Entries for May 2005
SOURCE Day 1
Now that I'm back at Case, the real fun of the summer can begin! I don't believe that I've mentioned it here yet, but I have the honor of receiving one of the inaugural grants from the SOURCE office for summer research. Back in April, I mentioned SOURCE as a possibility for summer employment, but things got busy and I didn't document finding a professor and a project or writing the proposal.
There was a lot of competition for the limited number of awards, but my proposal for a project (entitled "An Investigation of the Odor Sensing Abilities of Moths") with Dr. Ed White of the EMAE department got some positive attention, so here I am back at Case with funds to cover the costs of staying here over the summer.
Continue reading "SOURCE Day 1"
Toying With the Idea of Podcasting
I've been toying with the idea of trying some podcasting, but since the FAQ is a bit silent on how to podcast, I haven't done too much. I'm not so concerned with the actual mixing and such because I'm sure that I can figure that out pretty easily. What I'm concerned with is the legal question of what I'm allowed to podcast.
For example, I'm a fan of several Irish alternative rock groups/singers, and I know that some of them, like The Frames and Damien Rice, allow bootlegging and releasing of their concerts, provided that the songs are already released on an album or single. I don't know, however, if that's an okay for me to share them with others via podcast. The question will have to be investigated further, I think. Any knowledge/comments/etc from anyone reading are very welcome.
I did come across a couple of handy RIAA-related resources, however. Since I'm well aware of the RIAA's hatred of Internet-savvy college students, I figure that I'd be wise to find out what they can and cannot take me to task for. In that vein, I found a podcast on podcasting RIAA music under license and RIAA Radar, a site that checks to see which albums/artists/songs are released under RIAA jurisdiction. The latter, I suppose, could be useful for anyone wanting to avoid supporting them as long as they continue punishing consumers (but that's a whole different story).
"MIT Nerds" Are Nothing Special
This month's Discover magazine--most people who know me know that I am a complete Discover addict--ran a major story on MIT nerds (no subscription currently required). Now, as a student at the lesser-known but equally rigorous Case Western Reserve University, I found parts of this article somewhat offensive. It seems to me that the author sets up these students as being unique to MIT before describing activities--among them doing calculus, instant messaging with friends (a primary form of communication at Case), and playing Boggle (one of my suitemate Jessica's favorite pastimes)--as some of the common expenditures of time. The motto she records--"Work, friends, sleep. Pick two."--sounds perfectly applicable to Case life, though it seems like many Case students manage all three.
One of my favorite parts is where the writer identifies the students on the East side of campus--traditionally those who pursue "hard tech, math, and engineering"--as those who drink Mountain Dew over the Starbucks Frappuccino of the soft tech students. I have lived the past two years with several computer science majors and wondered repeatedly if they don't survive some periods of the semester on Mountain Dew Code Red.
"Here there are lots of different levels of nerddom," one MIT student tells the writer. "There are nerd jocks here, the übernerds who study, nerds who actually have lives." I fail to see how such a statement is any more applicable to MIT than to other rigorous universities. Case students seem to me just as likely to give an outsider such a breakdown of student groups as this MIT student is.
Throughout the article, the only definite differences in student populations that I can pick out seem to be the result of the administration of the university. MIT has, for example, a traditional Mystery Hunt in which students decipher "some 150 complex puzzles" to find instructions to the location of a hidden object. The residency system at MIT is different than Case, resulting in certain dorms being traditionally homes of different types of students. And, of course, there is MIT's independent activities period in January, but those don't seem like characteristics that would recruit or alter a student body significantly from students at other universities.
From the "grueling and unremitting" work load to the commonly used, though overly emphasized acronym EECS or the student body's enjoyment of Trogdor the Burninator, MIT's nerds are not all that different from Case's and presumably from those at any other high-quality institution. Why give MIT's nerds special attention then?
Blog Version 2.0
In the exciting world of coding, I've spent quite a few hours over the past week moving the backend of my blog around so that it's easier for me to maintain. I have discovered the joy that is Movable Type template modules and maintaining that sidebar of mine is no longer a chore! I also changed my color scheme around, added some information about myself to the main blog index and got rid of the navigation bar along the top. All of its functionality has been moved instead to the sidebar and highlighted with green. (You'd think I was MSN Search with a move like that!)
The dorm has emptied out, which makes life a good deal quieter. It also makes it much easier to cook in the dorm kitchen and take advantage of the tail-end of the 25 cent washing and drying cycle. The weather's actually been nice the last couple of days, so I've been out skating a couple of times, and yesterday Mark, Greg, Brian, and I went to the Great Lakes Science Center. There's nothing like going through science demonstrations and actually understanding all of them.
I finally remembered to take my camera with me to the lakefront, so I got some nice photos of Cleveland, including a panorama of the downtown skyline with which I'm quite pleased. Incidentally, there are also some pictures there of the aforementioned Robot V and the SOURCE Symposium poster I helped create. I'm still thrilled that we earned 2nd place in the Engineering and Computer Science category!
Headline: Freshmen Living in Steam Tunnels, Eating Squirrels
So, Case announced today that we have a record 1,152 students scheduled to come in as freshmen next fall, with increases in the number of out-of-state students, humanities majors (hello, iPod Shuffle issue!), etc. I'm happy to see Case getting some recognition. However, there are some huge issues here. We already have a housing shortage, and the dorms set aside for the incoming freshman don't have room enough for 1,152 people. If Housing decides to leave Southside--or part of Southside--open another year, they have to tackle the issue of feeding the people they stick down here since Fribley is scheduled to close. (The most amusing possibility, in my opinion, is Housing declaring that they will place all freshmen on Southside. Then they'll have managed to exactly turn the tables from what they did the year I entered.)
And then there's the issue of SAGES First Seminars. Since this will be the first year of full implementation, there's quite a bit of pressure to make things spectacular. The university has staked a lot on this program, and I fully believe the program is capable of all that they expect and then some. But only if the proper resources and training procedures are in place. 1,152 freshmen in First Seminar sections of 15, the pre-determined size of a First Seminar, would require 77 sections. The last time I spoke with anyone in SAGES, their intention was to have 55 First Seminars next fall. To me, it looks like they're going to be running around campus looking for more people to teach First Seminars. They have that option, or making a third of the instructors teach two sections of freshmen. (There is theoretically the option of having some students take the First Seminar in their second semester of freshmen year, but that destroys the whole purpose of the course, really.) Short of getting professors to teach multiple sections on top of their established workloads for the fall, SAGES has to face the prospect of having professors with little--or worse, no--training teaching First Seminars. I can tell you now that that is a recipe for disaster.
Our administration here at Case have some great visions, I admit, but if Case can't deliver what it's promised--especially if it can't manage something as basic as room and board--for all these people whose attention they've managed to grab, the university is going to lose what credibility it has. No branding campaign will make up for, "Hey, isn't that the college that had freshmen camping in tents for a couple months because they didn't have enough housing?"
Drained
It's a terrible thing when all desire to study for finals is gone. I've been sick since Friday, and, in that time, I wrote a 14 page biorobotics project report, a 15 page aerostructures design report, and a 10 page research essay in German. This, of course, made it pretty much impossible to convince myself to put much effort into studying for tomorrow morning's aerostructures final.
On the bright side, everything is over at 11:30 tomorrow morning. At that point, I will have time, I hope, to recount and reflect on some of the things that have happened in the last few weeks.