The Ivy Experience

New personal series I think I may try out, documenting the Ivy League experience. I technically haven't moved in yet. My flight is on Tuesday, September 2nd, and my move-in appointment is on September 3rd. I have my first-year trip in group B for a few days, and then a few weeks of welcome week before I start class on September 15th.

The Last One to Go

My sister started Sophomore year about five days ago, and everyone else my age is long gone at their universities, leaving in the middle of August or earlier. So I am the last one to go. Even some of the other kids at Dartmouth moved in a little earlier, either for FYSEP or any one of those other programs that they offer. Pretty interesting stuff, but I wish I could leave soon.

I say I'm not nervous because I'm not, or at least, not for the reason people would think I'm nervous. I'm fine being away from home for long periods of time; during the summer before my sophomore year I did four camps back to back to back to back, with only a handful of actual free time. TLC for Jack and Jill of America, Debate Camp, Purdue's GER2I Camp, and then Space Camp for the second and final year. It was all pretty interesting stuff, and I even still got some coding work done in between. I remember releasing BattleCards in the middle of the night around 11am and submitting my paid plugin application, fighting with md_5 and the administrators over nitpicky details and eventually getting approved. I also remember coming back a few months later after a few downloads and then when I ask to convert it to free they just decided to delete it because "we can't convert it so we just deleted it without asking you" even though I didn't ask them to delete it.

Geez.

These Kids are Interesting

I'm a social person. Quite. I get bored and go through those recommended people to follow things on Instagram at least once in a while and just click on random people. I'll reply to stories or notes that I find interesting, maybe a comment or two. Interesting isn't a bad word, but it isn't purely neutral either. I think that my experience in talking to people has made me realize that not everyone is who they seem and everyone is explainable in some way or form. I think the funniest part is that I met this one person who shares my obsession with F1 and it evolved into an interesting friendship where I basically tell them anything and everything. I do that a lot with a lot of people, but I don't think it's ever happened with someone who I haven't even met in person yet. And I talk a lot more in person as well, so who knows what that's going to be like.

My friends in high school were like me too, which is how I became this way. Speaking of which, just finished hanging out with a few this last month. Picked out some clothes too to wear at my debut during welcome week. I think my personality combined with my sense of fashion is going to be an interesting thing at a place like Dartmouth. I tend to avoid getting too personal about political issues related to me, besides just venting outright about weird personal things going on and not high-level stuff going on, so I'll keep that up, but the idea is that I'm definitely going to stand out, and it's going to be a wonderful experience on getting through that.

My Technical Knowledge is a Lot

I didn't realize I knew so much about programming and technology at someone my age until I spoke to other kids interested in learning Computer Science and realized that the most that they have done is some Python stuff with AI or ML, Jupyter notebooks, and maybe a Java capstone that they did for an AP class. No one really knew about database sharding, serverless architecture, webassembly cross compilation, full-stack app development, or anything I was really working with. My website is in my bio, so that's usually the first thing people see. I had Claude catalog my GitHub profile with some of my blog posts and SpigotMC forums to create a markdown report and profile for me, and used that report to overhaul my website with marked information.

Verbatim:

"The GitHub bio says he is the world's okayest developer. The numbers disagree."

I avoid self commentary as much as I can given my past experience in people getting annoyed when I would talk about myself or whatever I would do, but it was still encouraging to hear that I wasn't behind. Because part of me felt like I was, until I realized it was the complete opposite. Being around a lot of kids who had perfect ACTs with a flurry of tutors behind them or D1 signing prospects with straight As and founded non-profits can make you feel a certain kind of way. Funnily enough, all high school was about was to not talk about what I was doing, but now everyone wants to know what everyone did and how you stack up against someone else. It's a dramatic scenery change, and one that I think will be different.

I say it is a lot not that "omg this kid thinks he knows everything omg omg" but that trying to move on betwen architectures or design patterns or projects can be a lot of work. I'm at 50 GitHub repositories, not including the organizations I'm in. And I got a Claude subscription only three months ago, before using whatever shitty GitHub Copilot stuff that GitHub had for awhile before nerfing it into the ground. If I looked at Novaconomy's architecture today, sure, I could probably whip it up with some new features and compatibility fixes, but that would take a month. Same for StarCosmetics or MobChip. I don't have a lot of time. That's why I like using AI, but also why I question everything it outputs and why I don't over rely on it: it essentially learned how to code like me and now I direct it exactly like how I would be thinking about programming. And it works way more faster than I can; I'm on track to triple or quadruple my commits this year compared to last year, from around ~3k before AI to now ~7-8k by the end fo August, 2k from August itself alone.

And when I hear people "coding" with Claude to make static HTML websites, I internally am like, "this is not real coding." But my personal opinions are not important on this topic, nor are they relevant.

The Road Ahead

Conclusion time.

The beginning of classes will probably be part 2. It'll be an interesting experience, being around a bunch of kids like that, with their own little personality quirks. I have a lot of internal opinions about everything, and maybe they'll come out later depending on how I sit on them and when I actually have the chance to see them face to face. Because at the end of the day, what is online isn't real, so eventually you have to get outside and meet new people and try new things (aka plug for The Earth App, which will also be getting an update soon).

Peace.