Hello hello, welcome to this week's edition of Sunday Chillin'! Apparently the storm system passing through the western seaboard is called the Pineapple Express. Who comes up with these things? And where can I sign up for this job?
The Expanse
I've said this sentence approximately 47 times since moving back to the west coast, but it bears repeating once more: this campus is too big.
How big, you ask? Well, it turns out that Stanford is the largest college campus in the US, covering over 8000 acres. This is a HUGE amount of land, given that there are only 6000 undergrads and 12,000 grad students at this school. [1]
To put this in perspective, UC Berkeley has a total student population of ~45,000 and spans 2000 acres. That means that Berkeley's student population density is 17x (!) higher than Stanford's. How about a similar private institution like Harvard? 22,000 students and 209 acres. [2]
On one hand, this means that Stanford feels very spacious and serene. Sometimes you can walk on campus and not see a soul for 10-15 minutes at a time. [3] In fact, if you get off at the Palo Alto Caltrain station (just off campus) and decide to walk to the main quad, you've got a peaceful 1.3 mile walk ahead of you down Palm Drive. And there's no real issue with noise on this campus, but I assume that this is because sound decays as a function of the distance squared. So it's got a lot of space to dissipate. [4]
But I think I tend to lament the size of this campus because walkability is so important for social vibrance. I saw a tweet at some point that said "the only reason why people in the US are obsessed with college is because it's the only time in their lives that they've lived in a walkable community." And I think this rings true, it's so nice to have quick and direct access to your friends. At Berkeley, if I wanted to hang out with friends, I'd just amble a few blocks over to initiate shenanigans. [5]
But here, if I want to hang out with someone that happens to live on the other side of this campus, we're literally separated by ~1.8 miles. C'mon man. The activation energy to get me to do that is just too high, I'm sorry. [6] This lack of convenience probably also seems more acute to me because I just moved here from New York City, one of the most walkable cities in the US. I've really been spoiled by having everything within a 5 minute walk of my apartment.
Thankfully (?), grad school is inherently less social than undergrad so it's not as big of a deal as it would have been at an earlier stage of my life. If you're an undergrad on this campus though, I do not envy you, and I hope you can live in a more dense place soon.
I will say though, my cardiovascular health has improved since coming here, especially in periods when I biked daily to class. Unfortunately, biking has likely impacted my social standing, as I often come into class looking like I just narrowly escaped a local coyote. It's hard to look put together when you're breathing that hard. [7]
The biggest positive I've experienced, however, is that I've had the chance to walk much more here. There's a lot of research that shows that walking is super beneficial for longevity, mental health, and even mental acuity. But to be honest, never mind all of that. It just feels good to take a walk sometimes. And I also find that walks give me a lot of time to think since it's a fairly solitary activity.
I have some theory that human beings were really made to walk. Our ability to walk long distances with relatively minimal food intake contributed in no small way to our success as a species. But I think that also means that we just really enjoy walking. We all like to do what we're good at, after all.
With all that being said, I've actually been taking walks with friends more often as a social activity and I've found it to be a really pleasant experience. Walking with someone still allows for lengthy conversations, and even silences don't drag on since you're still physically moving forward. I, for one, am glad that Stanford has forced me to start walking more.
I don't want to bore you with more details of my Relaxing Pastimes™, but I hope that you also elect to take some walks as the weather begins to warm up. I don't know about all of you, but I'm certainly looking forward to the Vitamin D and the fresh air after this cold and dreary winter.
A Stroll
Initially, I was thinking it might be funny to just not include any songs since I do think that it's nice to take walks in silence. But then I realized that a) that's not that funny and b) it goes against the whole purpose of this newsletter. So instead, here are a few songs that I enjoy listening to on my walks and bike rides. They're all songs with an easygoing character since I don't want you to feel the sonic pressure to accelerate. Heaven forbid I start jogging.
The Journey - Tom Misch
Spotify | YouTube
South - Galimatias [8]
Spotify | YouTube
Ice Cream Truck - Dom Kennedy
Spotify | YouTube
Beauty and Essex - Free Nationals, Daniel Caesar, Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Spotify | YouTube
Lots of chill music linked here this week, I hope it leaves your mind free to wander.
See you all next Sunday!
suhaas
————————————————————————————
If you'd like to share this newsletter with your friends, please direct them to this link.
Here are Spotify and YouTube playlists with all the songs so far.
[1] Do these numbers surprise you? They certainly surprised me. But it makes more sense once you realize that grad students bring in much more money for the school than undergrads do. That, and also, keeping the number of undergraduates low is probably another way to make the school feel more exclusive. But I will say that Stanfy does a better job of holding their professors accountable to actually being decent teachers than Berkeley did. So maybe it's not a big deal in the end.
[2] To be fair, I think Harvard's campus is actually quite underwhelming. If you have an endowment of $53B, you should probably upgrade your campus so it has a bit more oomph.
[3] As opposed to Berkeley, where I learned not to bat an eye even if I saw someone take a poopoo in front of me. I suppose everyone has their preference of scenery, but that’s not on my list of top 874 things to witness on a Wednesday morning. No doubt it builds character though.
[4] Perhaps this distance also helps muffle the screams of students during finals week (and every other week). Either way, I'm just glad *I* don't have to hear it.
[5] How else are we supposed to live out the immortal line from Outkast? As the good book says: "LEND ME SOME SUGAR, I AM YO NEIGHBOR."
[6] The distance problem is exacerbated by the fact that buses don't run on the weekends. Imagine my crestfallen face as I got off the Caltrain in Palo Alto at 4pm on a Saturday afternoon after a 2 hour journey, only to realize that I still had two (2) miles to walk. Thankfully I've got the resolve of a determined giraffe and persevered in the scorching 62 degree (Fahrenheit) weather with only some grumbling. Time Person of the Year, basically.
[7] There's a deep hubris that comes with biking. You convince yourself that you can leave later and later because you can always bike harder if you need to. And although this is technically true, the effort is also directly correlated with how disheveled you look upon arrival. Some say the solution is to leave earlier but what do I look like? A walker?? (I am).
[8] For the longest time, I thought this song was by an artist named "Esquivel," like it's labeled on Spotify. But when I was looking up the song on YouTube to link, it just wasn't showing up. After some deep sleuthing (I used Shazam), I discovered that the actual artist is Galimatias. Coincidentally, I've been coming across a lot of songs that get uploaded under different artists' names. I have some theories on why people do this, but that's a topic for another newsletter.
The Expanse
I've said this sentence approximately 47 times since moving back to the west coast, but it bears repeating once more: this campus is too big.
How big, you ask? Well, it turns out that Stanford is the largest college campus in the US, covering over 8000 acres. This is a HUGE amount of land, given that there are only 6000 undergrads and 12,000 grad students at this school. [1]
To put this in perspective, UC Berkeley has a total student population of ~45,000 and spans 2000 acres. That means that Berkeley's student population density is 17x (!) higher than Stanford's. How about a similar private institution like Harvard? 22,000 students and 209 acres. [2]
On one hand, this means that Stanford feels very spacious and serene. Sometimes you can walk on campus and not see a soul for 10-15 minutes at a time. [3] In fact, if you get off at the Palo Alto Caltrain station (just off campus) and decide to walk to the main quad, you've got a peaceful 1.3 mile walk ahead of you down Palm Drive. And there's no real issue with noise on this campus, but I assume that this is because sound decays as a function of the distance squared. So it's got a lot of space to dissipate. [4]
But I think I tend to lament the size of this campus because walkability is so important for social vibrance. I saw a tweet at some point that said "the only reason why people in the US are obsessed with college is because it's the only time in their lives that they've lived in a walkable community." And I think this rings true, it's so nice to have quick and direct access to your friends. At Berkeley, if I wanted to hang out with friends, I'd just amble a few blocks over to initiate shenanigans. [5]
But here, if I want to hang out with someone that happens to live on the other side of this campus, we're literally separated by ~1.8 miles. C'mon man. The activation energy to get me to do that is just too high, I'm sorry. [6] This lack of convenience probably also seems more acute to me because I just moved here from New York City, one of the most walkable cities in the US. I've really been spoiled by having everything within a 5 minute walk of my apartment.
Thankfully (?), grad school is inherently less social than undergrad so it's not as big of a deal as it would have been at an earlier stage of my life. If you're an undergrad on this campus though, I do not envy you, and I hope you can live in a more dense place soon.
I will say though, my cardiovascular health has improved since coming here, especially in periods when I biked daily to class. Unfortunately, biking has likely impacted my social standing, as I often come into class looking like I just narrowly escaped a local coyote. It's hard to look put together when you're breathing that hard. [7]
The biggest positive I've experienced, however, is that I've had the chance to walk much more here. There's a lot of research that shows that walking is super beneficial for longevity, mental health, and even mental acuity. But to be honest, never mind all of that. It just feels good to take a walk sometimes. And I also find that walks give me a lot of time to think since it's a fairly solitary activity.
I have some theory that human beings were really made to walk. Our ability to walk long distances with relatively minimal food intake contributed in no small way to our success as a species. But I think that also means that we just really enjoy walking. We all like to do what we're good at, after all.
With all that being said, I've actually been taking walks with friends more often as a social activity and I've found it to be a really pleasant experience. Walking with someone still allows for lengthy conversations, and even silences don't drag on since you're still physically moving forward. I, for one, am glad that Stanford has forced me to start walking more.
I don't want to bore you with more details of my Relaxing Pastimes™, but I hope that you also elect to take some walks as the weather begins to warm up. I don't know about all of you, but I'm certainly looking forward to the Vitamin D and the fresh air after this cold and dreary winter.
A Stroll
Initially, I was thinking it might be funny to just not include any songs since I do think that it's nice to take walks in silence. But then I realized that a) that's not that funny and b) it goes against the whole purpose of this newsletter. So instead, here are a few songs that I enjoy listening to on my walks and bike rides. They're all songs with an easygoing character since I don't want you to feel the sonic pressure to accelerate. Heaven forbid I start jogging.
The Journey - Tom Misch
Spotify | YouTube
South - Galimatias [8]
Spotify | YouTube
Ice Cream Truck - Dom Kennedy
Spotify | YouTube
Beauty and Essex - Free Nationals, Daniel Caesar, Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Spotify | YouTube
Lots of chill music linked here this week, I hope it leaves your mind free to wander.
See you all next Sunday!
suhaas
————————————————————————————
If you'd like to share this newsletter with your friends, please direct them to this link.
Here are Spotify and YouTube playlists with all the songs so far.
[1] Do these numbers surprise you? They certainly surprised me. But it makes more sense once you realize that grad students bring in much more money for the school than undergrads do. That, and also, keeping the number of undergraduates low is probably another way to make the school feel more exclusive. But I will say that Stanfy does a better job of holding their professors accountable to actually being decent teachers than Berkeley did. So maybe it's not a big deal in the end.
[2] To be fair, I think Harvard's campus is actually quite underwhelming. If you have an endowment of $53B, you should probably upgrade your campus so it has a bit more oomph.
[3] As opposed to Berkeley, where I learned not to bat an eye even if I saw someone take a poopoo in front of me. I suppose everyone has their preference of scenery, but that’s not on my list of top 874 things to witness on a Wednesday morning. No doubt it builds character though.
[4] Perhaps this distance also helps muffle the screams of students during finals week (and every other week). Either way, I'm just glad *I* don't have to hear it.
[5] How else are we supposed to live out the immortal line from Outkast? As the good book says: "LEND ME SOME SUGAR, I AM YO NEIGHBOR."
[6] The distance problem is exacerbated by the fact that buses don't run on the weekends. Imagine my crestfallen face as I got off the Caltrain in Palo Alto at 4pm on a Saturday afternoon after a 2 hour journey, only to realize that I still had two (2) miles to walk. Thankfully I've got the resolve of a determined giraffe and persevered in the scorching 62 degree (Fahrenheit) weather with only some grumbling. Time Person of the Year, basically.
[7] There's a deep hubris that comes with biking. You convince yourself that you can leave later and later because you can always bike harder if you need to. And although this is technically true, the effort is also directly correlated with how disheveled you look upon arrival. Some say the solution is to leave earlier but what do I look like? A walker?? (I am).
[8] For the longest time, I thought this song was by an artist named "Esquivel," like it's labeled on Spotify. But when I was looking up the song on YouTube to link, it just wasn't showing up. After some deep sleuthing (I used Shazam), I discovered that the actual artist is Galimatias. Coincidentally, I've been coming across a lot of songs that get uploaded under different artists' names. I have some theories on why people do this, but that's a topic for another newsletter.