Things to tell 18-year-old Evan

Early in 2023 the MIT Undergraduate Math Association had an event where course 18’s could get paired with a graduate student and chat over coffee. So naturally I got asked what I wish I knew as an undergraduate. This post records some subset of the things I said.

1. Undergraduate math isn’t deep after all — it’s broad but shallow. (Graduate school is a different story.) For years, I was told that when I got to university, math would be way harder than in high school, because blah-blah-blah contests aren’t real math blah-blah-blah. Turns out I was somewhat misled.
2. I wish I had taken fewer math classes. For someone that’s taken circa 30 semesters of math classes, I remember astonishingly little of what was covered. All too often I’ve had the rather depressing experience of not understanding chapters of Napkin, despite being the author. Time as an undergraduate is really valuable, so in hindsight I don’t think this was worth the opportunity cost, since (a) I didn’t remember most of it later anyway, (b) math is easier to learn by yourself than many other fields.
3. Instead I should’ve taken more music and linguistics or similar. They were better taught than the math classes, and far harder to replace after graduating. In general, at MIT at least I thought the humanities classes were stronger than the technical classes, pedagogically.
4. But you don’t have to drown in classwork. I started every semester by signing up for eight classes, and then taking the four that took the least time. Also, being a math major means you have almost no major requirements; you can get a math major by taking one math class per semester. I think being intentionally light on classes was the correct decision, because —
5. Living on campus next to your friends is absurdly underrated. Now I’m at the age where most of my peers have graduated, gotten jobs, moved to one of the coasts, etc. In some cases they’ve gotten married and basically disappeared off the face of the Earth. And I wish I had taken more advantage of the time when everyone was basically within a 2-mile radius of each other.
6. Besides, meeting new people is much easier in college. It’s much harder when you get older.
7. Growing up is horrible. Seriously. Besides crappy dorms and tuition, I really miss being an undergrad.