stanford-quarterly-reflection-02.md (7486B)
1 +++ 2 title = "Stanford Quarterly Reflection (Y1Q2)" 3 date = 2024-04-20 4 [extra] 5 type = "post" 6 +++ 7 8 In this quarter, Stanford became my default. As such, my memory of my 9 time at Stanford has begun to take the blurry and general form I 10 associate with "real life." 11 12 <!-- more --> 13 14 ### Academics 15 16 My workload increased this past quarter, as I left the one-unit courses 17 behind in favor of some required humanities courses and entertaining 18 medium-unit classes. I received my first A+, and also my first A-, in my 19 Stanford career. On balance, this lowered my GPA by 0.01, as the unit 20 counts were skewed in favor of the A-. I took five courses: 21 22 1. ARABLANG 2A: Accelerated First-Year Arabic, Part II 23 2. CHEM 29N: Chemistry in the Kitchen 24 3. COLLEGE 102: Citizenship in the 21st Century 25 4. CS 40: Cloud Infrastructure and Scalable Application Deployment 26 5. PWR 1KAA: Writing & Rhetoric 1: Forward Momentum: Writing About 27 Movement(s) 28 29 Arabic continued to be a positive staple of my week. It also expanded 30 its impact, when I took a late-night excursion into San Francisco with a 31 friend visiting from UChicago and we tried out a pizza place recommended 32 on the authority of Khaled. It was lovely! The proprietor remembered 33 Khaled from his days at USF. We also went on later that night to 34 discover a crepe place near where we went to high school, which was 35 surprising as we had not encountered it before and because restaurants 36 open past midnight are rare gems in San Francisco. I got back to 37 Stanford very late. 38 39 CHEM 29N was a total treat, if not particularly rigorous in either its 40 chemistry or its cooking. It is stuck in the classic funding limbo, 41 wherein the program is given little money due to its low output but 42 cannot increase its effectiveness until it receives more money. Still, I 43 got a lovely addition to my fledgling apron collection. 44 45 COLLEGE was aggressively mediocre. There is great value in the liberal 46 arts and indeed they are fundamental to Stanford as an institution. You 47 will, however, not find this value in COLLEGE 102. The class is a 48 compromise: primarily between those who want to require a liberal arts 49 core and those opposed as well as between those who want to overhaul the 50 Western canon and those who do not.[^1] The end result is boring. 51 52 CS 40 was a course super relevant to my day-to-day coding work and a 53 lovely introduction to the exciting world of 3-unit courses, but as it 54 was its first quarter running there were still some kinks to work out. 55 "Figure out programmatic declaration of self-hosted services" has been 56 on my todo list for quite a long time, so I was excited to both learn 57 how to do this and get school credit for it; however, instead, I just 58 spent a few weekends spray-and-praying AWS CDK gibberish at the screen. 59 I understand that they're going to switch to Terraform or Ansible next 60 year, and I wish them luck with that (and myself luck with self-study of 61 the same). Ideally, I would have come away from the class with the 62 skills required to write cloud-agnostic declarative infrastructure, but 63 I have not. Unless you're looking to hire me, in which case I absolutely 64 have. 65 66 #### And Now to Address PWR 67 68 I am unable to imagine a more painful academic experience than PWR 1KAA. 69 To gather the world's best and brightest—driven, talented youth—at great 70 expense in money, time, and effort, and then force them to divert 71 significant effort into this aimless toil feels criminal. It is astounding 72 that this has been allowed to occur. To absorb the material of this course 73 would be a detriment to your writing ability. 74 75 And though I suspect there would have been no PWR 1 courses that I would 76 have loved, it did not have to be a complete failure—for that, the 77 instructor is responsible. As explanation, and a means of 78 self-restraint, I will simply deliver the following anecdote: A very 79 good friend of mine, in a different PWR course, had scheduled a session 80 with a tutor to work on his final essay. His tutor canceled, and he was 81 assigned my PWR instructor in their stead. He left the meeting 82 astounded, with no actionable advice and significantly more confused. He 83 had some choice words, and told me genuinely that he felt sorry for me. 84 85 I pray, sincerely, that I never again encounter anything like this course 86 during my time here. 87 88 ### Personal 89 90 I fear that I have waited too long, and have become too engrossed in the 91 day-to-day of this new quarter, to do this section as I would have 92 liked. But I will appreciate people nevertheless, and devour my camera 93 role repeatedly as I seek to return to the proper mental state. 94 95 I want to appreciate Nika and her illegal bunny. I want to appreciate 96 Daniel and Ryan for a raucous night of festivities; I admire Daniel 97 greatly for his ability to commit and his fearlessness in social 98 situations, and I am grateful to Ryan for his non-stop encouragement. 99 Huge love to Jack and Sam, who tried the Vision Pro with me and 100 got many a late-night Zareen's. Kelly, for an even later Zareen's, 101 failed attempts at glasses shopping, and lovely brownies besides—you are 102 a light. Vivek for climbing on the Shangri-La scaffolding. Nate for 103 hitting 195 before me. 104 105 The JSA Retreat stands out as a highlight of my experience this winter. 106 The chances of finding such a space as we created in that house are less 107 than one-in-a-million, and I am in awe that it exists here at Stanford. 108 I would not be the same without it, and I don't think it an exaggeration 109 to say that it is *the* defining part of my Stanford experience. Diego's 110 cooking was not half bad, and I love *I Love London*.[^2] 111 112 I was warned that winter would be dreary and horrible. I'm just not sure 113 what people are on about; this was my favorite quarter yet.[^3] 114 115 --- 116 117 [^1]: Let the record show that, on these fronts, my positions currently 118 stand as follows: I am opposed a required core at Stanford, and broadly 119 aligned with the idea of updating the Western core. To the former, I 120 think the increasing number of required courses is bad; the WAYS system, 121 in which you are required to study specific fields but have a great deal 122 of choice in how you do so, is significantly more aligned with the 123 spirit and culture of Stanford. If you want a core, and the specific 124 impacts that having such structure brings, look elsewhere—aforementioned 125 UChicago friend is thoroughly enjoying his time on the school's intense 126 and rigid path. We should not attempt to backport this to Stanford. To 127 the latter issue, I am hopeful that we have advanced as a species since 128 much of the classics were written. I do not hold these texts sacred. I 129 do, however, hold excellence sacred—and don't think updating this corpus 130 will be as easy as cutting a few pieces and throwing in a few modern 131 works from traditionally marginalized voices. This process needs to be 132 done well and by actual experts, which I do not believe has happened yet 133 in a curriculum I have encountered. It has certainly not happened in the 134 COLLEGE department, where courses are taught by brand-new "teaching 135 fellows" who agree upon a core curriculum but all refuse to teach it and 136 instead occasionally do and say things ranging from the abhorrent (see: 137 Ameer Loggins) to the casually wrong (my teacher suggested, and doubled 138 down on, a claim that China and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are more 139 accountable to the citizenry of their nations than the United States 140 government). 141 142 [^2]: Which, while we are on the subject: I'm saving my spring break 143 trip for my Q3 post. 144 145 [^3]: Small sample size, but still.