Final SSP Reflection

In Advanced Topics in Computer Science (ATCS), we followed the Nand2Tetris curriculum over the course of the year and built a computer from the ground up!

We started with the logic gates in the fall and spent the spring building a compiler for the programming language Jack (similar to Java but easier to compile). There were three labs: parsing the jack code, compiling it into VM code, and then writing the operating system that the compiled code needed to run. These labs took me significantly longer than the ones earlier in the year.

I had a lot of fun taking the class throughout the year, which is why I decided to continue it! Our class was a lot smaller this spring (just three of us), but I still really enjoyed it.

All the code I wrote throughout the year for the class is open source on GitHub! You can find all my work at github.com/eeriergosling/nand2tetris and the compiler specifically at github.com/eeriergosling/nand2tetris/tree/main/Compiler.

For our Book Club this spring, we read two books: My Friends by Fredrik Backman and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I was in the book club with Soomin, Adrian, and Alec, and every week we would all read part of the book and discuss it as a group while we ate lunch.

I really liked our book club because I've always really enjoyed reading but never made the time for it outside of reading for class. I enjoy reading a lot more when I get to discuss it with other people and share what I thought along with hearing new perspectives on the book, so this was a perfect activity for me to keep reading things throughout my SSP. We had a lot of fun theorizing about the books, like trying to figure out what "C. Jat" really stood for in My Friends.

Echo Chambers was a seminar where we talked to high schoolers from Sam Houston High School (SHHS) in Louisiana about political issues. They're generally much more republican than we are at BB&N, so the idea behind the seminar was to understand their point of view and have respectful conversations about politics with people we disagreed with.

The structure was:
Week 1: Getting to Know You
Week 2: Political Typologies Quiz Discussion (just BB&N students)
Week 3: Object Share: Story Exchange
Week 4: Stereotypes Exercise
Week 5: Fishbowl Exercise
Week 6: Issues Deep Dive
Week 7: Questions of the Other Side
Week 8: Reflection (just BB&N students)

I really learned a lot from this seminar. We covered a lot of different topics - gun control, immigration, foreign policy, DEI, abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, etc. Even though we disagreed a lot with the SHHS students - sometimes over things I struggled to even understand their perspective on - we found a lot of common ground and understood that all of us were coming from a place of wanting the best for their communities and the country.

I took the Breads & Spreads seminar for my new experience because I've always loved cooking and baking, but I'd never worked with yeasted bread before this class. It's quite different from other types of cooking or baking because the yeast is a living organism - you have to feed it and make sure it rises properly. A lot of breadmaking is waiting for the dough to rise and understanding how to shift the recipe so that the dough is the right texture.

Each week was:
Week 1: Intro to Breadmaking
Week 2: Whole Wheat Bread & Jam (I made mango jam)
Week 3: Pita & Hummus
Week 4: Conchas & Mexican Hot Chocolate
Week 5: Focaccia & Tomato Sauce
Week 6: Babka
Week 7: Anadama Bread & Butter
Week 8: Choose your own (I made cinnamon rolls)

Each week we met and tried everyone's version of the bread that week. I made all my bread on Tuesday mornings right before the seminar (so it was fresh when I brought it in) - waking up at 5 or 6 AM so I had enough time to bake it from start to finish. It was a lot of work, but I really liked doing it and sharing my bread with all my friends. The cinnamon rolls were my favorite, but the conchas and babka were great sweet breads and the focaccia and pita were my favorite savory breads (the tomato sauce was the best spread by far!). Fresh bread is much better than store bought, and I'll definitely be making more breads in the future now that I've learned how!

For my service learning, I really wanted to do something that related to Computer Science. I work for a nonprofit that encourages teens to learn how to code, but I've never really done much teaching individual people myself.

I spent all the classes teaching one kid named Bowen. He's really interested in programing and loves learning - every time he finally figures out a concept he gets extremely excited about it. I taught him some Java, starting with the basics of object-oriented programming (classes, methods, functions, objects, etc.) and moved onto mastering loops and arrays. We did a USACO problem (Cow College - December 2022, Bronze Problem 1) and sometimes I let him explore while asking me questions until he understood a concept. Some of the code he wrote is available at github.com/eeriergosling/bcyf-teaching since we were using GitHub Codespaces.

I really loved teaching him this spring, and if I'm able to, I'd love to come back again in the fall! It's really rewarding to get to see him learn and get excited about coding, and I hope having the resources to teach him at such a young age is able to help him do more and more by the time he's in high school himself. Bowen reminds me a lot of myself when I was younger. He really wants to learn how to make apps and program hardware, so I'm excited to see how far he's able to get!

I did a lot of different sports during my time at BB&N, and I joined the sailing team in my Junior year. I really liked it, so I decided to continue sailing during my SSP! I really liked being on the river for rowing, but I wanted a sport that was less stressful. I had a great time sailing with the team this spring (which was mostly seniors and freshmen) and I decided I'd like to keep sailing in college next year as well. The MIT boathouse is right across from CBI (where we sail) so I'll still be close to the team next year!

I decided to read 1984 because I've heard a lot about the book from people referencing it and thought it seemed interesting — especially how it relates to the state of our country today. It's a book fundamentally about government censorship — specifically rewriting history and controlling the minds of the people — and it was interesting to read it after taking the Echo Chambers seminar where we talked about a lot of political issues (which was one of the reasons I chose the book).

I really liked the book — it makes a lot of interesting points about the nature of government and how regimes come to power. It's very dystopian, but behind all of it is the hope Winston and Julia have for a better future (even if that hope doesn't come to fruition). It serves as a warning about the importance of protecting free speech and the dangers of accepting lies and propaganda as truth. It's very relevant today, and the book is very well written beyond the political points it makes.

I had a great time this spring - SSP gave me the flexibility to do a lot of things I really enjoy without being overwhelmed with homework every night. I'd suggest - as the seniors do every year - to make sure to schedule activities with your friends and hang out in the library with people when you're free! If you don't, you'll never really see your friends during the last trimester of your time in high school. Most of all, I'd recommend trying to schedule all your activities close together without much time in between - it's really hard to use an hour of free time between two activities and it makes each day feel much more busy than it could be!

~ Sofia