Tidbits from People

On learning

i worked all throughout my undergrad, doing dishes, as a server, cashier, and while there’s money to be made are you sure you want to do that at 30? so make good use of your time here at university.

do you know what i found the easiest part of my undergrad was? it was studying. no matter how hard the material was, regardless of how late the night, to sit with my coffee, put on some music, and work at a decent desk comfortably was the easiest possible thing i could have ever done.

most people don’t get this chance. you have this brief window where your one job is to fill your mind and to be curious. to struggle with hard problems, to meet people. study all that you can because you might never get a chance like this again. - a professor (some parts are lessons from my father too)

when in doubt, just remember, it’s never none of the above. (advice for 90% of all dilemmas) - a cool friend from my putnam math group

On my field of study

Mathematics is the music of reason. To do mathematics is to engage in an act of discovery and conjecture, intuition and inspiration; to be in a state of confusion—not because it makes no sense to you, but because you gave it sense and you still don’t understand what your creation is up to; to have a break-through idea; to be frustrated as an artist; to be awed and overwhelmed by an almost painful beauty; to be alive, damn it. - Paul Lockhart, A Mathematician’s Lament

The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts … He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher — in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man’s nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician. - John Maynard Keynes

From Twitter

all failures can be distilled into skill issues or will issues — anson yu from twt

the days are long but the decades are short — sam altman from twt

you can just do hard things - random tweet