If I Were At Expo

Rebecca Christianson, the Olin prof who organizes Expo at the end of every semester, sent out the email for Expo sign-ups today. Expo is the "end-of-semester celebration of student work," and all on-campus Oliners are required to present something each semester. I'm going to be in Budapest, not at Olin, so I'm not participating, but it made me think about what I would do for Expo were I somehow to be at Olin on December 19th.

A lot of Olin's classes lead to Expo-presentable work because they're project based, and many classes that aren't project based for most of the semester have final projects that are Expo-able. It's a little weird that I've only presented project work at one Expo. In fall 2012 I presented my last ModSim project, in spring and fall 2013 I used my graph theory research for Expo, and last spring I talked about my Passionate Pursuit. For the past three semesters, I've talked about either math or ballet.

So it shouldn't be surprising that if I had to come up with something for Expo this semester, it would probably concern math or ballet.

It's a little tricky, though, because my classes this semester have been very different from Olin classes. There are no projects. Even in Spectral Theory, my most Olin-ish class, nothing I'm doing is original. I'm very proud of the work I've done here, and I've worked harder than I generally work in a semester at Olin, but it's all proving known statements or solving problems with known answers because that's how one learns mathematics. There are lots of things I've proven or seen proven that I think are really cool, and I've considered trying to use a few of them for Midnight Mathematicians talks in the future, but giving that kind of presentation isn't really in the spirit of Expo.

That brings me to ballet. I've seen a lot of ballet here, more in a single semester than I usually see in a year. In Bratislava and Prague I saw two very unusual productions of Romeo and Juliet, and I could easily compare them to each other and to more standard choreographies. I also saw unusual versions of Carmen and Coppelia, so instead of focusing on R&J I could talk about new choreographies of traditional ballets, or I could add in La Sylphide and Merry Widow and explore the structure of story ballets from different time periods.

I think it's a little weird, though not necessarily surprising, that one of the ways I chose to spend my free time would yield at least three potential Expo projects, whereas the hundreds of hours of mathematics I've done wouldn't translate into anything appropriate for Expo. Expo works as a requirement at Olin because of the nature of Olin. BSM is very different, and trying to do Expo this semester with an Olin mindset would be difficult because of that difference.