quote lasts for 5 minutes and you’re under time pressure for your AP test. Also, when it’s near 80 degrees out, most people do not come prepared with jackets for frigidly air conditioned rooms. Luckily, I did ;-P
Afternoon tests are so much more terrible than morning tests due to the anxiety that builds up all day. I don’t think I’m awake enough to be anxious in the morning.
There was a good deal of controversy surrounding the English Language exam. Apparently, the silly proctor guy chopped off 3 minutes of our time. It was my first AP exam this year and I was too dumb to actually pay attention to when we started, so I had no idea this happened until later. Many people were very upset though. However, no one was brave enough to speak out at the time :-(

So, now I’m done. I was looking forward to post APs season, thinking it would be an easy, low key time of year. However, now that it’s post APs, going to class seems incredibly pointless and I keep wondering what I’m still doing here.

Congratulations to Andrew Ardito, on placing 2nd in the nation in MathCounts!!! As a side note, in case anyone forgot, I intend to homeschool my kids. I have it all planned out.

Congratulations are in order.

Congratulations, Michael, on your Bar Mitzvah! You did an excellent job on the torah, all the prayers, and your massive haftorah. Also, the rabbi was very impressed with the topic of your speech ;-) I’m so proud of you! (I expect you to find this lj within a year)

Congratulations, Yuri and Jack, on your 2400s! (Jack, I assume you will stumble across this lj eventually).
I’m quite happy with my 2340 (800M, 800V, 740W). I thought that I had severely failed the writing (and wasn’t expecting a perfect on the verbal either), so this is a pleasant surprise. I was reallllllly not looking forward to taking it again. Not that I can completely put it out of mind, as there are still people I care about who haven’t taken it yet (and whom I should be helping study).

Congratulations, Yasha, on being one of the USAMO winners!! Seriously...top 12 in the country?! That is amazing.

Best of luck to everyone taking AP exams in the upcoming weeks!

Things have been going quite well since I was extensively interrogated by the police.

Good things:
<| NYSML was awesome. We came in first in our division for the second year in a row by a pretty big margin. I also got some other award for having one of the highest scores at the meet. Their award system is confusing. I was also glad to talk to Yuri and some other random nyc people, some of whom seemed to be having identity crisises. There was one bad thing at the end of NYSML however. Suffice it to say that one can not fairly divide one medal amongst three alternates or amongst zero alternates. This resulted in a heated argument.
<| The weather has been nice. It’s been near 70 a couple of days this week.
<| Cultural fair was much fun, as usual. I did a very poor job of actually staying at our booth and spent much time wandering around, taking over 70 pictures.
<| Passover has been pretty cool. Since it overlaps break for the most part this year, I only had to bother packing lunch twice. I found the afikomen for the first seder (I know I’m too old, but someone has to compete with my brother) and my mother gave me a slide rule for my prize. I was quite impressed with her for finding it and ordering it online. (For some reason, she’s really wanted to get me one for the past few years). Our second seder was pretty fun. I decided to make it more interesting by taking breaks in the reading to ask my brother the meanings of (english) words I had just read. My father thought that this was a great idea. My brother, however, did not.
<| I went shopping today for way too many hours and managed to buy most of the items on my extensive list. Normally, I have a lot of trouble finding things and get less than half the things I’m looking for, so today was quite an improvement. I also shopped for several hours past 4pm without getting bothered by any security guards (only capital region people know what I’m talking about here). Also, I completely neglected to don my in-my-20s look. In fact I was wearing a town camp t-shirt that must have been a children’s size 14 or 16 (Although I’m quite annoyed with all the too-big math t-shirts, I don’t completely understand the concept of “too small”).
<| My parents didn’t really care about my less-than-stellar third quarter grades. I didn’t really care too much either. Perhaps I’ve just come to terms with things. Second quarter was much trickier despite the fact that I actually did better that quarter. I was very upset about things and only managed to avoid very angry and upset parents through massive use of pathos.
<| Despite basically failing the last two rounds of USAMTS I still scored in the silver range. That’s ridiculous. Last year I would have been pretty upset about the whole failing thing, but um, I’m pretty happy about math in general right now, so I don’t really care. Btw, congrats Yuri!

Oh yes-on the extensive interrogation by the police. Alison, we were meeting at your house for carpooling-to-NYSML purposes and well, I hadn’t really been to your house many times before. We found this nice brick house with a light on inside and no house number anywhere that looked a lot like your house. After hanging around for awhile and wondering where people were, we finally rang the doorbell. It was about 5:40 am at this point. Although we heard a voice inside, no one answered the door. Several minutes later, three cop cars pulled up and insisted upon asking us all these questions and seeing our IDs. I thought this was taking things a little too far. Later however, your mother told me that it was the town judge’s house that we had chanced upon…

I’ve been accepted to RSI!
Wow. I was beginning to be glad that I applied lately because my essays on the application are organized really nicely and useful for reference. Didn’t expect to actually get in though. :-)

SAT was this morning. I’m very glad that it’s over, but I’m not so sure about how I did. I don’t think I did well on the essay or the big grammar section. Math and Critical Reading were pretty good though. 4 hours is a long time.

USAMO qualifiers are out. I’m quite glad that the cut off is above the AHHHHHHHH range seen in the chart below. Facts:
*My distance from cut off each year (using the 12 because the 10 isn’t really fair): 74.5-->57-->15
*I’m the third highest scoring girl on the AIME in NY. I know Jen beat me. I wonder who the other one is.
*12 people in SD took the AIME. The highest score was a 6.
*Although 4 people in Wyoming made the AIME, only 2 took it. Their scores are a 2 and a 1.

Sage advice:
If you hyperventilate in class, people will be very worried. They will send you down to the nurse. Your experience there will be ridiculously funny to tell about later, but bordering on traumatic at the time. To avoid hyperventilating, it is important to get over 4 hours of sleep per night when you are coming down with a cold. You definitely should not pull any all-nighters when coming down with a cold and already tired from sleeping under 4 hours the night before.

Anyone want to explain St Patrick’s Day to me? I seriously don’t get it.

Who celebrates it? Irish people? Catholic People? People who like to wear green? The most common answers I received upon asking around were Irish people and everybody.
What does one do to celebrate? I asked several people whether there was anything more to it than wearing green. Most agreed; It is also proper to go out drinking.

Someone please offer me a better explanation than this.

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The school play, Steel Pier, was pretty cool. Lots of dancing. Lots and lots of dancing. My classmates are so talented :-)

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MathCounts States was awesome. I didn’t actually have a team but I volunteered to help score because I thought it would be interesting. I always wanted to know what *really* went on in the scoring room. It’s nothing much really, but I had a good time. I was quite shocked to see how low most of the scores were. It was a harder year than normal, but still. I also talked to Mrs. Ardito extensively. While I do student perspective/teacher perspective comparisons on a lot of things, I never really look at the parent perspective (one’s own parents never count) so this was quite interesting. The results were amazing. Andrew was unsurprisingly first, but we also had 3 other AAMC members in the top 7, including David making nationals! Congratulations guys!

AIME:

Index cutoff          Probability of such an occurrence*       My response
<202.5                             5%                                     YAYYYYYYY
202.5-215                        35%                                    AHHHHHHHH
>215                               60%                                    haha, I’ll make it next year

*This is obviously totally inaccurate

So I could go to AoPS and read through pages of people’s scores and cut-off index speculations, but that would be a very bad idea.

I was actually totally cool before the test. However, in the hours after the test I was rather anxious, angry, restless, etc. I calmed down mostly, but the above actions would still be realllllly unwise.

Other math news:

They kicked me out of their arguing circle. As much as I hated to be a part of it, I’m even more upset about being kicked out like this.
I really need to start that USAMTS that’s due next Monday
Homeschoolers continue to amaze me. I swear, I’m home schooling my kids. Little 10 year old uses the word binomial…

Math competitions are fun.

deepthought0042 asked me a good question the night before the competition. She asked me if I was nervous, and I wasn’t really. Believe me-I’ve been there before. I’ve been incredibly nervous about math competitions in the past and it just doesnt do any good. For awhile last year, and ok-a little this year too, I let math competitions have free reign on my emotions, wrecking havok in their path. Badddddddddd. So I've decided to not do that. I was honestly more worried about the team-everyone getting there on time, them knowing where to go throughout the day,etc. which is quite good for me as it allowed me to channel any sort of tensions externally. The nice thing about HMMT is that its sort of a A+/no credit system in that you never really know exactly how you stand if you don’t come in the very top. My father doesn't seem to get it. He tells me that at some colleges I won't be in the top 50% and expects me to be sad about it or something. I tell him that I'm sick of it. How if you're at the top of things at school a lot, people notice when you're not and how the expectations get ridiculous. I like math and I like how no one expects me to be at the very top. I have more room to move around down here in the middle.

I was happy with things. There were some pretty cool questions and some insanely hard questions. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one who considered them insanely hard. It was also pretty cool to meet up with some mathcampers and upstate ny armlers. We actually placed this year for our overall total despite our lack of individual awards on any of the single tests. Yay! :-)

I don't believe in long lj entries because no one will actually bother to read them. Long emails are different and I should get around to writing some of those. Yeah. So I will be writing two entries now instead of one really big one

***Warning: The following reading is more thoughtful than amusing***

What a break. I accomplished a small part of my to do list, toured around MIT, Harvard, and Cambridge, and went to a math tournament.

I know the other college visits don’t compare. My father and I do break off the beaten track and wander around for some time by ourselves, but it’s not like it was here, actually living amongst the students. I felt I was truly able to experience college life-from going to classes to hanging out at the dorms. Everything except doing the homework, although I was able to distract a number of people from doing their homework.

The classes were a mix. They varied on class size, quality of instruction, and amount I could understand, at both of the schools. I looked at a variety of subjects and was amused to find that in every class I could just join in for the day without the professor noticing or caring.

The cultures at the two colleges are very different from each other, though that’s partially on account of the people I stayed with. At first I was partial to the lifestyle at MIT, but on further thought I realized that while I may prefer that for a month, I’m not sure which I would prefer for a year.

I faced such hospitality-from friends I was staying with (thanks-

blusky125 and

landofnowhere!) to people I had just met (wow!) I love meeting new people from worlds outside my own. I love talking to them, or really just watching them talk. I also like seeing the old people again, the people I hadn’t really seen in weeks, months, sometimes years. I like to see how they’ve changed and I like to ask myself how much I have changed in that time.

Today:

~I managed to both pass off as a middle schooler to get another free math shirt and to get several coaches commenting that I didn’t “look older than 25” at mathcounts today. Heh. What’s up with the shirts anyway? The smallest size they had was adult medium. Seriously-how many middle schoolers fit in an adult medium? I don’t fit in adult medium, and contrary to some beliefs, I’ve been out of middle school for several years now.
~Yeah…we didn’t really do that well. It’s kind of embarrassing. We actually had 3 team members and 3 alternates do quite well, but a fourth person can really bring the average down. I think once in the past 5 years we managed to get the top four correct. The homeschoolers were amazing-1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd place. I was jealous for a moment but then I remembered that they are all on my AAMC team, so I get to work with them rather than versing them. This works quite well.
~I talked to a lot of coaches and kids and a few parents. I also managed to disseminate a number of my camp applications. ;-) I consider this quite successful. I’m getting way better at this talking thing.
~I was talking with my co-coach that I get along with at lunch. She told me about a dream she had years ago and how it had come true (this was regarding baby names). The chances of such an occurrence seemed impossibly low and though not normally a believer in such things as prophetic dreams, she made an exception for this case, and it really made her wonder. Later at home, I looked up the relevant numbers, and the chance of this happening to her was about 5%, which is already much larger than she had thought. The situation though, was not incredibly uncommon, and so the chances of this happening to someone skyrocketed. Hearing these numbers though, might really hurt her beliefs, so I surely won’t mention them to her…
~Upon being alone in an empty shul, I was quite glad to have a certain friend’s phone number memorized. I’m going to memorize a few more phone numbers now. They may prove useful sometime. (and for future reference 6:30≠7:00)
~Due to not having 3 dollars that I forgot to bring to the shul, I decided that I should really carry a little money in my coat. I used to carry money and other random useful items in a pocket of my old coat. Then I got a new coat 2ish years ago that didn’t have nearly as many pockets as the old coat. I will make sure to resume this carrying items practice now.
~ Boxing is really dumb. Really really really dumb. I knew that it was dumb before, but after watching Cinderella Man, I feel much more strongly.
~I am sooo going to make my brother the most amazing birthday card ever to compete with the one he sent me this past summer.

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