Revival

A recap and a return

Here are some things that I've done in the last two years, in mostly chronological order.

Join Harvard

I made a webapp with a group of friends that would help undergrads at Harvard discover new extracurricular activities to join. It's called Join Harvard, and it's now on the Harvard University IT's Student App Spotlight, which is the homepage of every computer in the Science Center. I later wrote Building Join Harvard, a blog post detailing the development and design process my team and I went through for making this app.

I made this with some friends over the course of a week.

Summertime Radness

In the summer, I interned at AmerisourceBergen on the mobility team and worked a lot with mobile apps, iPods, Androids, and mobile device management. I convinced my manager to send me to Vegas with the rest of the mobility team to work a company trade show and had a blast. This was also the summer I learned to ballroom dance. I took dance lessons covering waltz, foxtrot, club swing, salsa, and merengue.

At the end of the summer, I visited Peru for a month as part of the Harvard-UTEC collaborative field project. We learned about air filters, and we made water filters in Lima, Peru. We also visited a shanty town in San Juan de Lurigancho and several tourist stops, Cuzco, on the way to and back from the Pallancata silver mines in mountains 4700 meters above sea level.

Shanty Towns in San Juan de Lurigancho

Sleep No More

When school started again, I started experimenting with my sleep patterns, trying out the Dual-Core Sleep cycle, which involves four hours of sleep at night, a 1.5 hour nap in the morning, and a 30 min nap in the afternoon. I also accidentally slept through my four person seminar several times... possibly related to my sleep schedule, I'm not sure. Incidentally, this was also the best I did academically at Harvard, so I'm going to say that my crazy sleep schedule totally worked.

Either that, or it was the semester that I discovered my love of sociology, primarily though an amazing sociology course called Class and Culture. It was the the scrapbook/journal assignment that made me realize how seemingly dense sociological concepts apply to every day life. 

When I came back from winter break, I began the Campaign for a Nap Space. I started a petition, sent out a survey to research people's thoughts on napping and getting a campus nap room, made a nap map, and got a lot of press in the process. Here's a selection:

• "Harvard Nap Room Under Consideration After Student's Petition Finds Support." The Huffington Post.
• "On-campus nap room proposed at Harvard." USA Today College.
• "Shhhh. Harvard student hopes to open campus nap room." Boston.com.
• "Petitions Address Nap Space, Brain Break." The Harvard Crimson.
• "Harvard Considers Adding a Nap Room." Hack College.

Thought Catalog

Some time after this, I had my first piece of submitted writing published by Thought Catalog! Yes, another listicle. 8 Ways To Beat Loneliness! Yes, they really work!

Time Out

At some point I accepted a co-op position at Akamai Technologies and began working there full-time. It meant that I had to take time off from school, but I met one of my closest friends to this day during my co-op, so I would say that it was worth it.

Taking time off from school allowed me to be introspective and write without worrying about papers or problem sets. I wrote a few pieces on finding a mission statement, and focusing on specific projects instead of taking on too much at once, while also giving yourself a space to explore every idea that interests you.

I wrote a personal mission statement to guide me during my time off.

I also interned as a user experience design intern in New York for a while. It was fun, I met cool people, and I lived in East Village. Here's a guest post that I wrote for Let's Go Travel Guide on finding summer housing in NYC.

Revival

The last two years have been eventful, and I wrote a lot, but now that I'm back at Harvard, I want to return to this blog and continue reflecting on my adventures here.

Hello World

The first page I ever customized was my user page on Neopets, a virtual pet game, that was popular when I was in elementary school. It was straight copy-paste, though I had a general idea that div elements somehow separated my content from one another and it was not a good idea to edit anything between style tags unless I had a good idea of what I was doing. I learned some CSS after a while (check out that opacity yo), but eventually I grew out of Neopets and moved on to other things like drawing and surviving middle school.

Fast forward to college, when I enrolled in my first computer science class freshman fall and learned the languages I use now for web development (HTML/CSS, PHP, and JavaScript). My second computer science class was about user experience design and though the class was poorly organized and my teaching fellow stopped giving my team feedback on our assignments halfway through the course, I still loved what I learned.

It inspired me to finally take action on the website ideas that had been crowding my thoughts for the better part of a year. 2013 was the year that I made Join Harvard with Sharon Zhou, George Lok, and Annie Wei. It was also the year that I installed Linux Mint on my Windows machine to make development easier. I've since started to document all the issues I've run into, especially since nothing ever seems to work out of the box for me on my linux machine. At some point, I'll make my problem/solution log public, in case people run into the same issues as I did. 

I've also set up a personal website to track my learning and progress towards all the initiatives, projects, and websites I've started.

Back to school

It's been one month since the start of the academic year. My classes are going really well, and I've found myself with a lot of extra free time because I've begun experimenting with a polyphasic sleep schedule where I sleep 4.5 hours each night with two 20 minute naps at 6 hour intervals. I haven't felt this inspired in a long time!

Here are two major things I want to do this semester:

1. Start a podcast where I invite someone who is affiliated with Harvard for a 30 minute conversational interview and put the recorded interview online. The first issue I want to interview people about are about class differences.
2. Start a wellness campaign where I spread awareness about polyphasic and segmented sleep schedules and the power of naps. Ultimately, I want to set up safe nap spaces around the yard where people can pop in and take a 20 minute nap.

If I can do these two things this semester, then I will consider my semester a success. Then I can start tackling the other projects that I have on my list, which are mostly coding projects or club related.

How many memoirs about Harvard are there?

So far, just two that I know of: "Penelope" by Rebecca Harrington and "That Book about Harvard" by Eric Kester. One of these books is more creatively titled than the other, though that doesn't say much considering "Penelope" is a book about a Harvard freshman named Penelope. Technically, "Penelope" isn't a memoir, but it is probably similar enough to Harrington's own freshman experiences that I'm going to consider it a memoir for the purposes of this post.

Interestingly, both authors graduated Harvard in 2008, both were involved in the Crimson, and both currently work for the Huffington Post. I'm sensing a conspiracy here.

Another fun fact about being a part of a publication at Harvard: Conan O'Brien '85 was president of the Lampoon and Jeff Zucker '86 was president of the Crimson (probably during the same years as each other). Fast forward about 25 years later: Jeff Zucker is CEO of NBC and Conan O'Brien is hosting a late night show on that same network.

Now, back to the books. I'm actually pretty interested to read these, seeing as my own freshman year was a roller coaster of emotions. My amazing academic and personal experiences were unfortunately counterbalanced by tons of social anxiety as I struggled to find my niche. I was just talking to my freshman year roommate about this last night, actually. We both came back from the summer with totally different perspectives on the upcoming year, but I'm losing my perspective a lot quicker than she is. It's only been two weeks, and I can already feel myself regressing to my freshman year mindset. Maybe these books will help me keep things in perspective.

Edit: And now a third. "A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano" by Ruben Navarrette Jr.

Takeaways from living in Los Angeles

“I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Ice Palace

Five things that helped me be happier:

1. Working out three times a week. Joining a gym with a tight community helped me get in shape and meet new people! Crossfit gyms are especially great because all the workouts are done in groups, and you generally see the same people coming to classes.

2. Going out at least twice a week. One of the best pieces of advice I read this summer is from Thought Catalog, and it goes like this: If you’re feeling depressed and you’re not sure why, there’s a 70% chance you just need to leave your apartment and be social.

3. Gaining a new skill. I wished I'd put more effort into learning how to code, but one fun cs project I did over the summer was the redesign of Harvard Fusion Magazine's website.

4. Talking to friends and family back home. It's easy to take them for granted, but they're the only people who will always be there for you when you're feeling down.

5. Reading self-help books and books written by comedians.

One website that might improve your LA experience: http://www.dailyiso.com/

One really important thing that I learned about myself:

I love living in the middle of a city. I love seeing the sides of skyscraper buildings glitter with lit office rooms. I love seeing a cluster of skyscrapers getting closer and growing bigger as I drive deeper into downtown. I love how the skyscrapers loom over me, making me feel so apart of the city yet so small in its history. I feel awe when I'm in a car going down the highway, and I see downtown rising before me. It's cheesy, I know, but I freaking feel like I'm going home.

One thing I wish I had done:

Stay as long as possible on the west coast. I went home on August 15th, which I now realize was horrible decision. I don't return to Boston until the 31st, which gives me almost a full three weeks at home. In that time, I could have couchsurfed through San Francisco or visited a friend in Seattle. I'm annoyed that I missed the chance to get more out of my west coast experience. From now on I will never spend more than a week and a half at home. I've realized that a week and a half is the perfect length of time to hang out with my family and friends while still being relieved to get out of the house at the end of my visit.

Three professions I would love to try some day

This post was inspired by the real life professions of three people in my Groundlings improv class. I've noticed that the people in my improv classes are not only really funny, but also have the coolest professions. Here are three I'd like to try some day:

1. Post-Production Editor for Playboy

Post production is the editing that takes place after a TV show, movie, or short film has finishing shooting. It involves cutting scenes, color correction, sound effects, and any other edits necessary to polish up the video.

The good part:

"I love my job," says Dawn, who works in post-production for Playboy, "I basically edit porn all day. And the people are so nice!"

The downside:

"My job is so boring!" complains Dawn. "I watch videos of naked women all day on a computer screen in a dark room. Nobody ever comes by. I'm practically starving for human interaction all day!"

I don't know what's true with her.

2. Production Assistant for Rupaul's Drag Race

Borges likes to think of himself as an old man. He owns a typewriter and wears a bathrobe at home. He has many seemingly random tattoos on his arms as a reminder of his younger days living with a tattoo artist and drinking a lot. I think he helps out on set. Lately, he's been editing the newest season.

His thoughts on his job: "You get really jaded. Now, whenever I see a hot woman walk by, I first assume she's a man. I've been burned too many times."

3. High Stakes Gambler
.
Lily is one of the few Asian females who plays poker at these $150 buy-in poker games. She got into poker after her boyfriend took her to a few tournaments.

Her thoughts on her win-loss ratio: "I know it's bad to say, but I haven't really been keeping track of my wins or losses. My boyfriend does that for me. I think I'm in the green though."

If it's possible to have controlled reckless gambling, then she's got it, and there's something strangely compelling about it.

Takeaways from my internship

Advice for work:

1. At the beginning of the summer, make sure you set up the metrics of your internship with your supervisor. In other words, make sure you know what qualities will make you a good intern in the eyes of your boss. This will also help you think about the end product of the internship: what you get out of it, what you deliver to the company, and what standards work for you.

Important questions to ask include:

• What are the deliverables? What are some tangible things I will bring to the table at the end of the summer? For me, these would include a written strategic and operational plan, research on potential grant makers, and a letter of inquiry for several local banks.
• What is expected of me? This includes expectations for how quickly you turn in assignments, how you should approach asking for more responsibilities, and the expectations for coming into the office. I had really flexible hours and would often show up pretty late. My boss didn't say anything about it until the very last week, but by then it was already too late to change. 
• What am I being measured against? How do I exceed the legacies of past interns? What do I need to do so that you consider me a successful intern at the end of the summer? 

2. Don't leave the office without asking your co-workers if there is anything you can help them out with. My boss actually praised me about on this during the mid-internship review. 

3. Ask to learn the skills you want to gain. If you don't know what skills you want to gain, ask to learn the most marketable skills. That ways, you at least leave with something desirable. If you're at a nonprofit and don't know what skill you want to gain, ask to learn about development. Development is generally the fundraising side. I've learned that I don't care for development. However, knowing how to write successful grant proposals is a highly desirable skill. The program side of a nonprofit is also a good place to start.

4. Ask for a mid-internship review and an exit interview.

5. Write a personal mission statement. This is a good exercise to figure out what you want to purpose of your internship to be. Also, it's a chance to ask yourself, what must be true in order for me to be happy at this internship? Then, make sure those factors which are critical to your happiness exist at your internship.

6. Make sure your organization is ready for your arrival. For example, I didn't get a key until the last two weeks of my internship, so I almost never knew when I was coming in; it always depended on who was in the office that day. They ordered a key two weeks after I arrived and the order was lost, so it took even longer than usual to get me the key. Some places really will forget to prepare certain things for the intern. I should have asked about the key situation in the email I sent them a week before the internship started.

What I learned:

I found that working at my particular nonprofit was a nice ease into the the working lifestyle because my hours were flexible and my deadlines were nebulous. However, I also didn't find the work particularly challenging. I was doing a lot of research that I felt like anyone could do. I also didn't feel like the work I did actually impacted the organization. I liked working on the strategic and operational plan because it would really shape the organization, but I couldn't see the impact as much when I researched potential funders. One thing my boss suggested I work on during the mid-internship review was seeing how the smaller projects I worked on fit in the 'big picture'. However, I often found that difficult to do, especially with the really small projects I was assigned. I suppose that's why I need to work on it more. I will not return to the nonprofit sector in the near future.