Scholar of the Year: Lily Friedberg
I try to read two books a week,” senior Lily Friedberg said, aiming to sum up her Exeter experience. “And last year I started liking math, so I took group theory, and then I took two terms of multivariable calculus, and in winter term I doubled up on multivariable calculus and complex analysis.”
Anyone who has studied difficult courses at Exeter knows that finding time to read even a single book not assigned for a course can seem to be an impossible task. Yet, Friedberg, who has interests ranging from Russian history to advanced computer programming, finds time for reading and more. Aside from being an outstanding student, she also dances and serves as a co-head of Exeter’s Republican Club. How does she find time for it all? “There’s just a lot of time in one day,” Friedberg said.
After growing up in New York, Friedberg decided to apply to Exeter because she wanted a change from her middle school, The Dalton School. She was excited by Exeter’s Harkness style of learning and fully embraced it as soon as she arrived. Senior Kevin Sun, Lily’s classmate from Mathematics level 690, called Friedberg, “a really good person to have in class [because] she finds different ways to explain or clarify concepts. She was often the one to point out connections with other parts of math, which is really important when you’re working in an unfamiliar mathematical structure.”
Close friend and senior Teffanie Goh also cited Friedberg’s passion for math as something that connects Lily with others. “It honestly makes me so happy that Lily has discovered something that she is so passionate about,” Goh said. “Because of the number of math classes she has taken, I know that Lily has made a lot of valuable friends that share this passion.”
“She is the kind of person that reads the Economist for fun and uses NPR as her background music.”
Most of all, Friedberg is excited that the university specializes in her interests of mathematics and computer science, as engineering and computer science are their largest departments. Friedberg’s interest in computer science has lead her to begin crafting an Artificial Neural Network with fellow senior Anthony Bau. A “neural net,” as it is often called, is a machine learning method, described by Bau as “technique that you can use to estimate most things—common tasks are image classification or facial recognition or sentence parsing.”Although she considered applying to Ivy League universities, Friedberg ultimately decided against it. “I looked at all the East coast Ivy League-type schools, but in the end, I said, ‘actually, let’s not do this again,’” she said. Friedberg decided that she wanted to try something new after her four years at Exeter, so she has chosen to attend Harvey Mudd University in Claremont, Calif. “I’m excited to do something different,” she said. “[The school is] really wonderful. It was [70 degrees], except it was so dry.”
To create it, they are trying different “architectures” for making a program that does differentiation. But, as they are doing it just for fun, they do not expect to finish it. “This is largely supposed to be a learning exercise for us,” Bau said. “We’ve gotten a lot more familiar with matrix and vector calculus.”
When Friedberg arrived at Exeter, she took the opportunity to begin learning Russian, both a new language for her and a welcome change from the the Latin she had already studied for four years. After beginning to learn the Russian language, Friedberg decided to take Russian history as a lower. It was this course which ignited Friedberg’s passion for Russian history.
“It’s such a unique country. It hasn’t had its history shaped by Europe in a colonial way, the same way that China or Japan or all of South Asia or the Americas or Africa have,” she said. “It’s really been allowed to evolve on its own.” After lower year, Friedberg traveled to Russia as part of a three-week program to learn more about Russian language and culture.
Because of her insatiable curiosity for learning, Friedberg has formed close relationships with several teachers. She has taken classes with mathematics instructor Jeffrey Ibbotson four times in the last three terms, sometimes having him twice a day. Ibbotson even gave her mathematics books to read over the summer. He “was the person who made [her] really like math,” she said. Friedberg also expressed gratitude for her other teachers, citing history instructors Amy Schwartz and Michael Golay as major influences in her enthusiasm for history. She has had them both for two terms, and remarked that her classes with them were very strong and filled with interesting people and discussions.
Friedberg’s friends describe her as a warm-hearted person who is passionate about her interests. Senior Amelia Stucke remembered Friedberg’s prep self very fondly. She commented that her first encounter with her occurred on the second day of classes, when Friedberg approached Stucke and “began to lecture [her] on the Brooklyn beekeepers.”
Goh has had very similar interactions with Friedberg, describing her as a person who “reads the Economist for fun and uses NPR as her background music.” Her fondest memory of Friedberg occurred in prep year, when they pelted each other with pinecones in the quad. Friedberg helped Goh build her first snowman that year, and more recently they have found enjoyment in playing Frisbee and cooking in Dunbar’s kitchen.
As a co-head of Exeter’s Republican Club, Friedberg said that she is conservative in her views, although she is not a “true Republican.” Earlier this year, Friedberg and others helped organize the “free speech forum,” which was hosted by the political clubs on campus—Democratic Club, Exeter Political Union and the Republican Club. It was a great success with a large student and faculty turnout.
Friedberg also engages in activities that are not as academic. This term she has played ultimate Frisbee and in past terms has danced. She signed up for the class in the fall of her lower year because it seemed to her the best way to “get out of doing real sports.” Though she enjoyed dance, it was only when someone told her to sign up for it during winter term that she decided to continue. She danced through her upper year and senior fall, when she decided that it was time to do something new.
Besides Frisbee and dancing, Friedberg also enjoyed cooking with her friends, and every Sunday she has made food for many of her friends. “I just like eating good food,” she said.
Friedberg is an extraordinary Exonian because she does not limit herself to only certain areas of study. She embraces all fields, from STEM interests like math and computer science to humanities interests like Russian history and literature. In the end, Friedberg is a true academic; she loves to learn, and she can master whatever interests arise with a mind that is always curious to discover. In the future, she will travel in whichever direction her interests lead her.
“I kind of want to be a mathematician,” she said. “But I’ll probably end up doing whatever I want because I usually just do whatever I want in general.”