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:

Thanksgiving Break Adventures

I'm going to see family for Thanksgiving, but I actually haven't left yet because I've been up to a couple of other things! First, I took a quick trip to Toronto, and then there was a fluid dynamics conference in town!

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.

These Are A Few of My Favorite Things

I planned on listing a few of my favorite things in Budapest. The list I ended up writing is a little longer than "a few."

Snapshots

A couple of weekends ago, Hannah, Philippe, and I went to the Kürtőskalács Festival. Kürtőskalács are chimney cakes, dough baked in a helix around a spit. The festival was held in City Park, so Hannah and I agreed to meet by the 1956 revolution monument at one side of the park. 

Evidently I'm really bad at picking meeting points because it happened to be the day of the Budapest Marathon, and the finish line was right in front of the monument. Oops.

The Chimney Cake Festival mostly consists of a lot of booths selling different varieties of chimney cakes. There's not much to do other than wait in line, get food, and eat, so the lines were very long. The chimney cakes were delicious and definitely worth it, though.

Hannah, Philippe, and I with our mini chimney cakes.

This was the regular (vanilla/sugar) one; I also got one with cinnamon. Note that this is about half the length of a normal chimney cake, and the diameter is smaller than normal, too.

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!

Ballet and Street Food

Today was my first experience with ballet in central Europe! I went to a matinee at the Opera House to see the Hungarian National Ballet perform Troy Game and La Sylphide. There was also a big festival today on the same street as the Opera House!

The Opera House
The Operaház is gorgeous, and I was sitting in a box. In the theater at home, all the boxes are on the sides, so I think they don't tend to be terribly good seats, but the boxes here go all the way around the circle, and I was near the center.

The Opera House! The screen outside was for a festival going on today.

Inside the theater

Some of the boxes on the Dress Circle level

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.

Felt Instead of Heard

"Dancing is a language that is felt instead of heard."
-- Prince Eric in the Disney musical The Little Mermaid

Today was the second part of my audition for the Babson Dance Ensemble.

 One of my friends has what I consider to be the perfect audition blog post. It's general enough to have applied to multiple auditions for her, but it also says everything that really needs to be said. So, I'll get to the details later, but here's the most important part, with thanks to Rach:

"My line wasn’t the best, I wasn’t always with the music, I didn’t have the best technique, my extensions weren’t the highest, I didn’t stay on relevé the longest, my turns weren’t the cleanest... But I worked as hard as I could. And furthermore, I had fun with it, because I love to dance. And hopefully the way I danced at that audition conveyed that to the judges."

Clubs!

Friday afternoon was club fair! What this means at Olin is that all the clubs set up tables around the center of campus (the Oval), and the freshmen wander from table to table, talking to upperclassmen, eating food, trying things out, and signing up for more and more mailing lists.

I didn't come off too badly (by which I mean that my email won't be horridly flooded on a daily basis). I had already joined Olin Dance Project, the contra dance group, and WHACK (the weapons club, and they had foils at their table and it made the foilist in me very happy), but at the club fair I also signed up for Society of Women Engineers (SWE), Olin Christian Fellowship (OCF), Midnight Mathematicians, Fiber Arts, Stage Combat, Franklin W. Olin Players (FWOP, that's theater), and then I was convinced to join the Olin Opera Organization! We'll see how that goes. I'm also planning on going to TARDIS -- that's the Doctor Who club -- events, but I'll know when all of those are from Carine.

The club events continued after the fair, though. SWE had a meeting last night, complete with lots and lots of cheesecake. They talked about what kinds of events they do, tried to convince us all to go to the national conference -- why are engineering conferences so much more expensive than math conferences? -- and what fundraisers they do. And we ate cheesecake. Lots of fun. Today was the second TARDIS meeting, though the first I've been able to attend, and we all crowded into a dorm room and ate food, drank Coke, and watched today's Doctor Who episode. "Dinosaurs. In a spaceship!" That basically expresses all the awesomeness.

Brave

In thirty minutes, two things which, for me at least, constitute being brave.

First, I went to a field to sketch insects. Next, I asked someone if she'd like to go see the Boston Ballet with me.

Neither one of those seems like particularly hard things, right? But I'm pretty squeamish about insects, and I'm shy.

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...