This week, I attended Rutgers DIMACS's workshop Current Trends in Mathematics: Beyond the Freshmen Horizons. From the website:

The main purpose of this workshop is to help students answer the following important question: What should I do in mathematics? The intention is to provide the participants with the necessary knowledge to make well-informed decisions regarding their choices related to research topics, potential graduate programs and thesis advisors. This will be achieved by exposing them to a wide range of research topics in pure and applied mathematics.

3 Things To Remember

Here are 3 things I learned from each talk that I want to remember:

• Measuring The Relative Complexity of Mathematical Problems by Simon Thomas
• Tic-Tac-Toe and Additive Combinatorics by Sarah Peluse
• The Distribution of Prime Numbers by Henryk Iwaniec
• Enumerative Geometry of Grassmannians and Positivity Questions in Schubert Calculus by Anders Buch
• Integrable Systems and Markov Numbers by Christopher Woodward
• Random Matrices At Large by Ramon Van Handel
• An Introduction to Sharp Fourier Restriction Theory

The talks exceeded my expectations in both depth and quality. I enjoyed every single talk! Additionally, very few people attended, which allowed for lots of conversations with the speakers. My favorite talk was Random Matrices At Large, although Enumerative Geometry of Grassmannians is a close second.

Other

This trip also gave me the chance to explore the Rutgers campus for the first time - I was impressed! I had heard mixed opinions about the campus, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But the campus is huge, beautifully maintained, and there was no sense of overcrowding (though I did visit during the summer, so that may have contributed).

One of my favorite stops was the math library. While small and a bit cramped, it holds a surprisingly vast collection of books. The atmosphere was cozy, making it a perfect place to read between sessions. And of course, the Panera on campus was a solid choice for lunch. After the morning talks, I got into the routine of going to Panera and then heading over to the library for an hour, before returning for the afternoon sessions.

Another highlight of the week was getting the chance to talk with some students from the DIMACS REU program. It gave me a nice spark of motivation, and now that I've graduated high school, I'm excited to spend this summer focusing on what I truly want to do. Overall, it was a fantastic week: I learned a lot of math and had a ton of fun. Hopefully, this is the start of a great summer!