WA.STEM

June 22, 2017 ~Flying to Princeton~ I'm currently flying to the Newark Airport on my way to the home I am renting out town PACT. I will try to do daily blog posts of my experience similar to what I did last summer for the Summer Institute of Mathematics at the University of Washington (SIMUW). I am taking an hour long Uber to my homely destination in Princeton. I am splitting the upstairs of the house with a graduate student doing some sort of scientific research from Cornell (so I hear) and my roommate Kota from Georgia (who is also participating in PACT). However, Kota will be arriving a couple of days later than me and will be driving her car up to New Jersey with her so we can go grocery shopping. I will have to figure out my dining options for these first couple of days alone seeing as the nearest grocery store is only accessible by car. Luckily, there is a small diner right across the house I am staying in. Hopefully is not too pricy. In the mean time I am planning on...

Due to yesterday's new privacy update on Twitter, I was eager to examine the changes in my security and privacy settings. Not contrary to most other social media sites, I was informed that my privacy settings were becoming more lenient, now collecting non-Twitter-related browsing data up to 30 days from my last Twitter activity to store (from the previous 10-day limit). Twitter claims that this will allow for a more personalized and accurate experience by referring users to products and sites in which they are more likely to be interested. On top of this offline-browsing policy extension, Twitter's pre-existing Do Not Track option which prevented websites from tracking and ad-targeting users has been removed (despite having held a polar-opposing view in 2012 when Twitter originally implemented the Do Not Track option). Apparently an option to manually prevent specific websites and companies from receiving user data will still exist, but I have not yet been able to find this ...

The time is here! It seems that every week I have at least two college decisions to look forward to.  I am currently studying for my differential equations, Java II, number theory, and Physics finals (next week) amidst these college notifications. This truly is the final countdown. It is so exciting to think that only two weeks stand between me and my college decision: the notification that will determine where I will be spending the next 4-years of my scholastic career! Through the college admissions process I have connected with so many impressive high school seniors around the country, and even the world. From California to Korea, these students have proven to me that there is no shortage of amazing humans around the globe, and I feel very lucky to have befriended so many of them already. Waiting for decisions is a lot more bearable with late night video calls, meme development chats, and group meet-ups. I cannot wait for what is in store for me, but no matter what, I ...