417A — Here's my hand, here's my hand...
Today was a day full of feelings. Whether they were good or bad is an interesting question—there was news in both directions, but they were all of great magnitude, and on the whole it washed out into this general sense of confusion and exhaustion which has now diffused throughout my being. I'm not sure how exactly I feel about it on the whole, but here we are.
This morning was generally okay. I was not initially very willing to get up, since the exhaustion that had been building throughout the week was pretty strong at that point already. Eventually, I got out of bed, got ready, had breakfast, and headed out (quickly) to my first class of the day, which happened to be a chemistry exam. On the whole, the exam went mostly okay, but I found myself pushing closer to the time limit, with a full page and a half left to do with 10 minutes left. I got it done though, and we'll see if the grades come out at any point during this weekend. Hopefully they do—after all, the class is relatively small, and the test was not too long. We'll see how it goes though.
I went from chem to the Concourse lounge. I discovered that my weekend homework load is not too significant, which kind of made me more stressed than I was previously. (What am I avoiding? Am I afraid of free time or something? This is unclear.) I halfheartedly started next week's reading of The Republic before putting it down to deal with a crisis of a nature which I will not really discuss here, apart from the fact that it was mostly external to myself, and yet still pretty emotional. Eventually, time came 'round for the weekly lunch seminar, and I put away my phone.
I had a light lunch and then we began talking about history and what it can teach us about the present. This was pretty interesting, although it was also easily grasped—of course our discussion of history is not truly about the past, but about the traces of the past which we have and how they can be interpreted. It was still interesting to see examples of this in the modern day though, however, and we had some interesting discussion at our table about what the past means and what we can learn from it. (The professor said she really liked my response and its almost literary nature, which was pretty cool.) Eventually, we wrapped up the discussion, and the seminar was finally over. Thank goodness.
I went to multivariable lecture after this, where we got pretty deep into the definitions of partial derivatives and gradients and tangent planes and differentiability and whatnot. It's definitely going to hit a difficulty spike from here (as even the professor notes), but he also noted that he expected the class to get an 82% average on this test, when we ended up getting an 89%. Maybe he's overestimating the difficult, or maybe it is that hard. If it is, however, I will study more, and perhaps that's a good skill to build, at the very least.
Multi lecture was followed by math for CS recitation, which I mostly zoned out in, as I struggled to sustain my mental state until the end of the class. This is one of the first Friday's I've wanted so desperately for the week to just be over, which is something I experienced a lot in high school, and I guess it's back, for now. Wanting something always makes it take longer though, and so today's recitation took a comparatively long time, especially given it was over a lot of topics I already had some basic understanding of, and given one of the problems was just a little too hard for me to solve. Oops.
I talked to a friend through some of the things I was feeling for about twenty minutes, which helped get me a little bit through the wash of it all, but eventually he had to leave and I was sitting alone in the hallway trying to read Plato's Republic in a state of mind not fit to read Plato's Republic. I was waiting outside a classroom for a talk that was going to be given by Jonny Sun and Bo Burnham about digital anxieties and society as a whole at the present, and eventually I was joined by a few friends from my wing. We pushed up to the front of the line, and when the doors eventually opened, a few hours later, we ended up getting third row seats or something. This was good.
What was better, however, was the talk itself. I have a vague set of outlines and notes and things I want to talk about from it, so this order might not make total sense, but here goes.
The first thing I noticed was that Jonny Sun cannot for the life of him sit in a chair in a normal way, and honestly, same. It was kind of funny, but also very identifiable. From the start of the conversation, it was very casual but also very interesting, and it was very clear that both individuals had thought a lot about the topic and were passionate about it. In fact, it was almost interesting enough that I wanted to get a notebook out and take notes on it, although I managed to restrain myself from this and satisfied myself with only typing up a few statements. One of the funniest moments was when they were asking the audience to raise their hands and answer questions about things, and one of the exchanges went like this:
Bo: "How many men are sitting in an aisle and wearing an incredible hat?"
man raises hand
Man: "I don't know who you are!"
auditorium breaks down into laughter
I had some things to think about throughout the talk—one key one was the idea that anxiety feels both alienating and yet universal. It took a long time for me to identify what I was feeling as something that was not necessarily shared by everyone, and also to give in to talking about it. Some days now, however, it is so overwhelming that I can do nothing but share it, and fortunately I have people to share it with. This reaffirmed some of the things I had already been thinking about, which was nice to have.
Another thing that they kind of skidded by which reminded me of something we'd been talking about in relation to the Republic in class is the idea of what is good over what makes money. To put it another way (perhaps closer to what Plato was discussing), whether justice is an ends in and of itself, and whether or not we can achieve it. I thought about this recently when I was applying to externships—I chose not to apply to an unpaid externship assisting high school students in their education because it didn't pay or advance my career interests, even though, to be perfectly honest, I probably would've been happy doing it, and it was probably the right or good thing to do. This is definitionally selfish, yet I ended up choosing it anyways. Yet, if we don't choose justice at whatever cost, as an ends to itself, what's the point? I'm not entirely sure.
This was also, to some extent, something I talked to my friend about today. I think being selfish in some cases is good and important, because it prevent us from destroying ourselves and our mental health. At the same time, having the privilege and ability to change things and participate in things which may be more sacrificial is useless if we don't actually do things which can change the people around us. "You don't have to save the world," he says. Part of me agrees with this. Part of me wonders if I'm not trying my best. During the talk, the two speakers talked about being unbelievably lucky, and using that for change or at least for the best. I too, am unbelievably lucky in being here, in my upbringing, in everything which surrounds this. What should I do with this?
The rest of these notes are not in chronological order, but rather grouped by the concept I saw in them. One of the most interesting themes that they visited over and over again was what it means to matter. We might not matter in a traditional sense—there are just so many people and they are all around us—but that is fine as long as we matter to someone else. To be significant, to matter, is to change the lives of the people around us in some small way. (I've written about this a lot before, so this was a good reaffirmation of my world view.) We have a certain amount of control—we care for people—for me, that was being a counselor at RSI. (Funnily enough, Bo shared my habit of referring to people not too much younger than he is as 'kids', which was very amusing for the audience and identifiable for me.) That role matters, to a certain extent, because we can help make other people's lives better. As Bo put it, rather poetically, "the end of the road is holding someone's hand and the light goes off, not on a stage."
A lot of the talk was of course, also about the digital age and modern technologies. One line that resonated with me was "sometimes the Model T shows up and the horse is just done." Modern technologies are irreversible; they're here to stay. That doesn't mean we just give up—there are plenty of young people who want change, who understand technology culture and how to make it better. One of the key things we need to accomplish, and this was emphasized by the speakers as well, is making our tech workers more diverse and more integrated and more well-versed in the humanities and in caring about other people which is something that really resonated with me, as someone who really feels this struggle a lot. It was nice to hear other people who are perhaps more qualified in their experience discussing this as well, and it reaffirmed, to some extent, the things I've been feeling and the questions I've been asking recently.
Jonny Sun presented a variety of different ideas that were also kind of specific to the Institute, since he is also an MIT PhD candidate at the moment. (This is also extremely cool.) He talked about depression, and about how balancing life and work is hard even if you seem fine externally, and how talking about your internal state with other people is really important to maintaining yourself. All of these things really resonated with me, which is kind of concerning, given that it's only the fourth week and I'm already filled with this latent anxiety and this lack of free time, but it was good to know that this is something someone this successful goes through. The Institute treats everyone equally—we can only hope to learn and grow from it. He also presented a gentle reminder as well, however, that suffering is not key to success, and that sometimes we should just drink more water, take a walk, get some fresh air, have less caffeine, and stop trying to think our ways our of our anxieties. "Take care of yourself and try not to hurt anybody else," he summarized. Maybe I should remember that more.
There was some interesting discussion about creativity, which also kind of resonated with me. For one, Bo talked about how his creativity derives from complete crisis, which I kind of identify with, since often my writing accompanies depressive periods, or crises of personal belief and whatnot. Another thing they talked about was how the online age was also sort of assaulting long-form writing and brainstorming, which was very interesting to me, since I've never really been able to write long-form. I'm still considering doing NaNoWriMo, but if I do, I'm going to follow the advice given here, and avoid writing about my ideas too much.
I went to this talk on a whim because the topic sounded cool, but I walked out of it thinking and feeling a lot of things, which was really impactful. I'm really glad I went to it, and it was super meaningful and fun and important. Maybe I should go to these kinds of things more often. One final closing anecdote: after about 50 minutes of the event, Bo Burnham asked "can I swear?" after having sworn probably a dozen times. It was a good time.
After the talk, I walked with the same friend (after bumping into him after it) to East Campus, wrote some pretty bad magnetic wall poetry, got boba at SaveTFP, and returned to East Campus, where I'm currently writing this and where I called my kids for 45 minutes, which was really nice to have at the end of the day. I'm calling them again tomorrow, which will be very nice as well, and they're truly some of the people who most consistently brighten my day. Maybe I'm depressed this week because I forgot to call them last week. Hm...
Tomorrow, I think my only set item is rehearsal/solo auditions for Asymptones at 5 PM. I'll be doing work on and off throughout the day, hopefully. We'll see how it goes.
This morning was generally okay. I was not initially very willing to get up, since the exhaustion that had been building throughout the week was pretty strong at that point already. Eventually, I got out of bed, got ready, had breakfast, and headed out (quickly) to my first class of the day, which happened to be a chemistry exam. On the whole, the exam went mostly okay, but I found myself pushing closer to the time limit, with a full page and a half left to do with 10 minutes left. I got it done though, and we'll see if the grades come out at any point during this weekend. Hopefully they do—after all, the class is relatively small, and the test was not too long. We'll see how it goes though.
I went from chem to the Concourse lounge. I discovered that my weekend homework load is not too significant, which kind of made me more stressed than I was previously. (What am I avoiding? Am I afraid of free time or something? This is unclear.) I halfheartedly started next week's reading of The Republic before putting it down to deal with a crisis of a nature which I will not really discuss here, apart from the fact that it was mostly external to myself, and yet still pretty emotional. Eventually, time came 'round for the weekly lunch seminar, and I put away my phone.
I had a light lunch and then we began talking about history and what it can teach us about the present. This was pretty interesting, although it was also easily grasped—of course our discussion of history is not truly about the past, but about the traces of the past which we have and how they can be interpreted. It was still interesting to see examples of this in the modern day though, however, and we had some interesting discussion at our table about what the past means and what we can learn from it. (The professor said she really liked my response and its almost literary nature, which was pretty cool.) Eventually, we wrapped up the discussion, and the seminar was finally over. Thank goodness.
I went to multivariable lecture after this, where we got pretty deep into the definitions of partial derivatives and gradients and tangent planes and differentiability and whatnot. It's definitely going to hit a difficulty spike from here (as even the professor notes), but he also noted that he expected the class to get an 82% average on this test, when we ended up getting an 89%. Maybe he's overestimating the difficult, or maybe it is that hard. If it is, however, I will study more, and perhaps that's a good skill to build, at the very least.
Multi lecture was followed by math for CS recitation, which I mostly zoned out in, as I struggled to sustain my mental state until the end of the class. This is one of the first Friday's I've wanted so desperately for the week to just be over, which is something I experienced a lot in high school, and I guess it's back, for now. Wanting something always makes it take longer though, and so today's recitation took a comparatively long time, especially given it was over a lot of topics I already had some basic understanding of, and given one of the problems was just a little too hard for me to solve. Oops.
I talked to a friend through some of the things I was feeling for about twenty minutes, which helped get me a little bit through the wash of it all, but eventually he had to leave and I was sitting alone in the hallway trying to read Plato's Republic in a state of mind not fit to read Plato's Republic. I was waiting outside a classroom for a talk that was going to be given by Jonny Sun and Bo Burnham about digital anxieties and society as a whole at the present, and eventually I was joined by a few friends from my wing. We pushed up to the front of the line, and when the doors eventually opened, a few hours later, we ended up getting third row seats or something. This was good.
What was better, however, was the talk itself. I have a vague set of outlines and notes and things I want to talk about from it, so this order might not make total sense, but here goes.
The first thing I noticed was that Jonny Sun cannot for the life of him sit in a chair in a normal way, and honestly, same. It was kind of funny, but also very identifiable. From the start of the conversation, it was very casual but also very interesting, and it was very clear that both individuals had thought a lot about the topic and were passionate about it. In fact, it was almost interesting enough that I wanted to get a notebook out and take notes on it, although I managed to restrain myself from this and satisfied myself with only typing up a few statements. One of the funniest moments was when they were asking the audience to raise their hands and answer questions about things, and one of the exchanges went like this:
Bo: "How many men are sitting in an aisle and wearing an incredible hat?"
man raises hand
Man: "I don't know who you are!"
auditorium breaks down into laughter
I had some things to think about throughout the talk—one key one was the idea that anxiety feels both alienating and yet universal. It took a long time for me to identify what I was feeling as something that was not necessarily shared by everyone, and also to give in to talking about it. Some days now, however, it is so overwhelming that I can do nothing but share it, and fortunately I have people to share it with. This reaffirmed some of the things I had already been thinking about, which was nice to have.
Another thing that they kind of skidded by which reminded me of something we'd been talking about in relation to the Republic in class is the idea of what is good over what makes money. To put it another way (perhaps closer to what Plato was discussing), whether justice is an ends in and of itself, and whether or not we can achieve it. I thought about this recently when I was applying to externships—I chose not to apply to an unpaid externship assisting high school students in their education because it didn't pay or advance my career interests, even though, to be perfectly honest, I probably would've been happy doing it, and it was probably the right or good thing to do. This is definitionally selfish, yet I ended up choosing it anyways. Yet, if we don't choose justice at whatever cost, as an ends to itself, what's the point? I'm not entirely sure.
This was also, to some extent, something I talked to my friend about today. I think being selfish in some cases is good and important, because it prevent us from destroying ourselves and our mental health. At the same time, having the privilege and ability to change things and participate in things which may be more sacrificial is useless if we don't actually do things which can change the people around us. "You don't have to save the world," he says. Part of me agrees with this. Part of me wonders if I'm not trying my best. During the talk, the two speakers talked about being unbelievably lucky, and using that for change or at least for the best. I too, am unbelievably lucky in being here, in my upbringing, in everything which surrounds this. What should I do with this?
The rest of these notes are not in chronological order, but rather grouped by the concept I saw in them. One of the most interesting themes that they visited over and over again was what it means to matter. We might not matter in a traditional sense—there are just so many people and they are all around us—but that is fine as long as we matter to someone else. To be significant, to matter, is to change the lives of the people around us in some small way. (I've written about this a lot before, so this was a good reaffirmation of my world view.) We have a certain amount of control—we care for people—for me, that was being a counselor at RSI. (Funnily enough, Bo shared my habit of referring to people not too much younger than he is as 'kids', which was very amusing for the audience and identifiable for me.) That role matters, to a certain extent, because we can help make other people's lives better. As Bo put it, rather poetically, "the end of the road is holding someone's hand and the light goes off, not on a stage."
A lot of the talk was of course, also about the digital age and modern technologies. One line that resonated with me was "sometimes the Model T shows up and the horse is just done." Modern technologies are irreversible; they're here to stay. That doesn't mean we just give up—there are plenty of young people who want change, who understand technology culture and how to make it better. One of the key things we need to accomplish, and this was emphasized by the speakers as well, is making our tech workers more diverse and more integrated and more well-versed in the humanities and in caring about other people which is something that really resonated with me, as someone who really feels this struggle a lot. It was nice to hear other people who are perhaps more qualified in their experience discussing this as well, and it reaffirmed, to some extent, the things I've been feeling and the questions I've been asking recently.
Jonny Sun presented a variety of different ideas that were also kind of specific to the Institute, since he is also an MIT PhD candidate at the moment. (This is also extremely cool.) He talked about depression, and about how balancing life and work is hard even if you seem fine externally, and how talking about your internal state with other people is really important to maintaining yourself. All of these things really resonated with me, which is kind of concerning, given that it's only the fourth week and I'm already filled with this latent anxiety and this lack of free time, but it was good to know that this is something someone this successful goes through. The Institute treats everyone equally—we can only hope to learn and grow from it. He also presented a gentle reminder as well, however, that suffering is not key to success, and that sometimes we should just drink more water, take a walk, get some fresh air, have less caffeine, and stop trying to think our ways our of our anxieties. "Take care of yourself and try not to hurt anybody else," he summarized. Maybe I should remember that more.
There was some interesting discussion about creativity, which also kind of resonated with me. For one, Bo talked about how his creativity derives from complete crisis, which I kind of identify with, since often my writing accompanies depressive periods, or crises of personal belief and whatnot. Another thing they talked about was how the online age was also sort of assaulting long-form writing and brainstorming, which was very interesting to me, since I've never really been able to write long-form. I'm still considering doing NaNoWriMo, but if I do, I'm going to follow the advice given here, and avoid writing about my ideas too much.
I went to this talk on a whim because the topic sounded cool, but I walked out of it thinking and feeling a lot of things, which was really impactful. I'm really glad I went to it, and it was super meaningful and fun and important. Maybe I should go to these kinds of things more often. One final closing anecdote: after about 50 minutes of the event, Bo Burnham asked "can I swear?" after having sworn probably a dozen times. It was a good time.
After the talk, I walked with the same friend (after bumping into him after it) to East Campus, wrote some pretty bad magnetic wall poetry, got boba at SaveTFP, and returned to East Campus, where I'm currently writing this and where I called my kids for 45 minutes, which was really nice to have at the end of the day. I'm calling them again tomorrow, which will be very nice as well, and they're truly some of the people who most consistently brighten my day. Maybe I'm depressed this week because I forgot to call them last week. Hm...
Tomorrow, I think my only set item is rehearsal/solo auditions for Asymptones at 5 PM. I'll be doing work on and off throughout the day, hopefully. We'll see how it goes.
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