hmm,
I almost remember a time when I thought math was fun. Probably in middle school sometime… I had a lot of high school teenager angst by the time I got to AP calculus. I went into AP statistics thinking of it as the “easier” AP math class (vs AP calculus), so that was alright, but not particularly enjoyable nor exciting. In linear algebra, I just felt lost. And in differential equations, I just felt like a failure.

That was the last time I took a math class. It was eight years ago…  1st semester freshman year. (dear lord I’m old, what have I done with my life?)

I think it’s because Harvard SEAS (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences) is so small. There are Math and Physics PhD students in my classes all the time and I know their faces from seeing them around (and sometimes showing up at their socials to eat food :] ).  In particular, I’ve been hanging out with Irina and Sharon, and we’ve been bonding over classes we’re taking together and that utmost of bonding experiences: DESPAIR.

haha well Irina is too chill for despair. But anyhow. Basically, now I know math people, and furthermore they’re my friends and seem like nice friendly normal-ish people, and they struggle and have insecurities like I do. And my friend even told me about how she decided to major in mathematics *because* she had math fear. And I’m sure its something to do with, I don’t think I’ve ever really known other math majors, so I always had this abstract idea in my head which was nowhere close to reality. (Sorry Renee, I should hang out with you more. Wait, that means I now actually call three mathematics majors my friends!). And now the math majors I know as people who struggle sometimes, not generic Mathematics People.

(Probably helps in breaking my stereotypes, that they’re women. Though I hate to admit it, because I’m so tired of the whole diversity thing, and caring about it, and anything… I just want to care more about abstract problems for now),

And my rotation advisor is a math person, he seems pretty normal (and very patient).

I think it’s when I start thinking or reading about other people and the Words and the Theorems that sound so complicated and esoteric, that I feel math fear. For instance, I read recently a bio by  Steve Mitchell (I do not know him), and my main takeaway is that, not only is he some unknowable math person who talks about “homotography groups of spheres” (??), but worse still, he was so much better at being an adventurous bum than me! Hitchhiking in cars and stowing away in trains, dropping out of college, climbing rocks and living on houseboats :'(

while I was exuding distress about failing my classes (well I dropped a class, so failing my one class…), my friend (esteemed almost-Dr. Renee Bell) was trying to cheer me up by telling me about Stephen Smale, who apparently almost got kicked out of grad school before winning a Fields Medal. The difference though, is that I don’t think I can “start working hard” to pass my classes. I *feel* like I’m working hard already, and still failing my classes (and I don’t mean in the “oh maybe I’ll get a B” sense).

For goodness’ sake my hobby went from sailing in the ocean and captaining my own boat and trying to avoid ramming rocks and dying, to taking care of a houseplant on my windowsill at work.

[ I do  really like my plant. It’s a mini rose plant that I got from Trader Joe’s, and it’s actually flourishing. It just put out a flower, another one almost flowered, and I count five more still-tiny buds. Of course, I’m supplementing it with a lot of light, and specifically 5000K light that “mimics daylight”, which I think means it emits more evenly across the spectra.  And I just started my succulent seeds, though apparently they’ll take a month just to sprout… ]

But when it’s just me and the math, independent of faraway people and geniuses; independent of all my insecurities and fears that I’ve built up over years and years, calcified into a monstrous tower looming over me. When I’m just struggling to figure out what it going on, and I have a friend to struggle through it with me (Eric actually ended up staying up all night with me before my advisor meeting ). When I have friends who tell me why math is cool and exciting, When there is no pressure and no people to compare myself to.

That’s when math seems fun.

I bet I’ll change my mind when I take two math classes next semester though. (I should probably just take one, actually). Then I’ll have to work on math with math people, and fail at math. Then I’ll stop thinking math is fun.

It’ll be a pity…

i didn’t try hard to apply to hertz this year, which is kind of a shame in retrospect.

i was a bit intimidated by the whole “we give out 15 fellowships a year,” because no way am I in the “top 15” in the nation.

however, after the deadline passed, i thought about it and realized. these super selective fellowships are all stochastic and random, and the only thing to do is to apply to as many as possible. once you get down to a list of 100 or 200 or however many people, getting down to the final 15 people is inherently a random noisy process. there’s no real way to pick between candidates at that point. and since humans make the final decisions, there is a strange probability distribution that has many possible factors deciding its shape, e.g. how long it has been since the judges ate lunch.

so, the lesson I learned is, do not be intimidated by how how “selective” the fellowship is, or its “acceptance rate.” but simply apply to as many as possible.

applying to soros was strange. for me and the 2 or 3 other people i talked to, we grew up and spent our whole lives in america in fairly well-off conditions, and felt as american as apple pie. and while it was fun for me to think about all the things that made my life growing up different, and i enjoyed reflecting on all the stories of hardships my parents went through and how they pulled through. but, these were not my stories, and these were not my struggles. and more importantly, for the fellowship, i was not writing a personal essay reflection on my growth, but rather convincing strangers that i held promise and was worthy of funding.

i do not understand my essay writing process or how to make it go faster or take up less time. i need to figure out how not to get stuck on a task and prioritize it so much that i’m not able to switch to other tasks. it’s a strong component, i think, of how hard i’m struggling in grad school. likely it’s caused me great grief in my jobs as well, but in grad school it’s very easy to measure in completed problem sets and weekly milestones which are solely dependent on my own working style.

it turns out i am friends with a hertz fellow who applied several years ago, and friends-of-friends with two soros fellows. it’s too late for hertz — you can only apply pre-grad school or your first year — but, perhaps for other fellowships…

a few fellowships in CS (my friend has some part-time work compiling this)

https://phd.northeastern.edu/opportunity/?subject=computer-science

a few generous fellowships have passed with focused on fields i’m unacquainted with and could not immediately (in a week) write a research proposal around. i hate trend-following, but i must admit, when there’s so much money being thrown at e.g. machine learning and AI, and fellowships are so crucial to me, it’s hard to turn my nose.

My lack of linear algebra is really destroying me in computer vision.

There are some pros about an expensive dining plan: there was all-you-can-eat sweet potato souffle at Dudley dining hall this week… and there was apple cobbler two weeks ago (almost as good as peach cobbler)

Other highlights:

I discovered Kanopy, where as a Harvard student, I can watch a lot of movies for free. For instance!! I could watch http://harvard.kanopystreaming.com/video/super-cute-animals Super Cute Animals
The Science of Adorable Animals BBC Harvard

Students also have free access to the Harvard Cinema. I’m going to watch Three Sisters this weekend. My grandma lived there, and I spent two summers in Yunan’s capital, Kunming (which is no doubt very different than rural Yunan!) hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2017sepnov/wang.html#three

work pictures

CS283 (intro to computer vision) — Pset 2 (metric rectification)

CS182 (into to artifical intelligence) — Pset 2 . Search  (Pacman!)

CS 283 — Pset 3 (camera matrices and binocular rectification)

My own implementation of the RRT algorithm (rapidly expanding random trees) in Julia: collision checking issues, two runs, and a graph of how the solution path cost decreases with more iterations (aka if you find a path, you find a better path on average if you run more iterations). Although, it seems to converge not on what you might expect is about the optimal path cost (20* sqrt(2) = 28). And why would the optimal path cost decrease with more iterations, if the algorithm stops right when we find a solution? Hmm. I need to make more plots.

life pictures

my desk

apple cobbler with cherry ice cream

fancy career fair free food: kumquats!

my first pizza box obtained as free food (from fellowships information event)

sunset from my lab on the third floor

peach cobbleerrrrr peach cobbler whooo

robot socks! (no, I didn’t get any, I saw this between classes)