i'm home for passover and that other holiday where there's a rabbit and you dye eggs! i'm also supposed to be studying for two midterms and writing a paper, it's whatever. that said, it has come to my attention that the world sees harvard as a heartless, cut-throat school where the students feed off each others' flesh and live for competition. this is absolutely not the case; we have excellent dining halls with diverse menu selections. anyways, i just want to reassure you -- especially if you're a prospective student -- that we harvard kids have plenty of fun. here are just a few highlights you can expect in between research papers...
lady gaga comes to play:
we have sex week:
...and sleep week (leave it to harvard to make sleeping a contest. literally the only way to get kids here to go to bed):
we do classy...
and semi-classy...
and not classy whatsoever...
and of course, we do ancient rome (toga praetexta, tunica, stola -- we don't mess around, most harvard kids were latin champions in high school):
...and, as promised, we sometimes rap in chinese class.
I'm going to regret posting that, I'm sure. Anyways I'm thinking of doing a set of week-in-the-life, diary-type posts this coming week. Sound good? Suggestions in the comments please!
lady gaga comes to play:
we have sex week:
...and sleep week (leave it to harvard to make sleeping a contest. literally the only way to get kids here to go to bed):
we do classy...
and semi-classy...
and not classy whatsoever...
and of course, we do ancient rome (toga praetexta, tunica, stola -- we don't mess around, most harvard kids were latin champions in high school):
...and, as promised, we sometimes rap in chinese class.
I'm going to regret posting that, I'm sure. Anyways I'm thinking of doing a set of week-in-the-life, diary-type posts this coming week. Sound good? Suggestions in the comments please!
Harvard sounds awesome! :D I just couldn't help but laugh reading the "So you think you can sleep" poster. I'm a Malaysian currently doing medicine in a university in Ireland & I know that many of my friends think that I have no time for fun. Obviously, that's so not true! Well I guess people be there to believe it ;D
ReplyDeleteThat is awesome! Props to you for rapping.
ReplyDeleteI love that you can cooly say that you still have fun at Harvard; I think there are students at Harvard - or any other Ivy League school for that matter - who allow others to believe that they are in a harsh school where the only thing is work, work, work, and wallow in self-pity.
I would gladly participate in sleep week! On a less facetious note, it's reassuring to know that Harvard is encouraging kids to get some rest. I'm currently doing a paper on sleep deprivation and it's horrifying to know the things that go on when our body functions on very little sleep.
But enough of me babbling!
Glad to know that you get to go home for passover and have a break. Thanks for taking the time to update! It's always comforting to take a breather and catch up on someone else's hectic life. :D
A week-in-the-life type post seems interesting; just so you know, I expecially enjoyed your first "How to _____ like a Tiger Cub".
Hi Sophia!
ReplyDeleteI read your mother's book and I loved it! So I decided to write about it in my blog. It's in portuguese, but I hope you read it and like it. :)
Hahahahaha, what a hilarious rap. That's awesome - you did a badass job! I hope someone else watches and understands it too.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Fellow Tiger Cub (without credentials quite as lofty)
i love your rap! :)
ReplyDeleteYour rap was hilarious! Thanks to dropping out of chinese school early on, I only caught fragments of it, but rest assured, the main message came through.
ReplyDeleteWould love to read a diary-esque post!
Sophia,
ReplyDeleteYour rap is very funny! I've shown your blog and referred your mom's book to the kids in my Chinese class. I'll have to show them this too! I've been following your blog since you started it along with my boyfriend who's abc. I have so many thoughts and questions after reading your mom's book and following your blog. I am planning to write you a letter, since you provided your Harvard addy to us followers. I know finals are coming up soon, but hopefully you can write me back sometime, because I would love some of your insight on some of the thoughts that I have!
I love your posts :) and you should totally try something diary-esque! Just wondering, are you rushing a sorority? What's Greek life like at Harvard?
ReplyDeleteAhhh, I love your rap!! You are so mult-talented :) I also think someone should nominate you for "Prettiest Girl at Harvard" lol ;)
ReplyDeleteA set of week-in-the-life, diary-type posts sounds great!! Preferably diaries of when you're at Harvard as opposed to when you're on break, but in either case, I look forward to your posts. :)
So I know you don't exactly need more flattering comments about your looks, but your make-up in the "classy" pic looks so pretty and springy- definitely my favorite of your make-up looks so far. The side part was a good choice too. Though, I must say, the accessory on your right arm is what really pulls the outfit together. ;) Also, the "semi-classy" dress is so hot, WANT.
ReplyDeleteI diary thing sounds like a great idea! I was happy to see a new post from you, and I'm glad you're having fun!
I was wondering whether you had Ancient Greek in High School and if yes, if and how you would try to keep up with it without any classes in it. (I had it in high school as well as Latin and I can't figure out the best way to go about it- translate every day?)
ReplyDeleteBTW just read your mom's book and it was extremely interesting to me. I grew up "despising" kids like you (not in a very malicious manner, don't get me wrong- maybe more like in a "dismissive" manner- I didn't understand the concept of studying, but I was definitely in favor of osmosis) only to realize that- fast forward to about 10 years later- my aptitude would only get me so far, and that being used to just "making it" and having excellent results without studying is dangerous for two reasons: First, you get accustomed to getting rewarded without doing work and secondly, you never learn (until you are 22 and ask yourself what the hell you've done with your life) the importance of hard work. No matter what you achieve, nothing is worth anything unless you put in grueling hours of learning for it. That is just a fact of life and how to be happy, so kudos to your mom for drilling that into you AND to you for understanding it. You probably realize it everyday...
PS: How do you deal with too many interests (I am just guessing that, just like me, you want to do EVERYTHING)? How do you set priorities as to what you do want to learn on your own outside of school?
Greetings from a Swiss girl in California
Maurine
Diary sounds lovely!
ReplyDeleteAlso, do you read the emails people send to your account listed on your blog?
Your Mandarin is great :)
ReplyDeleteWow your Mandarin is REALLY good!I've been at Chinese school for a few years, but I'm no way as good as you! I'd like to ask, are you in a sorrority? Do you approve the idea of paying up some money and hanging out with a bunch of girls to have a friendship (Not saying it in a bad way, but some people think it's a bad idea)
ReplyDeleteYou can tell Harvard has lots of Asians, just look at the semi-classy picture -- 3.5 out of 8 girls are Asian. Lenient parents should ask themselves why that is. They have no excuse here, Harvard is as western and American as it gets, so why do Asians, who apparently use an "out-dated" parenting style, manage to succeed there?
ReplyDeleteOr perhaps, Sophia, as a person of Chinese descent, happens to have many Chinese friends.
DeleteI was raised by "lenient" parents, and I've greatly succeeded. There's no way of correctly raising a child.
I don't think it's an archaic way of parenting, by the way. Every parent is entitled to subscribe to whatever belief they have.
@Delphine True, the picture is not representative of the entire Harvard population, I only used it jokingly, but my point still stands, top American schools have a very high percentage of Asians.
DeleteIt's good that the lenient style of parenting worked for you, but it doesn't for most people. Most people, through no fault of their own, will tend to avoid hard work unless pushed to do it. I went to a good private school and even there many kids slacked off, and it was perfectly acceptable to be a B student.
Take note that American parenting hasn't always been lenient, it is only in the past few decades that it's become so. If you look at the Founding Fathers, all of them were extremely well educated, so America was founded by hard-working, disciplined people, not some high-school drop-outs that we get more and more these days. University drop-out rates are very high as well. I see that as a failure of parenting, not the education system. A hard-working student can succeed in any environment.
I am not implying though that there is one best parenting method, I think it depends on the personality of the child, but I do think that most children need supervision and personal tutoring from their parents when it comes to education.
The diary sounds great! I personally am still SUPER KEEN for your 'how to tiger cub high school' post you promised a while back :)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, your classy dress+hair+shoes are so beautiful!
I concur. :)
Deletehahaha, "we have excellent dining halls with diverse menu selections". you are so funny!! which is your favorite dining hall, btw? Also, can you give us tips on eating nutritiously and not stress-eating during midterms and finals periods? I have major problems when it comes to stress-eating lol. but it def doesn't seem like freshman 15 hit you at all!! good for you! :)
ReplyDeleteYes, I've actually heard the opposite about Harvard! My friends from high school who went to Harvard said that there is a sense of pride and a huge sense of camaraderie at Harvard and that students are more than willing to work in groups and help each other learn concepts/material for classes. They seem to have such diverse interests and be there for the sake of learning and help maintain a very supportive learning environment. I heard that the environment is nowhere as cutthroat and harsh as some people may think- or at least definitely not as much as in high school where people are competing to get to Harvard. I also heard that grade inflation helps a lot, which is pretty awesome!!
ReplyDeleteSome diary type entries would be great! Really, I enjoy reading any of your entries so I don't care as much about the content. LOL!
ReplyDeleteCan you please, please tell me where you got your "semi-classy" dress from??? The pale pink, peplum dress? OMG, it would be PERFECT for an event I have coming up in September. Please, please, please! My email address is deesgirl@gmail.com I don't know if I'll see your response here so if you can email me and let me know I will be forever grateful! Thanks so much!
http://www.zara.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product/us/en/zara-us-S2012/189503/739009/DRESS%2BWITH%2BFRILL%2BAT%2BTHE%2BWAIST
Deletethanks! anyone know where the classy dress is from?
Deleteyes thanks for the diaries!! I would love to hear about how you balance work, exercise and fun at Harvard :) xoxo
ReplyDeleteI love your dresses! But I thought you were a tiger, not a leopard…
ReplyDeleteBut anyway, I like you rap in chinese!
haha! you've definitely proved harvard is wacky! and wacky=fun! most times, anyway. i love your rap! can you post a translation pretty please? i have to tell you, i've listened to it five times now, and the sounds are stuck in my head. and i don't even speak chinese! you've got a catchy beat going :)
ReplyDeletea fan of your blog, and thus your life :P
p.s a week in the life would be great :)
Who says Harvard's no fun? Probably Yale students. :)
ReplyDeleteLookin hot, Sophia! Love your dresses.
ReplyDeleteIs there anything you could say specifically about what Harvard looks for in prospective students? I know it's a vague, boring, off-topic question, but from your experience, what advice could you give to help us get that acceptance letter? An impressive resume, the essay? Unless you'd be entirely bored out, maybe a separate article would be nice:) Thank you!!
ReplyDeleteThis is probably obvious, but the first thing you need is excellent grades and high SAT I/II scores. If you don't have that, they probably won't even look at your application. I guess being able to rap in Chinese would be a plus too. :)
Deleteloved the chinese rap! i can actually understand it :) chinese people ftw! :D
ReplyDeleteHow to do high school like a tiger cub please! :D
ReplyDeleteany tips for incoming college freshmen in general? (not going to harvard, but thought your advice would be nice).
ReplyDeleteHey Sophia,
ReplyDeleteI'm in the process of deciding between schools, and I'd love some info regarding Harvard. My main concern is that there isn't as strong of an undergraduate focus as some other schools. How has your experience been? Have you had access to professors and still had a great learning experience so far?
Thanks in advance!
OMG, week-in-the-life would be so great! Especially since I'm about to go to college at Columbia soon and would like to see what life's like in the Ivy Leagues...
ReplyDeletelolz self-callin' like a champ. life at the ivy schools can be pretty different, since the schools themselves are pretty different from one another. better to ask someone at columbia what their typical week is like.
Delete...but actually congrats, good luck, and welcome. just don't self-call.
Hiya Sophia :)
ReplyDeleteI'm just wondering how you dealt with the pressure of being a tiger cub. I am one too and sometimes the pressure from my parents and teachers just makes me want to crumble and die. Dramatic? Yes. Also, do you have any tips on practicing piano? My parents want me to go to a big competition next summer, which leads to Carnegie Hall (the one you played at, I think). The practice for it is tedious and I can't get myself to settle down and focus on my goal. I want it for myself too, but AHHH, I FEEL LIKE RIPPING MY HAIR OUT! That was off topic, but basically, I would just like to know how you dealt with the pressure.
Love from one tiger cub to another,
Anna :)
glad you enjoy college ... I would LOVE a diary-type week-in-the-life ... go for it, please ! Now you've raised our hopes, you HAVE to ;)
ReplyDeletelove from Freiburg
While the diary thing sounds great, and hearing about your life at Harvard is fascinating, I would love to hear more about growing up as a tiger cub. Give us some stories that weren't in the book!
ReplyDeleteI second that, I'd love to hear more of your growing up stories, especially since your tiger mom said that she doesn't plan on writing a follow-up book any time soon. To be honest, I find your mom's book to be too short, she definitely could have written more than that, but I guess she was busy with university work, so she had an excuse for producing only 240 paperback pages.
DeleteHey Sophia,
ReplyDeleteLoved the pictures - you look super cute. Hope you're having a good time at Harvard - it looks like there are many fun (and funny) things to do !
- Aurora
Hahah love the rap! Just wanted to say that I love your blog... It always makes me laugh! I love some of your insights from earlier posts. (As an Asian-American college student) I can sympathize with so much of what you've described, and I'm so happy to find someone with a similar outlook! Keep writing =]
ReplyDelete-Grace
Haha, I'm a freshie at Stanford where we have a Sleep and Dreams course where you get extra credit if you fall asleep in class. (No, like seriously.) And I just finished a stats pset which wrapped up with a question asking us to find the probability that God exists. College work can be kind of dry (see: the fifty pages of Kant I *supposedly* read for today's lecture) but there's a sort of tongue-in-cheek sense of humor hidden in most classes, a humor which is kind of dry... in other words, exactly what you would expect from professor-types.
ReplyDelete(I also tried taking heritage track Chinese here... turns out they expected us to master traditional characters. Ha - what a joke, I can't even read the simplified ones.)
@Megan Whoa, that seems like an awesome stats pset. Would you mind sharing the solution that you came up with? I know it's a tongue-in-cheek type of question, but that's why I am asking.
DeleteI mean, first we have to decide on which God we are trying to assign a probability to, but I assume we are talking about the American God, i.e. Jesus. And even though some people will argue that America is not a Christian nation, it's just not true -- the great majority of Americans are Christians, just like Arab nations are Muslim nations because the majority of their population is Muslim. No need to fuss about that as long as government-level secularism is preserved, as mandated by the constitution, which it often isn't, but I digress.
Still though, even if we are picking Jesus, we can't simply discard other people's beliefs, we are America for God's sake, which basically leads to my method of assigning probabilities to various gods, i.e. as percentage of the global population that believes in them multiplied by a weight that is a function of that nation's percentage of the world GDP, because nothing in our world is decided without taking money and fortune into consideration. This means the rich vote counts more, because they are job creators who do their God's work, thus making Him more real. We won't take foreign debt into account, because everyone owes everyone something, so why don't we just drop it already, right?
Additionally, we will use the winner-takes-all method of the American presidential election system to make the whole process more exciting, so America gets all 330 million people for Jesus. Already, that's 4.7% for Jesus with "early precincts reporting". Now, America stands at 17% of the world's total GDP, so we will multiply 4.7 by 1.17, which amounts to 5.5%. Not bad for just one Christian nation.
Using the same flawless logic, the EU's entire 500 million population goes for Jesus as well. That's 7.3% of the world population with a GDP similar to America's, so the weighted result is 8.3%, amounting to 13.8% of the vote for Jesus so far.
South America goes singlehandedly for Jesus. That's 5.5% of the world population with 5.6% of the world GDP, so 5.8% weighted, which tallies up to 19.6% for Jesus.
Let's divert our attention to some non-Christian nations for a moment. Now let's get back to the Christian nations. Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Russia all go for Jesus. That's 0.33%, 0.49%, 1.6%, and 2% of the world population, with 1.2%, 2%, 1.2%, and 1.9% of the world GDP, respectively, which gives the following weighted percentages: 0.334%, 0.5%, 1.62%, and 2.04%. The total for Jesus so far is 24.1%.
Gosh darn it, I am running out of large Christian nations. Let's see... Ah! Japan and South Korea count as Christian nations too because it was Christian dollars that made them as economically powerful as they are today. So, 1.8% * 1.07 = 1.93% for Japan and 0.7% * 1.013 = 0.71% for Korea, which brings Jesus to 26.74%.
Hmmm... there must be something I overlooked here. Oh, Israel! Jesus was Jewish after all. Let's see, 7 mill in population and 200 bill in GDP. Yeah... never mind, that's not it. But of course, I forgot to counter in the nuclear stock pile of all Christian nations as opposed to the rest of the world. Jesus nations own 93% of all nuclear weapons, so we multiply 26.74% by 1.93, which gives 51.6%.
This basically gives Jesus the probability of getting heads on a coin flip and everyone else much less than that when split between Islam and Buddhism. Sure, there is another possibility to consider -- that there is no reason to believe that gods exist, bringing the probability virtually to zero, because there is no scientifically-sound evidence to back up their existence, but our logic so far has been way too flawless to worry about evidence.
Conclusion / TL;DR: Go with P(Jesus) = 1, he has money and nukes going for Him.
It was based on a method used by Stephen Unwin in his book The Probability of God, which uses conditional probability ratios. For example, if he claims that certain events (such as natural disasters) are x times more likely to happen if God does not exist than if he does, you can calculate how many times more likely it is that God does exist vs. does not exist.
Delete...but of course, Unwin probably pulled the numbers out of thin air.
Right, so basically he pulls out his initial probabilities out of his British arse, just like I do, so it checks out.
DeleteThat was freakin awesome.
ReplyDeleteYay, you're back!
ReplyDeleteI would love a week-in-the-life diary.
Just wondering, what are you saying (in English, please :) ) in your rap?
ReplyDeleteAwesome posts.
LOVE YOUR RAP!!!
ReplyDeleteHarvard looks sooo fun!! It only strengthens my dream of going to an American university by a thousand.
ReplyDeleteI would love a day-in-the-life post! Also I'd like to hear about Lulu! What is she doing, besides reblogging on Tumblr? :p
P.S. Where did you get your "semi-formal" pink dress? It's stunning!
Dude, why'd you block me from posting on your stereotype-defying blog?
ReplyDeleteI love your blog and it would be an awesome idea for you to post more often! I'd also love to hear about Lulu as well, we're the same age and I'm so curious about what her life is like:)
ReplyDeleteit looks like the diary thing is what everyone wants, including me! love to read your every post!
ReplyDeleteI love all the new pictures that you put up! Glad that you seem to be enjoying yourself up there. It's important to have fun in college and make it all worth it! Looking forward to your next post :)
ReplyDeleteNice blog, love it :)
ReplyDeleteYou've been nominated at my recent post!
http://inluvwitpurse.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/ive-been-nominated/
Is that boy in the pic "we do classy" , your boyfriend?
ReplyDeleteIf you approve this comment , then it means that the boy in the pic
ReplyDelete"we do classy" is your boyfriend.
You.. are.. so.. COOL!!! And pretty! lol
ReplyDeleteLol, your chinese rap class had me laughing so hard! The meaning is funny. I am not surprised your mandarin is quite good (if what I read is true--that you grew up speaking mandarin, is that correct?). I just wish I could have the same confidence of speaking mandarin as you exuded in that clip. Anyway, sorry of this comment turns out to be really long. :) I just find it interesting to share my own experience since I have the language factor in common with you.
ReplyDeleteI'm a native speaker of mandarin, too, but unfortunately I wasn't doing much of it as a child. My parents were first generation immigrants, and they did not assimilate well into english, so at home they only spoke to me in mandarin. It was a difficult time because I had to master english for school, and I began using mandarin less and less due to the habitual slip of getting used to using only english (I was one of the few asian, if not chinese, girls in my class).
I'd say it was around high school out of curiosity I wrote my first strokes of a chinese character again after finding my old notebook from childhood (when my mother used to teach me simpler written words in chinese). Then, I began self studying it at home (with the help of my parents--because in the beginning I could barely write anything). It was a small project that I started more out of fun to see how far I could get since my brother had gone to our dad's home country, Taiwan, for the summer to join a chinese dorm school in which there'd be chinese language lessons. He went more out of having fun than actually having serious intentions about bettering his mandarin skills, lol.
Well, the more I studied, I realized I actually enjoyed the language experience. I never really felt connected to my heritage growing up since there was always the language barrier. I always felt like an outsider in my own relatives' houses all because I couldn't converse fully in mandarin, or feeling embarrassment as a child when I'd be prompted a question in mandarin and could only understand partially what the person said to me. But this time around, I'm learning it for myself and not to gain other peoples' approval. I'm in college now, and still improving my mandarin. The journey never ends!
I love your blog (:
ReplyDeletenice ass sophia ! ;)
ReplyDelete