Writing
The following are some pieces that I am particularly proud of. Some are papers from classes that I have taken at MIT, while others are just personal writing
litchin@ and mellifluously@
Since 2014, I have had a literary mailing list (litchin@) and a musical mailing list (mellifluously@) which I would send various musings to. An archive of posts made (albeit missing the lively community of responses) can be found here.
Jeopardy - 2017 to present
After winning the 2017 Jeopardy College Championship with "Who is the spiciest memelord?", I got quite a taste of internet celebrity. My media studies training helped me make sense of the entire process.
This space is reserved for my own writing. Interviews with me can be found on my press page
- Reddit AMA I conducted on /r/Jeopardy
- "Memetic Nanofame" - a presentation I gave for the Summer HSSP 2017 lecture series about what my Jeopardy experiences taught me about fame and media. Video of me presenting these slides for Twitch is archived here
Alice - 2015 to present
After taking 21L.430 / CMS.920 (Narrative and Popular Culture: Children's Cultural Blockbusters) with Professor Marah Gubar in Spring 2015, I turned my passing interest in Alice in Wonderland into a more scholarly one. I ended up teaching several classes about Alice and children's literature in general for MIT's Educational Studies Program, modifying what I had learned from Professor Gubar into a class of my own.
- 21L.430 final paper about how the 2010 Burton version of Alice turns her into a destroyer of narrative, civilization and childhood through its removal of nonsense (Spring 2015)
- Preparation notes and in-class notes from my Splash 2015 class.
- Notes from when I taught this class again for my friends in Winter 2016.
- Presentation of a brief history of children's literature taught for Spring HSSP 2015 and Summer HSSP 2017
- Class notes for my Summer HSSP 2017 version of my Alice class, a more in-depth, 6 week version of the one-off class I taught for Splash 2015
21L.706 - Studies in Film: Color in Film - Spring 2017
I took this class with Professor Eugenie Brinkema, the professor who inspired me to minor in Comparative Media Studies through her stunning teaching of 21L.011 - The Film Experience. For my last undergraduate semester at MIT, I took her seminar about color in film which pushed my analytical skills more than ever before.
- Midterm paper about how color exerts violence and trauma on the characters of Upstream Color and Red Desert
- Final paper about understanding the inherent contradictions within the monochrome by tracing its violence / redemption in Blue, Tower, and Vertigo
CMS.616 - Games and Culture - Fall 2016
I took this class with Professor TL Taylor. It's honestly been an honor to work with her and I've really enjoyed looking more in-depth in sociological issues around gaming. Although the papers were a bit more surface level than I would have liked, I definitely feel like I have the groundwork for doing more research
- Midterm paper studying the dynamics of different Tetris communities.
- Final paper about the co-creative relationship between speedrunners and developers.
CMS.845 - Interactive Narrative - Spring 2016
I took this class with Professor Nick Montfort. It's been the first time in a while since I've done a creative writing class since elementary school and I found the work really cool.
Ex Machina by Jonathan Ball
CMS.300 - Introduction to Video Game Theory - Fall 2015
I took this class with Professor Mikael Jakobsson. I really enjoyed this class and managed to write papers that I didn't feel were overly rushed by my college life. I also really appreciated the opportunity to dig deeply into game studies, which was something I never had a formal grounding in before taking this class.
Dorm Security Protests / UA Student-Admin Collaboration - 2014-2017
- Essay I wrote as part of my application for the Burchard Scholars program, a quick summary of my 2014-2015 protests against changes in the MIT Dormitory Security Policy
- Op-ed I wrote for The Tech (MIT's student-run newspaper) about being engaged in student goverment. Heavily related to my work in trying to improve student-admin collaborations through the Undergraduate Association.
- When the Senior House decision / Senior Gift boycott went down, I was interviewed several times by The Tech as a student government official. Here are my opinions about boycotting the MIT Senior Gift Campaign and here and here are my opinions about closing Senior House.
