Hello World

 I haven't blogged in a long time. It has been more than a month since I wrote my last entry. Before arriving at college, I honestly expected that I could write at least every other week, but I did not take into account how little time I have for myself. There are so many opportunities in college to interact with people that I end up not spending much time inside the dorm room. 

There are so many things I want to blog about my first month at MIT, but here is a short summary of interesting things that have occurred: 

FPOP/Orientation/REX:

FPOP is Freshman Pre-Orientation Program, which happensed a week before orientation. I was part of the Discovery Chemistry group and I enjoyed it. Although I wish there were more hands-on chemistry activities like cool labs or experiments, I enjoyed the student and faculty panels. There were some activities that weren't related to chemistry, like going to the science museum and kayaking on the Charles River. I think that I had a pretty good experience with the FPOP because chemistry is my main interest. FPOP was a nice way for me to meet new people and make some friends. Unfortunately, I don't really see them anymore after FPOP, but if I see them walking around campus, I will still say hi to them. 

Orientation involved a lot of events at the Kresge Auditorium and eating meals with my orientation group. Orientation was still nice, but I liked FPOP more because the orientation events were more formal as they taught us important things about college like emergency plans, sexual assault prevention, and drugs/alcohol safety. The plus was that someone I talked to from a Discord group happened to be in my orientation group and we got along quite well. 

REX was the main highlight during the orientation week. REX is short for resident exploration and there are a lot of dorm events so people can explore the dorms. Some REX events may influence people to change dorms if they aren't happy with their temporary dorm. During REX, I got to enter each of the 10 dorm buildings (excluding Burton Conner because of renovations). My favorite REX event was the East Campus party because I got to ride on a carnival ride that was constructed by East Campus residents. It was outdoors, so it didn't feel that crowded. 

Classes: 

An interesting observation I have made about my first semester of college is that my academic experience is more pleasant compared to my senior year of high school. I think the main reason is that I don't have to write college application essays now and worry about my future. Another reason I am enjoying college more than others is that MIT does PNR for freshmen first semester, which stands for Pass No Record. The purpose of PNR is to not make freshmen stressed out about grades and to let them adjust to college, which is a big transition. Therefore, I don't have to be upset about not getting an A because on my transcript an A, B, or C will show up as P. 

The problem sets are pretty difficult, though I prefer having difficult problem sets to having high school homework. Although high school homework is easier to complete and doesn't require as much thinking, sometimes high school homework felt like busy work and teachers would give a lot of textbook problems or questions that were repetitive. On the other hand, college problem sets don't have a lot of questions and they are assigned on a weekly basis. Sometimes, I am annoyed that the problem sets are so hard, but at the same time, I enjoy the intellectual challenge. I like that the problem sets actually force me to have a solid conceptual understanding of what I learn and that they make me use my critical thinking and problem-solving skills, unlike the repetitive questions I did from my calculus textbook in high school. 

Something unexpected about college was that my Thursdays aren't that stressful because all my problem sets are due on Monday and Wednesday and my midterms are done by Thursday. This makes Thursday feel like a Friday in the sense that I don't have to work super hard and panic about the upcoming deadline that is on a Friday. 

Conclusion: 

College life is good so far, though I am aware that my freshman spring will be significantly harder because I may take an extra class and there will be ABC grading. I am still learning how to establish strong study habits and learning methods as I did poorly on some of my midterms. 

For high schoolers out there, I would say that college life is better than high school life. I am very interested in hearing the opposite. First, there is more freedom and one's social life improves significantly in college. Even though you may be studying in a suburban or rural area, there will still be a lot of on-campus activities like club fundraisers, performances, etc. Another thing is that you get to choose your schedule. The earliest class at MIT starts at 9 AM, which I think is reasonable, whereas some high schools can start as early as 7:30 AM or 8 AM.