We Are All Beavers

A blog set up by cross-admits Kayane (Caltech '16) and Neil (MIT '16) for those curious for one view of what life is like in their respective universities. Have any questions? Please let us know!

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Conference of Undergraduate Women in Physics @ Caltech

Recently, I was able to guide tours to various labs as part of the Conference of Undergraduate Women in Physics hosted by Caltech. It was my first time giving tours of any type on campus, so it was a pleasant new experience! We went to several quantum labs as well as ones related to space and the other branches of physics. The other undergraduates also attended several days of seminars and presentations, as well as an optional tour of JPL the next day. At the end, we watched "Ph.D. Comics: The Movie" (starring many Caltech-affiliated students/profs) in Feynman Lecture Hall. I made some new friends and look forward to being a tour guide on campus starting this summer!

^ The NuSTAR control room, with several monitors prominently displaying data being imported from the satellite. More information on NuSTAR can be found here: http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/

^ Taking refreshment breaks between the two lab tour sessions. Many women had come from the same schools, yet others met with people going to other colleges on a day where they celebrated their common interests.

^ Poster presentation contest. There were about 40 projects competing and the top presenters were given prizes. This reminded me of my days in high school (nostalgia!) when I would eagerly prepare to give Science Fair presentations on my hard-worked-on research. Some things never change!

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Independent Activities Period at MIT

Much like how many other schools have a January term, MIT has Independent Activities Period (IAP).  I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head, but the majority of students seem to come back early during the winter (besides, if you’re in school housing you don’t have to pay extra or anything for January).  During IAP, you have a credit limit of 12 units, and most classes offered during the one month period are extremely fast-paced anyways.  However, many students stay for IAP to take classes that aren’t strictly academic.  As this IAP starts to wrap up, here’s what it was like for me:

The actually legitimately academic class I took was Introduction to Python (6.S189).  It was a six credit class that met every day at 11 and was a fast paced but forgiving class for those with no programming experience or very little to start off with.  It was graded on effort but moved very much like a real class, and by the end of it we were learning how to do things with classes in Python.  It actually was only 3 weeks out of IAP’s 4 weeks, so I just turned in my final project Friday morning.  The TAs were very helpful and explained how to improve on your code and how you were ideally supposed to solve problems.  Overall I found it a very fun way to get my feet wet with programming.

The rest of my classes were actually art classes that I decided to take just for fun, though they had a fee for them.  I ended up being busier than I expected because I signed up for intro to ceramics on Mondays, intro to oil painting on Wednesdays, and self-directed life drawing on Fridays.  The teachers in these classes were all very helpful and cheerful (except for life drawing, given that it was self-directed and had no teacher), especially in terms of giving us a lot of freedom to experiment and try our own ideas.  I might post some of what I ended up making if I get the chance later.

My most interesting class by far though was glass blowing.  I got really lucky since you have to lottery into the class (with the IAP class only being open to freshmen), and after looking across the room while blacksmithing and wondering what the heck the glass people were doing, I finally got to give it a try.  We started off making glass caterpillars and made a lot of paperweights with crazy patterns and colors inside.  I just did my first “blown” piece which was a simple cup, but I still have two more sessions to try out things left.  I think the coolest part about glass blowing is that no matter what you make and no matter how much you screw up it always looks really awesome.

I guess in the end IAP is great for having fun and unwinding while getting you pumped for school to start again!

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Do people dress nicely at your schools? Or is everyone too busy studying to make a big effort, like makeup, suits, heels etc. like other schools ?

People definitely do dress up - there are many who wear makeup, suits, heels, etc, especially when meeting with a professor or giving a talk about a poster or at a conference. It all depends on what people are comfortable wearing on any particular day. What people wear is the same at any other school with the small exception that people who decide to wear PJs to class are not looked down upon - if that's how they're comfortable, then so be it! Once again, people at our schools dress like people at any other college or university, but are open to anyone dressing any way they want. (Restrictions apply only to dress code at formal parties and wearing shoes and long pants in lab.)

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Caltech Houses (A Pictoral Representation)

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Caltech and MIT: Housing Systems

Caltech has eight dorms (called houses) split into the north houses (Ruddock, Lloyd, Page, Avery) and the south houses (Dabney, Fleming, Blacker, Ricketts). Upon arrival at campus, each person is assigned a room that he/she temporarily lives in. For about a week starting a few days before class starts, each student eats dinner at a different house (called rotation) and gets a feel for the personalities of each of them. Some houses have rotation videos and all houses have activities designed for students to get to know their house better. Students then rank the houses on a scale of 1-20 based on which house(s) they would want to be in the most. The house presidents and several other people meet to decide who gets placed in each house, and the next day the students all gather at the Fleming cannon and await its firing. At the blast, the students are now considered frosh and run to their top houses and go through a process unique to each house to find out which one they got in. After that, each house has a unique way of deciding roommates. Students stay affiliated with that house all four years, but multiple house memberships and social memberships are also available.

MIT has 12 undergrad residence halls, each one unique. Undergrads are required to live in one during their freshman year, and the summer after you choose to go to MIT, you receive giant a color pamphlet and a CD. In it you get a description of the different dorms, plus a video produced by each dorm. You list your dorms in order of preference, and the MIT dorm picking black box committee assigns you a dorm to get you into at least your top five. After you get your assignment, however, it’s not quite the end of it. During orientation you see what it’s like and the various dorms still hold some pretty awesome events to try and convince you to live in there, along with their respective houses, and you can choose to apply for a transfer to a different dorm (though I believe a dorm or two doesn’t allow that, like Maseeh). At the same time that dorms are holding events to try and convince people (or scare them away) to come live there, each individual floor or wing is also doing the same thing. After people are locked into their dorm assignments, then you choose between the different dorms that you want to live in. It involves a lot of moving around, and you definitely shouldn’t unpack everything until the assignment process is done, but it gives everyone a chance to really try out their dorms and gives you a chance to change your mind. You’re automatically assigned to the same house after freshman year, though you can choose to say, move out to a different dorm or live in outside housing or in a frat/sorority. The process was very confusing to me as an incoming freshman, but I hope this helped clear it up at least a little bit.

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Caltech Landmarks: The Periodic Table This is the largest periodic table at Caltech, with each element about 7 inches on each side. This room is where I take Organic Chemistry and had chem lab lecture. Stay tuned for more updates!

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This blog makes me really happy!

itsametaphor-yousee

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For Fall semester freshman year at MIT, you need to have a freshman advisor.  Instead of meeting your advisor once in a while, you can instead choose to take a freshman advising seminar, where your advisor teaches you something in their field of expertise.  I was lucky enough to get into the "Modern Blacksmithing and Physical Metallurgy" seminar.  We learned basic skills like how to manage your fire and how to forge weld.  A lot of the learning was through projects like a coat hanger, a bottle opener, and a colonial era fork.  In the end you can pursue your own "end of the semester" project, in my case a candle holder as a Christmas gift for my best friend.  Some other projects that people have done in the past are a crowbar, a grappling hook, and an insect cast in bronze.  The advisors were very patient and helpful, and I highly recommend this freshman seminar!

See more pictures of the stuff I made on the other blog I write on: http://somesingtotalkabout.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/coal-burned-fingers-and-hammers/

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Caltech Pranking 101: Episode 1 - The Rose Bowl Pranks

Let's celebrate the New Year with some fun and memorable Caltech prank stories. It is believed that Richard Feynman was one of the first people to bring the pranking spirit to Caltech, and pranking remains an activity a lot of Caltech students love to do. The Rose Bowl takes place every year on New Year's Day, and Caltech found ways to prank it in 1961 and 1984.

1961 - Minnesota vs. Washington - 14 Caltech students, the "Fiendish Fourteen," changed the cards of the Washington fans in the game so that when the cards flipped, they read CALTECH instead of HUSKIES. (See photo above)

1984 - Illinois vs. UCLA - Two Caltech students sneaked in past security and changed the wiring of the scoreboard so it could be remotely controlled. At halftime, when UCLA led Illinois 17-0, they remotely changed the scoreboard to read Caltech 17-0 MIT!

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You guys are real cool. Thought you should know.

Thanks justajournalblog!

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Caltech and the Honor Code

As the year of 2013 rapidly approaches, we look back on the year of 2012 and what we have accomplished, how we can improve on what we've done so far. Many people set New Year's Resolutions and try to keep them! The Caltech version of keeping resolutions set is the Honor Code:

"No member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community."

 All the students hold the Honor Code very dearly - it gives us so many privileges that wouldn't otherwise exist if the school didn't operate under it.

24/7 access to labs, workshops, and almost every building on campus

collaboration on sets; professors encourage students to work together on many homework assignments

take-home quizzes and exams; we get to take them whenever and wherever we want (even next to Millikan Pond) during the time period stated on the instructions as long as we follow the rules

trust between students; we know that if we have to leave a backpack somewhere or have a visiting student in our rooms, we don't have to worry about a student following the Honor Code stealing or damaging any of our personal belongings - this also leads to a safer campus

What makes the Honor Code work and last is that students follow it. The school keeps it as long as we don't break the rules, so we all keep the Honor Code in mind and live by it. 

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A Note About Terms

Caltech and MIT have their calendars structured differently:

Caltech - We have three terms every year: Fall, Winter, and Spring. We start around October 1 with fall term and the term lasts until Winter Break. After Winter Break, we have winter term and that lasts until spring break, followed by spring term which ends around June 15. Our first two terms of freshman year are graded Pass/Fail, with our third term on letter grades. During the summer, people can do SURF (summer undergraduate research, regular undergrad research takes place throughout the year), internships, or neither!

MIT - We have a Fall and a Spring term every year, with our fall term starting around the beginning of September and the spring term the beginning of February.  In between those two we have Independent Activities Period in January, which isn't mandatory but almost everyone comes back to school around then to take advantage of some fun classes both for credit and just for kicks.  Our first semester is graded Pass/No Record, while the spring semester of freshman year is A/B/C/No Record.  We have internships called UROPs which can go on pretty much at any time of the year.

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MIT Winter Break

Well, it looks like I somehow (mostly) survived my first semester freshman year and it's time for winter break!  I still have to pre-register for my classes for spring semester but as much as I'm enjoying life without schoolwork, I'm pretty excited to come back in January for Independent Activities Period.  Hopefully after learning some Python and getting to take some art classes, I'll be ready for the firehose again!

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Caltech Winter Break!!

There are about two weeks left of Winter Break until I return to school in early January - so what do I do now? Relax! Enjoy life without sets, quizzes, and exams, and relish time spent with the family and the holiday spirit. We'll all need a good rest before Winter term starts!

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This is a blog where you can explore the lives of Caltech and MIT students. Though we live on opposite sides of the country, our university lives are surprisingly similar. Any questions? Please let us know!