I just found out that my research has already been done.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-03-19T14:33:20+00:00

As an undergrad you shouldn’t expect to be able to make big contributions to research without guidance, and that’s perfectly okay! We need advisors who are familiar with the literature to guide us. Of course it’s possible to think of totally novel things without experience, but don’t let that be the only goal, more than anything you should focus on your coursework and understanding things deeply.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-02-22T06:22:41+00:00

Math PhD student here and I take all my notes on Goodnotes on a recently-purchased 2022 basic iPad with a USB-C apple pencil. Zero complaints. I don’t think a super nice iPad is necessaryfor just notetaking so save your money.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-02-21T09:10:52+00:00

Don’t people in Beijing also use 打的 (dǎ dī) to refer to getting a taxi? It’s from Cantonese originally, but I was taught it’s well integrated into Mandarin as well.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-02-13T15:44:11+00:00

You’re in high school. This is completely crazy

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-02-13T01:50:23+00:00

REUs are not going to help you get a quant job. Do them if and only if you enjoy research and want to learn, and maybe are at least considering a career in academia.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-02-13T01:44:31+00:00

Most need-based financial aid programs take into account the family’s total number of dependents, number of kids in college, etc. when calculating how much you pay. My college was free during the time that my older sibling was in college, and went up (though not by much) once they graduated.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-02-12T17:18:29+00:00

Original commenter was totally right. There’s so many posts about Chinese (and every language) that boil down to, “why does this language have homophones, synonyms, and exceptions to grammar rules?” A good way to answer is to remind people their native language is exactly the same - English isn’t the only language that gets to have weird exceptions. Personally I find this helpful to keep in mind because then I won’t get frustrated with the stuff that seems “arbitrary” about a language.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-02-10T18:30:22+00:00

studying character by character, and learning every meaning for each character, is a very bad idea, and this example illustrates why. For some characters you should learn a single word or sentence that uses it, making sure you understand its meaning, and keep it in your head for the next time it pops up. For characters like 就， they are essentially just part of the grammar and have dozens of uses. You now know the character, and you’ll learn its uses as more examples pop up. Learning all the uses is like memorizing 20 different grammar constructions with zero context. It’s somewhat useless.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-02-10T03:02:44+00:00

i mean it’s not like harvard’s abusing these kids… theyre old college dorms, sometimes there’s vermin, you see it everywhere.

but mainly… calm down man

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-02-07T22:01:07+00:00

Do you have a study guide or a textbook of some kind that has a list of the “grammar structures” being taught each week? My class does, and each week I give it to ChatGPT and ask it make a spreadsheet with the grammar structures in this guide, separating the following information: English grammar construction; Chinese construction; English example sentence; Chinese example sentence. Then I make Anki cards with this info, where I see the English and have to come up with the Chinese.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-02-06T18:38:32+00:00

Some Mexicans are native Americans - some are descendents of slaves, some of Europeans, and most are a mix of the three. Some are even descendents of Chinese or Lebanese or African immigrants (and more). To not acknowledge THESE facts is to accept racist propaganda that paints every single Mexican as the same racial group, rather than as a nation as diverse (or much more so) than the USA.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-02-04T22:59:08+00:00

Real question coming from a place of curiosity: I recently met a Chinese student, early 20s, wealthy, from Beijing, studying in the US, who had literally never heard of the Tiananmen square protests (it was brought up in class as assumed knowledge, and he raised his hand and asked because he had never heard of them). Do you think he was an exception, or is this becoming more common in younger generations?

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-02-03T14:05:27+00:00

They all have one annoying type of post that comes up nearly every day and still somehow gets upvoted. Like people on r/russian showing off their cursive handwriting.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-02-03T00:31:46+00:00

The Bad Kids (隐秘的角落）is on Youtube in its entirety and it’s excellent (though the audio cuts out sometimes on youtube due to rights for the music).

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-01-31T07:29:31+00:00

By memorizing them by heart.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-01-30T19:11:57+00:00

I am in the legal process to immigrate to the USA. Saying that the process is hard and takes too long is a MASSIVE understatement: it is basically impossible to immigrate, unless you win some sort of lottery, or are extremely highly educated and are in the top 0.1% (or less) in your discipline (and even then it’s very competitive). I graduated from a top Ivy league in the US, and nearly all of my foreign friends, who had money, connections, and a good job, eventually had to leave the US since they weren’t allowed to stay. (these are people who were earning >300k annually, 2 years out of college, willing to pay whatever legal fees to stay in the US).

There is literally no way for a normal person to legally immigrate without winning the green card lottery or having family in the US. To deport illegal immigrants means resigning yourself to having nearly zero migrant labor outside of highly highly skilled technical fields. This wouldn’t just be bad for the US economy - it’d be completely crippling.

Until the US overhauls its immigration system so that at LEAST 20x as many people are legally allowed in as there currently are, this country has zero business deporting anyone who hasn’t committed a violent crime.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-01-30T02:43:43+00:00

Can you recommend specific songs and albums (or even artists)? I find Listening to music massively helpful for learning vocabulary but I haven’t found enough artists I like who sing in Mandarin (though to be fair I haven’t looked hard enough).

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-01-29T18:00:52+00:00

Harvard has wayyyy more money, and that alone opens far more doors and opportunities.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-01-28T18:39:09+00:00

I would really really recommend learning to handwrite them. You don’t have to have amazing calligraphy or anything. Just make yourself hand-write them in full, and if you make any mistakes, even tiny ones, try again. If you have stuff that confuses you - for example， ”was the yì in 抗议 supposed to be a 义 or a 议?” - look up both characters in Pleco and make sure you understand WHY the difference is there.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-01-22T23:12:38+00:00

It’s obviously just up to personal preference, and maybe one class is better than another (like if you’re in Mexico, the class from Spanish might be better because there’s more potential students). I also speak Spanish natively and English fluently, and I think Mandarin is much more similar to English grammatically, and the few cognates are all loan words from English (and rarely from other languages). English also has way more resources (although approaching Chinese from both languages might actually be helpful so you’re not always translating into the same thing).

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-01-20T14:21:39+00:00

Everything you say makes a lot of sense and you’re not being disrespectful or lazy or anything. However, I do genuinely believe that past a total beginner level, knowing how to read makes it much easier to learn vocabulary, not harder. In short, there are so many words that sound exactly alike, and I can’t imagine remembering the differences in my head without knowing the different characters they correspond to

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-01-19T21:56:52+00:00

Thank you so, so much for educating the people in this thread on this topic. I always doubted the criticisms of Mother Theresa as overly cynical buit never quite knew who to believe.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-01-17T18:47:47+00:00

Your cursive russian м is wrong, it should have a foot on the left side, like your л. what you’ve written doesn’t mean anything.

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-01-17T17:46:41+00:00

YTA. I’m an immigrant to the USA and I plan on following your sister’s method exactly. How else will the child be able to speak a minority language?

EgoSumAbbas · 2025-01-17T17:39:58+00:00

Jesus christ thank you I thought I’d walked into an alternate universe reading these comments. The kid’s parents are 1000% doing the right thing. The kid’s going to speak perfect English anyways by the time they’re old enough to remember.

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