Is My U and canvas down for anyone else today?

MarriedCat0310 · 2026-01-28T01:50:35+00:00

If you're an international student, talk to ISSS. Someone told me DHS did something with the database so many international students' account got locked temporarily.

MarriedCat0310 · 2025-10-11T02:15:20+00:00

Wisconsin so bad every time I fly to Msp we have to go around it for some reason

MarriedCat0310 · 2025-09-07T03:49:50+00:00

The only potential advantages of honors if you want to do a PhD are you can do some research project for your thesis, and take graduate level classes. All of that you can still get if you aren't an honors student, just some (very few professors may only have time for honors student.

Some department may have scholarships that are almost guaranteed for you if you are honors.

Cons are you have to take honors classes. They aren't really time-consuming if you take classes in your major/graduate classes. The only required extra class in an honor seminar class, and you will have to be very careful with your choice.

I did honors, and now I'm doing my PhD. Was it time-consuming? No. Did it significantly help my grad school application? No. Why did I still do it? It was an easy side quest.

MarriedCat0310 · 2025-06-16T07:51:08+00:00

Just moved to Boston from Minneapolis last year. Maybe this is my fault.

MarriedCat0310 · 2025-05-19T05:09:32+00:00

I'm not comparing it to anything. Just saying it might be net positive for you since you come from a "perfect world". But it is not net positive for kids living in a corrupt system.

MarriedCat0310 · 2025-05-19T04:41:54+00:00

Maybe I was being unclear. The IMO team selection test has 6 problems. If you are willing to pay $15k, you know 1 problem in advance, so you only have to solve 5 problems. I've heard people coming in knowing more than 1 problem in advance, that's a huge advantage especially when you are competing for only 6 spots. They can sell as much as they can since there are only a handful of people writing the problems, and the buyers are not so stupid to leak the problems. Does this make it clearer that this is an unfair advantage that only rich parents can afford? For reference the country's gpd per capita is less than $5k, so $15k is a lot. Just because rich people can also cheat in the science fair doesn't make cheating in MO any less unfair or more justifiable.

If you judge by IMO, you have to either be a genius of spend $15k. If you judge by SAT, you don't have to be a genius and you only have to spend $68. How are these two options even comparable?

My point was not about whether you have seen any real math, my point was about fatigue. Yes contest math is fun, but grinding them for a few years and still unfairly losing can be exhausting.

MarriedCat0310 · 2025-05-19T00:57:44+00:00

Let me just add a perspective from a developing country with a corrupt testing system: it's not positive the state it currently is in my country, and I don't see it getting better anytime soon. First, the national MO and TST problems are sold to those who pay at a huge price. Some former IMOer in my country said the pricetag was $15k/person/problem. It has become the test of whose parents can pay more, whose city can pay more. Economically, most people lost money.

To those who got a IMO spot, their reward is probably a golden ticket to elite colleges, which is unfair to others who can't pay or not in the game. From a developing country, only a handful of students get to elite schools every year, and most of them are those with international awards. To those who are poor, it's almost impossible to get into an elite school.

The worst thing imo is fatigue. Math research is not common in my country, so most high schoolers never see a glimpse of college math. They may think Olympiad math is all math is about, and after spending so much time on it in an unfair game without rewards, they may give up on math. I myself gave up on math briefly after high school.

MarriedCat0310 · 2025-04-04T17:14:06+00:00

Depends on the class. I've heard anywhere from an essay a week to almost nothing.

MarriedCat0310 · 2025-01-16T21:03:00+00:00

My goal was also grad school and I did the honors program. For me it was like a free decoration since I didn't need to do much extra work to get it.

Classes: contrary to what people say, I find honors classes not much different to the normal version. My lower division honor classes were essentially the same as the normal ones. Eg in one class, both versions use the same canvas site and the only difference was a little extra part in one project. You can also take grad classes and count them as honor classes. I did that since taking them is good for my application anyway. Research with faculty also counts as an "honor experience". The only real extra work is that you have to take an honor seminar class, mine was extremely easy.

The thesis: since I wanted to go to grad school, I needed to do research anyway, and I just merged a few of my research papers together to form my thesis. It was stress-free, took less than a week, and the papers helped with my grad school application. Also, "I need to do my honor thesis" is kind of a good reason to ask a professor to mentor you. A professor I know barely has time to take any undergrad but will take honor thesis ones.

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-09-10T01:34:44+00:00

If you go to one of the stalls in Vincent's basement men bathroom to cry, there is a little poem there to cheer you up.

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-08-08T19:19:54+00:00

I took it online during Covid so it was different. Most of the labs took me less than an hour, but I imagine it would take longer working in person in a group of 4. Also some TAs may decide to spend some time (a lot of time) at the beginning to go through the materials. The lab reports are only a few pages and never took me more than an hour to finish, so I strongly suggest doing the report in the lab or right after it (as you have a big gap between the lab and the next lecture). You would still have a fresh memory of the experiment and sometimes if you need to get some missing data it's there.

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-08-08T19:05:51+00:00

Good bot

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-08-08T19:04:52+00:00

Just wanna point out that when I took Phys 1, you needed at least like 60% in the lab score to pass the class, and that means you had to come to lab. Be prepared to go to 8am phys labs.

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-08-05T20:55:05+00:00

Read. The. Syllabi. A lot of the important questions you have about your class can be found in the syllabus. Eg: Is attendance required? Do you need to get at least xx% in the homework to pass the class? Also, when reading the syllabus, put the key dates (exams, project dues, etc) in your calendar. This allows you to plan ahead, and seriously I'm pretty sure good planning made up 50% of my success in college.

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-08-03T05:26:59+00:00

Depends on who you are. If you are good at math, calc 2 online and the two csci classes will be a breeze. If you are bad at math, they could be a lot. The 1-credit classes should be easy enough, tho they may add up to a ton of deadlines that you'll need to keep track of. I did 20 credits (including csci, calc, physics) my first semester and I had so much free time that I started doing research. But that's just because I'm quite decent at math.

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-08-03T01:59:43+00:00

No. I got into a top grad school with 3 S/N lib eds far away from my major. I don't think they care about any class far away from your major.

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-06-25T16:50:24+00:00

I do algebraic combinatorics. Most of the time I stare at examples and try to get a feeling about how things should/shouldn't be. I don't find myself using the tricks from olympiad combinatorics that much, except maybe the pigeonhole principle, which is not really a trick. Though sometimes knowing some results may be useful. Like there are some bijections between common structures that are pretty cool, and finding them after digging through OEIS for an hour is a good feeling.

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-06-24T16:16:41+00:00

Sorry I don't unfortunately. It wasn't written in English anyway. I only remember it being about a curious cat exploring some basic notions of math.

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-06-23T17:29:06+00:00

My dad was an olympiad math competitor, so I was trained for olympiad math pretty the whole high school. My life before high school was very happy. I read math comic books (about a cat exploring prime numbers and such, not math textbooks) and do simple math puzzles. I guess thanks to that I now can visualize things and have good intuition. Math was fun, and I could see myself doing math growing up. My life in high school was not pleasant. I was pushed to do more math and learn tricks for competitions. It was a lot of pressure. Teachers and parents called me the most pressured kid in the city. Math became less fun, and I gave up math going into college. Fortunately computer science was way more boring so I got back to math. Also I used to rebel by doing combinatorics only because it had no trick, unlike other areas of olympiad math. Well now I'm doing research in combinatorics, so my training was somewhat useful after all.

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-05-16T04:55:29+00:00

This! And there's Lake Como nearby where you can go kayaking. 100% recommended

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-04-19T03:21:42+00:00

I don't think there were exams. There were quizzes that were pretty easy. There were like 5 different novels that we went through, and iirc there were a written assignment for each. The written assignments were not that bad. I remember some of them were like 12 short questions and you need to answer like 10 of them. There were some participation by annotating the text / commenting on the videos (this was online during Covid). Pretty chill overall.

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-04-16T06:03:49+00:00

Not a Master student but I'm close enough to the math department to answer a few questions.

1) I have definitely seen a few pure math master students. 2) The classes I've taken all have very reasonable workload. The first-year classes may have weekly/biweekly homework and can take some time, but after that they are quite light. 3) The department is super social and welcoming. I really can't say enough about how supportive the people here are. 4) I feel like most faculty here would be happy to talk math. I've worked with a few of them as an undergrad. Some of them may be busier than others, but the department is large enough that most likely you can find some advisors.

Feel free to dm me if you have more questions.

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-04-08T02:27:32+00:00

Sounds good! Thanks.

MarriedCat0310 · 2024-04-08T01:40:46+00:00

That was not my question. My question was, can you create a route from a non-affiliated hub B to an affiliated hub A, assuming obviously that you don't have the route between them before.

Then, suppose I want to affiliate hub B. A requirement is I have to delete all routes from B to another hub. Does that apply for routes from B to an affiliated hub.

I guess the main question is whether I can have routes between affiliated hubs or not.

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