Organized Chaos at SSP

Author: Jeremy L.

Chapter One: The Tanay-Abby War

Not long into week three, problem-set frustrations led SSPers to cope in short-lived factions. The first and most successful group was known as the Tanay B’s, which had quickly spread to multiple Zoom breakout rooms and enlisted around a third of the participants. 

Figure 1: The Tanay B’s (Courtesy of the original Tanay B)

Within the large number of Tanay clones, one particular individual (rumored to be the devil itself) had the power of co-host to rename non-believers into Tanay B’s and post meeting-wide propaganda announcements. The individual in question single-handedly started what some may call the Tanay-Abby conflict. 

It began when this peculiar clone, under the disguise of the TA Abby M, traversed through multiple rooms, converting everyone into Tanay B’s. This act brought upon surprise, confusion, and resentment to many neutral SSPer and triggered the rise of the second faction, the Abby’s, consisting of SSPers who bear a rebellious heart.

Figure 2: The rise of the Abby’s (Courtesy of Jay the Pset Apprentice)

Though certainly a smaller size than the Tanay B’s, the Abby’s were brave and persistent, standing their ground before the might of its neighboring faction til the end of the Work-and-Minimal-Play block. No one knew which group was going to survive the night…

<—To (Not) Be Continued—

Chapter Two: Unravel-ing

Not surprisingly, the tension of the surface world did not affect those in the underground voice channels of the SSP Discord server. In fact, these dwellers vibed and partied harder than ever before. 

Through the rapid invasion of a poorly-guarded music voice channel staffed by a single NMT participant (totally not me at all) and the Rythm bot, the other campus participants were able to convince the NMT personnel to host a karaoke event.

Figure 3: Initial invasion of SSPers foreign to NMT

Backed by the single reinforcement Justin J, the NMT SSPers initially managed to suppress the overwhelming combined power of Biochem and the two other Astro campuses. However, as time zones intervened, they had no choice but to retreat to bed.

Figure 4: The height of the invasion

Bonus Chapter: The Parallelogram Returns (Again)

Since Katrina L introduced it at the beginning of the program, the “simple quadrilateral with two pairs of opposite sides that have the same slope” comfortably established itself among us NMT participants, even making its way into the T-shirt contest as the necessary figure of a design.

Figure 6 (the real Tanay B’s Original Creation)

Despite Figure 5 and 6’s beautiful integration of the shape into the “OD determination” (-Chimay J, 2021) theme of SSP, it was Figure 7 that ended up winning. To be fair, it was the largest in size, which likely contributed to its success.

Bonus in the bonus chapter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym4CUMczRp0

Chapter 4: A historical event of SSP 2021

Short summary of July 9th, 2021. 

Astro Pset 7 was due that evening and the Work-and-Some-More-Work-Except-for-Codenames block was chaotic as usual. As participants checked their codes with test cases, high on anxiety, Dr. R revised the pdf with the results of those tests. The new numbers alarmed a few participants and seemed kinda sus!!!

At first, it seemed as if these participants would have no choice but to re-analyze their 200-line codes. All the hours they put in would have been for nought. HOWEVER!!! They refused to accept their destiny and fought what seems to be an impossible and hopeless case.

That is, until Dr. R saw a variable name that was misplaced, the imposter of his code!!! Hereafter, the participants celebrated their unimaginable victory against someone who could only be described as a god amongst the SSPers. Everyone lived happily ever after… or did they???

(idk anymore i’m kind of tired, forgive me for making amogus references)


About the Author: HEY HEY! I’m Jeremy, a rising senior from Walnut, California. I like to watch random videos on YouTube, go road cycling, and speak memes. Anime is cool but chill lofi-hip-hop is cooler.