Table of Contents

Fall

Courses

I just realized I haven't blogged about where I ended up going to college yet. During application season, I wanted to major at math/cs at either Harvard or MIT (like literally everyone else). Somehow I got waitlisted by both, all of the good Ivy League schools that are good at math, and the computer science programs at Berkeley and CMU. I didn't even apply to that many schools, so I had more waitlists than acceptances/rejections combined.

For a while I was quite frustrated, but I guess that's just how life goes sometimes. Eventually, I decided to turn down a couple schools to join my older sister at Williams.

Luckily, Williams was generous enough to let me skip a bunch of stuff, which allowed me to jump straight into more exciting electives. Here's are the courses I took in my first semester:

• MATH 426: Differential Topology. Solid overall, though the initial point-set topology review felt redundant. The midterm was unexpectedly tough, but my final project on $G^\infty$-DeWitt Supermanifolds was fun.
• MATH 497: Local Fields and Roots Systems. We did both PAWS courses. The local fields material was cool but too brief, while the root systems part was too basic for me. I tried to read MIT 18.785 but got busy and eventually stopped.
• STAT 341: Probability. Well-taught with manageable homework. Overall, a good course that fit my expectations.
• PHYS 201: Electricity and Magnetism. Less engaging than expected, with too much lab and no advanced math, but well-taught overall.
• ENGL 112: Introduction to Literary Criticism. The term "literary criticism" was never even mentioned once in class.
• PE: 3v3 Basketball. We played in 3v3 in the court behind my dorm and it was a nice way to relax after class.

I also audited a course without receiving credit. To earn credit, I needed to attend 2/3 of the classes, but due to a scheduling conflict with another attendance-based course, I only attended 1/3 of the sessions and kept up by reading the lecture notes. When the notes stopped being posted, I attended about once every two weeks.

• MATH 326: Differential Geometry. The formulas got quite ugly and the course was computationally heavy, but the ideas were neat.

Occasionally, I crashed the topology and measure theory courses with friends to avoid boredom, but I attended very sporadically (maybe once a month) and thus did not learn much.

Other

Here are some other things I did:

• Research! I got a funded research project with Professor Yang on the representation theory of Lie algebras.
• BIMSA. I audited a lot of BIMSA courses, starting many but finishing few. The most memorable were Advanced Complex Analysis and Algebraic Curves, which I completed. I also watched 1/3 to 1/2 of five other courses. Had a great time overall!
• Yale/MIT Study Group on Affine Quantum Groups and Categories $\mathcal{O}$. Watched the lecture recordings, will post complete notes later. Really enjoyed this!

Winter

Winter Break

Winter break was a blast!

• I went skiing at Okemo for the first time in a couple of years. The mountain was still fairly empty, the weather wasn't too cold, and the snow conditions were good.
• I spent some time in NYC and checked out the beautiful holiday decorations at Bryant Park and Rockefeller Center.
• I spent a lot of time talking to friends at other schools, including reading Hartshorne's Algebraic Geometry with nocredit.
• I made an attempt to complete all of the Yale graduate representation theory courses I could find. Notes will be posted at some point.
• I went to JMM.

Winter Study

Williams requires everyone to take a single winter study course to waste everyone's time. The classes are obscure, not very academic, and no one learns much. There's no homework as well, so everyone is stuck on campus bored.

After missing the first week to go to JMM, I got kicked out of my course and switched into a different one:

• MATH 12: The Mathematics Of Lego. The goal of was to build a Lego man in under two minutes. We did it on my second day back, and the professor cancelled class for the rest of winter study.

With not much to do, I mostly relaxed and read various math books in the library. I also went to club hockey a lot.

I'm excited for the spring semester. Happy (belated) 春节 everyone!