Reverie and Jubilee

Let me say this slowly.

I am not interested in education – well, that is, until I joined Minerva. Some kids here come from Studio Y, and were working on projects which explicitly involved education. Most notably, one of them was working on something EdTech-related (educational technology), and another was working on figuring out how to teach the least motivated students. I say "most notably" out of convenience/habit and only don't include the third Studio Y-er because I just don't know what she was working on there.

I am not one of these people. My interest in education is still only equivalent to me reluctantly dipping my toe in. At this point, I am interested in education out of necessity rather than passion. You have to be mildly interested in education if you're helping build a university, right?

Well, that's only partially right.

I am interested in learning. This is as selfish as my interests get. I am interested in learning so much that I can sit in my room doing math or learning a programming language all day, without actually noticing that it's been all day and I've in fact forgotten to eat. (I forget to eat often – not because I'm anorexic or I don't want to eat, but just because, when I am doing a task, I am very easily engrossed and compelled to complete it before getting up, because if I leave, I always have an excuse not to finish the task – but that's another story.)

Since I've been here, I've learned a few things. Unfortunately, one of those is not yet "how to feed myself and not eat cereal for three meals". I've learned some statistics. Some gorgeous, gorgeous statistics. If I ever had interest in giving up time that I could be working to do so, all the theoretical concepts – the ones for which we were told, "It's alright, you don't have to memorize these, only generally understand them," – would be plastered all over my dorm room walls. (Perhaps that is the difference between me and a friend down the hall who insists he wants to learn more math.)

But let me get back to my original statement: I am not interested in education.

Through Minerva, I've had the pleasure of meeting the wonderful Eliana Lorch. She stuck around for a couple of days before dropping out to accept her Thiel Fellowship. But in two days she reminded me that I am not interested in education–– in fact, I don't even like education, or edtech, or anything like that.

I like microbiology and genetics. I like knowing that DNA comes from 2-deoxyribose, and that the 5' end goes to the 3' end, and that telomerase makes me happy, though it sometimes makes people sad...

I like math. I don't exactly know what kind of math, but I'm pretty partial to calculus, and I know that I don't like applied statistics. I am not like Eliana, in that way. She enjoys using words like Kaprekar Routine, while I'd rather say things like, "Leibniz rule" and "Laplace transform"...

I don't like complex systems. I like the idea, but I would rather not spend all my time thinking about it when I could be learning quantum mechanics or anything else.

I don't like having an entire class based around communication. I understand that knowing how to communicate effectively is probably important, but I would rather not spend all my time reading an assigned novel that we barely even wind up using when I could be learning about partial derivatives.

I don't like the philosophy of science. I argued with one of the aforementioned Studio Y-ers about this. He was not satisfied with my answer of, "Yes, I get that it's probably important, but I am not excited to learn it." I was not satisfied with his answer of, "What are you talking about? It's the most exciting part of science because it's the most fundamental!"

I like statistics... but only in theory.

I know fairly specifically what I like. I am annoyed that I no longer have time to pursue it because I am always so swamped with assignments that I don't care enough for. (Side note on not caring enough: if you knew me in high school, you would know that I am an absolute perfectionist, to the point where I'd repeatedly re-write any lab assignments that we got to take home until the handwriting looked sufficiently neat. This resulted in me having a lot of scrap paper on which to do math. I only did this for subjects that I cared about. I now only dot my i's and cross my t's for any statistics papers I am tasked to write. My statistics papers get refined, although not as much as I would typically like. The other papers get thrown in exactly on the deadline, slightly aggravated that they aren't better, but also unwilling to spend extra time on them, even if I had the time.)

I am angry that I no longer pursue things I really adore because having all of my classes and schoolwork on my laptop means that I do not have the heart to keep looking at the screen after I am finished. Also, my headphones recently broke, and I do my most fun tasks in the middle of the night, while my roommate would prefer to sleep.

How is all of this related to anything?

Well, this is the weekend before finals week. We explicitly got the weekend off; we were told that students throughout the country were spending all 48 hours of this weekend cramming facts that they would likely not remember in the coming years, and that that was exactly what the Minerva staff did not want us to be doing. So we had no homework this weekend.

Having no homework this weekend made me run around like a chicken with its head cut off. I lazed around the residence hall and proposed ice skating ventures just because I actually did not have a clue what to do with all this free time.

And not instantly being able to fill free time with voluntary learning––as I typically would have been able to do before university––made me annoyed, and a bit sad.

How does Eliana relate to any of this?

Well, she had messaged the entire class this morning letting us know that she was leaving for the East Coast and then Portugal this Thursday, and that she wanted to see us before then. She linked to the same post that I linked to above when I mentioned her, and its details reminded me that I do not need formal education to learn.

When I was only slightly younger, I wanted to be like Jacob Barnett. I also wanted to go to MIT and double major in Molecular Biology and Computer Science. From then on, I decided that I would learn all the math that my brain could handle. I did math for fun in my spare time (and trust me, it was ridiculously fun). I learned new programming languages in the other part of my spare time. I had a lot of spare time. I can't remember doing homework that much in high school. Funnily enough, my math homework never got done in Forms 4 and 5. Ever. Alright, maybe once, but we were assigned such ridiculous volumes of repetitive things that I'd skim the chapter, ignore the problems, then ace the test. That was how I was. All homework except essays and labs got done the morning before the class, if I felt like doing it at all. My IT homework also never got done. I probably did two of the multitudinous assigned readings for the entire two years. I don't know how I placed first in that CSEC exam, because I ratched all the theory answers based on the standard response of "___ makes ___ more efficient". If any of you are teachers reading this who thought I put a lot of time into completing assignments for their class – I'm sorry, but there were genetics and cryptography courses to be taken. It's not that I didn't care for your efforts, but that the work was painstakingly mundane. I literally only passed any of your classes because I spent time learning how to take tests, and reading things about whatever we were studying on the internet. Also because I actually paid attention in class. Lots of it. I had no use for texting people under the desk, or talking to people during class. And because I asked questions. Sometimes these questions seemed oddly tangential or too high-level, but I promise they always made sense in my head. The never-ending series of "How?"s helped me structure information in my brain, even and especially when it was prefaced with, "Well, you don't need to know this for CSEC, but..." Those were my favorite kinds of answers. I promise. (My biology homework got done though. That genetics assignment got done the night we were given it – AKA about a month in advance of its due date. But my high school biology teacher already knew that.)

Learning all the math that my brain could handle did not have any hidden assumptions for the future. There was no clause of this agreement which said that I'd learn all the math that my brain could handle up until I went to university, at which point my exploratory learning process would freeze until further notice.

The guy down the hall that I mentioned earlier has decided that we are going to learn math together now. Our first topic will be partial differential equations. I am not too sure how much this will work because my most productive learning typically takes place in a pitch black room with no one else around. But at least it's some sort of motivation. If not motivation, then accountability. After never needing external motivation to do anything in my learning life, I am now relying on being accountable to someone else for continuing to indulge in something I truly love. It's almost ironic.

I'm going to start reluctantly wrapping this one up, because I have to leave my bed in about eight minutes.

Tonight, Minerva has invited us to some mystery event titled Reverie. It was done via cards emblazoned with the Minerva symbol stuck onto our door (probably by Lauren, our RA) while we were all planned to be at Minerva HQ for a feedback session. Our only instructions were, "Meet in the lobby at 7pm sharp. Dress warmly."

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, reverie is defined as:

rev·er·ie noun \ˈre-və-rē, ˈrev-rē\

: a state in which you are thinking about pleasant things

Full Definition of REVERIE

1:  daydream

2:  the condition of being lost in thought

I am not sure whether this experience has been a reverie, but I am excited to see what they have planned for tonight. I am always excited when I have to play Sherlock to know anything about an event, or when I have to be patient for something.

Let me say this, though: excitement does not always mean that the event will be surreal. Minerva tries very hard to incite surrealism in us, but, so far, for me, it has not worked by their design. I feel surreal only of my own accord. That is one thing that belongs to me. But I am still excited, if only to see what happens.

On Friday at the feedback session, we were informed that those of us who have a median score below a 2 (we are graded on a five-point scale, with a 0, meaning no data, also possible) will be assigned extra work over winter break. This work is actually optional. I do not have a median score below two in any of my classes. I have received probably one two for the entire semester. I have also received a crazy array of fours in my stats class. I am not sure how he grades these things, but I'm not complaining, either. Anyway – I don't have to be worried about having extra work.

But this extra, optional help was framed as a "jubilee". This is in fact help because, if anyone doesn't grasp concepts from this semester, they will be in ridiculous amounts of trouble next semester.

Last night, I learned (from Andrew, our fancy-word guru) that the original meaning of jubilee was forgiveness of all debt.

I have not touched on my maybe-plans to apply for a Thiel Fellowship, the bioreactor in a cube I've been helping to build for the past few weeks, or my wandering adventures around SoMa last night (it involved a trip to Ghirardelli for overpriced ice cream, and getting off the bus a stop early and having to either wait 22 minutes for the next bus or walk up the hill that I took the bus to explicitly avoid because I'm terrible at public transit and since when are there two tunnels on Stockton!), but perhaps that's for a part two, since I am supposed to leave my room in negative eleven minutes.

I am teaching myself how to learn and have spare time again. Life is teaching me how to be adventurous again.

And this is my jubilee.

MOGA & The Beatles

We had our first MOGA (Meditation and Yoga) session of the semester tonight, led by Gabby. No pictures because it was dark, but it was wildly relaxing. It reminds me of when we used to do yoga for Dragon Boat, back so long ago in SJC. Cue the warm fuzzy feelings inside.

Now we're playing Beatles songs while sitting in the common room together. A few of us are just sitting together, listening to Beatles songs, and possibly doing some homework, some of us... and it's just so great and relaxing, too. Ailén knows almost all the words for almost every song that plays. Woah.

I'm just so happy right now. And relaxed (thanks Gabby). And it is just wonderful... :)

Yay! Coding!

We have these classes known as student-led sessions, wherein the professor is not present (but watches the recording of the class afterwards and grades us), and two students from the class lead the session.

Today, we had a Formal Analyses student-led session. I figured I'd drop this little gem here. Perhaps this adds some context to my last post, just coincidentally. (Also, bonus for anyone who is wondering, "You say you take classes online! So is this an online university? What does it look like?!" No, it is not an online university. It's just a futuristic one. ;) )

"My name is Justine (AKA: Yay! Coding!)"
I feel like Roiman came up with that option. :)

Python Charmers

I haven't been able to post as much as I'd have liked recently. I suppose that I'll have to stick to monthly updates. I will try to do one of those later tonight, but here's a quick thought while I balance classes and homework on my head (like everyone around here) in an attempt to get to the San Francisco Opera tonight.

I am immensely lucky that I had the teachers that I did in high school. I am constantly reminded of this in university, particularly when I do the programming assignments for my Formal Analyses class. My other high school teachers have been absolutely wonderful - but this post is about programming, so praise for other teachers will come later (and trust me, it will - I think about my good fortune in this regard almost daily).

High school seems so far away when I talk about it now, which is a bit absurd because it's only been a handful of months. Nevertheless, I shall say this at risk of sounding like I'm speaking of something that happened in 1750: I am immensely lucky that I had the teachers that I did in high school.

In Forms Two and Three, I was lucky enough to be taught by a teacher whom I thought was slightly irrational. That isn't to say that irrationality is bad - as the thirteen-year-old me failed to realize - just that irrationality represents anything different from my perception of the norm.

My perception of the norm was wrong, needless to say. This wonderful teacher strived to impress upon all of us that simplicity is key. We all thought that programming was remote and complicated (not complex! re: complex systems class). I remember the first time this teacher told us about IPOS (Input, Output, Processing, Storage) in the context of programming. For the homework assignment, we were told to use IPOS to examine a given problem.

We all came back with long, winding, overtly descriptive sentences under each of the four columns. It was very irritating to me that the teacher wouldn't accept my overtly descriptive, unnecessarily un-parsimonious analysis of the problem that we were given.

We soon learned that IPOS was a parsimonious structure; that logical deductions often followed Occam's Razor, rather than trying to explain everything in existence ever. "Accept value from user for pounds" "Divide that value by 2.2 and show on the screen this number which represents the value in kilograms"?

Goodness, no! I can't bear to look at it right now. "Input lbs". "kg <-- lbs / 2.2". "Output kg". Simple. Sweet. Parsimonious.

What's my point? Well, this framework of logic and simplicity has been what I've used to teach my classmates about programming in python. At first, they always seem confounded that I could view pandas and python in general as simple, as I do. I try to explain myself as best as I can in the simplest possible terms; pandas seems illogical to everyone who gets it thrown at them as their very first data science adventure (or so I hope).

This framework is what I keep in mind as I learn about data science in Python using the pandas module (a module with which I am completely unfamiliar). I seem to have figured out this module surprisingly quickly. I think I owe that speed to the framework in question.

This framework of logic and simplicity has been the basis of all other programming languages I've learned, have been learning, and will learn (see also: I'm going to get around to learning C the Hard Way, inspiration courtesy of Eliana).

Recently, one of my professors sent out an email thanking the "Python Charmers", referencing the two or three of us who actually understood the programming assignment and tried to help out the other 26 or 27 of us who woefully didn't. The praise could never be solely mine. I owe a great deal of it to this high school teacher, who instilled in us the kind of view on problems and programming that I shall carry with me for a very long time, whether I become a Computer Scientist or not. She, perhaps even unknowingly, tried to teach us that the rest of the world will not be as simple as high school is, thus we should take advantage of the simplicity that is spoon-fed to us while we still have it.

This simple, logical view can be extrapolated to the rest of world, but I'm still working on that: in Form Five, I had a teacher who would often look at my mathematical proofs and laugh at the fact that I was making my life "so hard". (I also owe the development of my logical abilities to the aforementioned Form Five teacher, too. I know many ways to uncover the simplicity in seemingly complicated mathematical problems, thanks to her. She would get along very well with my current Formal Analyses professor: they have the same sense of humor. Perhaps this sense of humor is not French, as my professor so believes, but simply mathematician-like. But I digress - there will be posts for various other teachers in the future.) My logic and simplicity outside the world of programming is still a work in progress, but I owe it to this Form Two teacher for getting the ball rolling.

So thank you, Ms Frection. Thank you for teaching me all about this framework - especially back when I thought that it was irrational. You're inexorably stellar.

Bonus fun fact: Python has list comprehension and it's exciting! No more explicit loop structures for reading data into arrays (even just using python's append() function)! Yay!

Don't Panic, Don't Be So Hard On Yourself

So... I've survived.

I know it's only Tuesday, but I still feel like I deserve the right to throw my hands up, dance, and otherwise be happy that I'm alive. I'm not saying that people shouldn't do this all the time - just that this one moment is very special. I'm absolutely exhausted, so forgive me if some of my sentences are poorly structured or not as articulate as usual. I've strived for enough well-structured, articulate sentences for the day.

I was hoping that, over the weekend, I would've had time to update this lovely little corner of the Internet. Boy, was I wrong! The weekend just got crazier and crazier.

On Saturday, the official end of #MinervaFounders Orientation Week, we had a feast. Unfortunately, I came down with the cold, so I couldn't join everyone else in cooking. I did get to take pictures, though!

We cooked.

We danced.

We laughed.

We made wacky faces like this (this one is my favorite - Kayla makes so many of us smile!)

I even got to use this gorgeous camera with a fancy 50mm lens. Exciting!

Later on in the night, we had a bit of an open mic night. I didn't grab any pictures because we had it outside and it was dark, but a few of us played random songs on guitar, we had sing-a-longs (which have become a real hit in our dorm - once someone pulls out a guitar, expect a crowd within five minutes), there was an improvised skit from the most talented "untalented people" that I've ever seen, there was dancing... wow. We had so much fun with that! I just can't fathom my level of excitement into words. We may have also found a future ukelele singer-songwriter star. We're all still wondering why she's in college if she can just drop out and write a spectacular album (yes, I'm looking at you Kayla, you're outstanding).

But then Sunday came and we all realized that we had assignments due then and the following day. Then Monday came, and we had our first classes in Multimodal Communications and Complex Systems.

Our first classes were not what we expected they would be: we had hyped them up a bit too much, some of us felt, but I know that we just need to give them some time.

And then came Monday night. Monday night... wow. I walked around the fifth floor - our floor - at about 2am, and literally everyone was still up doing homework. Every. Last. Person. Some were even freaking out about the fact that they didn't have enough time to do the work from last week, since we were busy all week, then we were assigned even more work with a turnaround of less than 24 hours.

No, Monday night was not a night for sleeping. Monday night was only a night for some light napping - even if you'd spent the entire Monday in your room doing homework between classes. It's nights like these that bring us closer, perhaps. There is some comfort in knowing that everyone else is just as panicked as you are. So I handed in my Empirical Analysis assignment on the exceptions of Hooke's Law and Newton's Second Law, edited my Multimodal Communications essay, then lay down for a nap.

"I'll get up at 4:30am," I told myself. "I'll wake up and read the material for Complex Systems, then write that 3-4 page essay that we have due later today."

I slept until 7:30am. I snoozed my alarm. My body is smarter than my brain, sometimes.

I say that my body is smarter than my brain because, when the professors from yesterday gave feedback on the classes, I read the class grades and comments and, suddenly, I felt slightly relieved.

Before the start of classes, the professors told us that, on a five-point scale, the highest mark we might be able to achieve this semester is a 3 in each concept. I received a 3 in one of the HCs (Habits of Mind and Foundational Concepts - at Minerva, we receive our grades solely for the application of these) for Multimodal Communications. The professor seemed very happy with my performance in the comments to me, so I see no reason why I should despair. I received a 0 in the other one (meaning 'no data'), but the professor told me that I in fact didn't even have a chance to apply this HC during the class, so I shouldn't worry.

I hope that the grades for the other classes will follow such a trend... a trend of "don't panic". Because, boy, do we panic. This is a lesson for all of us; maybe, this will teach us not to be so hard on ourselves.

Thanks for the lesson, Minerva.

The Managing Directors for each region are coming over for dinner tonight. I plan on attending (especially because I don't have a clue what I'd cook for dinner otherwise - we've been living off pasta, instant noodles, pizza, things we can order, food cooked by our amazing classmate Roiman who can't cook for less than four people, and food fed to us by Minerva). Some of us have spoken about taking a walk around the city - perhaps on the beach, which is about fifteen odd minutes away - for the sole purpose of relaxing ourselves this afternoon. I can't wait.

And I can't wait to see what I'll learn next! ...especially when I don't panic.

Once Upon a (Mi)nerd

This felt too cliché to be called "first post", because this adventure deserves so much more than a "first post". This kind of adventure deserves a grand gesture, one that would impress even the stern venture capitalists over at Benchmark.

I won't elaborate on anything that has yet occurred - I'm saving that for a series at the end of the week - but I will say, four days in, that this has already been completely outstanding. Ben Nelson is really trying to outdo himself and impress us, the Founding Class-- his Founding Class.

I have never been a writer, but I feel the need to dedicate an entire series of blog posts to our Orientation Week adventures. I'll skip the introductions, small talk, and other mundane things. Such an intriguing experience deserves so much more than mundanity; I feel like I'll only have the time to give this venture what it deserves once the end of the week comes.

Until then, I'll leave this here and stop procrastinating my first week work. My awesome roommate, Lucy, just came down here, so I feel bad for captaining the Procrastination Station tonight. Elle blague beaucoup, on parle français, etc etc. C'est amusant mais pas banal. Elle m'ennuie pas quand même.

I'm going to have an awesome week, but I hope yours will top mine. You very likely deserve it. :)