Fortunately, contrary to what Strong Bad would have you believe, we at Mudd are not, in fact, on fire. There are plenty of fires to go around right now (fairly common in Southern California around this time, actually), but they don't usually come very close to Mudd. Just close enough to make us smell smoke for a few days and occasionally drop ash on us when the wind blows the right direction. Look for a more substantial update when I have more time. (Yeah, like that ever happens). No, really, I still have to give you pictures of my freeze ray, for instance, and talk about the glider trips I led the Barnstormers on. (You just keep telling yourself that). I'm not talking to you anymore. (Isn't that was I was just saying?). ...huh.
~KMarsh
Showing posts with label dorm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dorm. Show all posts
16 November 2008
17 September 2008
Quest for Graduation: So You Want To Be A Mudder
Здравствуйте!
We're back and school has begun. Actually, it began 3 weeks ago. The semester started off rushed for me, but it's settled down for now and I finally have time to blog again. As you may have noticed, I'm learning Russian. It's far too much work to be worth it (6 hours of class/week + 2 hours of homework/night = totally not worth it), but it's my favorite class so far. Be that as it is, however, I'm enjoying all my classes considerably more than usual -- there are often one or two that I just need to take, but this year all my classes are of my own choosing (except clinic, sort of) and I'm enjoying them all.
I'm enjoying living in Case, too. The rooms are huge, although mine is still filled with boxes that I haven't unpacked yet or are waiting to return to storage, and this time around I actually know the people I'm living with and they all range from "I don't know you very well yet" to "damn cool". We've got my Wii in the corner of the L and Litz got a PS3 over the summer so we're going to buy Rock Band 2 when they come out with the new peripherals for it. I also managed to acquire an armchair and 3-seat couch from my grandparents when they bought new furnature. It is some of the most excruciatingly comfortable furnature I've ever experienced, so I'm happy.
Computer Vision is such a cool class. I'm not really sure how much Professor Dodds actually knows about robotics and computer vision because he's always telling us stories about things he tried that didn't work, but I get the feeling that he knows his stuff. It doesn't actually matter, though, because he is extremely good at teaching it and at inspiring excitement and enthusiasm in his students, and that's really the whole point. Our first project was to write a program in C++ or Matlab that locates a can of spam in an image. We took a bunch of pictures of each other holding spam in class on the first day and used those to test our programs. We met with mixed success, but had a fun time seeing what we could do with the code libraries available.
In non-academic news I am now co-president of the Barnstormers (as mentioned before, apparently...). The Barnstormers are HMC's club for all things aeronautical, and Claire and I were given leadership of the club when Matt McKnett graduated. We've already done some cool stuff, like skipping class to hang out with Stan Love -- an HMC alumnus who happens to be an astronaut, but we have even more cool stuff coming up.
First is the annual aero alumni fly-in. At the end of September each year many of the school's alumni who have airplanes will fly in to Brackett Field, take current students up on joyrides with them in everything from carbon-fiber homebuilts to a Citation 2 jet. After the flying we all retire to the Aviation Room at Hoch-Shannahan dining hall (paid for by the aero alumni, hence the "Aviation Room") to have dinner and catch up.
Second is an event we've been planning since last year (also mentioned before). When Claire and I took over the Barnstormers, Matt and Iris proposed that we try to take any interested students on a gliding trip. We started looking at possible glider schools and sent an e-mail to the student body asking for interested parties. Within hours I'd received over 50 responses. Now, after sending an e-mail to the new freshman class, I have over 80 people who have expressed interest. The club got $2400 in funding from the school for the trip, and if even half of those people are still interested when the time comes we'll probably have to make them pay more than I wanted. Also, Claire, Iris and I flew out to visit one of the potential glider schools and the guy there mentioned that he could probably fit about 12 students in one day, so we'll have to split this up into multiple days. More on this as it unfolds.
That's about all I can think of right now, but keep an eye out for more regular posting -- I'll probably start updating on Friday or Saturday and I'll see about getting an RSS feed going. As a parting word, kudos to all those who caught the reference in this post's title.
~KMarsh
We're back and school has begun. Actually, it began 3 weeks ago. The semester started off rushed for me, but it's settled down for now and I finally have time to blog again. As you may have noticed, I'm learning Russian. It's far too much work to be worth it (6 hours of class/week + 2 hours of homework/night = totally not worth it), but it's my favorite class so far. Be that as it is, however, I'm enjoying all my classes considerably more than usual -- there are often one or two that I just need to take, but this year all my classes are of my own choosing (except clinic, sort of) and I'm enjoying them all.
I'm enjoying living in Case, too. The rooms are huge, although mine is still filled with boxes that I haven't unpacked yet or are waiting to return to storage, and this time around I actually know the people I'm living with and they all range from "I don't know you very well yet" to "damn cool". We've got my Wii in the corner of the L and Litz got a PS3 over the summer so we're going to buy Rock Band 2 when they come out with the new peripherals for it. I also managed to acquire an armchair and 3-seat couch from my grandparents when they bought new furnature. It is some of the most excruciatingly comfortable furnature I've ever experienced, so I'm happy.
Computer Vision is such a cool class. I'm not really sure how much Professor Dodds actually knows about robotics and computer vision because he's always telling us stories about things he tried that didn't work, but I get the feeling that he knows his stuff. It doesn't actually matter, though, because he is extremely good at teaching it and at inspiring excitement and enthusiasm in his students, and that's really the whole point. Our first project was to write a program in C++ or Matlab that locates a can of spam in an image. We took a bunch of pictures of each other holding spam in class on the first day and used those to test our programs. We met with mixed success, but had a fun time seeing what we could do with the code libraries available.
In non-academic news I am now co-president of the Barnstormers (as mentioned before, apparently...). The Barnstormers are HMC's club for all things aeronautical, and Claire and I were given leadership of the club when Matt McKnett graduated. We've already done some cool stuff, like skipping class to hang out with Stan Love -- an HMC alumnus who happens to be an astronaut, but we have even more cool stuff coming up.
First is the annual aero alumni fly-in. At the end of September each year many of the school's alumni who have airplanes will fly in to Brackett Field, take current students up on joyrides with them in everything from carbon-fiber homebuilts to a Citation 2 jet. After the flying we all retire to the Aviation Room at Hoch-Shannahan dining hall (paid for by the aero alumni, hence the "Aviation Room") to have dinner and catch up.
Second is an event we've been planning since last year (also mentioned before). When Claire and I took over the Barnstormers, Matt and Iris proposed that we try to take any interested students on a gliding trip. We started looking at possible glider schools and sent an e-mail to the student body asking for interested parties. Within hours I'd received over 50 responses. Now, after sending an e-mail to the new freshman class, I have over 80 people who have expressed interest. The club got $2400 in funding from the school for the trip, and if even half of those people are still interested when the time comes we'll probably have to make them pay more than I wanted. Also, Claire, Iris and I flew out to visit one of the potential glider schools and the guy there mentioned that he could probably fit about 12 students in one day, so we'll have to split this up into multiple days. More on this as it unfolds.
That's about all I can think of right now, but keep an eye out for more regular posting -- I'll probably start updating on Friday or Saturday and I'll see about getting an RSS feed going. As a parting word, kudos to all those who caught the reference in this post's title.
~KMarsh
26 February 2008
0-Round Pull into Case!
The title of this post needs explaining. A lot of explaining. It is thick with jargon and contextual knowledge. I'll explain it backwards, starting with the meaning and then describing how I got there. The statement means that one of my friends will be proctor of Case next year and that I will be living with him or her. Case is one of our dorms, so that's easy. What does "pull" mean?
At Harvey Mudd College, rooms for everyone except the freshmen are decided through a process called "room draw". In the simplest form, everyone is assigned a number and then goes in order picking which room he or she wants to live in next year. Numbers are assigned randomly (I think) among the members of each class; thus, rising seniors get first pick, juniors next, and sophomores last. When you pick a room, the verb we use is "pull". You can also "pull" a roommate or suitemate (which, I believe, is where the term came from -- you get a room and pull a buddy with you). If you choose a double or triple, you must fill the room, so you write down your name and the names of your roommate(s). When you pull a single, the system is kind so it lets you bring a friend to live in the room next to you.
Seniors are slightly different in that there are 3 rounds of Senior room draw. In an effort to make sure that seniors get to live where they want to, Senior draw is divided into first-round, second-round, and third-round. During first-round, all the rising seniors who currently live in a dorm get to pull into that dorm before rising seniors with better numbers who don't live in the dorm. This is called "in-dorm status" and is the center of much maneuvering during junior draw. The second round is for out of dorm seniors, and the third round is for seniors pulling underclassmen. Confused yet? The worst is over.
The title claims that I got pulled into Case, but it claims I got a "0-Round" pull. I said there were only first- second- and third- round pulls, though! Some rooms are preplaced. A number of rooms each year in each dorm are reserved for incoming freshmen or transfer students and some people petition to live in rooms with certain characteristics because of medical needs (a med-pull, commonly used to get a room with a kitchen for people with food restrictions). One or two rooms in each dorm are the proctors' rooms. Each dorm has at least one proctor (Case and Atwood have two each) and he or she is allowed to pull a friend just like everyone else. That friend is placed in what's called the 0-Round since it happens before the seniors' first-round.
We've explained the title now, but what's a proctor? The proctor is Mudd's equivalent to the RA. They keep an eye on the students and make sure that no huge problems surface. They are the people you can talk to when you have problems, be they fights with friends, noisy neighbors, stress from homework or more touchy issues relating to drugs/alcohol/sex or whatever else you might come across in your first years away from home. The difference between the proctors and most RA's is that the proctors are not here to report your actions to the authorities; they are not responsible for getting you in trouble. They're here for when you need them, whether as someone to talk to, someone to support you when confronting said noisy neighbors, or someone to help you notice, if not avoid, the pitfalls in the rocky road of life. Proctors do report directly to the deans, but they're not interested in getting people in trouble. Their job is to keep the school healthy, physically and emotionally, by collectively watching every student on campus to make sure everything is okay and helping us when nothing is okay. That's a tall enough order as it is, and if you add "tattle-tale" to the job description you've created a paradox in which people should feel comfortable going to the proctors for help, but are afraid of getting in trouble if they do. As an example of the sort of thing the proctors do, after last year's shooting at Virginia Tech our deans and proctors holed up together and spent hours compiling a list of all the people on Mudd who showed warning signs of being depressed, unstable, friendless, or otherwise in the slightest danger of becoming dangerous. (For what it's worth, the list was empty).
Two of my closest friends here at Mudd -- actually the two closest outside of my girlfriend -- have been proctors; one of the juniors I lived with when I first arrived at Mudd who really embodied the spirit of the place for me went on to become a proctor the following year and just last week my roommate, with whom I have shared a room since we came to Mudd nearly three years ago, has been made proctor of Case. I'm a bit disappointed that he didn't get Atwood, but Case is workable and he's been walking on clouds ever since, so when I see you next year, come visit me in Case.
~KMarsh
At Harvey Mudd College, rooms for everyone except the freshmen are decided through a process called "room draw". In the simplest form, everyone is assigned a number and then goes in order picking which room he or she wants to live in next year. Numbers are assigned randomly (I think) among the members of each class; thus, rising seniors get first pick, juniors next, and sophomores last. When you pick a room, the verb we use is "pull". You can also "pull" a roommate or suitemate (which, I believe, is where the term came from -- you get a room and pull a buddy with you). If you choose a double or triple, you must fill the room, so you write down your name and the names of your roommate(s). When you pull a single, the system is kind so it lets you bring a friend to live in the room next to you.
Seniors are slightly different in that there are 3 rounds of Senior room draw. In an effort to make sure that seniors get to live where they want to, Senior draw is divided into first-round, second-round, and third-round. During first-round, all the rising seniors who currently live in a dorm get to pull into that dorm before rising seniors with better numbers who don't live in the dorm. This is called "in-dorm status" and is the center of much maneuvering during junior draw. The second round is for out of dorm seniors, and the third round is for seniors pulling underclassmen. Confused yet? The worst is over.
The title claims that I got pulled into Case, but it claims I got a "0-Round" pull. I said there were only first- second- and third- round pulls, though! Some rooms are preplaced. A number of rooms each year in each dorm are reserved for incoming freshmen or transfer students and some people petition to live in rooms with certain characteristics because of medical needs (a med-pull, commonly used to get a room with a kitchen for people with food restrictions). One or two rooms in each dorm are the proctors' rooms. Each dorm has at least one proctor (Case and Atwood have two each) and he or she is allowed to pull a friend just like everyone else. That friend is placed in what's called the 0-Round since it happens before the seniors' first-round.
We've explained the title now, but what's a proctor? The proctor is Mudd's equivalent to the RA. They keep an eye on the students and make sure that no huge problems surface. They are the people you can talk to when you have problems, be they fights with friends, noisy neighbors, stress from homework or more touchy issues relating to drugs/alcohol/sex or whatever else you might come across in your first years away from home. The difference between the proctors and most RA's is that the proctors are not here to report your actions to the authorities; they are not responsible for getting you in trouble. They're here for when you need them, whether as someone to talk to, someone to support you when confronting said noisy neighbors, or someone to help you notice, if not avoid, the pitfalls in the rocky road of life. Proctors do report directly to the deans, but they're not interested in getting people in trouble. Their job is to keep the school healthy, physically and emotionally, by collectively watching every student on campus to make sure everything is okay and helping us when nothing is okay. That's a tall enough order as it is, and if you add "tattle-tale" to the job description you've created a paradox in which people should feel comfortable going to the proctors for help, but are afraid of getting in trouble if they do. As an example of the sort of thing the proctors do, after last year's shooting at Virginia Tech our deans and proctors holed up together and spent hours compiling a list of all the people on Mudd who showed warning signs of being depressed, unstable, friendless, or otherwise in the slightest danger of becoming dangerous. (For what it's worth, the list was empty).
Two of my closest friends here at Mudd -- actually the two closest outside of my girlfriend -- have been proctors; one of the juniors I lived with when I first arrived at Mudd who really embodied the spirit of the place for me went on to become a proctor the following year and just last week my roommate, with whom I have shared a room since we came to Mudd nearly three years ago, has been made proctor of Case. I'm a bit disappointed that he didn't get Atwood, but Case is workable and he's been walking on clouds ever since, so when I see you next year, come visit me in Case.
~KMarsh
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