PROMYS

So this is extremely late, but I wanted to make a post talking about my time this summer at the math camp PROMYS. For a bit of context, this was my second year doing this camp, but it was my first time in-person as last year was virtual. Overall, it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot of interesting math. PROMYS gives a lot of freedom to the campers, so it was a lot of fun to get to hang out with friends that I made virtually irl. NGL I wish I did a daily post instead of trying to remember it all now.

First Week:
It was interesting to see my friends irl. One of them I was really surprised at their height. At first I didn't even recognize them 💀. There was a funny moment where we were texting another friend asking when they would arrive only to find out that they passed by us when we were getting food (or maybe boba, I don't remember). We also started a game of Fish in elevator lounge (the dorm building has multiple towers—two for girls and one for guys—and a few lounges. Each floor of the tower also has a common room, but with no AC it gets pretty stuffy there. They also aren't very large. Each tower had a lounge, the one for A-tower we called Melville, B-tower we called quiet study lounge, C-tower elevator, and there was also the laundry room lounge [inside and outside of the laundry room, though inside was mostly a joke]). We got a lot of people playing. There was also just a random watermelon on a table. The next day we had our first lectures. Our first number theory (nt) lecture was pretty good. If iirc it was pretty similar in content to last years, but it was better to hear talk about things irl. It was also better for asking questions (since he could see us). The first cryptography lecture was intense. The teacher was like "you guys remember doing this from last year right?", and it was something from the very last pset (and the open-door one too!). The matroids seminar was oddly paced. She went super slow on basic nt things, but went insanely fast on what is like the backbone of the class. Although something interesting about her was that she was a super stacked violinist and mathematician. She studied at the Julliard School, which is apparently one of the most prestigious music schools in the world. The other lecture went pretty slow overall. We also watched the fireworks, which was very extravagant. I also lost my phone on the second day that week 😭. Later that week we got pizza and watched the sunset/just hung out with some other counselors.

rest of the time:
Here's just a list, since I don't remember all the events chronologically: we went to Chinatown, the professor started to haze less as first-years were scared off, research labs started, there was a few weeks of covid spreading, some kids from another program (cough cough summer challenge cough cough) started spraying other kids with a water gun in the elevators and rooms, we did some more exploring, did a Target run, my parents mailed me a new phone after being panicked from no communication (and after the second day too), went biking, had a tour of Harvard's math department from our professor, had the talent show (I pretended to be one of the professors) - this was pretty fun -, we had midterms (I trolled on it by using advanced stuff), had hot pot, failed to see a movie cuz of age restrictions😢,carried a sandwich in the rain for a friend (he was doing another program in addition to promys; dude's insane), frisbee happened (we beat mit's program, poggers), did research presentations (I got carried really hard; I mostly focused on the class so I did almost nothing on the project while one of our teammates stayed up til 4; it was also chaotic since we didn't plan the presentation until like 20 minutes before we presented), got our new shirts, there was a magic show (it was really cool)/guest lecture, went for pizza with our research mentor, did another boba run, went to Newbury street, there was a fire in the dorms (someone apparently microwaved metal?), the heat wave hit some people hard (one girl fainted), went to dinner with all my friends and our professor (which was rlly unexpected; we also had like 20 ppl, which was crazy), we stayed up late many nights (4 was pretty typical for the day before psets were due), and finally we did an all-nighter on the last day (so we avoided curfew restrictions by avoiding the guard for the whole night; we explored mit a bit and rolled chairs down a ramp; tho the chair was in critical condition, and we ended up finding a chair that was locked with a chain), unfortunately my return flight was at like 4 so I didn't get to spend the whole night with my friends.