Halfway Through

Four semesters down, four semesters to go.

I'm halfway through my education at Olin. When I started this blog, I intended to document my experience in the experiment that is Olin. So far, I've mostly done this course by course, and this seemed like a good point to stop and look over the past two years as a whole.

I came into Olin planning to major in mechanical engineering, but I thought that I might switch to engineering with design. My "why engineering" essays from college applications all say that I wanted to work in product design after college. My first semester, my experience in Design Nature was awful, and there went all thoughts of being a designE. Design Nature isn't just the first design course, though; it's the first semester course that future mechEs are expected to enjoy. I didn't have fun in DesNat, I wasn't comfortable doing CAD, and being in the machine shop made me nervous. I didn't seem like an Olin mechE at all. (I've since come to believe that ModSim is just as much a mechE's course as Design Nature, but that's another topic all together.)

Product design wasn't the only thing I mentioned in all my "why engineering" essays. I also talked about loving thermodynamics and fluid mechanics, and whereas I talked about product design as something I wanted to do in the future, I already knew that thermo and fluids were exciting. This past year, I really looked forward to both Transport and Thermo. Thermo was absolutely fantastic, and while Transport was more applied than I had expected, it was very good for me. (I talked about my Transport project in every internship interview I had this semester.) Those two courses along with PDE in spring of my first year have convinced me that as a mechE, I most enjoy working with thermal or fluid systems. The realization that there's a large field within mechanical engineering where I'm comfortable was really reassuring.

Coming into Olin, I also thought that I could mostly stop doing pure math. I thought I could take the Putnam, work for AoPS, go to the Joint Meetings, take 10 credits of math over the course of four years, and read math books when I had time. That's not how things have come out at all. I NINJAed Linearity I at Aaron's suggestion because I knew the material but more experience with it wouldn't hurt. I loved being a NINJA, so I've kept doing it, and I've ended up NINJAing about half the math classes Olin offers. Then I somehow ended up doing graph theory research because Jacques sent an email to carpediem (an email list about fun things/opportunities) trying to recruit for the group, and I responded. I think I probably would have started NINJAing no matter what, though maybe for different courses, but if Jacques hadn't emailed carpe I wouldn't be doing graph theory.

One of the main reasons I chose Olin was that I really liked the strong relationships students seemed to have with faculty, and I haven't been disappointed in that respect. I've been able to work closely with all the math faculty as a NINJA, I've gotten to know Oscar through salsa and Por Supuesto, and I've already had multiple courses with a handful of professors. I chose Olin despite the constant change and experiments, and I actually haven't felt like as much of a guinea pig as I expected. I took Waves and Bayesian from Sanjoy, who was teaching those courses for the first and second times respectively, but Bayesian felt pretty stable, and other than some odd pacing, so did Waves. Transport with Shane was definitely an experiment, and Bio and FBE also had a lot of changes, since those are probably the two most problematic requirements. Other than that, I've taken pretty established courses at Olin. However, I've NINJAed four experimental math courses (everything but Discrete), so I've gotten to see how that part of Olin's culture works from both sides, which is pretty cool.

A lot of people come to Candidates' Weekend and leave completely sold on Olin. I wasn't one of those people. I liked the small size and the student-faculty interactions, both of which I still love, but I saw the limits imposed by the size as well. I liked the idea of the project focus, but I was very uncomfortable with the focus on entrepreneurship (which isn't as present as I thought, and there's a debate on whether that's an issue or not). I wasn't sure what to think of not being able to predict what courses would be like and when electives would be offered. I had some good conversations with other students at CW, but I didn't immediately click with anyone, and once I got to Olin, it did take me a while to really make friends. But this year I lived in a hallway with a lot of my sophomore friends, and I spent a lot of time in East Hall with a group of seniors. (I'll miss class of 2014 a lot.)

The things that made me nervous at Candidates' Weekend were generally things about which I was right to be nervous, but a lot of the things that made me excited about Olin were also the right things. I say that even though I'm not as enamored of the project focus as I thought I would be. A variety of experiences with teams and projects has shown me where I'm comfortable and where I'm not, and I've had to work through a lot of the discomfort. Sometimes I come out of that thinking that I never want to have to deal with that again, and sometimes I'm not nearly as uncomfortable as I was at the beginning. Either way, that experience is valuable.