<commit_before>``I'm interested in spending a semester or two at like a state school,'' said
Samuel, a few days after Christmas.  ``Do you think I'd be able to get credits?
I don't know if this makes sense.''

``Sounds like a good idea to me,'' I said.  I was lying on my bedroom floor
after a workout, letting sweat dry on my face.

``I can't really articulate why I want to go to state school while still
graduating from Yale.   Maybe it's intuitive, the reasoning behind it.'' 

``No, I get it,'' I said. 

\plainfancybreak{12pt}{2}{* * *}

A few days later, I flew to Seattle for a software engineering interview at
Amazon.

When I got to my hotel, it was warm enough to sit outside in the dark and do
some coding problems.

My phone flashed.

``I'm considering taking another class to increase the chances of being able to
do the state school thing,'' said Samuel.  

``How do you feel about writing a few papers and blog posts?  For ... \$1k?
Basically, you'd be taking the class for me.  Do you want to pursue this?'' 

``Sure,'' I said, knowing I'd regret it.

\plainfancybreak{12pt}{2}{* * *}

The next morning I woke up feeling sad and walked to the Amazon campus, enjoying
the spring-like weather.  About thirty of us were shown into a large conference
room, split into groups of three, and given laptops.  I tried to be social with
the other interviewees, despite the familiar nervous silence that always
reminded me of soldiers standing in landing craft.

As we booted our computers, a proctor gave each group a laminated booklet
detailing a set of programming challenges.  We were supposed to work together,
but we would submit our own code independently at the end of the day.

``You have until 3pm to finish your implementation,'' said the head interviewer.

I momentarily felt a blind, helpless rage at my situation, and imagined standing
up and walking out of the interview.  I wondered what the consequences of that
would be.  

\plainfancybreak{12pt}{2}{* * *}

After the interview, I fell in with a group of the more confident, social
interviewees, and we went to an atmospheric Asian restuarant in Belltown.

A guy from McGill, Saurabh, was showing me his mobile-optimized graphics engine.

``It's really close to the metal.  To optimize for mobile, I had to directly
open up the buffers for matrix operations.  Cool stuff.''

A waitress brought us warm saki and sashimi, and we talked about our other
interviews.  All of us had interviewed at Facebook, some of us at Google.  

I smiled at myself in the bathroom mirror after pissing.

One guy, also from Cornell, had interned at Palantir.  He talked about his boss,
who was brilliant with computer science fundamentals, and told us how they'd
done acid together, at work. 

``That's terrifying,'' I said, thinking of Palantir's glossy black office in
Chelsea.  I imagined Chelsea Manning, alone on some sort of chat client in Iraq
in an unbearably flat world, trying to act ``normal'' with her boss.

We decided to go to a legal recreational marijuana shop, the first and only in
Oregon.

The cab driver knew exactly where we wanted to go.  I felt slightly ashamed, but
the purchasing experiencing was amazing.  Someone greeted us at the door and
made us feel comfortable, and the people behind the glass display cases seemed
to share our disbelief at process of buying weed legally.

After going to another restaurant, we found a park somewhere near our hotel.

We removed the pre-rolled joints from their plastic tubes and passed around a
lighter.  By the time I finished my joint, I felt pretty high, but not paranoid
or dysphoric.  The other guys were stupidly high.

Saurabh stared at each of us with wide eyes.  ``Do any of you guys feel that you
might not die?  Like, you might live forever because of computers,'' he said.

The sober Taiwanese guy laughed manically.  I smiled and listened to the wind in
the trees above.

``Like Amazon Web Services is a homeostatic living thing, sort of?  And if we
get offers from Amazon our code will become a part of it.  This sort of process
will continue until the uh recent advances in statistical machine learning are
unified with the symbolic AI research of the 80's and the singularity happens.''

I thought of all of the layers of silicon computing in the dark Palantir office,
or their virtualized cloud infrastructure.  The other Cornell guy was rocking
back and forth.

``People who don't understand computers are going to have to have a hard time,''
said the Cornell guy.

``Yeah, they're fucked,'' said Saurabh.

``I don't know,'' I said.

Back at the hotel, waiting to fall asleep, I looked up the typical offers for
SE1's at Amazon.  Some were barely into the six figures, but they all included
at least a 40k starting bonus.

\plainfancybreak{12pt}{2}{* * *}

The next morning I woke up early for a jog.

I had a bit of a weed hangover, so things felt surreal.  It was warm out though.

I ran downhill, towards the ocean.

When I arrived at the harbour, I walked for a moment.  The horizon seemed close,
and glassy bubbles welled up in the green water.  I thought of the programmers
at Microsoft working in this hydrated environment. 

The interview had gone very well, I knew my code was good, it was unit tested.
Assuming I got an offer from Amazon, I'd move here. 

\plainfancybreak{12pt}{2}{* * *}

It was bitterly cold back in Ithaca.

Before my first class, I went to the erg room for forty minutes of steady state.
I felt hopeful and clear-headed after, and showered with my teammates.

When I got back to my locker, there was an email from my Amazon recruiter.  My
heart beat rapidly and my throat constricted.  "Thanks From Amazon" was the
subject.  It was a rejection.  What the hell, I thought percussively. 

I threw my phone onto a stack of clothes and started to get dressed.  I'm
totally willing to be in denial about this, I thought.  It doesn't make sense.<commit_msg>Parents, weed<commit_after>``I'm interested in spending a semester or two at like a state school,'' said
Samuel, a few days after Christmas.  ``Do you think I'd be able to get credits?
I don't know if this makes sense.''

``Sounds like a good idea to me,'' I said.  I was lying on my bedroom floor
after a workout, letting sweat dry on my face.

``I can't really articulate why I want to go to state school while still
graduating from Yale.   Maybe it's intuitive, the reasoning behind it.'' 

``No, I get it,'' I said. 

\plainfancybreak{12pt}{2}{* * *}

A few days later, I flew to Seattle for a software engineering interview at
Amazon.

When I got to my hotel, it was warm enough to sit outside in the dark and do
some coding problems.

My phone flashed.

``I'm considering taking another class to increase the chances of being able to
do the state school thing,'' said Samuel.  

``How do you feel about writing a few papers and blog posts?  For ... \$1k?
Basically, you'd be taking the class for me.  Do you want to pursue this?'' 

``Sure,'' I said, knowing I'd regret it.

\plainfancybreak{12pt}{2}{* * *}

The next morning I woke up feeling sad and walked to the Amazon campus, enjoying
the spring-like weather.  About thirty of us were shown into a large conference
room, split into groups of three, and given laptops.  I tried to be social with
the other interviewees, despite the familiar nervous silence that always
reminded me of soldiers standing in landing craft.

As we booted our computers, a proctor gave each group a laminated booklet
detailing a set of programming challenges.  We were supposed to work together,
but we would submit our own code independently at the end of the day.

``You have until 3pm to finish your implementation,'' said the head interviewer.

I momentarily felt a blind, helpless rage at my situation, and imagined standing
up and walking out of the interview.  I wondered what the consequences of that
would be.  

\plainfancybreak{12pt}{2}{* * *}

After the interview, I fell in with a group of the more confident, social
interviewees, and we went to an atmospheric Asian restuarant in Belltown.

A guy from McGill, Saurabh, was showing me his mobile-optimized graphics engine.

``It's really close to the metal.  To optimize for mobile, I had to directly
open up buffers for matrix operations.  Cool stuff.''

A waitress brought us warm saki and sashimi, and we talked about our other
interviews.  All of us had interviewed at Facebook, some of us at Google.  

I smiled at myself in the bathroom mirror.

One guy, also from Cornell, told us about his internship at Palantir.  He talked
about his boss, who was brilliant with computer science fundamentals, and told
us how they'd done acid together, at work. 

``That's terrifying,'' I said, thinking of Palantir's glossy black office in
Chelsea.  I imagined Chelsea Manning alone in Iraq, using an encrypted chat
client to try to find some sort of connection on the Internet, while trying to
act ``normal'' with her boss.

After dinner, we decided to go to a legal recreational marijuana shop, the first
and only in Oregon.

The cab driver knew exactly where we wanted to go.  I felt slightly ashamed, but
the purchasing experiencing was amazing.  Someone greeted us at the door and
made us feel comfortable, and the people behind the glass display cases seemed
to share our disbelief at process of buying weed legally.

After going to another restaurant, we found a park somewhere near our hotel.

We removed the pre-rolled joints from their plastic tubes and passed around a
lighter.  By the time I finished my joint, I felt pretty high, but not paranoid
or dysphoric.  The other guys were stupidly high.

Saurabh stared at each of us with wide eyes.  ``Do any of you guys feel that you
might not die?  Like, you might live forever because of computers,'' he said.

The sober Taiwanese guy laughed manically.  I smiled and listened to the wind in
the trees above.

``Like Amazon Web Services is a homeostatic living thing, sort of?  And if we
get offers from Amazon our code will become a part of it.  This sort of process
will continue until the uh recent advances in statistical machine learning are
unified with the symbolic AI research of the 80's and the singularity happens.''

I thought of all of the layers of silicon computing in the dark Palantir office,
or their virtualized cloud infrastructure.  The other Cornell guy was rocking
back and forth.

``People who don't understand computers are going to have to have a hard time,''
said the Cornell guy.

``Yeah, they're fucked,'' said Saurabh.

``I don't know,'' I said.

Back at the hotel, waiting to fall asleep, I looked up the typical offers for
SE1's at Amazon.  Some were barely into the six figures, but they all included
at least a 40k starting bonus.

\plainfancybreak{12pt}{2}{* * *}

The next morning I woke up early for a jog.

I had a bit of a weed hangover, so things felt surreal.  It was warm out though.

I ran downhill, towards the ocean.

When I arrived at the harbour, I walked for a moment.  The horizon seemed close,
and glassy bubbles welled up in the green water.  I thought of the programmers
at Microsoft working in this hydrated environment. 

I took a picture and texted it to my mom, and then told her about the legal
marajuana shop.  She didn't respond to this, which I found both funny and
concerning.  I had never talked to my parents about any sort of drugs before. 

The interview had gone very well.  Assuming I got an offer from Amazon, I'd move
here. 

\plainfancybreak{12pt}{2}{* * *}

It was bitterly cold back in Ithaca.

Before my first class, I went to the erg room for forty minutes of steady state.
I felt hopeful and clear-headed after, and showered with my teammates.

When I got back to my locker, there was an email from my Amazon recruiter.  My
heart beat rapidly and my throat constricted.  "Thanks From Amazon" was the
subject.  It was a rejection.  What the hell, I thought percussively. 

I threw my phone onto a stack of clothes and started to get dressed.  I'm
totally willing to be in denial about this, I thought.  It doesn't make sense.
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