Early in 2023 the MIT Undergraduate Math Association had an event where course 18’s could get paired with a graduate student and chat over coffee. So naturally I got asked what I wish I knew as an undergraduate. This post records some subset of the things I said.
- Undergraduate math isn’t deep after all — it’s broad but shallow. (Graduate school is a different story.) For years, I was told that when I got to university, math would be way harder than in high school, because blah-blah-blah contests aren’t real math blah-blah-blah. Turns out I was somewhat misled.
- I wish I had taken fewer math classes. For someone that’s taken circa 30 semesters of math classes, I remember astonishingly little of what was covered. All too often I’ve had the rather depressing experience of not understanding chapters of Napkin, despite being the author.
Time as an undergraduate is really valuable, so in hindsight I don’t think this was worth the opportunity cost, since (a) I didn’t remember most of it later anyway, (b) math is easier to learn by yourself than many other fields. - Instead I should’ve taken more music and linguistics or similar. They were better taught than the math classes, and far harder to replace after graduating. In general, at MIT at least I thought the humanities classes were stronger than the technical classes, pedagogically.
- But you don’t have to drown in classwork. I started every semester by signing up for eight classes, and then taking the four that took the least time. Also, being a math major means you have almost no major requirements; you can get a math major by taking one math class per semester.
I think being intentionally light on classes was the correct decision, because — - Living on campus next to your friends is absurdly underrated. Now I’m at the age where most of my peers have graduated, gotten jobs, moved to one of the coasts, etc. In some cases they’ve gotten married and basically disappeared off the face of the Earth. And I wish I had taken more advantage of the time when everyone was basically within a 2-mile radius of each other.
- Besides, meeting new people is much easier in college. It’s much harder when you get older.
- Growing up is horrible. Seriously. Besides crappy dorms and tuition, I really miss being an undergrad.
Power Overwhelming 
one of my dreams in life is to become rich enough that i can pay all my friends to live near me. failing that i dunno, i didn’t think this through
though i now live in new york i still have a decent number of friends in a 5 km radius. but i think it’s not only about distance, but how much free time people have. or i guess, free time people can spend hanging out with people (rather than vegetating because they’re tired from work)
it’s strange to me how both of these can be true: (1) it’s harder to make friends after college (2) people still want to make friends after college
i think frosh!cj did a good job being a frosh (and whether undergrad!cj did a good job, well, they’re too near my age to say). the advice i always give frosh is to take less classes and spend more time doing extracurriculars or hanging out with friends. while frosh!cj did okay in spreading their wings and talking to lots of people and such, they might’ve been happier with a smaller courseload…
(and to be clear, this is the advice i’d give to people who’re the kind of people to listen to my advice in the first place, which is not everyone)
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This confirm the reassuring thought we had with some friends. That is, we’re actually 16 years old, in a small town, lost in France’s land.It’s the middle of nowhere, and our high school isn’t amazing though we love it.
Only both of us are completely mad of maths, doing some contests, training at olympic maths, sometimes even learning higher maths (thanks first to 3b1b, then we found out your wonderful Napkin and some other resources). Notwithstanding this, none of the people we know shares this beloved subject and we are not prepared like others are in the capital.
However, we thought that our life has something they can’t have, maybe the knowledge of what our society looks like in its majority (people from big cities tend to be more represented, but they are less than the people from lands), or maybe friendship… We do not know. It’s reassuring us because on all other point of view, these people from the city seems to have everything (and be better at maths just because they were born at the right place nahhh, but we still have a decent life quality, i do not complain for it, it would be egocentric).
Hence, thank you, your blog is telling we’re still on some “right” way to an happy life
-Some unknow who wants to stay so XD
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