College Observations

• Internships: I think the hardest part of getting an internship is getting to the point where you can talk to a person (i.e. passing resume screens, OAs, etc). I also know way more people who are getting roles in quant firms (even if it’s a SWE role at Jane Street, for example) than people who get into big tech, which is not horribly surprising given recent hiring trends.

  On another note, I think it is truly a soul-sucking process, especially when the processes take so long. I am incredibly lucky to be done early, but I was not having the greatest time last year. Quant companies do tend to have shorter processes, which probably is a reason they poach a lot of talent.

• Classes: In high school, my teachers would always say stuff like “your college classes will be a lot harder”, and a lot of the messaging around intro-level classes/freshman year is “as you get further into college, your experience will get more difficult (but you will be more adjusted to college life to compensate)”, etc. While there is some level of truth to that, I found my experience has been the opposite. The really advanced graduate classes have grading structures like “submit writeups to a few problems by the end of the semester”. Unsurprisingly, they also were the classes where I learned the most.

• The gender ratio at CMU is quite concerning. Especially in CS. I am sure that the ratio for math majors is also similarly dire.

• My sleep schedule is not actually functional. I usually go to sleep around 1 - 2 AM, and wake up around 9 - 10 AM (I get out of bed much later). My sleep schedule did fix itself somewhat when I was working, but I will need it to be quite good for the summer.

• There is so, so much to learn. I feel like my knowledge of every field is quite shallow, and the number of fields I have any proficiency in are quite small. Even if you restrict it to pure math, I don’t have much experience with differential equations, complex analysis, probability,¹ etc.

• In a similar vein, there is so, so much to do. It is really quite nice that even in a less interesting campus like Carnegie Mellon, I will still run out of stuff to do.

• Gratitude: You know, in freshman year of college I wasn’t the happiest person. Forgive me if this is a little cliche, but now I am genuinely so glad to be alive every day. I’ve met a lot of people and made many friends, some of whom I have fallen out of touch with. While it is a bit sad, I wake up every day glad to be seeing the same sun as them every morning, and I hope that they are all doing well.

• Ambition and overwork: I was really ambitious going in freshman year. I skipped all the intro classes, sat in on tons of classes, and took 66 units (for people not in CMU, that translates to “a ridiculous amount”) in freshman spring. I have mixed feelings about taking so many classes. On one hand, it put me in a really good position now, where I am just a hair away from fulfilling my graduation requirements very early. But a lot of the classes I took so early on were junk volume, and the junk prevented me from paying as much attention to the classes I actually enjoyed. (Although I really did have the ability to power through more earlier than I do now. But I think that may have heavily contributed to my dissatisfaction with early university life.)

• Geneds: I think geneds have been a horrible waste of my time. This is not because I think writing, the arts, etc. are worthless. But if I am in a room with people who are just here because they have to be here, then I will not have a good time either, regardless of how much I actually like the subject itself. You cannot beat creativity into a person. Also, having depth in one or two areas in the arts would have been so much more valuable to me than the superficial breadth that gened requirements impose. (On my end, I wish I learned more music theory/rhythm classes/etc…)

• Poker: Gambling is lowkey way too fun. But seriously though, I think playing some poker teaches you quite a few things about life, particularly risk management.