Change of Course

Jeremi navigates the ambiguity of a new project; Luca describes this semester's classes and professors

Welcome back to Jeremi and Luca’s Newsletter, a weekly update from two friends connected by a relentless desire to learn.

Enjoy a closer look at what we’re reading, working on, and thinking about—from the small learnings to the large perspective shifts.

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Jeremi: Ambiguity

I walked into the Robotics lab with no idea what to expect.

At the end of the previous school year, I had reached out to Chris, a PhD student in a Robotics Lab that I fiercely wanted to do research in.

I’d already spent the entire year pursuing the Principal Instructor of the lab, though with little success. Chris had been the one person willing to see me and try to fit me into one of the existing projects at the lab.

We exchanged a few emails over the summer, and I got a sense of the project I’d be working on after my internship: a robotic version of Ball Therapy, which is a form of physical therapy administered to young children with Cerebral Palsy (CP).

In traditional ball therapy, a professional rolls a child with CP on a yoga ball to try and activate certain muscle groups. In our Ball Therapy, a robotic platform would move the yoga ball instead of the professional.

It all sounds cool and fancy, but how does it actually work? And how can I contribute? I had these questions bouncing around in my head as I walked into the lab on Monday.

That Monday morning was ambiguous.

Chris didn’t immediately know what to do with me. Which makes sense! There were a hundred different things that needed to be worked on, and he didn’t know which ones I’d enjoy the most or be the most effective in.

The challenge for me was drawing these “hundred different things” out of Chris, and deciding what I wanted to work on.

In a way, this is a good problem to have. He could have just assigned me boring work that needed to get done, to keep me busy. Instead, he gave me the responsibility (and opportunity) to figure out what I wanted to work on.

So I sat down and figured it out. I asked him probing questions to understand the different technical components of the project and how they functioned.

It’s not as simple as asking “What should we work on now?” I needed to understand how the project truly worked, as that question could be answered on many different dimensions. I was able to break it up with him into three large buckets: Control, Planning, and EMG.

These words probably mean nothing to you, and that’s OK! But by splitting it up in this way, I was able to ask in each branch: What is currently working? What is broken? What is the most important thing that needs to get done? From here, we were able to draft concrete action items for me that I was really excited about.

All this to say, it was a really satisfying experience to go from being confused and stumbling around in the dark regarding this project to breaking it down, conceptualizing what the goal state actually looked like, and creating concrete steps to get there.

In school, you are told exactly what to do and how to do it. In the real world, neither is given. The most interesting people don’t sit down and tell you what to do. I’m grateful to Chris for helping me build the skill of jumping into the unknown and making something out of ambiguity.

The view of the ocean from my workstation at the lab

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Luca: New Classes

This past week marked the beginning of my third semester at Cal. I’ve moved into a new house with three friends, made time for morning runs up in the Berkeley hills, went to our first football game against UC Davis (Cal won 31-13), and even squeezed in a flight to Clear Lake, CA.

But as I sit down to write this update, it’s my classes that I’m most excited about. This semester, I’m taking multivariable calculus, introductory computer science, quantitative microeconomics, and a public policy course titled “War? Emerging Technologies and National Security Policy.”

My calculus class is taught by Professor James Sethian. Coincidentally, he was born in Washington, D.C., where I spent the summer, and he currently leads the Mathematics Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (a facility connected to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where Jeremi spent his summer).

My introduction to Sethian was at our first 8 a.m. class, where he explained that he only teaches at this hour because he believes the caliber of students is highest. Later, when he asked our 600-person class how many of us played a musical instrument, nearly every hand went up—possibly affirming the connection between music and education that my high school music teacher always spoke of.

Interestingly, Sethian has a policy against taking notes during class. He prefers that we focus on understanding concepts during the lecture rather than frantically scribbling down every word. He’ll post his notes right after each class, allowing us to engage more deeply with the material while we’re with him. I appreciate this approach as I’ve often felt like I’m actually learning math concepts post-lecture looking at my notes that I can’t even make sense of.

Another course I’m particularly excited about is my public policy class, taught by Professor Andrew Reddie. Another Jeremi-Luca coincidence here: we met Professor Reddie back in high school at Swissnex in San Francisco during a talk on artificial intelligence and deep fakes.

The course examines how emerging technologies like robotics, drones, and machine learning are transforming warfare and national security. It ties together many of the concepts I explored over the summer in D.C. and will be a great change of pace from my math and science–heavy classes. After a fantastic first seminar on the history of war technology, I’m looking forward to learning more in this area and doing so with thoughtful and curious students.

First week in the books and a lot to be excited about! The semester will be extremely busy, but at least that’ll be due to interesting and challenging material, motivated students, and engaging professors.

The Campanile peeking out through the morning marine layer