Olin is its People

I chose to come to Olin over my other options largely because of the small community and particularly how strong the relationships between students and professors seemed. So, I wanted to take a post to focus on how those relationships ended up shaping my four years at Olin.

Left: with Professor Troxell. Center: with Rehana. Right: with Aaron.

Top left: with R rising senior. Top center: with C and K, rising junior and sophomore. Bottom left: with J and T, both rising seniors. Bottom center: with Amelie, a wonderful roommate and suitemate. Right: with Rocco, rising junior.

Professors
As far as professors go, my strongest relationships were with two Olin math professors, Aaron and Rehana. Aaron was my academic advisor, and I also NINJAed for him six times and took two classes from him, and he ran Putnam prep for three years and advised the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) for two years. I spent countless hours in his office talking about math and teaching, and sometimes after we'd finished talking, I would just stay in his office and work. Conversations with Aaron always reminded me of how much I love math. I NINJAed for Rehana both semesters of sophomore year, and I had a good relationship with her then, but it became really strong after I came back from Budapest. She helped me name how confidence had affected my trajectory in high school and college, and we talked a lot about getting more people engaged in math (at Olin and more broadly). Aaron was always the first person I'd go to when trying to figure out REU/grad school things, but Rehana was just as consistently the second, and her advice was so valuable. Both of them were wonderful to work with when I NINJAed their classes, and I always felt like I had a voice.

The two professors with whom I did research, Profs. Troxell and Karst, are both at Babson, though Prof. Karst is an Olin alum. I would not be going to graduate school in mathematics had I not been in their research group. They always made it clear that they valued my work and affirmed me as a mathematician, and they helped me figure out that I really prefer doing mathematics as part of a group. I learned to write a math paper, as opposed to just single proofs strung together, and they recommended me to referee papers. Being in the research group for three and a half years was fantastic, and I'm so glad I got to work with Profs. Troxell and Karst.

I had pretty good relationships with a few other Olin professors at various points. For my first two years (especially the first year), there was Oscar, due to both Por Supuesto and salsa. We interacted less my junior and senior years, but I was still always comfortable talking to him. I was really surprised by how many relationships with professors I developed during my senior year; I would have expected that to be too late. I worked a lot with Brian in SCOPE and Numerical, and because his background was in fluids, I also talked to him about grad school. During the spring, I got to know the faculty who were really involved in the faculty search sessions both by being at the sessions and by working with them to figure out how to improve student engagement with the process next year.

Students

The second collage above is with other students, though of the seven people pictured, only one is a fellow member of the Class of 2016. The students with whom I interacted and the ways in which I interacted with them shifted a lot during my four years.

During my first semester at Olin, I got most of my sense of belonging from groups like Por Supuesto and Olin Christian Fellowship. While I was in Por Supuesto for two years, the Class of 2013 really defined my sense of Por Supuesto, and once they graduated, it never felt the same. OCF was an important community for me all through Olin, but especially my first two years. I don't have any good pictures of us, but I spent a ton of time my sophomore year with the Class of 2014 OCFers, just playing card and board games or watching movies. During my sophomore spring, if I wasn't in my room, I was almost certainly in East Hall with OCF seniors.

Sometime the spring of first year, I started spending a lot of time with Amelie (bottom center in the collage), and the next year we were roommates. We had a really great hallway our sophomore year, and I spent a lot of time talking and hanging out with the other people in our hallway. When I NINJAed Linearity in the spring, I got to know R. (top left), who was the other NINJA in my section, and J. and T. (bottom left) who were in the class. When I came back to Olin the next spring I was more comfortable around them than I was around most people in my own class.

I came back and was that junior who didn't know any of the first years (but study away is a good excuse!), so I started spending time with the first years like C. (top center) and Rocco (right). They were part of a group of 2018ers who hung out with some of my friends in my class and the class below. It took a while to get to know them, but in many ways it was easier to be around people who hadn't known me before I went away. There were fewer expectations based on who I had been, and that gave me space to work through being back at Olin with less pressure. Olin feeling like home again by the end of that semester is due in large part to that group of CO2018ers.

It was through this group of first year friends that I started spending time in the West Hall 3 lounge. While living in West Hall, I'd mostly worked in my room or, sophomore year, in my hallway, despite West Hall's strong lounge culture. It wasn't until I moved into East Hall and missed the communal working spaces I'd had in Budapest that I started hanging out in WH lounges.

During the spring of my senior year, my group of friends and I were generally in one of the East Hall suites, watching TV or movies and sometimes doing work. That group was a good mix of the sophomores, juniors, and seniors I'd become friends with over my time at Olin, and I was comfortable enough in the suite that I would go in and work in the lounge at pretty much any time. That kind of comfort was a good way to end my four years at Olin.

I chose Olin for the people, and the community lived up to what I imagined when I made that choice. I could sit down for a meal and know there was going to be an interesting conversation (in at least one language). I always had many people I could go to when I had questions, was seeking advice, or just wanted to talk or work. In my last two years especially I had spaces that I associated with friendship and comfort. I worked with professors on teaching and developing classes and on expanding the Olin community. I would choose this group of people and the place I was offered in that group over and over and over.