Orientation Week part 2

Day 5

W day. I slept in, although in doing so, I missed a hike through Chicago (idk if I could even walk that much anyways so...). At ~11, I went to a bookstore with the English-Math major, who I'll call E, and one of her friends. The book store was nice in that they sold used books for quite cheap. I couldn't find the books on the reading list for my class, but I bought a different book. It was an anthropological look at creativity. I was wowed by how passionate E was for reading. She reads so, so much. It's almost like she's an English major. I got lunch at Bartlett again, since I didn't find the people I wanted to yesterday. I met someone who wants to major in fundamental texts though (to declare the major, you pick a question and formulate a course sequence to help you answer it as a thesis), which was unique. They were interested in political philosophy and were a prelaw. Afterwards, I went to a scavenger hunt with my peer mentor, which sucked. It was pretty much just a tour through campus. But I did get to met some awesome people. We had a long, long conversation about math, politics, energy, heathcare, the whole gamut. Two molecular engineers, a political scientist, and a mathematician walk into a room talking about math. They walk out talking about the free market. Truly a UChicago moment of all time.

After that, I went to a jazz performance for a bit. It was odd though. They didn't have a saxophone, the stereotypical jazz instrument. But it wasn't like they were afraid of the stereotype because they used a cello. It was also in a performing hall, making it seem very formal, yet one of the songs was using like "practical effects"—they had background audio and background voices. It was curious how they pushed the boundaries of the instruments. I used to play clarinet, but I have never heard the clarinet played in the way that women in that orchestra was playing it. It created such a different sound. I left a bit early because I was bored and walked around the jazz festival a bit. There was a place to pay for entry, but I accidentally entered somewhere along the enormous perimeter. Dinner was a little more complicated. On Saturdays, UChicago wants us to eat out for dinner, so they don't serve in the dinner halls. But apparently lots of students complained and now on Saturdays UChicago offers some dinners that I think are made by outside resteraunts. This took a lot of time to figure out, though, and also required using Grubhub.

We then headed to the Museum of Science and Industry as UChicago rented out the place and had a shuttle service to get there. Our shuttle wouldn't take us there for some reason. They just looped around instead of dropping us off close to the museum. This is the second gaff that the shuttle drivers have done this week. It was fun to just goof around in the museum with friends. There was also ice cream, and somehow one of my friends got an ice cream cone with no cone. It was just ice cream in the shape of a cone.

An MSI Exhibit:

Back in my dorm I met some friends and briefly played Unstable Unicorns. I played ping pong with one of them for a bit, started watching 90 Day Fiance with some returning students, and went to some other house's lounge and played smash for a bit. That house for some reason seems to have an unusual number of math majors. No first-years in that lounge either though. I just went back up to my room, thinking that I'd write this up and play a bit of Cookie Run. But now it's almost 4 am 😭. I wanted to get a lot of sleep and do some chores tomorrow.

A few remarks: my mom bought some dragonfruit a few days ago, and since I haven't been in my dorm much, I haven't been eating them. Now they're pretty sketchy. I ate three today, and they all had no concrete signs of being bad. But now at 4 am I still have one, and I'm not sure how much longer it has. I really should eat it, but I'm already in bed. The skin is super mushy, which is super sus. But the flesh still smells, looks, feels, and tastes great. A weird thing about moving from 13 years with a similar group of people to pretty much completely new people is that making jokes is different. Back home, I'd ironically use abused slang like "fr fr on god no cap", knowing that it subverts me just not being like that. But here that joke doesn't land as well because they don't know me. It's subtle but weird. I think something unrated about UChicago is how much they encourage exploring the city. We're super close to downtown, get free train rides, 10 free metra rides, have free, consistent shuttles around and outside campus, have volunteer programs off campus, and had a whole meeting trying to get people off. I'm looking forward to exploring such a rich city.

Day 6

Pretty boring start today. Slept in late enough that starting laundry wouldn't work well with other events but not enough for me to just go to lunch. I wanted to go to the gym with a friend, but they were busy. But the time that I woke up at also wasn't really enough for me to start doing something else, so I just kinda killed some time. I had lunch and went to Promontory Point with my house. It was a bit of a walk, but the view was really nice. We got an awesome view of the city. The water wasn't too bad, though on the colder side. I recovered a random volleyball from the water with a friend (not trivial because of rocky shore), played some ultimate, and ate some smores.

Then on the way back, I went to a book store with some friends. They didn't have any of my hum books again, nor any of the Nietzche books I've been meaning to read. It's a nice book store though. They have huge book shelves and sell at good prices because they're all used (although one of Nietzsche's books I considered buying was pretty expensive). On the way back, I saw a resteraunt near campus and decided to test my hypothesis that maroon dollars are for Saturday dinners. I was wrong—they didn't accept them. Once I got back, I wanted to go to the gym, but my friend was busy and I had laundry. lAuNDry WiLL be EasY. It took me ages. I hate apps. I initially downloaded a subtly different version of the app, which threw me off. I also wasted time trying to bypass the app requirement. It seems like the only way to bypass it is to buy a laundry card for TEN DOLLARS. Fuck you wash connect. Why do you need so many permissions just to send a message to a laundry machine physically near the phone? So stupid.

We then had tacos for house dinner. Mid tbh, but maybe it's just because I ate vegatarian. We played Secret Hitler, which was chaotic, as expected. I threw the game so hard though. I literally voted against my own nominatee for chancellor at the convincing of Hitler 🤡. The next game was Candyland, and it get really heated. One of the players drew a really good card and then siad that cheating was the only way to make this game skill based. So I assumed he cheated and stacked the deck against him. I guess he didn't really cheat because this made him really mad. Then someone else stacked the deck, and he got more mad. After that mess, we took a walk while waiting for a frat party to start. It was pretty nice. Somehow we got across campus in like 10 minutes, which is weird because it's faster than usual and we got a pb as a group. On the way back we saw a dead possum, and one of my friends took a picture of it. It's part of a thing with her other friend to send each other pictures of dead things (they collect bones). We collected people for a Barbie-themed frat party and waited in a huge crowd of people. I don't have any pink clothes, so I was supposed to be going as Allan (I haven't seen the movie). The frat party was really full, so it was hard to get in. It got so bad that people were struggling to leave the party. A fire alarm then went off, which might've been to get people to leave. At that point, we left for Insomnia Cookies and just chilled nearby. Eventually I got bored, so I started playing cookie run kingdom. But then someone recognized the game and started playing smash or pass with my cookies 💀. Then some others started playing smash or pass with the UChicago admits instagram 💀💀. After getting back, I did a little working out and stayed up late playing crk and working on this blog. My dorm has a little gym in the basement with dumbells and ellipticals. The dumbells have painful ridges on the handles though. A pretty fun day overall.

Day 7

Last day before classes start. I wanted to go to a work-study info session that I thought started at 11 am, but woke up like 11:30 am. But luckily, when I got there they told me that it was actually an hour later (miscommunication). I didn't even end up staying though, because I thought some friends and I were gonna go to Chinatown. We didn't end up going since it was so last minute. Instead, we went to a poster sale. We saw a Genshin poster, AOT, BTS, and others. I was thinking of getting one and putting it between my shelf's mounting bracket, but I wasn't sure if it would look good and if it would even fit. I saw a few cool ones, but none that showed my interests and were an appropriate size (there are really huge ones of Metallica that I probably would've bought if they were smaller). Then I went to a grocery store with M for some UChicago event. It was in the last 30 minutes of it though, so that's probably why it was kinda lame. I got to meet someone from an informal book club of the UChicago discord though.

A bit later I went to the gym with a friend. We started with a chest machine. Eventually the bench was available, but we were struggling to lift the bar with no weight 🤡🤡🤡🤡 (I did 10 pounds both sides before). Then I got dinner, which meant giving up returning to the poster store to buy something (I planned on doing some measuring in my dorm). At 6:30 there was a screening of The Blues Brothers and a discussion led by Agnes Callard (an infamous UChicago professor for her love life). In my opinion, the movie was a pretty straight-forward comedy that didn't appeal much to my sense of humor. Basically, one of the brothers was freed from jail, meet up with his brother, and reformed their old blues band to pay the taxes for a church that they used to attend as kids. The moderators' perspectives were that it was a movie about reuniting a family and the blues brothers' relentless pursuit of musical genius, i.e. them ubermensching. I disagree. The family angle is subverted by the underdevelopment of the characters. What family has no lines with each other? The ubermensch angle doesn't work that well either, since they don't pursue greatness that much and ultimately their end goal was to just pay the church's taxes. Also, in my opinion, they weren't even that good. I thought a more appropriate analysis was that this movie was about the absurd. Early in the movie, police pull them over, and one of the brothers realizes that the officer will likely arrest them, considering their entry in the criminal system. This is the realization that everything they do is meaningless. No matter what, they know that they will end up back in jail. So they pick some absurd goal of making five thousand dollars in a few days for an organization that doesn't like them and just have fun while doing it. They reunite the bois, play fun music, rizz hot women, and have no worries. Adding to the absurdity is the people chasing them. It starts out with a few police officers, then a large amount of the city police, then a large amount of the Chicago police, then firefighters, SWAT, army, helicopters. This idea doesn't explain the prescence of Nazis though. It could just be comedic reasons that they chose Nazis. I didn't get to add anything to the conversation because I didn't get the mic, but I want to contribute at some point. You can also get a free shirt for asking a question. At this event I met A, who is a very infamous character of the UChicago admits discord for his spicy takes (he is a serious economics guy and very Friedman-y). I left early because I got bored. Oh also, my roommte lost his key already. Like bro it's not a speedrun. So I got a new key.

Now it's 1:24 am, and I've got a 9:30 am class tomorrow, so I should sleep.

I thought that O-week was pretty fun towards the end. At the beginning it was hard to make friends because there weren't a lot of events going on nor good spaces to meet people. The dorms weren't allowing people from other dorms in, which just makes it so hard to hang out with friends or find people in a lifeless house. I've been having to channel extrovert energy to like sit down with random people at meals, talk to people while in line, etc. I also wanted to go to a frat party, to try and find people I didn't get contacts for and to meet new people. But I haven't gotten into one. I think they're just so female deprived that they try to reserve the male spaces for guys rushing, already have connections to the frat, or are in the frat. There's also just little supply since a frat is an ongoing effort and first week has extra demand due to the lack of events, leading to extra demand with no elasticity in supply. I want to start going into the city though, as during O week I haven't been yet. I'm looking forward to classes, especially Honors Analysis, and starting RSOs. There's also still some chores I haven't done yet.

And here's a pic of my room: