Summer 2023: Rewind
Draw the curtains
Wow, I cannot believe that it has been 15 weeks since I first started writing this summer newsletter series. I started out with one goal—to get better at expressing my ideas through writing. Instead of keeping my writing a private obsession, I wanted to make it a public one.
At the end of every week, I would sit down, open a notebook, grab a pen, and collect my thoughts from the week. It was a way for me to intentionally reflect upon everything that I had done during the week— matters of significance and subjects that had inspired me.
When summer started, I had a fear that once I had lived a life with infinite time, it would be hard to go back to living one where my time was split between being a student and myself.
I was afraid that I would get used to this liberty. Afraid of becoming too comfortable being in charge of my own time.
And I was right.
It was a special feeling waking up every morning and starting every day with a certain excitement and high energy. I did not know what the day held and I was okay with it.
In uncertainty I found solace.
When I tell people that I spent my summer in Urbana-Champaign (and loved every second of it), I get a lot of confused looks.
“Why didn’t you go back to India? Eat good food and relax?”
“Why didn’t you travel across the country or live in a more happening city?”
“Didn’t you feel bored being there by yourself?”
Quite honestly, I didn’t. I was not tempted to pursue any of these options because they would have all strayed me away from my goal for this summer, which was to better understand myself.
I knew that in order to fully discover myself, I had to spend time away from homely comfort or metropolitan distractions. Urbana-Champaign was going to be my haven, and I was prepared for it.
And, to be honest, I am really glad that I chose to stay here. Looking back, I wouldn’t have been able to do half the things that I did over the last 3 months if I had been anywhere else.
When I first started writing these newsletters, I said “This summer will be an experiment in learning”. And with any good experiment, you need some discipline and mental resolution to perform it.
Over the past 3 months, I have released 2 songs, read 5 books (collected a lot more), learned 2 new songs on the piano, started learning Spanish, built a drone, published my website, watched 25 movies, learned about Indian History, got verified as an Artist on YouTube and Spotify, worked on Solar Desalination, helped with a textbook on Energy Systems, edited a couple hundred photos, learned some ML, found inspiration at Disney, deep dove into physics, made a music video, and, most importantly, wrote and shared it all with everyone in 10 condensed newsletters. And as random and far-reaching as this list may seem, it has an underlying thread that connects it all together.
This is what my answer is to who I truly am. My answer to what I would work on if I had all the time in the world.
A supercluster of activities and fields served on a single platter. The lightning rods that attract me and the pieces of a puzzle that make me.
I have always found the title of a ‘Mechanical Engineer’ to be an incomplete description of my interests. I am more than just an engineer.
I am foolishly curious.
The last couple of weeks have flown by, leaving me little to no time to sit down and compile everything into a cute little newsletter. However, some of those events have radically changed my perspective on the world and helped me realign some of the goals that I had set upon myself.
Here’s a glimpse into some of the things that happened in those final weeks (Week 10-15) leading up to today:
Experiencing ‘Oppenheimer’
This movie has single-handedly rekindled my love for science and brought to my attention an aspect of scientific exploration that is seldom thought about—the consequences of one’s achievements.
It has changed the way I think about new horizons while simultaneously being moved by its art of storytelling. From its brilliant cinematic execution to its breathtaking soundtrack, this story instills fear and hope in me at the same time.
Visiting Purdue + Conversation with a Physics Professor
Visiting a different University campus is always a fun experience. You get to learn about new ideas, traditions, buildings, and professors(and explore libraries!!) During my visit there, I got the chance to talk to a theoretical physicist about his work at Fermilab with muons and the underlying structure of the universe. There was something that he said that I still keep coming back to every day—we are protected by our universe.
There is SO much energy packed inside the nucleus of atoms (as the ‘strong nuclear force’1), but we are all very well-shielded from it. The fact that we can touch something without it blowing up is a wonder in itself.
I want to understand this better, which is why one of my goals for this semester is to talk with professors who work on similar ideas on campus
Troppenheimer playlist
What do Tron: Legacy and Oppenheimer have in common? A spectacular and well-complementary soundtrack. It’s now a playlist2 that you can listen to.
Picked up some new books
The one constant every week has been the addition of new books to my library. Watching Oppenheimer seeded an outburst of an entirely new genre of books, related to Nuclear Physics, the History of the Manhattan Project, and the beauty of Physical Laws (The books include ‘The Character of Physical Law’ by Richard Feynman, ‘The Quark and the Jaguar’ by Gell-Mann, and ‘The Physics of the Manhattan Project’ by Bruce Reed)
One of the books that I read while at Purdue was “Lincoln: The Inventor” which explored the lesser-known side of Abraham Lincoln. Did you know that he is the only President in U.S. History to hold a patent? Lincoln had an inventive and curious mind. Before he was a politician, he was the son of a farmer who had spent a fair share of his childhood working in the fields. He had cultivated (pun unintended) a mechanical mind.
An excerpt from the book:
Abraham Lincoln as inventor is a story generally known but rarely examined to reveal its larger meaning. Lincoln's mechanical mind gave America more than just an unmanufactured invention; it was more than just the momentary élan or peculiarity of an intellectual man. The depth of Lincoln's scientific thinking—brought to fruition with his invention—pervaded his entire life and contributed to his overall greatness. His desire for cultural and social advancement and improvement through innovation influenced his thinking on internal improvements, free labor and slavery, and the tools of war; his penchant for math and science reflected his desire for exactness in everything he did, from surveying, to the law, to military planning, and even to his study of grammar and his writing. As acclaimed intellectual Jacques Barzun declared, Lincoln's "artistic genius"—as poet, writer, inventor, scholar, orator, and politician—was the reason he was a man able to "master a dangerous, new, and sophisticated world.”
The more you know!
AI x Education Conference
During Week 11, I got the chance to lead some panel discussions with educators from around the country as a part of the AI x Education Conference. One such discussion was with Stephen Wolfram, with whom I had a much detailed conversation with just a couple of months prior!3.
golden hour x UIUC
I wanted to capture the warmth of a summer evening at UIUC in a short video. This is something that I made as a one-day video experiment:
Reviving UIUCFreeFood
@UIUCFreeFood has been down ever since Twitter4 changed its policies on API and started charging for it. With the start of the semester coming up fast, Juan David and I knew that we had to get the train up and running again. After some days of intense coding and documentation reading on Authorization and endpoints on Twitter, the UIUCFreeFood Train is back on track! (And it is stronger than ever!!)
The latency between filling out the form and the tweet getting sent is mere seconds, as opposed to 5 min before. It works flawlessly.
1000 Subscribers for The UIUC Talkshow
Last week, we crossed 1000 subscribers for The UIUC Talkshow and it was a surreal feeling. Even though we didn’t start this show with the intention of getting new subscribers, the fact that it happened as a consequence of all our hard work over the last year made it all the more special5.
Curiosity @ Illinois
(I am going to leave you to figure this one out. More about it sometime in the future)
Conclusion
During these 15 weeks, I have been subject to countless surprises, (mis)adventures, expeditions, and explorations. But the one thing that didn’t surprise me was how fast it all ended.
The truth is, no number of summers are going to be enough for me to do everything that I want to. There will always be new projects to work on, people to meet, problems to solve, and horizons to explore.
Looking back, I am honestly surprised at how much/how little I was able to do during this short ‘hiatus’. There are still so many things that I never got around to finishing, such as building my RC Tron Bike or releasing ‘Interstellar’. But, I am sure that they will all have their time to shine sometime in the near future.
To be honest, I am going to miss having the luxury and freedom of being able to decide how to spend my time. With classes starting soon, I will have to split my time between school and my projects.
However, I want to take the lessons that I learned over the summer and find ways to continue doing what I am doing as the semester progresses.
I am a senior in college now (which still sounds absurd saying out loud)6.
As I enter this new stage in my life, I want to be more ambitious yet considerate, optimistic yet cautious, and fearless yet practical.
I started this summer with some questions that I was hoping to find the answer to by the end. But coming out of it now, I realize that I have only accumulated more of them7.
And maybe this is the most important takeaway from the last 15 weeks— learning that I will always have more questions to ask.
I do not know what the future holds for me. But something that I have learned this summer is to trust this uncertainty8. An undefined path means you have the ability to forge your own. Fearing it makes it more daunting, but embracing it gets you closer to your end goal.
My journey on this path has only begun. I know that I have a lot of room to grow and a lot more to learn and explore. I intend to keep finding new ways to be curious and grateful for everything and everyone around me.
It’s time to take a leap of faith.
I have a good feeling about this one.
Signing out,
Aaryaman
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Read the previous editions of the Summer 2023 Newsletter Series here:
Week 3: The Pursuit of Scientific Exploration
Week 4: Endaevours in Engineering
This is why E=mc^2 is such an important equation. The smallest mass is already being multiplied by a factor of ~10^17 because of the c^2 term! Learn more about it here.
Here’s the Spotify link for ‘Troppenheimer’ (make sure you hit shuffle)
I can’t get myself to call it “X”
The first and best conversation with Stephen Wolfram
Richard Feynman on ‘The Uncertainty of Knowledge’:
Sounds like a summer well spent, and I like how you documented so many diverse things together, like the whole experience is indivisible. I hope you’ll find a way to keep a bit of that summer exploration in everything that happens this semester!
Beautiful "sign out."
25 movies? How did you keep track of that haha? Maybe list them?? You forgot the 784 Shark Tank episodes with the 34506 individual pieces of chips.
"As I enter this new stage in my life, I want to be more ambitious yet considerate, optimistic yet cautious, and fearless yet practical." Great line.
In many ways, the question we need to figure out ASAP: How do we make this summer lifestyle our way of living?
One of the most important questions worth asking.
Have a good semester, and see you around.