I've decided to bike to work, from about Central Square in Cambridge to Lexington. Altogether it's about 12.5 miles each way. Biking is much more economical (I would be spending about $8.40 on public transport every day) and time-saving (instead of sitting on the bus/train for two hours, I get up to three hours of exercise).
Here's the log of the first few days:
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Saturday, I took a test run to check out the roads. I left at noon, at the peak of the day's heat, and forgot sunscreen, and neglected to put on my sunglasses until I realized my eyes were burning. That was painful. I also went down a few wrong roads on the way there. Upon reaching the office, my nose bled. On the way back, I decided to take an alternate route (not Mass Ave), and got a little confused around Harvard Square, but not for much.
Way there: 1 hour 40 mins
Way back: 1 hour 20 mins
Yesterday, I left at 5:47 AM. In the afternoon, I left the office early, at 4 PM, in hopes of beating the traffic, but I seem to have just biked into it. It was also very hot then.
Way there: 1 hour 15 mins
Way back: 1 hour 30 mins
This morning, I left at 5:43 AM. A road in Lexington was blocked for paving, and I ended up taking an alternate route, which was wrong. I realized this after I'd gone a fifth of a mile off. I ended up working 11 hours today, leaving from the entrance of Vistaprint at 6:43 PM. A few drops of rain fell on my face not far into my ride, and I got a little scared given those flash downpours Boston has been having. So I biked vigorously, partially driven by fear, especially as I got closer to WILG and the drops got bigger.
Way there: 1 hour 20 mins
Way back: 1 hour exactly: 6:43-7:43 PM
Total: ~75 miles.
Tomorrow I have to take public transport because it's going to rain.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Commencement
For the past couple of weeks, I've been scuttling between Burton Conner and my hometown. A week at home, a week at BC, a week at home again. Today I moved back to the city for good, since my internship starts tomorrow.
During the week at BC, I tied up loose extracurricular ends, including finishing up a feature story (begun in February) about tenure for The Tech. Then that Friday, I volunteered for Commencement, getting my first glimpse of a day two years from now.
As one of the roughly twenty people assigned to street duty, I witnessed the healthy line outside Killian Hall at 7 AM. It was like a mini-Black Friday; I was told people had started lining up as early as 6, maybe even before. Commencement didn't begin until 10 AM or so. What a long day for a lot of family members.
In the course of the morning, I moved from furiously handing out programs as waves of people entering Killian Court flowed by me, to standing on the Memorial Drive sidewalk saying good-mornings and directing people toward the correct side of the rope that was set up to corral them into a line (next year, they just need an arrow sign).
Around 10:45, I was reappointed to the interior of the Court, where I spent the rest of the day saying, "Please sir could you take a seat? You're blocking everyone's view." One person would go up to the front of the section to take photos, and a pack, a nonstop stream, would follow, leading to a wall of bodies blocking the views of those sitting behind them (a problem of fairness) and packed aisles (a problem of safety).
During the week at BC, I tied up loose extracurricular ends, including finishing up a feature story (begun in February) about tenure for The Tech. Then that Friday, I volunteered for Commencement, getting my first glimpse of a day two years from now.
As one of the roughly twenty people assigned to street duty, I witnessed the healthy line outside Killian Hall at 7 AM. It was like a mini-Black Friday; I was told people had started lining up as early as 6, maybe even before. Commencement didn't begin until 10 AM or so. What a long day for a lot of family members.
In the course of the morning, I moved from furiously handing out programs as waves of people entering Killian Court flowed by me, to standing on the Memorial Drive sidewalk saying good-mornings and directing people toward the correct side of the rope that was set up to corral them into a line (next year, they just need an arrow sign).
Around 10:45, I was reappointed to the interior of the Court, where I spent the rest of the day saying, "Please sir could you take a seat? You're blocking everyone's view." One person would go up to the front of the section to take photos, and a pack, a nonstop stream, would follow, leading to a wall of bodies blocking the views of those sitting behind them (a problem of fairness) and packed aisles (a problem of safety).
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Honoring Patrick Winston
Patrick Winston is a professor of artificial intelligence at MIT. Here's been here, in fact, since 1970, and during that time has honed his teaching to a science. An excellent speaker, he delivers his "How to Speak" talk in 6-120 annually during IAP, which is always oversubscribed and infamous for turning away fifty or so people at the door.
People fill the chairs and steps of 6-120, and even crowd around Winston's feet. (Jan 2009)
His website reveals him to be a man of many endeavors, from research to writing a community blog to befriending Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.
I took 6.034 (Artificial Intelligence) with him last fall, and had such a good experience that when the MIT awards nomination email came around in February, I immediately thought of Winston. I was familiar with the Everett Moore Baker Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, since another of my favorite professors, Eric Hudson of Physics (who sadly did not get tenure and is leaving MIT - more about him in a later post), also won this award, in 2008. The Baker award is the only institute-wide teaching award based entirely on nominations from students.
Luckily, throughout 6.034, I had noticed a lot of details that made Winston's class great. When it came time to write the nomination letter, I just sat down and cranked out over five 1.5-spaced pages. Over the next two weeks, I would edit and revise it twice.
I then hunted down people to sign the letter. (It would have been acceptable with only my signature, but more names makes a stronger case.) "Hunt" is not too far from the truth. At the beginning of March, I sorted through the 6.034 class list and emailed all the people I knew, however tenuously, asking them to submit personal anecdotes and sign the letter. At one point, I posted myself outside the entrance to Winston's spring course, 6.803 (The Human Intelligence Enterprise), and intercepted people as they entered the class. I asked my 6.042 TA's to sign, and even the doctorate candidates at my new UROP (in the field of artificial intelligence, no less). I was.. an MIT student on a mission. In the course of my mission I found out that a nomination for Winston had been previously attempted, but had failed, which only made me feel more like this would be the year.
Okay, so I'm getting somewhat dramatic here, though admittedly this was a minor production. At the end, I delivered the nomination letter to the awards office (which is strangely nestled in the DuPont Athletic Center), and hoped the woman I gave it to would take good care of the packet. It occurred to me I hadn't made a copy of the signatures page.
I then kind of forgot about the whole business. I marked May 4, the date of the awards convocation, on my calendar, but I didn't have time to attend that day. Not until yesterday, after finals and everything, did I suddenly remember and check the awards website.
Winston won! My term is complete.
---------
Below is the nomination letter for Winston. Full names of students have been abbreviated.
It is long (you have been warned) but provides a good review of 6.034 for anyone looking to take it.
---------
March 10, 2010
Dear MIT Awards Committee,
People fill the chairs and steps of 6-120, and even crowd around Winston's feet. (Jan 2009)
His website reveals him to be a man of many endeavors, from research to writing a community blog to befriending Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.
I took 6.034 (Artificial Intelligence) with him last fall, and had such a good experience that when the MIT awards nomination email came around in February, I immediately thought of Winston. I was familiar with the Everett Moore Baker Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, since another of my favorite professors, Eric Hudson of Physics (who sadly did not get tenure and is leaving MIT - more about him in a later post), also won this award, in 2008. The Baker award is the only institute-wide teaching award based entirely on nominations from students.
Luckily, throughout 6.034, I had noticed a lot of details that made Winston's class great. When it came time to write the nomination letter, I just sat down and cranked out over five 1.5-spaced pages. Over the next two weeks, I would edit and revise it twice.
I then hunted down people to sign the letter. (It would have been acceptable with only my signature, but more names makes a stronger case.) "Hunt" is not too far from the truth. At the beginning of March, I sorted through the 6.034 class list and emailed all the people I knew, however tenuously, asking them to submit personal anecdotes and sign the letter. At one point, I posted myself outside the entrance to Winston's spring course, 6.803 (The Human Intelligence Enterprise), and intercepted people as they entered the class. I asked my 6.042 TA's to sign, and even the doctorate candidates at my new UROP (in the field of artificial intelligence, no less). I was.. an MIT student on a mission. In the course of my mission I found out that a nomination for Winston had been previously attempted, but had failed, which only made me feel more like this would be the year.
Okay, so I'm getting somewhat dramatic here, though admittedly this was a minor production. At the end, I delivered the nomination letter to the awards office (which is strangely nestled in the DuPont Athletic Center), and hoped the woman I gave it to would take good care of the packet. It occurred to me I hadn't made a copy of the signatures page.
I then kind of forgot about the whole business. I marked May 4, the date of the awards convocation, on my calendar, but I didn't have time to attend that day. Not until yesterday, after finals and everything, did I suddenly remember and check the awards website.
Winston won! My term is complete.
---------
Below is the nomination letter for Winston. Full names of students have been abbreviated.
It is long (you have been warned) but provides a good review of 6.034 for anyone looking to take it.
---------
March 10, 2010
Dear MIT Awards Committee,
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Great Videos
Some of my recent favorite videos:
Dan Barber: How I Fell In Love with a Fish
Dan Ariely: Our Buggy Moral Code
Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the Learning Revolution!
Lewis Black: Glenn Beck's "Nazi Tourette's"
(starts at 1:03)
Dan Barber: How I Fell In Love with a Fish
Dan Ariely: Our Buggy Moral Code
Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the Learning Revolution!
Lewis Black: Glenn Beck's "Nazi Tourette's"
(starts at 1:03)
Thursday, April 1, 2010
A "Grand Unified Theory of AI"
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
A Letter for Stata
Walking back from the Stata basement Athena cluster this evening, I saw a girl sitting on the gray concrete floor outside the room, sobbing as another girl stood over her. As I passed them, I heard the second girl say, "It sounds like it's just been a month and a half of 'I just can't take it...'"
This scene reminded me of last year, the Wednesday night after a frustratingly unfruitful three hours in 6.01 lab, when I thought I couldn't handle life because there was still a DiffEq pset that I hadn't started due Friday, and a SEVT grant to write due Friday, plus this time sink of a 6.01 lab and its pset problems, when I was convinced I was the dumbest person at MIT and that Course 6 was the wrong major after all. My despair compounded during the walk back to Burton Conner. When I got back, I stopped at Kelly and Pallavi's room, slumped against the doorframe, and there the tears broke, heedless of my efforts to restrain them. I cried harder than I had in years. A few minutes later, I returned to my room and calmed down a little, hiccuping and blowing my nose into a million tissues, wiping up the pathetic remnants of the flood. Then Ben, a fellow freshman, walked past, heard my sniffles, and poked his head in to ask what was wrong. "Are you failing any classes?" he asked.
This scene reminded me of last year, the Wednesday night after a frustratingly unfruitful three hours in 6.01 lab, when I thought I couldn't handle life because there was still a DiffEq pset that I hadn't started due Friday, and a SEVT grant to write due Friday, plus this time sink of a 6.01 lab and its pset problems, when I was convinced I was the dumbest person at MIT and that Course 6 was the wrong major after all. My despair compounded during the walk back to Burton Conner. When I got back, I stopped at Kelly and Pallavi's room, slumped against the doorframe, and there the tears broke, heedless of my efforts to restrain them. I cried harder than I had in years. A few minutes later, I returned to my room and calmed down a little, hiccuping and blowing my nose into a million tissues, wiping up the pathetic remnants of the flood. Then Ben, a fellow freshman, walked past, heard my sniffles, and poked his head in to ask what was wrong. "Are you failing any classes?" he asked.
Friday, March 12, 2010
The Secret to Happiness
"The Secret to Happiness: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it." - Dan Dennett
I just watched a TED talk by Dan Dennett, and found this piece of advice profound. [1]
Conversations between Pallavi and me often stray to the question of what we are going to do with our lives. For what are we working so hard now, sacrificing sleep, fun, and maybe a few years of our lives? We're eager to find the thing to justify our current madness, something we will wake up every day wanting to do, something we won't mind even when we no longer have summer vacations.
As much as I like Course 6 right now, I think I would eventually be bored as a software engineer. To be honest, I would rather write essays than computer programs. I see Professor Raman, who got his B.S. from MIT and M.S. from Berkeley in Electrical Engineering, then got his Ph.D in English Literature and became a literature professor at MIT, and understand where he's coming from. But computer science promises a steadier career, and besides, I am not training to be a writer and there are probably many out there better than me who struggle for jobs. I enjoy Computer Science, but it's not enough. I can't do a job that predominantly requires sitting by myself, coding in a cubicle. I am too much of an extrovert. I get my joy from meeting people, affecting people, making new connections.
Lately, I've been thinking about international development as a career focus. It is a cause more important than me. Though I would be satisfied by writing an iPhone app used by a thousand people, I would be more satisfied by bringing drinking water to a village of fifty that had none. Though I hate flying, I do want to see the world, and I'm eying the Peace Corps as an immediate post-graduation plan. My plans are all a few years down the line, and I know more than anyone how rapidly they change: a three-year schedule I wrote over winter break became obsolete two weeks into January. But it's still an important question to consider. A meaningful goal now gives me reason to continue my work.
[1] The rest of Dennett's talk is pretty amazing. (If it wasn't, his rather stylistically unpolished talk would have lost audience member's attention, and likely would not have garnered the hundred thousand views on Youtube. Instead, every time he speaks, he says something worth listening to.) He presents a view of ideas as "living" Darwinian entities, and proposes we consider their existence in a neutral way, much as we consider the existence of harmful viruses neutrally (we think they are bad, and find cures for them, but accept them scientifically as part of life).
I just watched a TED talk by Dan Dennett, and found this piece of advice profound. [1]
Conversations between Pallavi and me often stray to the question of what we are going to do with our lives. For what are we working so hard now, sacrificing sleep, fun, and maybe a few years of our lives? We're eager to find the thing to justify our current madness, something we will wake up every day wanting to do, something we won't mind even when we no longer have summer vacations.
As much as I like Course 6 right now, I think I would eventually be bored as a software engineer. To be honest, I would rather write essays than computer programs. I see Professor Raman, who got his B.S. from MIT and M.S. from Berkeley in Electrical Engineering, then got his Ph.D in English Literature and became a literature professor at MIT, and understand where he's coming from. But computer science promises a steadier career, and besides, I am not training to be a writer and there are probably many out there better than me who struggle for jobs. I enjoy Computer Science, but it's not enough. I can't do a job that predominantly requires sitting by myself, coding in a cubicle. I am too much of an extrovert. I get my joy from meeting people, affecting people, making new connections.
Lately, I've been thinking about international development as a career focus. It is a cause more important than me. Though I would be satisfied by writing an iPhone app used by a thousand people, I would be more satisfied by bringing drinking water to a village of fifty that had none. Though I hate flying, I do want to see the world, and I'm eying the Peace Corps as an immediate post-graduation plan. My plans are all a few years down the line, and I know more than anyone how rapidly they change: a three-year schedule I wrote over winter break became obsolete two weeks into January. But it's still an important question to consider. A meaningful goal now gives me reason to continue my work.
[1] The rest of Dennett's talk is pretty amazing. (If it wasn't, his rather stylistically unpolished talk would have lost audience member's attention, and likely would not have garnered the hundred thousand views on Youtube. Instead, every time he speaks, he says something worth listening to.) He presents a view of ideas as "living" Darwinian entities, and proposes we consider their existence in a neutral way, much as we consider the existence of harmful viruses neutrally (we think they are bad, and find cures for them, but accept them scientifically as part of life).
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