It’s been a while…

Maybe I should do something here.

Words XI, Spring Semester 2010

April showers bring May flowers. At the end of April, on the final day of Electricity and Magnetism, we threw our final ModSim party of the year. Again, I was behind it, along with Kelsey. The concept was “The Pancake Effect in the I-hat Direction”—an internal reference. Naturally, we had pancakes, in the form of fortune cookies, and hats, on everyone.

Words X, Spring Semester 2010

February and March were filled with naps and awakenings. :) Every single one of them crucial to how the semester turned out to be. Blood Brothers seemed like a plot tool, and missing meals seemed like a perennial trend.

The Wandering Minstrels, however, made their mark during this time.

Words IX, Spring Semester 2010

I do apologize for the abrupt change in blog-styles…I seem to be less narrative with this second wave of posts.

The first highlight of my second semester at Olin is actually something that I had no part in, except that of the recipient. Some may know that the 31st of January is my birthday. Some did not know, for I removed my birthday from my Facebook profile as soon as Winter Break came to a close. There were a few who did know, and remembered. Kelsey was one such person. There were others, too, and some very worthy of mention, but that would distract from this story. This story has to do with, primarily, Kelsey and her initiative.

Words VIII, Winter Break 2009

In short, I spent time in New York, then Princeton, and then hung about with Anton Frolenkov, girl Casey, Tim Ryan, and Travis St Onge in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

And I made this while I was in New York:

This update of Words ends here. :)

Words VII, Fall Semester 2009

Something else marked the end of the semester, something that I cannot but mention. In the midst of all the birthday parties, another spark of spontaneity was also working its way to the big stage. In the style and spirit of Improv Everywhere, a few of us wrote our own original musical and performed it on the 18th of December in the dining hall. It happened on an unsuspecting Friday, and the very end of Finals week. Little napkin-holder advertisements were placed since a few days back to ‘suggest’ that people be at the dining hall at 6:15 on that very day, which made people wary of something happening, but did not give much away.

Words VI, Fall Semester 2009

It was not the end. It was not yet the end. After asking for the second time, I finally obtained approval to present the birthday surprises as a project for Olin Exposition 2009. Most other freshmen were presenting their Design Nature swimmer projects or their Modeling and Simulation project for Expo, but I—as usual—did not want to do what everyone else was doing. I had to be different, and so I pushed my way through. I roped in the greatest contributors for our birthday surprises and we presented our ModSim Shenanigans to whomever came to our table.

Words V, Fall Semester 2009

During the TPatS show, on the 10th of December, I had already started sending emails seeking responses about preliminary ideas for Mark’s surprise. We had yet to decide on the day and time of the surprise (thing is, classes ended on the 11th of December, so Mark’s birthday surprise was going to happen on a no-class day), and also the concept. People started to become more active, partly because our Design Nature project had ended in the afternoon. Up until Friday evening, the 33 of us in the email loop have been discussing in slightly different directions, each of us having a slightly different idea. Sasha, someone whom I will learn to love working with, consolidated all the suggestions and sent an email about it to the class, proposing that we have a “crazy conglomeration of the ideas” and everyone should come dressed as whatever they feel best about (anything that we had an inside joke with Mark about). Sasha merged our ideas into one, setting the day to Monday and the time to 1pm when we normally have Modeling and Simulation classes. The invitation to Mark would be a direct invitation, inviting him to his own birthday party. We would have lots of ice cream and we would gift him a giant pig poster. Our studio would be decorated with lots of ceiling decorations, following the wall-floor-ceiling decoration trend. With one email, Sasha tied it all together, and gave me a slight shock. I thought I called the shots.

Words IV, Fall Semester 2009

A few days before John’s Birthday, Jessica informed me that Professor José “Oscar” Mur-Miranda’s birthday was the following Tuesday. It seemed slightly beyond my capacity, but I started to conceptualize what his birthday surprise could be like. Right after John’s party, I sparked off an email loop which included 29 people, all contributing in some way to refine various ideas for Oscar’s surprise, Eso Si Que Es (“It is what it is”, in Spanish. Also a pun: S-O-C-K-S). Being the second party, the element of surprise might not exactly have been with us, but scheduling had been our friend: We had no Modeling and Simulation class on Tuesdays. We decided to celebrate Oscar’s birthday one day before, on a Monday, and hoped that that would catch him off-guard.

Words III, Fall Semester 2009

To me, college life is more about life than it is about college. Academics are important, but there are aspects of life that trump the alleged importance of academics. Especially when faced with a pass/no-record semester where there are no letter grades for any course, there is absolutely no reason not to celebrate spontaneity when the excuse for celebration presents itself. Frankly, all spontaneity requires is an excuse—not even a reason—to blossom. My enjoyable time at Olin could not have had a better closure than what I was an instrumental part of.