GYM GYM GYM GYM we are going to get buff. soz have been slacking but i will be back and we will GET SWOLE etc.
honestly you're right with keeping your goals reasonable and realistic; it's funny how i look at these goals at a glance and my first instinct is "wow there are surprisingly little things here – work through a textbook or two, read biostatistics, read poetry more" but then when i think about it, you're right for keeping it realistic and putting intent into learning this stuff.
yay we are going to Do Stuff this summer and there is so much left in the world to live
and yes! i think i'd like to set achievable goals, idk. it's nice to set unattainable goals bc it looks & feels good but then ... me when my unattainable goals are not attained (????)
- 5yrs on, trying something new (programming) turns out to have been worth more than fleshing out stuff i was already somewhat familiar with / 'had cracked the culture of'. you seem to be revisiting fields more than exploring fully new ones. i prefer 2025!andrew's field selection to 2020!lydia's but consider maybe trying 1-2 new important-seeming things? if any come to mind. & try not to let completionist tendencies keep u from new ground within-field :)
- like me learning foreign languages in 2020, this biostats plan seems not super automation-aware/resilient rn. i think there may be utterly fascinating fruit to pick by learning in an automation-aware way (high uncertainty). like having a story for how this knowledge will help you lead swarms of ai agents equally well-versed in the material to productive ends.* thinking about what you're happy to outsource, what not & why. what _needs to be a white box_, what's fine to stay a bit black-box-y. we're both on the “you have to actually know things” train but there's granularity within that i think. notably im not saying "leave more stuff as black boxes"; i think im saying "do the same amount of whiteboxing, with greater intentionality/precision/direction/clarity"
(i met a demographer at manifest who talked to me abt how he & the ~10 other ppl in his subfield studied obscure formulae for 4yrs during their phd program, & were called on by the government to apply this knowledge, but he's surprised to find chatgpt can now apply stuff from the back annals of one non-digitized textbook. either that textbook is in its training corpus somehow(?) or it re-derived the methods)
- 2020!lydia didn't move quickly enough through math to attain her summer goals, & didn't quite realize until late in the summer. will u have a math tutor? i guess there's a ~one-to-one conversion rate between 1h of college consulting & 1h of math tutoring. seems good to have some check-ins, someone to watch how you solve a problem...
*nuance: learning for the joy of it is also great, i completely endorse learning/knowing some professionally-redundant-on-the-object-level stuff (& am ~doing that)
- on trying new things - i think in a vacuum perhaps this is more worth it but i figure i only have two months and change until grad school starts, so maybe best to be as prepared as possible
- on automation-aware/resilient: i think part of my issue is not understanding the landscape well enough to know what an automation-aware plan would be. i do need to think about this more.
does going to the bathroom count as a sleep interruption (if so then i also haven't gotten uninterrupted 8h in a long time but that seems fine?) or do you have something else in mind
oh the bathroom thing happens like sometimes but like is not the main driver or smth. like i consistently wake up at 4-5 hrs in whether i need to use the bathroom or not and whether i take melatonin or not and whether i use a sleep mask or not and whether i sleep super late or not etc
exciting to hear you're planning to spend some time with literature! I recommend either New American Stories or The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories (both ed. Ben Marcus) if you have any interest in contemporary lit.
Otherwise, here are some recs from my English degree—none are deep cuts, but all definitely live up to their reputation: Hardy's Wessex novels, The Princesse de Cleves (Madame de Lafayette), Moll Flanders (Defoe), My Antonia (Cather), The Namesake (Lahiri)
I also have a ton of poetry recs from over a decade of reading / memorizing poetry, although I think the best first step is to skim through a good anthology. DM if interested. The poem that I found most worthwhile to learn by heart was "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and the last one I liked enough to learn was Merrill's "Self-Portrait in Tyvek Windbreaker."
that information theory textbook looks dry—my rec would be for mackay's information theory, inference, and learning algorithms. anyway, any textbook is great if you like it
From a friend who's very into info-theory-based-stats, MIT's 6.437 notes are very good for this. Unfortunately they're not on OCW and I only have an old 2015 version, but you can probably find someone who's taken it recently.
GYM GYM GYM GYM we are going to get buff. soz have been slacking but i will be back and we will GET SWOLE etc.
honestly you're right with keeping your goals reasonable and realistic; it's funny how i look at these goals at a glance and my first instinct is "wow there are surprisingly little things here – work through a textbook or two, read biostatistics, read poetry more" but then when i think about it, you're right for keeping it realistic and putting intent into learning this stuff.
yay we are going to Do Stuff this summer and there is so much left in the world to live
ah yes i forgot that one of my goals for this summer is to launch my career in personal training
and yes! i think i'd like to set achievable goals, idk. it's nice to set unattainable goals bc it looks & feels good but then ... me when my unattainable goals are not attained (????)
i ask my friends back home that if i invited them to my house to bake bread, if they would come
this does 2 things; elicit a big smile from my face when they say yes, and solidify the resolve i have to bake more bread next year, haha
its nice to speak things into existence and be accountable
<3
amazing stuff!
reminds me of my summer of '20.
learnings (unsolicited, usual disclaimers apply):
- 5yrs on, trying something new (programming) turns out to have been worth more than fleshing out stuff i was already somewhat familiar with / 'had cracked the culture of'. you seem to be revisiting fields more than exploring fully new ones. i prefer 2025!andrew's field selection to 2020!lydia's but consider maybe trying 1-2 new important-seeming things? if any come to mind. & try not to let completionist tendencies keep u from new ground within-field :)
- like me learning foreign languages in 2020, this biostats plan seems not super automation-aware/resilient rn. i think there may be utterly fascinating fruit to pick by learning in an automation-aware way (high uncertainty). like having a story for how this knowledge will help you lead swarms of ai agents equally well-versed in the material to productive ends.* thinking about what you're happy to outsource, what not & why. what _needs to be a white box_, what's fine to stay a bit black-box-y. we're both on the “you have to actually know things” train but there's granularity within that i think. notably im not saying "leave more stuff as black boxes"; i think im saying "do the same amount of whiteboxing, with greater intentionality/precision/direction/clarity"
(i met a demographer at manifest who talked to me abt how he & the ~10 other ppl in his subfield studied obscure formulae for 4yrs during their phd program, & were called on by the government to apply this knowledge, but he's surprised to find chatgpt can now apply stuff from the back annals of one non-digitized textbook. either that textbook is in its training corpus somehow(?) or it re-derived the methods)
- 2020!lydia didn't move quickly enough through math to attain her summer goals, & didn't quite realize until late in the summer. will u have a math tutor? i guess there's a ~one-to-one conversion rate between 1h of college consulting & 1h of math tutoring. seems good to have some check-ins, someone to watch how you solve a problem...
*nuance: learning for the joy of it is also great, i completely endorse learning/knowing some professionally-redundant-on-the-object-level stuff (& am ~doing that)
mm ty for the ideas!
- on trying new things - i think in a vacuum perhaps this is more worth it but i figure i only have two months and change until grad school starts, so maybe best to be as prepared as possible
- on automation-aware/resilient: i think part of my issue is not understanding the landscape well enough to know what an automation-aware plan would be. i do need to think about this more.
- i should consider getting a math tutor ... i'm legit considering this guy? https://mark-moon.github.io/index.html idk if he still does this thing
yeah lots to think about. expect to discuss more with u later
does going to the bathroom count as a sleep interruption (if so then i also haven't gotten uninterrupted 8h in a long time but that seems fine?) or do you have something else in mind
oh the bathroom thing happens like sometimes but like is not the main driver or smth. like i consistently wake up at 4-5 hrs in whether i need to use the bathroom or not and whether i take melatonin or not and whether i use a sleep mask or not and whether i sleep super late or not etc
so yeah I’m Kinda Confused
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieval-habit-of-biphasic-sleep
i may have to try sleeping for 4-5 hours and then simply not going back to sleep and working until i feel i should sleep again
arranged by vibe, from Bach to Rach
- Prayer (Galway Kinnell): https://poets.org/poem/prayer-9
- Corkscrew (Louis Jenkins): https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1207&context=prosepoem
- Wild Geese (Mary Oliver): http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_wildgeese.html
- On Walking Backwards (Anne Carson): https://biblioklept.org/2020/09/14/on-walking-backwards-anne-carson/
- On Hedonism (Anne Carson): https://getlitanthology.org/poemdetail/952/
- Very Narrow: Introduction to Just for the Thrill (Anne Carson): https://www.docdroid.net/XVXIU50/plainwater-anne-carson-pdf#page=141
- The Empty Glass (Louise Gluck): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49618/the-empty-glass
- One More Chair (Wong Chun Yin): https://redivider.emerson.edu/one-more-chair/
- 1 = 1 (Anne Carson): https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/11/1-equals-1
- For John, Who Begs Me Not To Inquire Further (Anne Sexton): https://www.poeticous.com/anne-sexton/for-john-who-begs-me-not-to-enquire-further
- Dirty Valentine (Richard Siken): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/1585836/dirty-valentine
- Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out (Richard Siken): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48158/litany-in-which-certain-things-are-crossed-out
thank u for the recs! i will send u thoughts when i begin reading them : )
exciting to hear you're planning to spend some time with literature! I recommend either New American Stories or The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories (both ed. Ben Marcus) if you have any interest in contemporary lit.
Otherwise, here are some recs from my English degree—none are deep cuts, but all definitely live up to their reputation: Hardy's Wessex novels, The Princesse de Cleves (Madame de Lafayette), Moll Flanders (Defoe), My Antonia (Cather), The Namesake (Lahiri)
I also have a ton of poetry recs from over a decade of reading / memorizing poetry, although I think the best first step is to skim through a good anthology. DM if interested. The poem that I found most worthwhile to learn by heart was "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and the last one I liked enough to learn was Merrill's "Self-Portrait in Tyvek Windbreaker."
thank u for the recs! i will send u thoughts when i begin reading them : )
poetry recs
<listed in ascending order of ~difficulty of interpretation, imo>
- gun case by richard siken (https://x.com/richardsiken/status/1925095164651176447/photo/1)
- helplessness' child by kaylee young-eun jeong, previously a mentor of mine (https://tinderboxpoetry.com/helplessness-child)
- central park by k. iver, also a previous teacher of mine (https://www.poetrynw.org/poetry/k-iver-central-park/)
- hurry by marie howe (https://poets.org/poem/hurry)
- mea culpa by grace q song (https://sixthfinch.com/song1.html)
- scheharazade by richard siken (https://typewriterblues.tumblr.com/post/120326748/richard-siken-scheherazade-from-his-book)
thank u for the recs! i will send u thoughts when i begin reading them : )
that information theory textbook looks dry—my rec would be for mackay's information theory, inference, and learning algorithms. anyway, any textbook is great if you like it
thanks for the rec - appreciate!
From a friend who's very into info-theory-based-stats, MIT's 6.437 notes are very good for this. Unfortunately they're not on OCW and I only have an old 2015 version, but you can probably find someone who's taken it recently.
There's also these notes but they look more advanced: https://web.stanford.edu/class/stats311/syllabus.html
thanks!!! i may ask around, depends on when i get to this part of my plans