#LoveOlin

I didn't fall in love with Olin, not really. Not like so many other Oliners do.

I was impressed when I first visited in summer 2010. I came to Olin right after leaving Mathcamp, and what I heard about Olin culture reminded me of Mathcamp culture. I liked the idea of knowing everyone and especially of knowing the professors. My Olin visit also changed what I looked for at other schools. I started asking about how easy it was for students to be trained on the machines, looking at how present design was in the curriculum and how early, and finding the statistics on how many graduates went into industry. But I wasn't in love, not yet. It was far too early to fall in love, far too dangerous to fall in love a year before I started applying to schools.

I called Olin my top choice for all of junior year and most of senior fall. It was close to Rice and Georgia Tech, and a lot of times I just grouped the three together as my top choices, but if asked to name one, I would say Olin. In January 2012 I was invited to Candidates' Weekend, and in February, I became a candidate.

I liked Candidates' Weekend, but so many people talk about leaving CW knowing for sure they wanted to go to Olin. I didn't know that for sure. I liked the other candidates and had some good conversations with Oliners, but the design challenge had made me pretty uncomfortable, and I still wasn't sure about parts of the curriculum. I wasn't sure about the curriculum constantly changing. While I liked campus, I didn't like the location, and the small size came with a lot of disadvantages.

Obviously, I ended up choosing Olin, but I wasn't in love when I chose. I was sure, but not in love.

I still don't think I'd say I'm in love, not in any continuous way. I have had plenty of moments over the past two and a half years of being in love, and a lot of them are unsurprising: good team experiences, great conversations with professors, opportunities I wouldn't get at other places due to school size or my major. But not all of these moments are so predictable, and some of them remind me that whether or not I'm in love with Olin, I do love it.

Last Friday wasn't exactly the kind of day to make me love Olin. It hasn't been the easiest or happiest semester in general. I was leaving at 1pm to go to the airport and fly home for the long weekend, but I had an assignment due at 5pm that wasn't done. I had gotten too little sleep, hadn't finished packing, and was frustrated with the assignment and myself, but I still felt like I needed to go to Linearity class and NINJA.

And then I stood in the middle of the Dining Hall Mezzanine after answering a couple of questions at a whiteboard, looked around at the eighty or so Linearity I students working on problem sets and quizzes, and thought, "This is why I'm here."

Some days that's all it takes.

Back at Olin

Being back at Olin is still a little weird. I'm living in a different dorm, and most of my friends have already gone through that adjustment. I'm in a double instead of having a large room to myself in a three person flat. I don't know a quarter of the school. (On the first day of one of my classes, the professor had us all introduce ourselves because "There's always that one junior who doesn't know the first years," and the other non-first-years pointed at me.) I'm not taking a math class, and I am taking four engineering classes. Olin culture is very different from BSM culture, and the Needham/Wellesley line is decidedly not Budapest. It's a lot to get used to, but it's been great to see people again, and I'm starting to settle in. Here's what I'm up to as far as academics this semester:

Spectral Theory

I've already written a fair bit about Inquiry Based Spectral Theory already, but it still deserves a post of its own. It's definitely the BSM class I'll miss the most.

Combinatorics and Topology

Extremal Combinatorics and Topology were my math classes at BSM that had the most fun homework and were generally the lowest stress. Here's a bit more about each:

Analysis and Algebra

Going into BSM, I knew I wanted to take at least one analysis class and at least one algebra class. My analysis ended up being Complex Analysis, and my algebra was Galois Theory. Here are my thoughts on each:

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?

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.