Last year my friends would often pointedly remind me that I was a freshman. So it’s been a little weird this quarter no longer holding that title. However, as far as beginnings go, I’d say it’s off to a fine start.
Academics
This quarter is what Stanford is supposed to be. I learned. A ton. I was enrolled in:
- MATH 21: Calculus
- COMPLIT 37Q: Zionism and the Novel
- SUSTAIN 345: Sustainable Societies Lab
- DESIGN 11: Visual Thinking
- CS 148: Introduction to Computer Graphics and Imaging
The extent to which I was actually in MATH 21, despite my enrollment, is somewhat questionable. I attended very few lectures, and I think possibly two discussion sections. On balance, I think this was alright. I obviously didn’t derive as much as I could have from the course (pun intended), but I performed adequately and had more time to devote to things that interested me far more. This is despite my liking the professor: when I did manage to show up for lecture, I felt a bit like I was participating in the mathematical world of yore. The class did manage to have a statistically significant impact on my sleep though! See if you can guess when the problem sets were due:
Zionism and the Novel was a real treat. The syllabus was so interesting that I felt guilty any time I had to skip a reading, and promised to catch up on it at a later date for my own good. I’m still working on that. I also ended up sharing a lot of my writing from the course on this site, which is a very nice plus.
The Sustainable Societies Lab continues to be a blast (I participated in another incarnation of it last spring). We heard from a number of deeply knowledgeable speakers from a broad range of fields. I was blown away by Marc Tarpenning, which also made its way into some posts here. I also strongly disagreed with the founder of Beyond Meat, and will attribute any future failure to his attitude and any future success to pure luck. The latter half of that sentence is a joke.
DESIGN 11, my old nemesis, was possibly my favorite class. It was certainly the most impactful—I think I will never look at the world the same way after taking it. The class forced me to become comfortable sitting in the liminal space of making things. There are very few ventures that you can be sure of before embarking upon them. Most entail some space in between, where each step from the start takes you further toward your ultimate destination. Some steps are misplaced, mistakes that you have to recognize and adapt to instead of abandoning your progress and starting again from scratch. This process must feel like home to you if you want to make something. The class instigates this change in its students by forcing you to do the things you’re bad at, over and over again. First the stakes are low: building little one-off thingamajigs and prototypes. And then you’re thrown directly in the fire and made to combine those little skills you didn’t even realize you were learning to make something real. We did that three times: carving and constructing an automaton from foam core, abusing Figma to make a functional digital vending machine, and the final open-ended project that ultimately coalesced into Roll Call. I am grateful to Patrick Fenton, who made this a comfortable place to grow, and to Vivek for pushing me through the course when I needed an extra shove and making building things a total blast. Also I sort of learned to draw:
CS 148 was another fun class—I took this one at Naama’s behest, and found the final project in particular a good opportunity to implement the techniques for making that I had picked up in DESIGN 11. The class was scheduled at the same time as DESIGN 11, so I never actually attended a lecture, but I’m theoretically a fan of the professor because he has two Oscars for inventing the math behind CGI and was a professional bodybuilder in his youth (scroll to the bottom of that link). It had been a long time since I worked with Blender, so it was fun to get back at it! I felt a lot more confident building things independently this time around, which I would attribute to my growth in many contributing areas and skillsets—quite satisfying.
This quarter lacked a structured avenue for me to engage with political thought. Zionism and the Novel came close, and I certainly engage seriously on a myriad of political issues in discussions with my friends, but I still felt something of a void. All of which is to say that I declared a PoliSci minor on the International Relations track, which will hopefully keep me entertained in this respect going foreword. They also gave me a funky shirt when I declared, which Design didn’t, so extra points to their department.
Personal
This was the quarter of Junch and the Sleepoverers. Odin and my membership in both groups means that we technically won the quarter. Every week was marked by me getting progressively more excited until I actually arrived at Junch and then seven days of comedown until the next one arrived. Our more ambitious schedule for this upcoming quarter is going to be epic; I just hope Naama and Jordan can keep up. The Sleepoverers were my people for these past few months. If I had downtime, I was with Nageena, Lulu, and Daniel. What a squad we were—the half of our contingent that are going off to Paris this upcoming quarter will be dearly missed.
My roommate this year is no longer random: I’m living with Vivek! Who would have thought that we would be living together, four years after we first met each other and thought the other one was super weird. Our room is a total blast. It really is as simple as Vivek told my dad: “we like the same snacks.” Here’s to next quarter, when my morning classes might finally force me to adopt his sleep schedule.
I’ve created some clean delineations above for the sake of the post, but of course reality is much messier. Jack and Zach, besides rhyming, are pillars of my existence here at Stanford. I look forward to more GSB library study sessions and rapid costume creation, respectively. Adri, Deit, Reis, Kato, and Bradley welcome me back to the Phi Psi house like a returning champ every time. Sophia is a boundless source of creative energy for activities and I am very sorry for spreading the false rumor that she broke her leg playing laser tag. Vedant and Hasan show up all the time in such unexpected places—I look forward to the next time I’m summoned. Nate continues to outlift me in the gym, and Trun continues to do things with computers that shock and surprise me. I am routinely impressed by Daniel’s FLiCKS.
Looking Forward (I Go Back to School Tomorrow)
This was a different quarter. I enjoyed it. This next quarter, I’m going to build on the positive institutions that were seeded here—continuing my perpetual search for better and more. Academically, I’m going back to the basics with a lot of foundational requirements. I’m looking forward to it. In the meantime, I’m going to go celebrate getting this out on time.