025. Tuesdays

tldr: the days of the week still have names?

Over the past year, Tuesdays have been my busiest day of the week. Consistently.
If I had to summarize what the ‘extracurricular’ section of my college applications looked like, it would essentially just be “here is what I do on Tuesdays.” This came with its pros and cons: on the one hand, I was really busy at the forefront of the week, on the other, the rest of the week became that much more enjoyable. This trend has continued on into the summer [shocking, given how much “free time” I have with quarantine]. So for you, the reader, and for my future self (when the pandemic is over, hopefully), here is what happened on this day last week. May it be reflective of my time in self isolation.

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12am-2am: My sleep schedule is Messed Up. Sure, it has been for a very long time, but not needing to do anything after 5pm has only made it worse. Nonetheless, I find that this is when I am most productive. [Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Uncertain.] This last Tuesday I spent this time working on a math project: I have been making a compilation of math concepts that can be applied to most any higher math class, just the pure basics. Table of Contents shown on the right –>

Am I doing this out of genuine interest in this project, or because I am worrying about taking 18.701 this fall? The world may never know. But at least it is keeping me busy.

8am-9:55am: I try to wake up somewhere between these times. 9:55am is the latest, because that is when I am supposed to be clocked in and ready for work, and 8am at the earliest because, I fail to go to sleep until 2am. If I get up early enough, I will make myself a cup of coffee.

OH! Lifehack: before you go on quarantine, get a mug from your favorite coffee place. It won’t replace the serotonin from actually going and hanging out in your community, but at least it will feel more like normal. Of all the personal items I want to bring with me to the east coast, this is definitely in the Top 5. Arguably the best investment I have ever made.
Besides coffee, I try to eat before work, but usually that doesn’t happen. If anything I just kinda, chill for a bit in the morning, waiting for the day to begin. [Like it didn’t begin 6 hours earlier.]

10am-12pm: I always found it weird that noon is technically PM as opposed to AM. Though I guess it’d also be weird if it was the reverse. In any case, I tutor from 10-12 and from 3-5, so these areas will essentially be blank spots on my schedule. I don’t usually get too many students, although this week it has started to change. [It is almost as if it is finals week?] If I don’t get any students, this is usually a good time to work on some side tasks, whether it be starting to write a blog post or working on some of the things I have to do as an incoming freshman (like turning in the medical form and such).

12pm-1pm: One may imagine that I would want to spend the few precious hours I have between tutoring either napping or getting lunch. This would make sense– but not on Tuesdays. During this time, a few other students and I meet and and work on Abstract Algebra (we are going through Hungerford’s textbook). This has been a lot of fun, and is great practice for 18.701. So far, we have learned about integer arithmetic, rings, isomorphisms, and polynomial arithmetic. I will definitely talk about some of these subjects in a later blog post, and why the ordering of this textbook is (apparently) very weird.

1pm-2pm: This is when I go and meet with one of the professors I am tutoring for. We talk about the things coming up this week among other topics. For instance, I got his feedback on the notes I am taking (see 12am-2am). He likes the concept, given that (in his experience), most of the math courses at a certain point start off with these basic concepts, and then become more specialized. He is also the person who got me interested in LaTeX, given that he types up notes for the classes he teaches [something I also one day hope to do].

2pm-3pm: Lunch, finally. Sometimes a nap.

3pm-5pm: Tutoring again! See 10am-12pm for more details, nothing different happens during these two hours.

After this I am generally speaking done for the day? I don’t have anything I need to do. Last Tuesday, I played Jstris and Chess with friends over discord which was a lot of fun. I also, in detail, described how in vector spaces zero isn’t always zero, to which my friend made me this meme:

To which I realized two things:
1) God I love math.
2) I am talking far too much about zero at 10pm– maybe I should go to bed.

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While typing up this blog post, it became exceptionally clear that the topics described above are *all* I have done over quarantine. I know that I shouldn’t expect myself to be super productive during this time [with it being both summer, and a pandemic going on], but it is definitely neat to see it all laid out in front of me in about 1000 words.

You know what the whack thing is? This upcoming semester will be the first one in over a year in which most of my classes aren’t on a Tuesday, if I get the class schedule I want. The times they are a-changin’.

Paige