classes im taking! by Victor D. '27

my schedule

6.191: Computation Structures.

Goal of this class: learn about digital systems. So far we’ve covered basic circuit design and boolean algebra. The first lab was pretty fun but—because I’m brainrotted—when I saw my friend typing rapidly on his computer it reminded me of hacking into the mainframe, so I spent about an hour configuring my VSCode to look like im hacking the mainframe:

I went through a few fonts before settling on this one, lmk if you have font recs. this is GlassTTY VT220 TrueType font.

18.100B: Real Analysis

I missed taking a math course last semester; it was my first without one. But here I am, learning to prove highly esoteric statements such as  1 > 0. Intuition serves me well to know this is true but the goal of this course is to learn how to write formal mathematical proofs (as well as develop a rigorous understanding of calculus). I enjoyed the first PSET; it reminds me of 6.121 (Intro to Algorithms) except this course requires far, far more detailed and rigorous proofs.

11.367:  Land Use Law and Politics: Race, Place, and Law

After several semesters, I finally have a chance to take a class with Justin Steil, a lawyer, researcher, professor, paramedic… he does so many things. The readings are incredibly dense including court documents, decisions, and legal opinions, something I haven’t been exposed to before. Each session, we discuss the key facts of the court cases we read.

Law is largely alien to me and while I primarily signed up for this course because of my interest in land use, I’ve really come to start apprecating the approach of this course synthesizing race, land use, and law, given how interconnected these topics are in the history of the United States.

WGS.S30: Global South Feminisms

This course is taught by Djameila Ribeiro, a leading Afro-Brazilian feminist scholar who is currently an MLK Visting Scholar at MIT (and whose book I mentioned in my last blog: Where We Stand). Each session focuses on different geographies and key figures in feminist movements in the global south. We’ve covered several movements so far, including Gloria Anazaldua who, writing from the US-Mexico border in Texas, focuses on issues concerning transnational Chicane identity and Dalit⁠01 if you've taken a world history class in the US, you probably know this caste by the name 'untouchables' Feminism, a strain of feminist analysis originating in India focusing on the intersection of caste and gender.

11.139: The City in Film

I was so mad when I was waitlisted for this class at first. CI-H subjects (Communication Intensive in the Humanities) at MIT are difficult to get into becuase there aren’t many options; yet, they require us to take two by the time we graduate .⁠02 Hypothetically, we as MIT should develop excellent writing skills by the time we graduate because of these communications requirements... the extent to which this is true is dubious

my humble plea to be let in the class

When I walked into our first screening last Thursday, I was really happy to find so many friends in this class, including one from hall and another from Wellesley whom I took 11.011 (The Art and Science of Negotiation) with last semester. All around, super thrilling. Our first film was a silent film released in 1927 called Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, which we discussed yesterday: it’s really incredible how modern the city feels despite being nearly 100 years old (transit hasn’t changed that much since the industrial revolution, excluding electric scooters and that whole hyperloop [reinvented tunnel] thing that flopped 😹 [i mean you could argue that high speed rail was a tech advancement and now they have maglev but it’s still a train yk]).

im feeling very intellectually nourished rn it’s so awesome.