Odds and Ends

Odds and Ends Some friends and I were chatting the other day, marveling at how ludicrously fast the semester was flying by when one of them pointed out exactly why that is. Turns out, the combination of September starting on a Wednesday, and Christmas happening on a Saturday have culminated in a perfect storm, leaving us with the shortest semester possible. Consequently that means we also have the fewest number of holidays this semester, clocking in at a pathetic and embarrassing two (not counting the two days we get off for thanksgiving). And one of those is just a rando-Thursday. Seriously. School Wednesday and Friday, none on Thursday. By comparison, my freshman year we had 4 (again, not counting the days we got off for Thanksgiving.) Maybe thats why Ive been feeling run so ragged lately. And if not, well thats what Im going to blame it on. At any rate, the past few weeks Ive felt pretty beat up. My brain feels like goo. Im hungry either constantly or frighteningly never. Ive been up in long enough streaks to feel my immune system start throwing its hands up and shut down. My biological clock is underdamped with a stupidly high Q. Looks like it will converge to midnight in approximately June 2012..hey! Thats when I graduate!Ive been, in a word, miserable. This sort of misery is prevalent enough on campus to have its own name though. Its called being hosed, I assume because it makes you feel like someone has shredded you into fibers, woven you into a long tube and rolled you up around a cylinder, not unlike a garden hose. It really is a mental stress test. It feels insurmountable, it feels devastating; its a panic-inducing, sickening, almost surreal disbelief at the quantity of quality you have to produce in a given time. In fact, Ive summarized the quality of being hosed into a concise mathematical formula: The quality of being Hosed, H is the summation of k assignments, where each assignment has associated with it a quantity of problems q, quality of work b, divided by unit time and multiplied over the care-tensor, where how much you care (gamma) is given principally as academically(aa), career-wise(cc), and personally(pp). Being hosed has units of Mills. Needless to say, with lots of assignments in important classes with lots of hard questions (seriously, who puts m parts in a problem? Im looking at you 2.005.) and not much time to do it Im pretty hosed (I leave exactly how hosed as an exercise to the reader). Im struggling to keep my brain from blowing a fuse and my roommates waking up to find me on the roof trying to eat cheerios out of a spoon using a bowl. Its an unpleasant way to feel right now, but I know in the end its worth it. Were entering the time of year where you really have resolve pull your laces tight, power through, and remember that your tuition is already paid and nonrefundable. Odds and Ends Since I just finished a 5.60 problem set, my brain is approximately the consistency of fuzz, and I am going to confine myself to writing something short about the last few entries comments on my blog. (5.60 is Thermodynamics and Kinetics, or physical chemistry. Physics + chemistry???? Whose idea was that??) (Note: to look up the link for 5.60, I had to go to the main OCW site, which lists the departments in alphabetical order rather than by number. I am so fried right now that it took me a full minute to find Chemistry in the Cs rather than the Fs for five, the chemistry department number. Who needs sleep? Me!) First, about the football game on Saturday. I am very psyched that Sam is planning to join the marching band (youre still going to do it, right?), so long as no pictures are taken of me with bad hair. Hee. And yes, sum1, MIT does have a marching band sort of. Theyve been on hiatus for the past few years, and theyre pretty informal. No shows at halftime at least not yet. Laura commented that the choice of Row, Row, Row Your Boat was rather odd, even given the other teams affiliation, and I totally agree. Haha, Im not sure the Mass Maritime people even got it, which probably defeated the purpose. Oh well. I am, by the way, the one in the front row middle of the picture of the cheerleading squad, with my poms together right above my knees. (Hint: to find me in any picture of the squad, scan the picture for the brightest white legs, and thats me. Hey, I work in a lab all summer. And Im trying not to get skin cancer.) A better picture of me cheerleading can be found here its a better picture mostly because Im doing my favorite cheer and I look really happy. A few entries ago Sam commented that my schedule last semester was really stupidly insane. And, yes, it was. Moral of the story: whatever classes dont kill you will only kill a few neurons and strengthen your resolve. (Im pretty sure thats not how the original philosophy went. But whatever.) It makes me happy to work hard. Well, happy and stressed. I think this is a pretty common MIT philosophy. Finally, a note on the classic how did I get here story: lots of people are glad to hear that even a wreck like me can get into MIT, but they admit that still doesnt settle their nerves. I totally understand. Just know that youre going to be evaluated in your own unique bubble of context, and that you dont have to have a certain GPA or certain SAT score or certain extracurricular activities to get into MIT. The best you can do is send in an application that reflects who you are and if you dont get in, its not because you are being rejected, or you are not good enough, its just that there arent that many dorm rooms at MIT and Im pretty sure you dont want to live in a Baker dodectuple. ;)