I've thought since my first year of Mathcamp that mealtime conversations are some of the best indicators of how I fit in a group of people. At Mathcamp and my high school, I loved the interesting (and often highly amusing) conversations at lunch and supper, and my mealtime conversations with people at Candidates' Weekend gave me a better feel for the Olin community and for the other potential members of my class than almost anything else. In the end, the sense of the Olin people that I got while sitting in the dining hall was a big factor in my decision to come to Olin. They seemed like my kind of people.
My expectations for mealtime conversations have been completely met, and starting this past Tuesday, the conversations have grown even more entertaining, at least three times a week. Tuesday was the first meeting of Por Supuesto, the Spanish conversation co-curricular.
Co-curriculars are student activities at Olin that are organized by faculty, and they count for non-degree credit. (That means they don't help students graduate, but they are on transcripts.) They don't have to have any academic nature, though some do, and many repeat year after year. Por Supuesto is one of the oldest co-curriculars, occurring every fall, and it is currently run by Oscar, a Puerto Rican electrical engineering professor who is also one of my ModCon teachers.
Por Supuesto lends itself to being the kind of activity that students do year after year. It doesn't get boring or repetitive because it's talking to and hanging out with people. That means that lots of students do Por Supuesto during all four years of Olin, so the Por Supuesto members really get to know each other, and there's definitely a Por Supuesto culture of sorts. This year, half of the students are seniors, there are no juniors, and then there are some sophomores and six freshmen. Not everyone comes to every meal -- I don't know how we'd seat that many people -- but people come when they can to eat, speak Spanish, and laugh.
The laughing is a really important part. If Por Supuesto were run by someone other than Oscar, there would probably be laughter, but I don't know that there would be nearly as much. He makes lots of jokes, and playful teasing is an integral part of Por Supuesto.
Because there are so many seniors, we meet every Wednesday night for supper, for what we call SCOPE decompression. The seniors have a capstone project known as SCOPE (Senior Capstone Program in Engineering), and Wednesday is basically SCOPE day. Wednesday night Por Supuesto is a chance for the seniors to celebrate or vent, whichever they need.
Traditionally, Por Supuesto has met twice a week. So, one time is Wednesday nights. The plan was for the other to be Tuesday lunches. Lots of people had conflicts, though, so Oscar proposed Thursday lunch -- and different people had conflicts. The result is that we meet for three meals (three hours) a week, so we've been calling it 50% More Por Supuesto. I'm so glad we're meeting as often as we are because even after only three meals, I'm really looking forward to a semester of Por Supuesto.
I think this past Wednesday night serves as a good example of why. There weren't very many of us because this Wednesday was SCOPE kickoff, so the seniors were eating with their company sponsors. It was just five of us and Oscar, sitting at a table. One of the students is from Rhode Island, and she was talking about how narrow it is. Oscar then brought up the word "oblong," which he had recently learned, and he decided that he rather likes it. We proceeded to use "oblong" in all kinds of ways, some proper and some absolutely ridiculous ("This table is oblong" makes some sense. "You have an oblong personality" does not). Eventually, we looked up the Spanish word for "oblong" on the Por Supuesto iPad -- err, I guess it's Oscar's iPad, but we treat it as if we all share it -- and found alargado and oblongo.
Okay, fine, alargado. Sort of odd, but it works. But oblongo? "It sounds like an insult," Oscar said. "You say oblongo in Puerto Rico, someone would hit you." The jokes about "oblong" and oblongo continued through the rest of the meal.
The next day, three of us from the night before were among the much larger group, and Oscar brought up oblongo and said this: "Oblong conversations are the best."
Estoy de acuerdo. Las conversaciones oblongas son las mejores -- but any Por Supuesto conversation is amazing.
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