Update: first week of IAP

"i actually might burn myself out before the semester starts"
"Is that exactly what you said you would learn from last semester?"
"lmao"

So what have I been up to these days? What is it that takes me away from writing? What is it that takes me away from giving myself time? Well, to be fair, I think I have been taking good breaks. I've really locked into the 3 hour grind session with Honkai Star Rail breaks in between. Catching up on all the old events that I missed during my hiatus is a good time killer and honestly relaxes me. It's nice because I'm not tryharding that much.

Anyways I should answer the question. It's IAP at MIT again. I'm doing the DRP (Directed Reading Program) again. I'm reading Lorenzini's An Invitation to Arithmetic Geometry. Hopefully I can get through a good chunk of it. My mentor mentioned that Riemann-Roch (a specialized case) would be a good result to get to by the end of IAP. I checked and it's at page 300 and something so uh. Kind of a lot of pages. I hope I'm on a good track? I really hope...

I'm also doing web lab. I wasn't planning on doing it seriously but then my friend asked me to look for another teammate and now our new teammate is doing the class for a grade so uh I don't want to let her down. Hopefully developing the project won't be a lot of work but so far the lectures alone have been killing me. There's 3.5 hours everyday, and I try to watch as much as I can on 2x speed but the workshops take me a while. I also gotta be hella locked in to absorb all that information because they go pretty fast.

So nowadays I think I spend approximately 6 hours of deep focused work on DRP and web lab. Unfortunately, I have more things on top of that that I have to work on.

First is my UROP, which is really chill. It's in Sloan on some cybersecurity. It's interesting, but not really that much of a time commitment weekly, but is something that I need to remember to do every week. Usually like one 3-hour grind session block is enough to finish all that I need to do.

Next, I'm playing in the pit orchestra for the Musical Theatre Guild. They're doing Cabaret over IAP. There are rehearsals twice a week, one of them 2 hours and the other 3. It's pretty chill for the most part. The music isn't terribly difficult but also hard enough that I'm hitting wrong notes while I'm sightreading, but I don't foresee having to put in extra hours outside of rehearsals to practice my part. A lot of resting, which is when I play HSR lmao.

Also, I have a yoga class that meets MW at 8am. I chose that time because I wanted to get my sleep schedule in order for the spring semester. I chose yoga because it's something that I've always wanted to do fully and also the MITWE conductor, fred, told me for the second time that I should really try yoga, because apparently my playing sounds very rushed or something. I mean, I get very earnest when I play the clarinet. It's good for some pieces, but not so much for others, so I should really learn how to chill down. I mean part of this post is literally me ranting about how stressed I am.

Finally, I need to get my REU applications submitted. It's that time of year where you apply to summer programs. I wasn't successful with the internship search (go figure, I'm a sophomore who has barely done any CS and I lowkey did not put in that much effort into my resume), and so I need to be successful in my REU apps or else I'll be going to PROMYS again for another year or something. Not that I wouldn't want that, but I'd definitely like to do something new for a summer. Also because my faculty advisor told me that I should probably do those if I want to get into a good grad school.

Sigh, it's like college apps all over again. I don't want to write an essay about why I want to do research (as if I don't write already). I don't like the fact that what I'm going to churn out will probably be something that I don't like. I also feel like I'm just going to get rejected by a bunch of things because I'm not qualified enough so I don't even want to try. I have to remember that people have to get research experience somehow, so I really should shoot my shot. I also asked a bunch of people to write letter of recommendations for me so I shouldn't let them down.

All in all, a really busy time. My days have settled into a nice routine though. I do random stuff in the mornings, and mainly have two 3 hour grind sessions in the day: one in the afternoon like 1-4 or 2-5 and one in the evening like 7-10 or 8-11. I really really lock in at that time and I get a lot of work done. Outside of that, I've just been cooking, chatting with the very few people that are here (which is a blessing. If there were more people here, I'd want to hang out with them and I won't have time to do stuff), and playing a lot of Honkai Star Rail.

Regardless of the grind sessions though, I'm still slightly behind on my work. I just don't really have any motivation to do things outside of those times, or I'm just busy with other random things to do. I guess I gotta be more efficient with the rest of my time, squeeze in another grind session? Well, it's only been the first week. A lot of adjusting that needs to get done is all. Hopefully next week will be better. For starters, I'm going to actually try to go to bed early today. Like maybe at 11 so I'll have 8 hours when I wake up at 7 for my yoga class. Hopefully. I'll make it through.