YAPPERY?? WHAT'S THIS?

like all of my east coast adventures, we begin in at the boston logan int'l airport, where after two days of battling a 103 degree fever, the burning had not yet subsided.

HMMT performance this year was greatly destroyed by my extreme health conditions. i walked in to get absolutely obliterated by lightheadedness and just generally feeling dizzy. but my saviour was in three 200mg pills of advil that my parents ran to stuff into my then-burning hands! and suddenly, i did a lot better at the other two tests.

after fighting several wars with impending fevers, HMMT came out to a close, my friends all left, and so the campaign begins!

the first university we visited was princeton, and what was most memorable was not the tour itself, but instead the fact that my friend is a freshman there and managed to sneak me into her intro to diff geo class … which had like a grand total of like 10 students … without the professor even batting an eye!! she was having fun trolling all her friends by doing grand reveals that i was a high school junior.

the class itself was mostly about geodesics, explaining two different ways to construct them (it’s been like 4 days forgive me for my lack of recall). i lowkey lost him in the last like thirty minutes when he said to apply a “fractal linear transformation” but all in all 8/10 experience i’d say? and as for the sneaking part, well, to all those haters out there who say “this would never fly in college,” i fear that you have been thoroughly proven wrong. by princeton university, no less!!

silliness aside, i think the undergrad opportunities and the campus vibes here are great though. virtually unlimited resources to do whatever the freak you want, and a lot of great offered majors to boot!

we then went on a journey over to philadelphia, to visit upenn. with no friends’ schedules to leech onto, we pulled up to the info session like an hour early on a bone-chilling day. andddd since it was 5˚ fahrenheit, the walking part of the tour was cancelled and we had a panel instead. which was a little sad, but after walking around in this terrifying weather all of us immediately understood why. the east coast does not play around when it comes to frigid temperatures!!

mom was super excited for this one since we were headed for new york city, baby!! on the car ride there she was constantly talking about all the stores she wanted to visit and all the sights she wanted to see. meanwhile, i was pretty excited for columbia too, as i know quite a few people who are going there! but the college tour was in the morning after we arrived, so we had a whole evening to kill time first.

as soon as we set down our bags, mom ushered us back out into the windy, snow-covered manhattan streets and led us like a tour guide towards the statue of liberty. i've never felt a super deep connection with it personally, but what i did find intriguing was our visit to wall street; i wanted to take a gander at the nation's finance capital. after taking a picture with the bull we then decided that yeah, although the sun was setting, we totally had enough time to pop onto the staten island ferry and get a quick look at the statue of liberty! which started off as a great idea, but new york was freaking COLD and with the added chill of the atlantic ocean wind, yeah, i was destroyed after that. passed out straight to bed.

the next morning, we split up as mom wanted to go shopping, while dad and i would go on the columbia tour. we had a bit of trouble parking (i almost missed the tour group!!) but sacrificing my nonchalantness i managed to 100 meter dash my way through the entire place. highlights were definitely getting to see the old library (i got immediate flashbacks seeing cicero's name included atop the old library from latin class), getting to see the labs in the school of engineering, and the law bridge, where you could could look around at the city in the midst of new york. school sounded amazing and i felt like there were a lot of job and internship opportunities around the area!!