For the last five weeks, I attended MCSP. Here is a recap of my experience:

Table of Contents

Favorite Events

Camp Scheduled Events

1. Favorite classes: Overly Convoluted Plans, Jacobi Sums, The Residue Theorem, A curious connection between $p$-adic distances and triangulations of a square, The Uncertainty Principle
2. Favorite colloquiums: 1, 2, 5, 14… FRIEZE; Hyperspheres; Heisenberg geometry
3. Favorite schedule board events: capture the flag in the dark, original basketball session, throw throw burrito, DALLE
4. Favorite weekend activities: hardcore hike #1, kayaking, campus fun day

Week 1

Academics

Classes

• Computability Theory. This class was pretty fast-paced, and I quickly realized I couldn't keep up with every single detail. I spam wrote a ton of notes and the first few days were manageable, but by the end of the week, I was struggling pretty hard - especially with the Friedberg-Muchnik theorem. The homework was also pretty tough, and I didn't make much progress on most of the problems. Still, I think this subject is fascinating, and I'm excited to revisit it sometime soon!
• Complexity Theory. This class started off slow for me, as I had already seen a lot of the material. But the last few days were new material to me and quite intruiging. The homework was pretty straightforward, except for the challenge problems, which were wild - one of the Day 4 problems had a difficult rating of "3 Grad Students took 4 hours." One of the downsides of the course was that there were a lot of references to video games that I hadn't heard of before, which made certain examples hard to follow.
• Overly Convoluted Plans. This class used Convolutions and the Fourier Transform on using Fourier stuff to understand why the pattern of the Borwein Integrals breaks down. The topic was presented in a super clear and engaging way, and the homework was actually doable and satisfying. I didn't think I was an analysis person, but now I'm really interested in Fourier Analysis!
• Jacobi Sums. When I saw the Wikipedia page, I knew this class would be super challenging. And it certainly lived up to that, as it was probably the hardest class I took at mcsp for the entire summer. Fortunately, it was taught very well, and the parts that I kept up where very cool. Even though I couldn't finish all the problem sets, the problems I did solve were incredibly rewarding. I really enjoyed this class, and definitely will look at this topic again.

Colloquium

• Day 1: How To Avoid Getting Eaten By Bears... In Space!. This talk was about whether a camper could escape equally fast bear(s) where the boundary area was a circle or a higher dimensional sphere. The topic was super cool, the lecturer had a good sense of humor so it was easy to stay focused, and the solution was pretty elegant and easy to understand. I really enjoyed this talk!
• Day 2: Applied Game Theory. This talk was less about math and more about humorous real-life applications of game theory. It felt more like a comedy show than a lecture, but it was still entertaining.
• Day 3: Three Term Arithmetic Progressions. This went over some history of the topic, which I hadn't seen before. I also learned that arithmetic combinatorics is a thing that I should be interested in.
• Day 4: Counting Things With Bad Maps. This talk was about the Borsuk Ulam Theorem. I got lost really quickly in this talk, but it seems like people with a better analysis background than me found it interesting.
• Day 5: 1, 2, 5, 14... FRIEZE. This talk was about frieze patterns and it was really visually appealing. It was also easy to understand and quite mindblowing.

Other

• Day 6: Relays. I participated in the hardcore division. My favorite problem was the one about squirrels and bears traveling on a spaceship.

Nonacademics

Field Trips

Hardcore Hike

Waking up at 6:45 was rough, but I got some decent sleep on the long bus ride to the trailhead. The hike started off pretty boring (heavy backpack, steep trail), but things got much better once we broke above the treeline and enjoyed some stunning views. After a 30 minute rest on a rock, I finally reached the rest of the group at the top and ate lunch.

Afterwards, we were given 3 options to choose from, and I chose to climb to a nearby peak. I wasn't paying attention when the front pack left, so I spent a long time trying to catch up. It was very steep, but eventually I caught up on the other peak. I tried to stick with this group going back to the original peak, but I got a leg cramp somewhere in between and spent close to 20 mins dropping rocks on my thighs. Fortunately, my muscle loosened eventually and I continued walking alone.

The hike back down the mountain was brutal. After going back below treeline, the view got a bit bland, and I was stuck smack in the middle between the front group and the back group (which were multiple hours apart from each other) so I had no one to talk to. At some point I felt like the hike would end soon, but then it just kept going and going and going and going. For hours. Eventually I caught up with the front group that was exploring a cave system and I thought we were close to the end, but then we proceeded to walk another 45 minutes. The walk back felt triple the length of the walk up.

At the start of the hike I turned on my Runkeeper app, but it decided to go insane for the whole hike and registered the following stats: 88.47 miles at a 6:30 min/mi pace and burned a total of 4,183 calories! I also managed to run mile 11 in 28 seconds!

Here are the real stats: first peak (13.something miles) + second peak (3.something miles) is approximately 17 miles. Total hike was 9hr30min.

Ice Skating Trip

Not much to report here. I zoomed around a bit and failed to teach some people how to skate. The extremely dull skates were a bit sketchy but they were sufficient enough to skate at around 50% of my max speed.

Other

• Day 0: Referee racing - a bracket style tournament where two people race down a road and back, and the loser of each race calls out a handicap that all following racers need to follow. This was really fun!
• Day 1: 400m race on the track. After eating a big meal, I probably shouldn't have raced so hard, but I'm happy to say I won! It was a fun challenge, and the adrenaline felt great.
• Day 1: Exploring the trails on campus. The trails were beautiful, and it's really nice how so many of the trails circle to different parts of campus.
• Day 2: Walking around campus in the dark.
• Days 4, 5: Solving Overly Convoluted Plans homework in LJ119.
• Day 6: Throwing an inflatable burrito at random crowds.
• Day 8: Dunking.
• Day 9: Exploring Miller and sleeping on the beanbags.
• Day ?: Putney clap circle...

Week 2

Academics

Classes

• Residue Theorem. Every result presented in this class was elegant. The methods and results feel almost absurd, like someone took too many drugs before startign to play around with complex functions, and somehow ended up with stunningly beautiful conclusions. I didn't do much of the homework, but the lectures were really easy to focus in and follow. I'm definitely planning to take an official complex analysis course when I get the chance.
• Hales Jewett Theorem. Ackermann Function was cool, but the super tall power towers eventually drained my brain power and I didn't have much motivation to grind this class over my other classes. Every proof was basically just span induction until you solve it or get bored. Unfortunately, I don't think this course convinced me that this topic is worth revisiting later.
• The Continuum Hypothesis: Week 1. I probably should've picked a lighter class before lunch, but I thought this would be an interesting challenge. Instead, I learned that model theory is my least favorite math topic!!! I followed this class well for the first bit but had very low motivation to do anything outside of class on this so I started getting a bit lost after the Mostowski Collapse Lemma.

Colloquium

• Day 11: Map Coloring Tourism. This was basically coloring stuff which unfortunately isn't really my thing. The jokes in the talks were funny, but the math presented in this talk wasn't particularly interesting. I did hear a lot of people enjoyed this talk though!
• Day 12: Fruit Math Memes. This talk was on question of solving the equation $\frac{a}{b+c}+\frac{b}{a+c}+\frac{c}{a+b}$ and it's backstory. I read about this problem a few months prior to camp so nothing was really new to me and thus it wasn't too interesting. If you haven't heard of this problem before, I do suggest you check it out!

Other

• Days 9 and 10: Project selection fair and first project meeting! This was fun and I successfully got assigned to the project that I really wanted to do! The official name of the project is "Is It Cake? Is It A Quiver Rep?" Really excited!

Nonacademics

Acadia Field Trip

We woke up early for a long bus ride to Acadia, which initially felt a bit hectic, but I caught up on sleep during the long bus ride. The trip was split into a morning and afternoon activity.

In the morning, I opted for a laid-back beach experience. The water was freezing, but after a few minutes, I got used to it. I even spotted a dead jellyfish floating by, which was pretty cool but probably not safe. After drying off, I grabbed lunch and relaxed on the beach for a while.

The afternoon activity was a hardcore hike, which was under 5 miles but had its challenges. I found myself stuck between the faster front group and the slower back group again, so I was alone for most of the hike. The view wasn't spectacular since it was super foggy and I could barely see beyond 10 feet, but there was a pretty cool pond at the bottom of the trail where I spotted a frog. Not the most exciting hike, but it was still nice to get out and explore.

Other

• Day 10: Spamming homework in the bottom floor of Miller until 10:45 PM.
• Day 12: Playing Throw Throw Burrito for the first time! We played two games, and I won both of them. The second game took forever and lasted several hours because I had the fear me token for the entire time but couldn't beat one of my competitors in the card game portion. Eventually we had to go sign in so we did a final duel and I won. This was super fun!
• Day 13: 3 Player Chess. That game is so broken.
• Day 14: Sleeping in the middle of the day.

Week 3

Academics

Classes

• Representation Theory of Finite Groups: Week 1. This class turned out to be a bigger brain drain than I anticipated, but I managed to keep up better than expected, so I ended up pretty happy. I thought it would be as tough as the Continuum Hypothesis course, but it was actually a bit more manageable, even though it had its difficult moments. The lectures were easy to follow and very well taught, which made the material a lot more digestible. My only complaint was that there were no lecture notes available, and the handwritten homework sets, while legible, were a bit tedious after a long day. Still, I finally learned Maschke's Theorem, which I'd heard about before but never understood. It's a really cool result, and I'll definitely be revisiting this topic in the future.
• Arrow's impossibility theorem. This three-day course started off intriguing but quickly took a turn when ultrafilters) entered the picture. I just couldn't get into them, and they kind of killed my enthusiasm for the topic. On the bright side, the class was well taught, and I managed to finish almost all the homework, so I didn't fall behind. I doubt I'll revisit ultrafilters anytime soon, but I did enjoy the initial discussion of Arrow's impossibility theorem.
• Zero Knowledge Proofs. A two-day class on Zero Knowledge Proofs should have been fascinating, but I had already encountered most of the material beforehand, so I struggled to stay engaged. I fell asleep in both sessions, despite the fact that the topic itself is really cool. If you're new to ZKPs, it's definitely worth checking out though.
• Continuum Hypothesis: Week 2. The second week of this course was a rollercoaster. It started off manageable, but midway through, I was completely lost. On day 3, I felt like I was staring at hieroglyphics. By the final day, I started to get a grasp of what was going on. This was definitely the hardest class I've taken at MCSP, and I don't think I understood enough to properly judge it. I want to dive into it again someday, but it's going to have to wait until I'm more mathematically mature.

Colloquium

• Day 16: Everyone Hates Analysis. This talk was supposed to showcase some of the "cool" aspects of analysis (continuous but nowhere differentiable functions) but honestly, it just made me dislike analysis even more. If you're into analysis, you probably found it interesting, but for me, it had the opposite effect.
• Day 17: Hyperspheres. The best colloquium of camp. The speaker did an amazing job presenting mind-blowing, counterintuitive ideas, and it was all explained in the clearest way possible. I left this talk feeling completely fascinated. The speaker recommended checking out Conway's Sphere packings, lattices, and groups at the end of the talk, which I will do.
• Day 18: High-dimension Oranges. I was pretty tired during this talk and ended up falling asleep. I heard from others that it was really interesting though!
• Day 19: Heisenberg Geometry. Also super amazing! I got lost at the very start, but started understanding stuff halfway down the talk and the rest of it was very enjoyable. It was presented well and the topic was cool. Definitely going to look at this again!

Other

• Day 16: Project meeting. I'm starting to lean more toward quiver representations rather than semisimple Lie algebras, so I'll probably shift my focus that way in the coming weeks. Super excited about my project!
• Day 20: Relays. I did hardcore division again, but I forgot to bring paper and only was able to headsolve one problem. Also, I didn't really know anyone on my team and we were significantly weaker than the previous week, so it was less fun.

Nonacademics

Field Trips

Kayaking Trip

The kayaking trip was a bit short: four hours of bus rides, one hour of actually kayaking, and one hour for lunch and chill time. As usual, I spent most of the bus rides catching up on sleep.

While in the kayaks, we started a race which was really fun. My team was in first place for most of the race - until some sneaky competitors pushed us off course and into a rock. We ended up finishing second, which was a bit of a letdown. After that, the rest of the kayaking was pretty uneventful.

The lunch and chill part was basically just me asserting dominance over everyone at spikeball.

Whitewater Rafting Trip

The least fun field trip. We had to wake up super early (6:30 AM) and I was already sleep-deprived, which made the day feel even longer. The rafting itself wasn't very exciting, and the guide overhyped a waterfall we were supposed to encounter, only to reveal that we had already passed it without even noticing. The rest of the rafting felt like we were just floating aimlessly for hours, going 1 mph with nothing to see.

When we reached the lunch stop, it started pouring rain. It was cold, and since we were forced to wear sneakers and hiking boots on the raft, my soggy socks made everything worse. The food they served was a huge disappointment and was worse than campus food. Overall, not the best experience.

Other

• Day 16: Napping on the field's logo.
• Day 17: 100m sprints on the track.
• Day 19: Basketball with others.
• Day 20: Funny MCSP stories from past years. This was more entertaining than I expected!
• Day 20: Capture the Flag. The best schedule board event of camp. The location was perfect, the glow sticks in the dark created an awesome atmosphere, and the teams were evenly matched. I'm proud to say that my team won twice!
• Day 21, 22: Spamming my project in the dorms.

Week 4

Academics

Classes

• A curious connection between p-adic distances and triangulations of a square. This class turned out to be much harder than advertised, but also super cool! The best part was realizing I had thought about Monsky's Theorem on my own before even knowing it had a name. The homework was tough, and some problems took forever, so I didn't manage to finish everything. But the lectures were engaging, and the topic itself was a lot of fun. I'd love to revisit this one soon and dive deeper into the connection.
• Representation Theory of Finite Groups: Week 2. This week felt like a major jump in difficulty. I got lost in a few lectures, especially in the middle of the week. I didn't spend as much time on homework for this class because I was more interested in other courses, but when I did manage to follow the lectures, they were actually pretty fun. This is definitely near the top of my list for things to revisit once camp is over.
• Galois Theory. I was expecting this class to be a bit more exciting, but it ended up feeling a bit slow and bogged down in the details. I was hoping to learn more about the Abel-Ruffini Theorem, but that wasn't really covered, which was a bummer. I didn't quite grasp what makes Galois Theory so intriguing for some people, but I've heard it's a pretty cool topic, so I'll definitely give it another shot in the future.

Colloquium

• Day 24: Graph On Graph Off . This talk was mostly understandable, and even when it wasn't, it was still cool. I liked how integrals just seemed to pop out of nowhere, which was definitely not something I expected from a talk that looked like it was about graph theory. It was a pleasant surprise!
• Day 25: Killing the Cookie Monster. Goodstein's Theorem is logic and I don't like logic so this colloquium wasn't that intruiging.

Other

• Day 26: Project meeting. Fun but super hard.
• Day 27: Relays. I participated in the hardcore division and it was water themed. This time, I remembered to bring a pencil and paper so I actually solved a few problems. It was more fun than the previous relay but not the first relay.

Nonacademics

Campus Fun Day

• Woke up early, but no one else was up, so I spent about an hour just walking around campus.
• Joined the ping pong tournament last second and played two matches. I won the first game and then lost the second game, before the official tournament ended and I decided to head to capture the flag.
• Day 20's capture the flag was really fun so I was expecting this one too be good as well. When I finally got to the location, I was expecting to see other people playing capture the flag. Instead, I was greeted with: "Wow, you look dry!!!" which was then followed by multiple water balloons that soaked me completely wet.
• Played capture the flag dripping wet. While the event was scheduled for the field, one of the organizers didn't want to move so we played super lame 3v3 capture the flag because everyone else was at the field instead. When everyone figured out what was happening, the JC did not want to move to the field, so we played capture the flag on very rough terrain. I won the flag once, but also fell and started dripping blood, on both of my knees and my elbow. Then less than 15 minutes after the first game started, everyone left for lunch. And thus, the event I was looking forward to the most, became the lamest event of the day.
• I went back to the water area. Got into a water fight and then decided to join the dunk tank people.
• Went to zorb soccer. It wasn't exactly great because it was super hot in there and the one time I tried to flip I fell out of the zorb headfirst because my seatbelt was broken.
• Had another water fight, and dunked two more staff into the dunk tank.
• Raced others in the bouncy house. But then my knee started dripping blood again so I left.
• Snow cone break, then went to play badminton. Unfortunately we got the birdie stuck in a tree and spent more time using a volleyball to get the birdie down than actually playing badminton.
• 1 mile run on the indoor track, which was somehow hotter than the outdoor weather.
• Went stargainzing. The sky was really nice, but I went with a much larger and louder group so it wasn't perfect. It was still a very nice way to end the day though.
• Walked into the bathroom with a bloodsoaked towel. Sorry to the one camper that I might've traumatized.

Other

• Day 24: Stargazing.
• Day 25: DALLE event.
• Day 26: Throw Throw Burrito 2.0. Destroyed everyone as usual.
• Day 26: Squid Game. I kept getting shot at for no reason, got a whole bottle of water dumped on top of me. I had no idea what was happening for most of it but it was fun.
• Day 27: Walking around campus
• Day 25, 26, 27: Squirrels attack my earbuds case???
• Day 28: Puzzle hunt. I overslept and contributed only a little because I don't like puzzle hunts that much.
• Day 28: Ditching puzzle hunt to walk around campus.
• Day 28: Dance. Glow sticks are cool, balloons that light up are cool, it was fun watching people troll by removing the cover to project the DJ's screen onto the big screen.

Week 5

Academics

Classes

• Counting With Polynomials. This was my only four-day class this week, and it was a tough one! But surprisingly, I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. The material was hard, though, and I struggled a bit with the homework. We covered a lot of cool topics, like incidence geometry and the Erdös distinct distances problem. I really wish I had a stronger background in analysis for this class, because I think I would've gotten a lot more out of it if I did. That said, I definitely want to revisit this topic once I'm better at analysis!
• The Riemann Zeta Function. This was a three-day class, and while it was very interesting, it was much easier than advertised and too slow. It was taught well, and I could follow without thinking much or writing anything down. The homework was very doable and I did almost all of it. I'm pretty happy that I took this class, and will definitely revisit analytical number theory again.
• The Littlewood-Richardson Rule. This was a two-day class, and honestly, I wasn't the biggest fan. The material seemed to lack motivation: lots of ideas just kind of popped up out of nowhere, and the problems felt like they were just about applying random rules. It wasn't too hard to follow, but I didn't get enough exposure to Young Tableaux to really decide if I like them. I think I'll revisit this later when I'm more familiar with Young tableau.
• The Golay Code. This was another two-day class, and I was quite excited for it. Unfortunately, it turned out to not be my type of math, and it was the last class before lunch, so I was zoned out for most of it. I didn't have enough motivation to do the homework, but at least I know that error correction isn't something I enjoy.
• Primes In The Eisenstein Integers. This was also a two-day class, and while it wasn't bad, it didn't quite live up to my expectations. The classroom was super hot, which made it harder to concentrate, but the material itself was presented well. Even though it wasn't the most exciting, it was a solid introduction to Eisenstein integers. I don't think I'll be revisiting this one anytime soon, though.
• The Combinatorial Nullstellensatz. Another two-day class, but it was super fun!!! It was taught really well, and I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. The topic was fun, and I'd definitely love to revisit it in the future.
• The Uncertainty Principle. This was a one-day class, and it was definitely my favorite class of the week! Fourier analysis is super cool, and I found this topic really engaging. I just wish it was longer because it felt like we barely scratched the surface. I'm definitely going to revisit Fourier analysis soon, for sure.
• The Sound of Proof. This was another one-day class, but it was more of a break from the math grind. It didn't have much math in it, but it was still decently interesting. I matched every pair wrong!
• Evil Floating Point Bit Level Hacking. Another one-day class that wasn't really a math course, but rather a CTF problem analysis. It was a fun diversion and presented well, but I wished it was more mathematical.
• Why June Huh won the Fields Medal. This was a one-day class and definitely one of the highlights of the week. Learning about June Huh's work in algebraic geometry was super inspiring, and it made me want to dive deeper into the field. I'm definitely planning to explore algebraic geometry more in the future.

Colloquium

• Day 31: Future of You. Most of the advice was stuff I already knew, and I feel like I could've gotten the same insights from reading the handout at the end.

Other

• Day 32, 33: Project fair setup and presentations. Setting up the project fair was fun, and there were a lot of cool projects being presented. It was really inspiring to see the work everyone had put into their projects over the course of the camp!
• Day 33, 34: Math Until We Die. I was planning to stay for longer, but I got lost right after Perron's Formula was presented and I was hungry so I went back to the dorms to sleep. I heard that some people succeeded in staying until breakfast, so congrats to them!
• Day 34: Relays. Participated in hardcore division and got a spot on a really good team. The questions felt more interesting than the previous rounds, and I contributed more than I expected. Pretty fun!

Nonacademics

Other

• Day 33: Talent show. My favorite two performances were Brutally Abusing Google Drawings and Finite Simple Group Of Order Two.
• Day 34: Walking around campus.
• Day 34: Nose typing.
• Day 34: Final assembly.

All Nighter Finale

• Chasing after vehicles.
• Signing yearbooks.
• Squid Game. With my amazing luck, I had to carve out a paper umbrella using only my hands. I died within 5 minutes.
• Stargazing. I miss the stars now.
• Sunrise. It was so beautiful!
• Breakfast and lunch, while watching everyone leave.
• Walking around campus for possibly the last time ever.