Today, I was too tired to learn...

Table of Contents

• 1. Personal Reflection
• 2. NYU Alumni: Some Benefits

1. Personal Reflection

Over the past few days, I've re-discovered the joy of writing. I've always wanted to write, but writer's block would get in the way. This internal voice in my mind would constantly nag me, "Do you even have anything substantial to contribute to the world?" But, I've realized that not having such high expectations from yourself is a pre-requisite to start moving. Sometimes, your aspirations can get in the way of your aspirations. This TIL series is a way for me to shake myself from passivity; it is for me to forge my writing skills and unlock new ways of thinking. Even if I have nothing to contribute substantially to anyone else, I have something to contribute to myself.

Having said that, I am wondering how long I can keep up with the TIL series. The problem is that the content I consume — an article, a paper, or a book — is quite dense. To digest, chew, and churn it takes considerable amount of time. The tendency to cut corners — by having an LLM simplify it first, or rush through an article — is quite tempting. A WIL (Weekly I Learned) series is more promising: I can collect, gather, analyze, and reflect better over a longer period of time. "Quality over Quantity," as they say. Yet, I think I need a bit of both: writing daily is a good sustained practice. Anyway, I will keep up the TIL series for now. Once I have some kind of consistency, I can branch into more weekly writing.

2. NYU Alumni: Some Benefits

It's been a while since I was in touch with what's happening at NYU. Some Alumni benefits I recently came across in an email that caught my eye:

• NYU Alumni Voracious Violets Book Club
• Annual Reviews: Curated review articles across 50+ scientific disciplines (natural sciences, formal sciences, social sciences, etc.). These synthesize the state of the art research in a field.
• JSTOR: Access to massive archive of high-quality academic journals, books, and primary sources high-quality research papers and journals.
• Project MUSE: Access to peer-reviewed journals and university press books (Columbia Press is conspicuously absent, though).
• ProQuest: The newspaper access includes Financial Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), amongst many other. But, content access is always 30 days old; i.e., not the latest.
• Law Journal Library (HeinOnline): Apparently, the gold standard for legal scholarship.

Here is a full list of all benefits: Alumni Benefits Directory. Here is the same for database access: Alumni eLibrary.

I don't think any of this is NYU-exclusive or exceptional; pretty sure other universities offer similar access as well. Also, with access to annas-archive.li and archive.li, is access to the above resources as exclusive and as special anymore? Perhaps not. Yet, I enjoyed discovering and digging into these resources...