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)

For Honor!

As of last night, Olin has a new Honor Code.

About a year ago, the student body voted to put a sunset clause on the Honor Code, largely because a lot of people felt disconnected from the code. So this year, we elected an Honor Code Revew/Rewrite Committee (HCRC). They held a lot of meetings throughout the year, starting with ideation and comments on the old Honor Code, and then they went through a lot of drafts and got comments on those drafts. At one point the committee taped copies of the old Honor Code and the proposed Honor Code to the door of every single room in both dorms -- and then sent a meeting request to the entire school to discuss the draft.

Last night's Town Hall Meeting was the result of all of that work. In order to vote, we needed quorum -- at least half of the student body. We ended up with about 205 of the 325-ish students living on campus. After two hours of presentations, discussions, and voting, we approved the new Core Values and removed the sunset clause.

The new Core Values are below the fold:

Beavers Baseball

I'm from a baseball family. My father umpires high school and college ball, and I've been watching baseball on tv and in person for as long as I can remember (I definitely remember games in the Houston Astrodome). So when I found out that Babson has a baseball team and that the field is closer to Olin's campus than it is to the rest of Babson, I was very excited. And yesterday was opening day!

The game was at Babson's field, but Worcester Polytechnic (WPI) was the home team, which made the scoreboard a little confusing. The scoreboard lists "Visitor" and "Babson," but yesterday the "Visitor" score was Babson's and the "Babson" score was WPI. And Babson won, 19-6!

The Visitor score is actually Babson's. Hooray Beavers!

Reasons I love Math

1. Different subfields connect to each other in awesome ways. I'm doing graph theory research this semester with a group on campus. Most of my graph theory experience is in one subfield (edge coloring), and the group does work in another subfield (vertex labeling). Within my first couple of weeks with the group, we solved a vertex labeling problem by changing it to an edge coloring problem and solving that, which I thought was really cool.

2. It explains weird phenomena. This past Saturday night was the first ever Midnight Mathematicians at which the speaker was a professor. Midnight Math meets every other Saturday night (ish) at 11:59 pm, and we all dress classily, eat cheese, and listen to someone talk about math! This weekend, Professor John Geddes talked about work he's done on nonlinear dynamics of fluids, particularly related to blood flowing in microvessels. The blood sometimes does weird things, like change directions with no change in conditions, and the mathematics can actually explain this, which is so awesome. (I in no way mean to imply that math is only cool if it is useful. I've done and enjoyed too much model theory and logic to think that.)

3. And finally, it leads to exchanges like this:
(In Partial Differential Equations on Friday, talking about the wave equation on the half line. Aaron is the professor.)
Student: "That's why we can't make a semi-infinite guitar!"
Aaron: "That's why we wouldn't want to. The finiteness of the universe is why we can't."

Looking Ahead

Four weeks into this semester, we're already thinking about registration for fall classes.

This past week, all the students received a list of the classes that Olin is planning to offer in the fall along with descriptions of any new or highlighted courses. On Wednesday during lunch, the faculty held a course fair. Each type of class had a table -- Math, Science, AHS, E! (entrepreneurship), and each engineering. At least one faculty member teaching a class in that category was at each table to talk to students about the various courses and open research positions.

Between the course fair and Sunday night, all the students are highly encouraged to fill out a survey where we list up to five courses we'd like to take. The class schedule will be based on the survey results. The schedule will be released in a few weeks, we'll have some time to think about it, then we'll all need to get clearance from our advisors to register. That usually involves a short conversation talking about the classes we want/need to take.

After that, registration!

Snow-covered Olin

There was a blizzard last weekend! We got two or two and a half feet of snow. It was by far the most snow we've gotten this winter, and also the best snow for snowball fights!

The Student Activites Committe sponsored a snowball fight!

To get around, we walked through trenches that came up above my knees. Pictures below the fold!

Traditional

My second semester at Olin started two weeks ago. I have a pretty traditional schedule this semester, which is a little odd after the fall. I'm taking Real World Measurements, Modern Biology, Partial Differential Equations, and Physics of Waves. Despite how traditional most of my classes seem from the titles, they're still very Olin-ish, just in different ways than my classes last semester were. The classes have each met several times now, so I'm going to go through each one below the fold.