UT changelog
What's new with Nathan Brown?
Hey hey! It's been 46 days since I started at UT Austin, and it's about time for another post. Here's how my life has remained constant / changed since my first day of class on Aug 23:
Constant: My Notion Usage
Yup, still use Notion all the time. I have one page named UT '28 where my entire school life lives[1] and where I keep my schoolwork and todo lists. Looks like this:
It's beautiful and it works well for me. The best part is I can access it easily on both my phone and computer.
Constant: Consistency of Morning Routine
I still have an extremely consistent morning routine. Most weekdays, I have class at 9am, so I wake up at 7:45am. I go to the bathroom, shower, brush my teeth, do my skincare routine, and get dressed for the day. At 8:30am, I head to the dining hall and eat the same breakfast every day:
- scrambled eggs (of questionable quality) with shredded cheese and red salsa
- bacon/sausage/ham (varies day-by-day)
- some kind of potatoes
- a biscuit (they are SO good)
- oatmeal with cinnamon and raisins
I have eaten this breakfast basically every day for the past 40 days I've been in college. What can I say? I like a good morning routine!
Changed: How Much I'm Active
I don't have a car here at UT. I had a car in high school, but my parents and I (correctly) decided that I wouldn't really need a car in college, because I can just walk everywhere. So now I walk everywhere. The Health app on my phone has been especially pleased with me!
I mean, I'm pleased with myself. I'm taking more than double steps/day than I was over the summer. Almost 12,000 steps/day is nothing to scoff at either! It hasn't only been walking. I run more often, especially on Speedway (partially because it is called the Speedway). I also play intramural pickleball and volleyball now, which has been great fun & great exercise.
Changed: My Usage of Vim & LaTeX
I learned how to use Vim back in summer 2023. But I never really used it much until my first day of classes, where I decided on a whim: "You know what? I'm gonna become really really good at Vim so I can edit text faster and take good notes and stuff." I am very happy to say I've passed the barrier point. Editing text in Google Docs is now more painful than editing text in Vim, so now I exclusively use Vim.[2]
My discrete math class has also reached the point where I have to write proofs. So I'm using LaTeX, the gold standard for mathematicians everywhere. I must say I've become pretty good at it. I don't typically trust ChatGPT much, but it's extremely helpful for LaTeX formatting. I currently use Overleaf but will probably install LaTeX locally at some point.[3]
Changed: My Enthusiam for Cooking
I spent last Saturday making breakfast burritos with a friend in my dorm kitchen. It was a little small, but it totally got the job done. We scrambled high-quality eggs (with help from Gordon Ramsay), cooked breakfast sausage, and learned how to correctly fold a burrito.
I'm not an experienced cook, but when my friend and I split the first breakfast burrito we made, I thought: "HOLY MOLY this is amazing. Either I am an awesome cook or breakfast burritos are hard to mess up, or perhaps a little bit of both." I mean, they were really good! We made a total of 7 burritos: we ate 2 while cooking, and saved the other 5 for later consumption.
But the whole experience made me enthusiastic about cooking more often. It is not only substantially cheaper to cook your own meals (compared to eating takeout), but it is far more satisfying to eat food you've prepared yourself. This week, I'm cooking ground beef quesadillas!
Conclusion
College is awesome and I'm really enjoying it.