Tomorrow's a Snow Day

Tomorrow's a snow day and I'm sitting on my bed looking all silly with a face mask that my friend gifted me on my birthday four months ago, that I haven't found a moment in the last four months to lay it on my face for 15-20 minutes and just chill. It's not really that I don't have time, because that's never really the case, it's just that I haven't made time for it.

Like how I haven't made the time to write in more than just a hot second.

But it's okay, because I have the time now to write, sitting here on my silly bed, with my silly mask, listening to silly contemporary jazz that tickles my silly brain in just the right way. So let me tell you about what's happened with me in the past couple days.

IAP happened and went by.

I took the 6.100A ASE after reading through the final review lecture slides the night before and passed all the test cases on the test, ending up with an A. I forgot how to use assert statements, but they give a code snippet with assert and try except statements in the multiple choice portions, and I wrote code that looked exactly like those examples and they passed the test cases, so it must mean I did great. I was also able to manually check some of the multiple choice questions with the code editor that they give us to write our code for the coding portion (we aren't allowed to use any outside resources), and that helped me make sure my answers were correct. Overall, it wasn't terribly difficult, given that I had already learned the content in senior fall.

I read through a good bit of Silverman. After the first two chapters, those two horrible chapters on algebraic geometry, I was able to move through the book at a faster rate. Overall, I think it's a pretty well-written book. I did have some prior knowledge of the topic coming into the reading, but it was kinda shaky, and I think this book did a good job solidifying my understanding. I didn't really get the differentials part, though, but I suppose I'll get to it sometime in the future. The concept of divisors is pretty cool :)

I didn't have the time to get to the cool stuff that I wanted to get to (Mordell-Weil), and I don't know when I'll have the time to get to it. Probably in the summer. By then, I hope to have a better grasp on Galois theory, which they employ a little in the book.

When I was cooking up my presentation for the DRP Symposium at the end of IAP, I was constantly paranoid that I didn't include enough information in my slides, and that my talk would be too basic and people would think it was trivial. I was doubly afraid of being asked super simple questions that I should know the answer to, but don't, because I have a half-assed understanding of the content. I ended up including a lot of content in my slides and I think I definitely went too fast in my presentation as a result.

I have this same paranoia elsewhere, too, and it's the main thing I need to work on for my mental stability and happiness. It's a work in progress, and I hope that I'm making actual progress? I can't really tell at the moment. Anyways, I want to reassure you, dear reader and follower of my journeys, that I am okay. I recognize that I sometimes write my posts in a more distressed state of mind, and that might paint my life in a more negative light than what is true. Don't worry, my friend! I am mostly okay, and hanging on! I mean, I still would like to write about my thoughts and struggles in case they reach someone out there who feels a similar thing. But I also want to include upbeat posts that could potentially uplift those people who have to work through similar obstacles.

I wrote some emails to mentors in my life over IAP, and they responded back to me with really heartwarming messages. I shared some of my trials in my first semester with them, and they gave me words of advice that I had never considered. They do be mentoring for real for real. It really makes me wish that I kept more constant contact with people who were significantly older than me, and I could ask them things about life that they could answer with their much longer lived experience. I do think a lot of my problems are a result of having to grow up and deal with problems on my own. If your relationship with your parents aren't too tenuous (and this is worth a shot even if things are a little bit rocky), reach out to them and ask them for advice on your tribulations in life! They'd be happy for the chance to talk to you and get to know more about you, since they should be people who care a lot about you.

My first pset was due today. It was from Algebra II, which is not a happy class for me. I think this pset was kind of an introduction to Lie algebras? I'm not really sure what a lie algebra is, but the prof told us to take that class if we're interested in learning more about this kind of math. I don't think I like it very much. We worked with some linear groups, and I don't have a very strong intuition for it. We're doing representation theory next, which is more linear groups, and I don't think it's gonna look very pretty for me. I can't wait for field, ring, and Galois theory.

I do this thing where I procrastinate doing a pset or homework assignment that I don't want to do by doing other classes' work. I turned in my physics pset due on Wednesday on Sunday. I got ahead in most of my other classes. And now that I've turned in this pset that I've been procrastinating, I really don't have much to do. I suppose it would behoove me to start looking at the pset for next Monday, and probably will do that tomorrow, but I honestly don't have many pressing things to do. And there's a snow day tomorrow, which means extra time to do stuff like catch up. I guess I'll get ahead? I'm already a little bit ahead, too.

It will be chill time. I'm chilling right now. I just have to keep reminding myself that I'm chilling. I forget all the time. Stupid little demons in my head, telling me to worry when I have no reason to. Silly little demons.