Today was a pretty good day. It was full and it was busy, but it was not the kind of busy where you get nothing useful done and you feel horrible at the end of the day; it was more gentle, with various breaks, where you get to wrap up threads that have been open for quite some time and move on with your life. It was nice.

I stayed up last night to a dumb hour updating this website with new blog content and whatnot. It is still way out of date, but I did post 1150A (fuck. reprise) with minimal editing, since I think it’s a good piece of writing and generally is anonymized enough to be worth posting. I suppose that fully updating this website should be one of my IAP goals.

I got up this morning around 9:35, got ready, and headed to Chamber Chorus, which I arrived to just in time. Midway through, my stomach threw a riot from the dining food last night, which was non-optimal, but otherwise nothing terribly interesting happened; we recorded the pieces we’re performing for MIT News, which will be quite fun and festive. I headed over to Hayden after this, and after some dilly-dallying ended up compiling all the dormitory Constitutions and Bylaws which I had received from folks. I wrote up a document summarizing the important parts of a Constitution, which was good for me to understand more broadly and also just kind of fun, and I’m excited to see what New Vassar’s will look like at the end of their process.

I headed to Chipotle after sending the documents to Tina, and then discovered that Chipotle was cash-only. I wandered back towards campus, thinking about where I wanted to eat, and eventually decided that I had enough time to go to Flour. I bumped into Nathan along the way, and we chatted for a while as I waited for my food at Flour, before we parted ways on our way back to campus. I ate outside W20, since it was nice and warm outside, and then Ryan appeared and we chatted for a little bit. It was nice to catch up with people I hadn’t talked to in a while, and afterwards I headed over to Concourse lounge, where I made a little more progress on 18.404, before heading to lecture.

I gained very little out of today’s 18.404 lecture, which was on arithmetization. It just seems so ridiculous and specific a concept to be meaningful, while complexity classes and whatnot seem more generalizable and useful. In any case, I spent most of my attention bashing away at the 18.404 pset, which I did eventually solve by the end of lecture. I verbally described this proof to Brandon and we both cringed but couldn’t find anything wrong with it. (I guess this is a proof-verifier system: I give Brandon a proof and he antagonistically verifies it. I don’t think that is what those words mean, but I guess I’ll find out in lecture on Tuesday.)

The hours after this I will describe as “Shuli Time,” because I spent essentially 4.5 hours in the company of Shuli over three different activities.

First, we had tenor sectionals, which was quite fun, especially since I feel like Shuli and I serve somewhat as Ileana’s advisory committee, while having no real obligations as non-exec members. We ran the hard pieces and had a good time! I am feeling a little more into the solo as well, which is good—I don’t think I’ll do anything too ridiculous, but just try and vibe a little more than I usually do.

Second, we had blogger check-in. On the way to the blogger check-in, Shuli and I discussed DormCon elections and logistics, which was very helpful. At the check-in itself, we mostly stood under the awning outside, ate snacks, and shitposted; Paolo, CJ, Vincent, and I spent a lot of time singing random notes, much to Petey’s dismay. There were also a lot of random announcements at the blogger check-in, none of which were particularly important, but it was good to be around other bloggers again. After some time, Shuli, Cami, Ella, and I walked back across campus to New Vassar; Ella and Cami went to get dinner, and Shuli and I headed to the first floor lounge.

Third, we had the DormCon General Body Meeting. Ella and Cami joined us on our walk to New Vassar, and then headed off into the dining hall when we got there. I was responsible for the main body of the meeting, which was electing i3/RAC and CPW/REX Chairs. The results of this were quite funny, since election we thought would be uncontested was contested, and vice versa. Regardless, I thought elections ran very smoothly, despite some of the vote distribution shitposting that was done—in particular, on the i3/RAC vote, we had:

  • Baker: 108 and one third votes for candidate A, 216 and two third votes for candidate B
  • BC: 371 votes for candidate B
  • EC: 383 votes for candidate B
  • MacGregor: 313 votes for candidate B
  • Maseeh: 375 votes for candidate A, 125 votes for candidate B
  • McCormick: 255 votes for candidate B
  • New House: absent
  • West Garage: 450 votes for candidate B. (I called the West Garage, because my spreadsheet has this for their name following Jordan’s lead, and someone went “seriously, in their own home?”)
  • Next House: 122 and two third votes for candidate A, 245 and one third votes for candidate B. (Meghana’s fault.)
  • Random: 31 votes for candidate A, 62 votes for candidate B.
  • Simmons: 1 vote for candidate A, 368 votes for candidate B. (Mohan tried to put ‘pi’ in his voting distribution, at which point I yelled at him. Jordan exercised his right to decrease Mohan’s voting power by one and vote of his own accord.)

We also did a very cute thing where the presidents of the dorms of the candidates went and retrieved them from the holding area. We did updates after this, and then the meeting ended. Meghana, Fatima (one of two new Dormcon CPW/REX Chairs!), and I walked back to Next together after this, chatting about the current election and whatnot. Meghana and I are starting our slow transition, although some things will stay the same—Meghana noted that the statement “one of us is a President and a Dormcon Exec member, and the other is just an Exec member” will stay true. I also noted this about Exec today—if Leo wins, we will continue to have a 3E-4W President/VP team, with simple role reversal. Kind of neat!

I got food from Five Spices after this, ate dinner in the shallow lounge, and then decided I would take the 7.03 exam, which went…poorly. I think I would not have known more had I taken the test tomorrow morning, but I just clearly do not have a good handle on this content. I did my best, and I answered all the questions, and we will see how the results go. I went out into main lounge and shitposted and worked on writing up 18.404 after this. This shitposting did bring me briefly to 4E, where I had a nice conversation with Cameron, and it also involved a lot of interaction with 3W, but not much else was notable about it.

As you can see an extremely full day, but a fullness that makes you want to describe the day in its full richness, which I have certainly done. Wow.

Oh, one last thing. I have my courses generally filled out for next semester, which, because of contingency planning, resulted in me filling up all the boxes in pre-registration. Here is how my next semester looks, with exclamation points to denote level of excitement.

I will almost certainly take:

  • 6.033 - Computer Systems Engineering - !
  • 7.05 - General Biochemistry - !!!
  • 21M.405 - MIT Chamber Chorus (6 units) - !!!
  • 21M.410 - Vocal Repertoire and Performance (6 units) - !!!!
  • 21M.785 - Playwrights’ Lab (12 units) - !!!
  • CC.012 - Continuing Conversations (3 units) - !!

I will take one of the following combinations:

  • 18.204 (Undergraduate Seminar in Discrete Mathematics, !!) and 6.888 (Secure Hardware Design, !!!!!)
  • 18.410 (Design and Analysis of Algorithms, !) and 21W.771 (Advanced Poetry Workshop, !!!)
  • 18.704 (Seminar in Algebra, !!) and 6.888 (ibid.)

I am still considering taking 21M.401 (Concert Choir, !!), but I think I will be singing too much if I do that. Alas.

Oh yeah, tomorrow! I have CC.012 and a 6.170 mentor check-in, and I have to turn in the 18.404 pset, but apart from that? It is finally time for me to sink my teeth into all the final tasks for the semester! The light at the end of the tunnel is coming; I finally see it.