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College Advice - 1. Parents

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Now that I’ve almost finished my first year of college, looking back, I can definitely say that I’ve changed and gotten better at being an adult, meaning that I’ve gotten used to being more independent. When I first combed the Internet for advice about how to survive my first year of college, I got some good advice. In fact, I read Cal Newport’s book How to Win at College: Surprising Secrets for Success twice. There were some tips that were really helpful: the psychological tricks to study and be productive, scheduling classes and activities, making more connections with professors, and other tips that fell into general “duh of course I should do that” things that I just wasn’t aware of (scholarships, taxes). While these tips were useful, a lot of them were just tips about resources at college that I was aware existed already. However, I have discovered that lately, college isn’t as complicated as a lot of people make it out to be. Sure, the sheer volume of tasks that need to g
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Life at Williams - 2. Social Life

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This is the second part of my three-part series about life at Williams as a first year student. I am drawing primarily upon my first semester experience here at Williams. Social life is a really broad term, so I will break it down into different parts: clubs/sports, talks and colloquia, off-campus life. 1. Clubs/Sports We have many clubs on campus. I will try to categorize the clubs here, but know that this is simply to give the best overview possible. There are clubs that social activity groups, like gaming, go, quilting, book discussion, etc. We club sports here too, notably ultimate frisbee, tennis, and volleyball, along with some other lesser known ones like climbing, martial arts, figure skating, equestrian. Williams has a really quirky social environment. We are NCA Division III so most athletes don't have to commit crazy amounts of time to their sport. As my friends have told me, I would say that at Williams you don't have to commit more time than you usually com
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Life at Williams - 1. The Classes

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College life has been very interesting. I have had a blast overall, opening me up to many new experiences and meeting a lot of new people. This is the first post of a series of posts about different aspects of life at Williams #1 - The Courses My freshman year I took chemistry, psychology, multivariable calculus, and ancient Greek philosophy. I enjoyed all my classes, though not all to the same degree. CHEM 155 - My chemistry professor was really excited all the time and always moved around constantly while teaching. He absolutely blazed through a lot of material, but at the same time, I felt like it was at a good pace, since he was really good at connecting previous ideas to new ones. MATH 151 - Multivariable was my least favorite class, mostly since I had grown to dislike lecture-based math courses in high school. The professor was really great, but I just didn't like having concepts taught to me before actually using them. I believe I learn math best when I'm bo
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Mob Psycho 100

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https://myanimelist.cdn-dena.com/images/anime/5/79183l.jpg Think of a show starring two characters. One character is extremely popular at school, gets amazing grades, and is genuinely adored by his peers. This character’s brother is very quiet, gets poor grades, and is terrible at almost every activity he tries to. The only redeeming quality about the brother is his incredible psychic abilities; he can bend spoons and throw people. Who in this case would have an inferiority complex? The brother, right? He has this power to hurt other people and has a brother who is a thousand times more popular than he is. Unfortunately, that's wrong. Mob Psycho 100 breaks many TV tropes like these. Mob Psycho 100 is an anime produced by Studio BONES with a 12 episode run for its first season airing from Jul 11, 2016 to Sep 27, 2016. Mob Psycho 100 is adapted from the web comic drawn by Internet artist ONE and is about an 8th grader called Mob who has psychic abilities but is a
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Why I Attend Williams College

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Williams College, ranked #1 National Liberal Arts College by US News, #2 in Best Undergraduate Teaching, and #4 in Best Value College. Williams College is different from other colleges. My mother first told me that her coworkers who knew about Williams spoke of it like it was a "Little Harvard." I didn't really understand the nickname's true meaning until I got here. I applied to Williams College Early Decision, mostly because I felt strongly about a liberal arts education and loved my one-day visit here. The admission counselor's talk was more than just selling the college to us, but also trying to help us find the best fit. This was starkly different from college visits to Dartmouth or USC, in which the counselors would talk for 45 minutes about the great opportunities at their school. The counselor's humility at Williams struck a chord within me, and I knew I wanted to be here after that talk. Something that helped me gain a lot of insight into Willia
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Why We Study Limits In Calculus

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Good morning class, my name is Olive-Verse (rap god incarnate) and today I will be your substitute Calculus teacher. Audience groans Today we will be learning about limits, but before we learn about limits, we need to know why we study them. In order to do that, we have to tell the story of Zero. This is the story of Zero. Zero was born slightly different. He simply wasn’t like the other kids. He wasn’t like the good positive numbers, like number one, tall enough to grab a book from the top shelf without a stepladder. He wasn’t like 2, who’s graceful black hair fell down perfectly straight along her back. He couldn’t crack jokes like 3 or even snap his fingers like 4. He wasn’t as fast or strong as 5, nor as agile or flexible as 6. He couldn’t even understand some of the words 7 was already using, and 8 could do a headstand. 9 could do arithmetic faster than Zero could write down the problem. The bus had ten seats and Zero would place his backpack on the seat
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Advice for the High-Achieving Freshman

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So as a high school senior, I do quite a bit of reflection upon the previous three years in terms of academic or social advice. Some of this advice pertains specifically to the high school I go to, Evergreen Valley High School, whereas other is general. Also, because this advice is something I would give my freshman self, it will be focused toward the college-bound, academic rigor seeking, and resume building, student. 1. AP National Scholar ( https://professionals.collegeboard.com/k-12/awards/ap-scholar ) In order to get an award for taking lots of APs, the AP National Scholar Award is given for taking 8 AP exams and scoring an average of 4 or higher on them; basically take 8 AP exams and score 4 or 5 on all of them and you’ll get it. This award is the only one that is worth it, there are other awards listed on the College Board website, but they all pale in comparison. The reason I want to get this out of the way is that I myself only took 7 APs, only one short of be
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