After Olin

Starting this fall, I'll be at Columbia University, pursuing a PhD in the Applied Physics & Applied Math department. I'm in the applied math - atmospheric science track, and I'm really excited about this.

I've known for a long time that I was interested in fluid mechanics and thermal-fluid systems, and my mechanical engineering courses confirmed that these really were my areas of interest. I also found through my courses and projects that Olin that I loved math modeling, and so I started looking into any programs where I could do fluid modeling. For a while, that meant I was looking into lots of different departments, including math, applied math, mechE, chemE, and oceanic and atmospheric science. Through reading geophysical fluid dynamics papers and looking at NYU's Atmosphere-Ocean Science and Math program, I decided that the research I was most interested in was in the atmosphere/ocean space, but my top choices of programs were NYU and Columbia, the two where I would be in an applied math department. After visits to all the programs where I was accepted, I was most excited about and comfortable at Columbia.

A Few Serious and Not-So-Serious Things I Did as an Oliner

In four years at Olin, I did the following:

Religion, Diversity, Student Government

I write a lot of happy things about Olin. When I write negative things, it tends to be in course reflections, and the negatives are usually accompanied by some positives.

But on Monday night, the student government voted down an amendment that would have (in its final form) required that the student government consider the calendar of religious observances important to the current student body before scheduling an event meant for the entire study body.

Reflections on Second Semester Senior Year Activities

Here are some thoughts on the activities I was involved in during my last semester at Olin. It was a pretty decent culmination of the things I've been involved with over my four years here!

Reflections on Senior Fall

I was originally enrolled in eighteen credits this semester, but after three or four weeks, I dropped down to fourteen. It was a decision I was pretty upset about because I dropped a class that I enjoyed and was taking for fun, but it was the right choice. I had underestimated how much time and effort grad school and scholarship/fellowship apps were going to take, and both SCOPE and Mechanical Design regularly took more than twelve hours a week each. I've had Olin classes take that much time before, but I'd never had two at once, and the fact that both were built around team projects (and thus team meetings) just made it worse. After I dropped BioTransport  (Transport in Biological Systems), some weeks were still rough, but I didn't constantly feel overwhelmed anymore. And between BioTransport and NLDC (Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos), dropping BioTransport was definitely the better choice.

Below the fold I'll talk about what I did this semester (apart from SCOPE, which is still in progress):

Community

The past couple of  weeks have made me think about communities of which I've been a part. There are a lot of them, and often it's the people that end up being most important to me about a place or experience. Here are a few recent moments that have really highlighted community for me.

A Few Summer Pictures

I've been away from Olin for almost a month and a half, so I thought I'd post about what I've been up to! Pictures below the fold.

Thoughts on Spring 2015 Activities

Here's a little bit about what I did this semester that wasn't related to classes or math!

I'm going to be a senior?

My life is still mostly class projects (even more so now that MechSolids projects are about to start), though the weather is finally warming up, so I've also been spending time at Babson's baseball games. There are only three weeks of classes left, and registration was at the end of last week. It's a little weird to think that I'm already registering for senior year. Here's what I'll be up to this summer and next fall:

Bratislava!

I spent this weekend in Bratislava, Slovakia! The center of Bratislava isn't very big, so it's a good city for a short weekend trip. On Friday evening after I arrived by train, I walked around the city a bit and went to St. Martin's Cathedral. On Saturday I did a walking tour of the city, went up to Bratislava Castle, and saw a ballet!

Exploring
Bratislava's Old Town and historical center is pretty small; most of it was destroyed under the communist government in the 60s and 70s. One of the things that was built where the rest of Old Town used to be was a highway with this bridge:

They call it the UFO bridge. Because, well... what else would you call it?

I walked around on my own on Friday, and the main place I went was St. Martin's Cathedral (Dom).

The back of St. Martin's Cathedral

The altar!

Non-Mathy Fun!

I've spent a lot of time in class over the first two weeks of school, but there's still been a lot going on outside of class! Here are some non-academic highlights from the past couple of weeks.

Welcome Party
At the end of the first day of classes, there was a BSM welcome party! Lots of the professors and almost all of the students came. This was when I met a lot of the people who had arrived at the end of the last week. I also talked to a couple of professors. The most important thing I had to do was meet with Miklos Abert, the Inquiry Based Spectral Theory professor, and the other students interested in taking the course in order to schedule it. (Scheduling that class is a problem we're still working on...) I also ate a lot of what I think are sajtos pogácsa, a cheesy bread puff.

Supper at Hannah's
Vivienne, a student from Texas whom I met at the welcome party, and I had supper at Hannah's one night last week. Our plans for who would bring what food didn't end up working super well for various reasons, so we had to throw together supper from what Grace had. The final result was pasta with Hungarian white peppers (which are fantastic), peas, spinach, and "pesto" (olive oil and basil), along with some really good garlic bread. It turned out pretty well! Cooking and talking with Vivienne and Hannah for a few hours was a lot of fun!

Evensong
Last weekend the Anglican-Lutheran Society had a conference at Lake Balaton, so the night before the conference started, a Budapest Lutheran church and the Anglican church I've been attending hosted an Evensong service. I'd never been to Evensong before, and I really enjoyed the service. It was almost entirely sung, mostly by the Gabrieli Choir, which specializes in Anglican sacred music. There were a couple of hymns as well, and while I didn't know either one, they were both very singable. One was very fitting for an evening prayer service, and the other was about unity, which made sense in the context of the conference.

Thoughts on Sophomore Year Activities

I did a lot of non-academic things this year, so here's a bit about the most exciting ones!
 
Passionate Pursuit
In the spring, I did a Passionate Pursuit in Soviet ballet. I watched a lot of videos of old ballets: The Red Poppy, The Stone Flower, two versions of Romeo and Juliet, two versions of Spartacus, and short made-for-TV versions of Swan Lake, Flames of Paris, and The Fountain of Bakhchisarai. I also watched Children of Theatre Street, which is about the Vaganova school, and the ballet parts of the Sochi Olympics opening and closing ceremonies. I reread relevant parts of Apollo's Angels, a ballet history book, and read Swans of the Kremlin, which is about Soviet ballet from the beginning of the Soviet Union to about 1968. I also watched a lot of short videos and read a variety of things that my mom or I found online. All of this was a lot of fun.

I'd said when I applied for credit that I would write a paper and present at Expo. I decided to write and present about which ballet of the of the seven mentioned above is the most Soviet ballet - which one best represents Soviet ballet as a whole. I cheated a little and gave two answers, Romeo and Juliet and Spartacus. Presenting a non-technical poster at Expo was really interesting. I'd only ever presented modeling or math projects before, and I talked to an entirely different group of people than normal. Some of the people who came by my poster were a lot of parents, some middle school girls who dance, the computer networks professor, the head of the machine shop, and people from Olin's department of family and alumni relations. Like normal, I still came up with a short description of what I'd done, but I had more in-depth conversations than I have when I present my graph theory research.

Church, Disciple, and OCF
Both at Christ Church and in Olin Christian Fellowship (OCF) this year, I've been involved in a lot of discussions about the future. I was on the Strategic Team at Christ Church, talking about selling the church building vs. not and what our options would be in either case. We lead an all church service/meeting in February, and people prefer the visions of a future in which we do sell the building, so right now we're exploring options from there. As for OCF, the leadership team this year was essentially all seniors. The current leadership and the future leadership had meetings once a week starting just before spring break. The future leadership is two rising sophomores, Michel and Sonia, and me. Michel and Sonia are co-presidents for next year. The big decision that came out of all of those meetings was the choice to no longer be associated with Cru and, through that, be more welcoming to all Christians on campus.

Reflections on Second Semester, Part 4

This is the last of four posts looking back at the semester that just ended. The posts are split up by class or activity. This post focuses on non-academic or non-Olin activities.

Weekends are Wonderful Things

Last weekend was one of my busiest and most exciting since spring break, but in a lot of ways it was a pretty typical Olin weekend.

Saturday was Dewey's Read-A-Thon, the beginning of the NEWMAC baseball tournament, the last performance of Much Ado About Nothing at Olin, a Doctor Who episode with TARDIS, and my advisor Aaron's Midnight Math talk. On Sunday at church, we celebrated Earth Day, and I played handbells. Back at Olin, I had my second-to-last research meeting of the school year. More about each below the fold!

Outside the Bubble

Oliners often refer to the Olin Bubble. That can mean the campus or the community, but either way, it's something that separates us from the rest of the world. This isn't unique to Olin; I've heard students from other colleges/universities refer to bubbles at their schools in the same way. There are cultural and community advantages to the bubble, but it's also important to get outside of the bubble occasionally. A place as small as Olin can't provide everything, and simply by virtue of being an engineering college, Olin can feel homogeneous.

There are lots of ways I get out of the bubble. Here are six:

1. Church. I've gone to a Methodist church about a mile and a half from Olin almost every Sunday since Labor Day, and I joined this past week. It's a really small, friendly community, which has been awesome. I've gotten to know a lot of the adults at church, which I appreciate because during the rest of the week, the only adults I interact with much are professors. There are also a couple of freshmen from Wellesley who come, so I get to be with other students in a non-academic context.

2. Babson baseball. Okay, so this isn't really off campus. The baseball field is technically on Babson's land, not Olin's, but it's closer to Olin than it is to the rest of Babson. Nevertheless, very few Oliners even think about going to Babson games. Most days I'm in the stands with the players' parents and a few Babson students. I love watching the games, and it's a way to be in a very non-Olin environment without having to leave campus.

3. Reading the News. This sounds silly, since it's not actually going anywhere at all. But the Olin Bubble can, if you're not careful, extend to awareness of the outside world. There are a lot of Oliners who do read the news online, but there are also a lot who don't. I like knowing what's going on, and I don't think it makes sense to be at Olin -- a school that puts so much emphasis on engineering in context -- and not be aware of what's happening outside.

(three more below the fold)

Weekend Adventures

Last night, there were two important events. There was a party at 9:00 Wellesley to which Olin students were invited. However, also at 9:00 was the premiere of the new season of Doctor Who. Olin's TARDIS club was watching the Doctor Who premiere. Bunches of freshmen were going to Wellesley.

What to do, what to do...