After a Million Miles or So

I'm going to write more detailed posts reflecting on this semester, but here are some more general thoughts on how I ended up here and about going back home.

Why I keep going abroad:

Yes, I keep leaving the United States. I've spent 8.5 out of the last 18.5 months abroad. I knew I wanted to study away for a semester, but I hadn't planned to spend so much time overseas. The Critical Language Scholarship Program was something I found out about during fall of first year and latched onto; it wasn't how I had imagined spending my first summer. Last year, I applied for some mechanical engineering internships and was considering talking to Olin professors about doing research at Olin over the summer when I found out about SERIUS, and less than a week after hearing about the program, I was for sure going to Singapore to do research.

Budapest Semesters in Mathematics (BSM) was the one that was actually planned. Like I said, when I started at Olin I knew I wanted to go abroad, and I was considering BSM, but I was also thinking about programs where I could study in French or Spanish or German. By mid-fall of sophomore year, though, I was pretty set on BSM (more on that below).

Some of my family and friends love to travel, and while I enjoy traveling, it's not something I love. What I've found that I love is living in a place, the process of somewhere new becoming familiar and home. I love the way that dépaysement, the disorientation and breaking of habits by being in a new place or situation, gives way to surprising comfort. I love being a regular at my favorite restaurants, cafes, and bakeries, having church family in four congregations in three countries, and learning cities well enough to give directions when just a few months before, I got a little lost nearly every time I left my apartment.

I love being nearly 9,000 kilometers from my house and yet still feeling like I'm home.

Why I came to BSM:

This is in many ways more complicated than any other reflection I've written here because the why is so different. This wasn't as simple as 'I have to take these classes' or 'It meets a requirement and seems interesting.' I needed to take six more credits of math, but I could have taken a couple of math classes at Olin or Wellesley to do that. So why BSM?

I love math, and I missed it. I had been thinking a lot over the past year about where I want to end up on the math/mechanical engineering spectrum - completely to one end or the other? applied math? modelling? - and so I wanted the experience of spending a lot of time doing math. I knew what it was like to devote a lot of time to engineering. It had been a long time since I had focused on math.

I came for challenging courses in a variety of fields of mathematics, and I came for a community of people who love math, who do math together, and who want to do all kinds of different things with their math degrees. I went to Mathcamp for two summers in high school, and it was the best I'd ever felt like I fit in a community. I loved the people, I loved the tradition, and I loved the math. I was looking for that again at BSM, and I found it.

My father is a BSM alum, so I grew up hearing stories from his semester here. Because of that, I've wanted to learn Hungarian and visit Budapest for a long time. And even when I was applying to college, I knew I wanted to study away somewhere. Something I did while choosing colleges was put together four year plans, and I tried to make sure a semester away would fit. It was important to me.

So, for all of those reasons, I became a BSMer.

Why I Will Have Reverse Culture Shock:

There are the expected reasons. Budapest public transit is far better than Boston's, and Olin isn't exactly in Boston. Taking a train to another country for the weekend won't be an option anymore. I'll miss hearing and speaking Hungarian, and I'll miss my favorite places and foods. I'll really miss the other BSMers, especially the people with whom I had Spectral or multiple classes; we spent a lot of time together.

But going back to Olin from BSM will be harder than coming back from Hungary. My friend Raoul and I were talking about going back to our schools next semester, and we both had moments over the course of that conversation in which we realized how difficult going back will be. Most of Raoul's friends who are math majors are double majors, with the other major more important to them than math, so this was the first time he had a large mathematical community. I've had this kind of community before, but I don't have it at Olin; even though a surprising number of Oliners enjoy math and think it's cool, it's only a focus for a couple of people (writes the mechanical engineering major). 

Olin is also culturally so different from BSM. Olin isn't a lecture-problem sets-tests kind of institution, and that's one of the reasons I chose it. BSM is that kind of program, though, and I've enjoyed it. I've already written about some of the grading and assessment differences, but finals just ended, so it's been on my mind again. Before midterms, I realized that studying for a test felt weird to me. It was something I did a lot in high school but not much for math in my junior or senior year. PDEs had no tests, and that's the only math class I've taken at Olin. So I had to relearn how to study for a math test. It wasn't hard, but it was like going to dance class again after a long time away. The muscle memory was all there when I looked.

And I still have a mental sense that this is weird -- where are the final projects? I haven't built anything? Why am I not spending hours in a lab or studio or team room? Why do I have nothing for Expo? -- but it doesn't feel wrong. Instead of labs or studios or team rooms, I have cafes and the upstairs room at the pasta place near school and the club room in the basement of the school building. I've relearned how to study "individual" subjects with other people. There are no course assistants, and professors' office hours work really differently here, but we all have each other, and a lot of the time that's enough. And sure, we ask the profs questions, either in class or by email, but usually when we ask by email we end up sending the responses to each other. 

Honestly, it sometimes feels like better teamwork than a lot of what I've done at Olin, even though here everything we turn in is individual work. I would not have made it through Spectral this semester without working extensively with three or four of the other students in the course. We would meet in the club room for several hours before class each Wednesday, our group Facebook chat is thousands of messages long, we've met at cafes to work, and we've even done a Google Hangout or two to go through difficult problems. Raoul and I had three classes together, and nearly every Tuesday and Thursday we worked on an assignment together during lunch, on top of occasionally meeting at the Cat Cafe to work. Last week I went to Topology office hours with Raoul and another student, and that time was spent so much better because there were three of us who had talked about some of the problems with each other beforehand. Our questions were better formed, and it all felt cohesive.

I need to figure out where I'm comfortable studying at Olin because I don't think I can go back to doing most of my individual work in my room. I need to work with other people. I need to still learn math, not just do research and TA. I need to talk to people about math. I need to meet up with Morgan, a BSMer who goes to Wellesley and was usually at the pasta place when I was, and speak Hungarian.

I'll be used to Olin again pretty quickly. The beginning will just be hard.