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Similar anecdote: I deeply believe that Caltech is the best[0] university for me (and that's even while I'm struggling with major burnout due to an insanely rou
by BalinKing 6y ago
Similar anecdote: I deeply believe that Caltech is the best[0] university for me (and that's even while I'm struggling with major burnout due to an insanely rough sophomore year[1]—even though my current situation is decidedly suboptimal, I don't regret a thing).
My particular favorite aspects of Caltech are three-fold (in no specific order):
1) The Honor Code and collaborative nature, for the reasons you've mentioned :-)
2) The breadth of the Core and CS major requirements. e.g. I really doubt that I would have found a fascination for physics, without Caltech having required me to take two terms of special relativity and electrodynamics as a freshman.
3) The theoretical focus. Even though I'm a CS major, my classes are often proof-based. One (non-CS-specific) example was Ma 1a, the mandatory first-quarter freshman calculus class: It spent the first two weeks building up the real numbers (i.e. starting from the Peano axioms). Caltech's theoretical-ness has a particularly special place in my heart, because it's one of the big reasons I recently cared to learn about interactive theorem proving and formal verification (which I love so much that I'm working on a undergraduate research project in Coq).
[0] (among the universities that I know enough about)
[1] I'm honestly a bit hesitant to share about my burnout publicly (since mental health issues can have stigmas and I don't want to shoot myself in the foot re: grad schools or employers), but HN is sufficiently anonymous (at a casual glance) that this feels safe enough.
- divbzero 6y ago> hesitant to share about my burnout publicly Wish this weren’t the case! The more open and okay we are with it the less perceived stigma there will be. We should consider it as typical and normal as physical conditions like asthma or diabetes that many of us have experienced or live with today.
- neolog 6y ago> sufficiently anonymous your name is in your profile
- Eduardo3rd 6y agoI'm not an MIT alumnus, but if I was one I feel like this joke would write itself.
- m463 6y agomaybe BalinKing IS from MIT and the joke's on all the caltech readers.
- vulcan01 6y agoI didn't realise clicking on the name lead to the profile for 2 months after I started lurking on HN. It's not that obvious...
- lostlogin 6y agoSecurity in obscurity. I can’t gloat, after 10 years I recently discovered I can favourite threads. It’s changed everything.
- saagarjha 6y agoHacker News has a number of little hidden features that you find as you keep using it. It's like an easter egg hunt of sorts, I guess. You could blame part of it on poor UI or whatnot, but I personally find it kind of fun to discover new things about the site (having a general understanding of how it works, so it's not like I am missing some critical functionality).
- BalinKing 6y agoYeah, but that’s an extra click that would require more effort than a quick Google search... I’m not worried about a determined attacker here ;-)
- kaitai 6y agoAlso, the intersection of people thinking (burnout at Caltech = tautology) and (reading HN is a good way to flick) is sufficiently large that I really think there will be no negative repercussions if you otherwise conduct yourself honorably online. Hi from an '03 mole whose is mildly surprised you're hitting that wall in sophomore year -- back when I was there it was junior year. But hey, I didn't do CS :)
- lordgrenville 6y agoI guess he thinks of it as a trapdoor function - it's trivial to find his name given the comment, but just given his name it's probably hard to turn up this comment.
- BalinKing 6y agoTIL the term "trapdoor function"—and also, you're correct[0] :-) [0] with the added protection that someone non-HN-familiar might not know to click on the profile name to get more information
- sn41 6y agoI did not go to Caltech. But my advisor did, and he is a mathematician who attended Feynman's lectures on computation. (Again the breadth : a math Ph.D taking a course in theory of computation from a Physicist.) Feynman's requirement for an A grade in the course was "prove something original". Someone timidly asked, "Well, what if we can't?" He replied: "Then I feel sorry for you." I wish my history were slightly different. But you must be more discreet, I think. It's not wise to give intimate medical information to strangers who might not be medical experts. All the best for your future.