Freshman Year

I think I wrote this at the end of freshmen year at MIT in 2004.  It's kind of a love letter to East Campus, the dorm I used to live in.

'sscrazy Even though so many things have changed already, it doesn't feel different.  Instead, it feels natural.  Of course, this whole spiel is only about my own experience.  It is specific to my past, my present, and most importantly, it is specific to myself.  This is just a story.
 During the my last few days in St. Louis, I wrote:
 

I feel like I'm entering a door that I can't see the other side of.  What do I not know.  I don't know who I'm going to be hanging out w/ and how I'm going to feel about people.  I don't know what my daily/weekly/monthly schedule is going to be like.  I don't know what it's going to look like when I look out the window, or if I'll even have a window.  I don't know how classes will be.  I don't know my competition.  I don't know the system.  Most importantly, I don't know what is going to be most important to me.  I suppose it's kind of the same every year.  I get a new routine.  I get a new strategy for how I'm going to approach my life; how I do work, how/when I play.  So, here's to the rest of my life. 

As time passed, I got to know some things... When I first came to Boston, the first thing was to find a place to live - a home, not just a physical location but also a community.  Over the summer, I chose a dorm notorious for its eccentric inhabitants.  I thought I might relate to the people there.  Now, all I can say is, man, I was so right.  I love the environment that I'm in.  The people on my hall encourage exploration and activity.  They value intellectual integrity and creativity.  There are tools for building things like lofts, tables, and other addendums to your room if you want.  Art is everywhere as people customize their rooms, doors, and hallways.  The kitchen is another great resource.  Along with these material commodities, the most valuable resource is the knowledge and support of the people you live around.  Thus, college is a sanctuary for learning things in a safe and effective way whether it's learning how to bake a pie or how to play hockey with burning tennis balls.  Yeah, I live with a special bunch.  When I tell people from the other side of campus where I live, they nod understandingly with a hint of pity and fear.
      
Not that the individuals are really all that different from the rest of the MIT community.  In general, we are all bonded by what is best described as "nerd pride."  It's the idea of learning for the sake of being proud of what you know, whether it's mechanical engineering, math, ocean engineering, or electrical engineering.  It's not about the money or making a living; it's not about having power; it's just about being smart and knowing how to do something and being useful.  This point of view does, however, look down on business and certain other less course intensive majors.  This is one of many ways I'm very lucky to be the way I am.  Because I am a nerd, and I came here to do engineering, and I possess that same "nerd pride," I don't have any problems fitting in or being challenged for not being "core" enough.
 

As I sink into the depths of Tetazoo (hall), East Campus (dorm), MIT, Boston, Massachusetts, My Life, I have become acquainted with not only the people around me, but also the sense of overall community, my values, and the school system.  I am beginning to develop a routine.  It took some time to tweak my daily schedule: work, sleep, class, work, eat, class, eat, work, work, play, sleep.  We even have our own vocabulary for our daily meanderings.  Work is otherwise known as “tooling,” while playing is “punting.”  Between tooling and punting, we do what we can in order to keep doing.

In college, you find out about a lot of inner conflicts.  Many people lose their motivation for doing work.  The new environment disrupts their pretty ideas of how life should be, and they scramble to reestablish their reason to live.  I haven't had too many problems with this, since for whatever reason, these questions are not new to me.  Maybe my world has been shaken before, or maybe I was just more sensitive to the smaller jolts growing up.  I have not even really had to struggle much with loneliness or homesickness.  Even insecurities about academic validation, the assurance that I am smart enough to be here, have mostly evaded me.  For me, the main struggle has been to keep myself sane and functional.  In college, you have to take care of yourself, and people here are often much more demanding of themselves than they should be.  In the doctrine of living life to its fullest, it's easy to lose perspective about your own limitations of how much social interaction you can take.  It can be extremely hard to find alone time or just a place where you can feel completely relaxed.  Having fun is fun, but you're still not relaxed.  It also seems like a lot of people here compulsively do work out of a need to feel productive, myself included.  We don't even know what we’re working for.  We’re all trying to figure out what we want.  

Maybe if we live enough, we will find out. In short:college is great

Cal Lecturer's Letter of Encouragement to Students

http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2013-11-21/cal-lecturers-email-students-goes-viral-why-i-am-not

Alexander Coward teaches a math class for undergraduate students at UC Berkeley.  On its face, his letter encourages students to attend class rather than support the UC workers' strike.  I am pretty sure he meant to encourage students to value their education regardless of whether or not they choose to participate in this particular strike.

I was really moved by many parts of the letter.  Perhaps if I were to make a compressed version of his letter, it would be this.

If I’ve learned one thing about politics since I was your age, it is this: Politics, like most things in life worth thinking about, including mathematics, is very big, very complicated, and very interconnected.

I’ve discovered that there is no unique or obviously best way of setting up society. For every decision and judgement you reach, there are people who benefit and people who lose out.  

Every judgement you make in life is a question of balancing different interests and ideals. 

...you are not going to be able to avoid making these kinds of judgments, just as I cannot avoid making a judgment about whether to strike or not. 

...you all need to know that there is not some great pool of amazing people in some other place who are going to shape the way our species navigates the coming decades. 

In order for you to navigate the increasing complexity of the 21st century you need a world-class education, and thankfully you have an opportunity to get one. I don’t just mean the education you get in class, but I mean the education you get in everything you do, every book you read, every conversation you have, every thought you think. 

Society is investing in you so that you can help solve the many challenges we are going to face in the coming decades, from profound technological challenges to helping people with the age old search for human happiness and meaning.  

I like that he mentions that being apolitical is basically impossible.  Any system will have winners and losers.  Not having a policy is a policy!

I also found it really touching when he addressed the insecurities of the students.

One of the things you can lose track of when you attend a top tier university like Berkeley is just how exceptional and amazing you really are. 

I’m not just talking about some of you. I’m talking about all of you. It’s a privilege to be your professor. Sadly, however, I know many of you don’t feel that way. The difficulty you all face is that as you look around at all your fellow students, it’s easy to have your eye drawn by people doing better than you. Or rather, I should say people who look like they’re doing better than you. In reality the true extent of how much people are learning can be difficult to measure. Sometimes failures and adversity are better preparations for long term success than effortless progress.

As an undergraduate, you are still trying to figure out how your abilities compare with others'.  Sometimes the professors or graduate students seem so much more polished and accomplished, you feel like you could never be like that.  To you, the professors are like the "adults" in the world who will solve the big complicated problems, which is sort of a secure feeling.

I find it kind of sad to realize now that that's not really the case.  On the one hand it's motivating, but on the other hand, I feel sort of sorry for the world that it is partly up to me to come up with solutions.  I know that nobody will really blame me or anything like that, but I know I'm not always trying my hardest and that I miss opportunities. I didn't cause all the problems so it's not my responsibility in the direct sense.  However, since not having a policy is a policy, perpetuating the current system while being just as qualified as the next person to change it makes me partially responsible.  I feel a desire to compensate those who will inevitably be affected by my and others' inability to do better, but knowing that we can't is kind of sad to me.  I take solace in the fact that we can only move forward and do what we can.  ...And maybe future talented people really will emerge as the adults, and then the rest of us will be off the hook again...

Discussion on Hazing

A recent Rolling Stones article on hazing has triggered a long discussion over old dorm lists about hazing and fraternities. This was my two cents.

The Stanford prison study shows how this behavior is motivated by
humans' primal nature and response to power. That doesn't explain,
though, why it gets perpetuated in fraternities.

In some sense, hazing activities are like extreme (X-TREME) ice
breakers, which gets people to form a bond based on seeing each other
do and say ridiculous things. All relationship building activities
work because of humans' primal nature, and most of the time there is
nothing wrong with that since we're social animals and we like to hang
out and be part of a group.

Perhaps hazing makes the bond even stronger, and the upside of a
strong bond for the individuals is that there are people out there who
are absolutely loyal to them personally, perhaps even die for them.
The benefits are clear in a military setting. But in general, when
you are in a bind, financial or otherwise, only your family is really
obligated to help you even if you haven't been that nice to them.
Fraternities increase the number of family you have. This is also why
people often start businesses with fraternity people, really close
friends, or family. Since you need to people who will stick with it
even when things seem like they will never get better, it's usually
best to work with people who are extremely loyal to you personally.
In this sense, there is a role for nepotism. I have found that your
personal trustworthiness is your most valuable commodity in the
workplace. Although it can seem extremely stupid to keep incompetent
but loyal people around, there are situations where a stupid person
who will really try their best can be more helpful than a smart person
who is trying to figure out how to get the most credit from the least
amount of work. Obviously you are most valuable as a trustworthy
competent person. I would say that the closer you get to
entrepreneurship, the more primal things get and the more important
relationship dynamics are. In large companies, they have had time and
resources to standardize things and create processes, like for hiring.
That's what human resources are for. Hiring is a time consuming
process so all companies prefer to hire a more known entity. While it
would be great to only hire competent people, honestly it's really
hard to figure out who is really competent and who is good at talking
without working with them for a bit.

Anyway, I think that the primal nature of the professional world,
especially in high risk high reward situations perpetuates things like
hazing. What can we do about it? Find other ways to teach more
valuable skills for those situations without hazing maybe? Increase
the profile of professional networks of living groups to compete?
Make hiring easier for small companies? Get more colleges to require
freshmen to live the first year on campus so people forms bonds
outside their fraternities?

Survey project

Promoting Mundane Science

http://rael.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/very-old-site/Mundane_Science.pdf

Godel, Escher, Bach for Kids!

I was talking to my friend James today. He says that what he'd really like to do one day is host a children's science show, kind of like Bill Nye. Kids today really don't have anything like that anymore, and they really need it. He made this back in college about the concept of infinity. Blast from the past!

California Green Jobs Report

I read more about the California Workforce Education and Training Needs Assessment for Energy Efficiency, Distributed Generation, and Demand Response.

This is really a line of research I am interested in pursuing. Here are some things that stuck out to me.

They talked about the need for "high-road agreements," which I think means including higher standards in contracts for businesses. The report also stresses the importance of enforcing standards and having certifications for labor force training.

The study found that incorporating environmentally friendly practices and standards into traditional training programs was more important than brand new training programs for new specialized green jobs. That is, greening traditional trades is more effective than anticipating narrow specialized emerging occupations. Actually, this is exciting because this has been my attitude towards green jobs, although it was just based on a hunch. The report's conclusion is more about the technicalities of job creation and training, but the message I was trying to send when I did the Big Picture Panel Lecture was that students should try to work on sustainability within whatever field they chose, not feel like they needed to change careers to work on environmental sustainability. While I think it makes sense to try to get a Sustainability minor or certificate, it would not make sense to make a Sustainability major. At least, not for most people.

I also thought of two other ideas while reading this report. One is that maybe businesses that work on contracts should have online rating sites like Yelp, especially government contractors. Consumer product ratings are now ubiquitous, but taxpayers regularly pay companies that they don't know much about. On the other hand, it may be that this information is readily available, and people are just not that interested.

The other idea is that students in high school and also college should have more information available about possible career choices so they can make better decisions. It seems like to me that most people make career decisions based on their interests, which is good, but I think it would be better if there was at least a little bit of data or infographics. Otherwise, the bit of data that students use are from TV shows and celebrities. It is becoming clear that the middle class has benefited the last three decades from cheap goods in China, and so it has not been particularly difficult to maintain a pretty good standard of living in the United States even if you did not make savvy career choices. It simply has not been that competitive. I think that the labor market is going to get more and more competitive now in the United States, and that more data for students are in order, not just more SAT prep.

Green Economy Labor Economics

Yesterday I applied for a research job at the UCB Institute for Research on Labor and Employment to do research on the minimum wage.

On their main page, they were spotlighting research by the Vial Center on Employment in the Green Economy. They just put out a new report that "California’s energy efficiency policies have a big job impact, but state needs to support more highly skilled and highly paid construction trades work force."

UCB Professor Lee Friedman

Professor Lee Friedman is another economist who works on environmental policy. He works on a broader range of topics, though, than Professor Hanemann, and his research tends to be more applied. He specializes in applied microeconomics and environmental markets. I am most interested in his work on pricing in the energy market and carbon market to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He teaches a core GSPP class, the Economics of Public Policy Anaylsis.

UCB Assistant Professor Margaret Taylor

Another faculty member who works on environmental policy and technology is Margaret Taylor. Her line of research has lately been about technology push and demand pull policies. She studies how policies can effectively achieve environmental goals through supporting technological innovation.

She works with the climate modeling community as well. It seems that climate and technology modeling becomes important to all environmental policy work.

I'm not sure what the defining differences are between her and Dan Kammen. It seems that they don't work together. I wonder if they have opposing perspectives or there is just no interest overlap.

UCB Professor Dan Kammen

Another professor who works on environmental policy is Dan Kammen. He is also a professor in the Energy and Resources Group, and he is the director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, which seems to be pretty well funded. He actually has a background in physics.

Dr. Kammen's research interests include: the science, engineering, management, and dissemination of renewable energy systems; health and environmental impacts of energy generation and use; rural resource management, including issues of gender and ethnicity; international R&D policy, climate change; and energy forecasting and risk analysis.

I need to find out more about his research on engineering management. The dissemination of renewable energy systems is appealing because those policies and projects could be implemented immediately. However, part of me wants to work on projects that are more general in scope.

There is a project in RAEL on clean energy financing that is well-aligned with my interests. Maybe I could work with that group.

Professor Kammen teaches a GSPP class that has been highly recommended called Energy and Society.

UCB Professor Richard Norgaard

Professor Richard Norgaard is one faculty at UCB whose work I am excited by. He is a founder of ecological economics and an Energy and Resources Group professor.

Among the founders of the field of ecological economics, his recent research addresses how environmental problems challenge scientific understanding and the policy process, how ecologists and economists understand systems differently, and how globalization affects environmental governance. He has field experience in the Alaska, Brazil, California, and Vietnam with minor forays in other parts of the globe.

His research seems to be more focused on the interactions of social systems, science, and governance than on the economic impacts of policies or setting up markets for managing resources. That may just be a more recent focus, though. He has written a lot about a coevolutionary interpretation of ecological civilization. This is the concept that the evolution of a species is the aggregate of the evolution of our values, knowledge, organization, technology, and environment. I am not sure how this line of research can help us evolve towards environmental sustainability or even how to conduct this research in a rigorous way, but it is an interesting concept.

Berkeley People

I've been doing some research on faculty at Berkeley I am interested in. When I get there I'll probably try to take some classes or seminars with them and see if they have any openings for research positions.

W. Michael Hanemann

Richard Norgaard

Daniel M. Kammen

Margaret Taylor

Lee S. Friedman

Environment and Labor Classes at UC Berkeley

I am starting to look at interesting classes I'm interested in at Berkeley.

The Governance of Global Production would be pretty interesting.

This graduate seminar explores critical policy and theoretical questions regarding the governance of global production. The seminar engages current trends in the restructuring of industrial production, distributions of environmental, labor, and social impacts from this production, and new strategies for democratic governance. The course presents existing theories of regulation and governance, assesses market and state “failures,” and critically analyzes emerging responses to the limits of traditional regulation. Using cases from the wood products, electronics, garments, shoes, coffee, food, chemicals, and oil industries, the seminar explores the potentials and limitations of new governance strategies, including: corporate voluntary self-regulation, codes of conduct, multi-stakeholder monitoring systems, certification and labeling schemes, fair trade programs, transparency and reporting initiatives, legal strategies, and international accords and agreements. The course seeks to evaluate why these new institutions and policies have emerged, how they function, and when and under what conditions they can be effective in mitigating environmental, labor, or social impacts of production

Complimenting Girl Brains

How to talk to little girls

The Only Economics Class

Many people agree that it would be good for everyone to take an economics course in high school or in college. Usually, introductory economics courses only cover microeconomics, though. I have just gone through the core of the Macroeconomics textbook used in 14.02 (Principles of Macroeconomics at MIT). I think it would be more useful for the first economics course that people take to cover primarily macroeconomics, especially if it's going to be the only course in economics they ever take. The topics in microeconomics that should be covered are the supply and demand curves, the concept of marginal utility, and the production function. The rest of the course should be about macroeconomics. Macroeconomics would help people to better understand fiscal and monetary policy and how they impact unemployment and inflation. This would help people have a better understanding of current events and be informed voters.

The problem when people only take microeconomics is that people try to use the very simplistic results to make policy decision. For example, people conclude that markets are the most efficient methods to allocate resources so there should be fewer regulations. Price ceilings and floors always add deadweight loss so those should never be used either. Theoretical and empirical results from macroeconomics are much more directly applicable to explaining everyday events and informing policy decisions.

Bilingual Powers

Bilingualism helps people think. Maybe the population self-selects, though.

Future Labor Force of America

NYT article about how little college kids study these days. They cite the research of Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks. The NYT article mentions Pell Grants may be partly responsible, but actually their research paper doesn't mention Pell Grants at all. The NYT article also suggests some "easy fixes" although the paper does not explore possible fixes. At any rate, the research is pretty interesting.

The Truth is Out

A Chinese Yale law professor wrote about how she raised her two daughters in a book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The Wall Street Journal posted an excerpt.

Americans are horrified, and many Chinese people raised this way have come out to denounce the way they were raised. However, given that the vast majority of Chinese Americans were raised this way, I'm surprised there haven't been more supportive comments.

It is somewhat amusing to me to see all the negative comments from American parents because it's like they have no idea how prevalent this is. Plus, those kids are the ones edging out American kids for college, graduate school, club leadership, and jobs.

Being raised this way was certainly hard and depressing. However, as time has passed, I've become much more supportive of how I was raised. At least, I feel like there were some major benefits and there doesn't seem to have been much permanent damage. It hasn't made me chronically depressed, unstable, or robotic. I think it is a major factor in raising people who are independent, self-reliant, and responsible. Even if people still have personality flaws, at least they are generally not a burden to their family or friends. For many people, it seems to have made people less sensitive to criticism and more easily accept that there is room for self-improvement. The truth is that after going through that upbringing, you realize that the biggest obstacle to achieving something is not having thought of a goal yet. If you fundamentally believe that you are capable of achieving anything you want with hard work, then you can be more creative or ambitious with your plans. For me, my upbringing may have made it easier for me to feel like I have control of my destiny. At the time I felt it was a burden to have to always defend my decisions and explain why I wanted to do something, but now it seems like maybe it was good practice because it only gets tougher in "the real world."

I think I'm reacting strongly because many people are complaining about aspects of the harsh parenting style that are really not the worst parts. I don't think it really stifles creativity, makes robots, or stunts social skills. Not going to sleep overs, playing piano, getting all A's, and not watching TV was not a really big deal. Being called "stupid" or "lazy" made me angry sometimes, but even that's not what really got to me. The most frustrating and degrading part is feeling like there is no way to avoid being yelled at. It is especially irritating if I didn't feel like I was given enough time or help to improve. I just felt it was not fair. The other part of my upbringing that was harmful was feeling like my parents did not trust me. I think this lack of trust damaged my self-esteem more than the language. It also made it difficult to trust other people. I don't think that this is a necessary part of being strict. It has taken me a few years to deal with the negative aspects of my upbringing. Now I'm in my twenties and feel more emotionally stable and ambitious than ever, though, so I suppose it has mostly worked out after all.

The Autobiography of Yang Ruan

Haha, I wrote this in seventh grade as a part of a poster about myself.

My name is Yang Ruan, and my life began in Shanghai, China, July 3, 1985. I lived my first four years in China, and then came to St. Louis. I am twelve years old, and I'm turning thirteen next year.

I love reading, and my favorite books are "Lisa Light and Dark," "The Westing Game," "The Only Alien on the Planet," and "Silent Storm." One thing I noticed is that in most of the books I read, the main character or one of the main characters are disabled. In "Lisa Light and Dark" Lisa is slowly going crazy and needs help desperately. In "The Only Alien on the Planet" Smitty is a genius, but he doesn't talk or have any expressions. In "The Westing Game" the characters are just weird. In "The Silent Storm" Alyssa is mute. I do not like stories in which the plot is pointless and is about somebody's personal problems.

I also love drawing. I love projects that have to do with art. I like using colored pencils the most. Paint is hard to control, markers are sloppy, crayons have too much wax, and pastels get all over you.

I am not good at many sports. The only sport that I'm good at is ping-pong. The sports that I like but are not very good at are badminton, softball, and kickball.

I love animals of all kinds especially cats, horses, foxes, and rabbits. My favorites are cats because they are slick, graceful, menacing, soft, alert, independent, and intelligent. Many people are adore dogs. I like dogs, but I prefer cats because dogs drool too much and they all over you and they are too loud. I love drawing animals. They look so soft, furry, and just plain cuddly.

My favorite subjects in school are Math, Reading, and Fine Arts. I like playing Equations, which is a math game. I love that game! You do not even have to be good at math to be good at it. My Equations team, the J.E.R.K.s (Junior Educated Radical Kids), have already won two seconds place ribbons, and one third place ribbon. We hope to get a first place trophy someday.

I am a very positive person, and very happy. I don't get put down very easily, and if i"m depressed I usually hide it so nobody can really tell and nobody else will be depressed along with me. Sometimes I am patient, sometimes I am very impatient, but I never try to be someone else. I'm content with the way I am, and I feel that the only thing that I need to change would be my Language grade.