tidbits

tidbits Hello Internet! Im briefly poking my head into the blogosphere as a respite from a very busy IAP (which Ill hopefully get to blogging about eventually). But since I dont really have anything interesting to say about IAP yet, and I couldnt think of a single unified topic to write about, I decided to answer a bunch of questions from the blogger bot that Lydia K. so generously created for us bloggers who cant think of anything to blog about. Pi or tau? Pi. (If its okay with the other person(s),) tell us your funniest (PG-13) MIT   relationship disaster story. I actually haven’t really had anything noteworthy in this arena the first person I got into a relationship with at MIT is now my boyfriend :) We often hear strange snippets of conversation as we walk through public   spaces. Tell us about a time you overheard something interesting. Overheard at a fencing practice last year: “This is MUCH less sexual if you understand quantum field theory.” Good news: another hour has just been added to every 24-hour day. How do   you use those extra sixty minutes? Sleep, obviously. What do you do to punt, de-stress, or reset, on or off the Internet? What   things on the Internet help you feel more happy and less anxious? When I’m by myself, I like to listen to music or watch BBC nature documentaries. More frequently, I force myself out of my room to go wander around and find people to hang out with, or watch something on Netflix with my boyfriend. Are you a night owl or are you the early bird? Whats your most productive   time of day? When do you do your best work? I’m definitely not an early bird, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found it more difficult to stay up late. Last semester, I found that my most productive hours were in the afternoon. What are your resolutions? What do you want to accomplish over the next   year/semester? Due to an unfortunate health complication, one of my resolutions is to be more healthy. This means cutting sugar and red meat out of my diet, and since those are most of the things that I enjoy eating, that’s going to be hard. I also want to be better at saving money; I realized between buying my own brass rat and taking a spring break trip to Vienna, I’ll need to have enough money put aside. Film (or write about, Im sure) anything related to music in MIT. This has already been done for me check out this fusion performance of Phantom of the Opera by my a cappella group, the MIT Ohms (I solo at 2:15!) Type up/embed/describe a short scene from a favorite book or movie and tell   us about how something in your life is like that scene. There’s a scene from my favorite movie (Final Fantasy 7: Advent Childrensurprise surprise) in which the protagonist Cloud (the guy with the spiky blond hair) is physically pulled upwards by all of his friends to fight the very, very large monster threatening to destroy the city. I always see it as a metaphor for the support that friends and family provide in one’s life they pull you up and give you the boost you need to fight your own monsters. I cry every time I watch this scene. (I cried when I watched it before hyperlinking it to this paragraph) What do you need to do within 30 minutes of waking up to ensure your day   gets off on the right foot? What happened last time you didnt? When I get up really early (before 11 am), I like to have a cup of tea or coffee to get me going. Otherwise, I like waiting until the last possible minute to get out of bed because there’s nothing than puts me in a worse mood than getting out of bed. Whats your signature beverage? How did it achieve that status? It would probably have to be thai ice tea boba, the only flavor of boba I really enjoy. Unfortunately, I can no longer drink the boba that’s normally sold in MIT fundraisers, but fortunately, I’ve learned how to make my own, reasonable tasting approximation. I also just really like making people tea, so tea in general is probably my signature beverage.   Do you have any funny/harrowing/interesting memories from a sporting event   you attended, participated in, or watched at MIT? At the first fencing meet of this year, I started off very strong in the preliminary bouts, and was ranked somewhere in the high 20s out of 50ish people going into single elimination. At some point in my single elimination bout, my muscle froze up and I made the mistake of trying to push through the match. After struggling and getting to 14-14, I couldn’t make the last touch and barely made it off the strip before my leg started spasming. I was really sad that I couldn’t have done better moral of the story is to stretch better, I guess. Tell us about something fun you do for/around pi day (especially if there   are pis or pies or taus involved). My high school used to have a huge festival in the cafeteria with lots of pi/pie related activities. The one I remember most vividly was the chance to pie our principal in the face. Whats messier right nowâ€"your bedroom or your computers desktop? Tell us   how it got to that state. My computer desktop I never look at it, and so it just builds up a layer of downloaded apps and files. My laundry basket does get obscenely full from time to time though.   Your dorm is on fire. Grab five items (assume all people and animals are   safe). What did you grab? A box of cards and notes that people have written me My guitar My Buster Sword necklace that I keep hanging next to my sink My blanket because it is really soft and I love it My equally soft body pillow What did you do for fun in high school? How did these things define who you   were then, and how have they defined who you are now? I played video games for fun and now theres a non-trivial chance that I might make video games for a living. Direct correlation! Teach us something youve learned at MIT, academic or otherwise. After three semesters of being on varsity fencing, I’ve determined that it takes almost exactly four songs to speed walk from East Campus to the Z-Center for practice. Tell us about a time you made a false assumption about a person, a place, a   class, or a department. How did they prove you wrong? Somewhere halfway through the middle of last semester, I was wholly convinced that I would never have to apply any of the knowledge gleaned from my 6.004 (Computation Structures) class, mostly because I was doing poorly in it and I was trying to console myself. As a 6-3, 6.004 is the most “hardware” class that I’ll ever have to take, and I was fairly sure that if I just got through the class, I would never have to think about it again. I proved myself royally wrong by getting an entire job interview filled with stuff I wouldn’t have known a thing about without some knowledge of 6.004. I also got that job, and that’s what I’ll be doing this summer, so I paid a lot more attention to 6.004 after that Tell us about the last time you got lost at MIT or in Boston/Cambridge. Was   it an enjoyable experience, or a stressful one? (Disclaimer: This story has been *edited* slightly for reasons) I remember that I was exploring the 30-something buildings with some friends, and we split off to explore and said we’d reconvene in building 9 in fifteen minutes. The challenge was to do this without ever exiting the buildings. I proceeded to get very lost fun fact, the 30-something buildings are only connected through the 3rd floor and I did not know this as a freshman so I spent twenty minutes running around with a dead phone, with no idea of where I was, and I eventually gave up and took Vassar Street to get to building 9. A prefrosh needs directions to Baker House. Instead of the fastest route,   give him/her the one involving the most fun (legal) detours. To be honest, I barely know where the dorms on Dorm Row are, so I can’t even give a good answer to this. How did you handle the waiting period between hitting submit and March (or   even between then and August (also known as senior year))? I graduated early and took a gap semester in Japan my senior year. I also studied for a bunch of ASEs, none of which I ended up passing (pro tip to seniors: just enjoy your summer, cause it’s probably the last one you’ll ever have in which you’ll have lots of free time). Take some selfies with your friends and tell us about who your friends are   and what you guys are doing together. My friends and I are watching Spiderman 3 while I write this post! Im writing as I complain about how bad this movie is :P Tell us a story about your relationship with a musical instrument and how   that relationship has played into (hah) your experiences at MIT. I taught myself how to play guitar in junior year of high school because I was too shy to sing songs a cappella, which means without any instrumental accompaniment (how the times have changed). It was the only instrument that I brought to MIT and I’ve initiated many a late night jam session with it. Playing the guitar always reminds me of the many ways that music brings people together; with just a few chords and a well-known pop song, you can get an entire room of people to sing along with you, and I think thats something magical. Take a photo of ordinary equipment that you use regularly at a UROP or   elsewhere, and tell us about what it does and how you use it. Jibo the personal robot! I dont *use* Jibo yet, but hes too cute not to post on here. Im UROPing in the Personal Robots group at the Media Lab for this IAP and the Spring, and Ive been tasked with creating a puzzle game that school children can play with Jibo. In just a few weeks, Ive learned more Unity and Photoshop tricks than I ever have before, and Ive tried to teach myself Unity and Photoshop quite a few times in my life. This is the first UROP where I really feel like Im in my element, and I really hope to work on this project until completion! Machines and appliances sometimes feel like they have their own   personalities. Tell us about the machines you own or interact with. Lets go back to Jibo for this prompt! Despite his WALL-E-esque design, Jibo always surprises me with how lifelike some of his actions are. Ill walk into lab sometimes and be startled by the Jibo that I sit near turning to me and saying hello. My interactions with Jibo are remarkably similar to my interactions with other people, and I think thats really cool and speaks to how well he was designed. And while were on this topic Cynthia Breazeal, the head of the Personal Robots lab, goes a little more in depth about the reasons why we sometimes feel like machines (specifically robots) have feelings and personalities in her TED Talk! How it is that you socialize? (How DO people socialize? MIT prefrosh want   to know (but really)) I’m not really one for going to social events outside East Campus unless there’s a definitive offer of free stuff, so I normally socialize by going to East Campus parties, hanging out in lounges, and recently, playing a lot of Super Smash Ultimate (I main Cloud, because of course I do). But Ive noticed since last semester that its remarkably easy to  not  socialize, which struck me as a surprise, since during freshman year I pretty much did nothing but socializing. Classes have become harder, and time management has become more stressful, and its hard to pset in lounges when you cant hear yourself think and even harder to find the energy to balance all the things youre supposed to do.   I personally believe that if I ever have no time in a day to hang out with friends, Im probably doing too many things, and Im going to try to adhere to this for the rest of the semesters that Ill be here.   Take photos of some places youve fallen asleep on campus. What are the   benefits and drawbacks of being asleep there? I have actually only *intentionally* fallen asleep (morning classes suck eom) in one place on campus: the nap area in 26-110, better known as the Banana Lounge. A picture of the nap area from The Tech article about the Banana Lounge. The nap area is really nice because the lights above it are dimmed, and people generally arent loud in the lounge out of respect to the people who are sleeping. And when youre tired enough, even a yoga mat on the floor and a blanket will be the comfiest thing in the world. Take a photo or a video of your/your profs/your friends pet and tell us   about him/her/it. Bonus points if its a plant or a pet rock. Flora 3 This is my familys cat, Flora! Ive met a lot of cats in East Campus (and in life in general, I guess), but shes still the cutest one Ive ever seen. Thats all the prompts that Ive answered so far. This is actually pretty fun, so Ill probably blog a few more sometime in the next few weeks. Stay tuned for more tidbits about my life! Post Tagged ##StudentStories #advice #blogger bot #music #random stuff