Digression and Regression with Oliver

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

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

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

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