In January, Olin welcomed 3 exchange students to campus for the spring semester. One of those students is Gwendal Plumier. Gwendal is an engineering student from Olin partner school KULeuven, a leading higher education and research university located in Belgium. He has come here to improve his English and his intercultural communication skills and to have the opportunity to learn from people and experiences, which is (of course) the Olin way!
How did you find Olin and why did you want to study here?
I found Olin on my institution’s website (Campus Group T, the industrial engineering wing of the University of Leuven), where there was a list of partner schools by country. I knew I wanted to study in the United States.
Tell us about your academic experience at Olin.
I chose 3 project-based courses at Olin which is a learning method not widely offered at my institution. I believe engineering is much more than just mathematics and scientific courses. You can have an unrivalled idea but without good communication with your team and investors, your idea will not see the light of day. I think studying at an American institution will help me improve my presentation and networking skills to help me launch a successful career.
How is life outside the classroom? Did you feel welcomed to Olin when you arrived?
From the first day on campus, I have felt welcomed to the Olin community. Some students were especially welcoming and consequently I met many students very quickly. I really like suite life and it has offered me the opportunity to become familiar with American culture through my suitemates.
When you reflect on why you came to the U.S. to study, do you feel you are accomplishing your goals?
The experience of working on projects that have a real world impact has exceeded my expectation. I have learned so much from meeting with people who would benefit from my group project. And I believe my English has improved because I am immersed in the language in my classes and dorm life.
Is there any part of Belgian culture that you miss?
Leuven is a very much a university town with lots of outdoor cafes and places to have a drink or coffee with your friends. That is one thing I miss but little else since I am so busy and enjoying myself at Olin.
Would you encourage Olin students to spend a semester at KULeuven or to visit you in Belgium?
Yes, definitely. Belgium is in the center of Europe and a very international place. It is the home of Stella Artois beer, excellent Belgium chocolate, and is known for its beautiful medieval towns and Renaissance architecture. With a population of over 11 million people, the country has distinctive ethnic regions including Dutch-speaking Flanders to the north, French-speaking Wallonia to the south and a German-speaking community to the east. My institution is the best engineering school in Belgium. It is only 20 minutes by train from Brussels, the capital. For students interested in international politics, Brussels is home to numerous international organizations. It is the de facto capital of the EU and the headquarters of NATO.
Argentina!
Hello, Olin. I write to you now from The City of Good Airs, the capital of a faraway country in the Southern Annulus called Silverland. My path here has been treacherous, requiring me to cross that impenetrable band of intense solar radiation, the Scorch, or the Equator as some call it. I believe my decades spent living next to it may have granted me an immunity to its deadly rays, as the crossing passed without incident, save the six month time warp. It is a strange land, this “aɾxentina”, where people speak a foreign dialect of Latin called “espaɲol” and drink carbonated water. Now that I have reached this untamed frontier that few humans have seen, as is customary of those who study abroad, I shall share with you some of the incredible truths that have come to light during my journey thus far.
The Earth is round.
I know how that sounds, but I’m completely serious. I have taken careful celestial observations both north and south of the Equator, and I have reached the undeniable conclusion that my orientation with respect to the stars has changed dramatically, and that the surface on which we stand rotates once each day. My observations of the celestial sphere here have not only thoroughly contradicted the well-known Planar Earth Model, but have matched the phenomena of the “Southern Hemisphere” that government agents describe as evidence for their Round Earth with astounding precision. Chilling precision.
Think about it. How would the US have known the exact rate at which the southern celestial south pole rotates? How would they have known that it were summer here? How were they able to set up their embassy facade in this city? The US has never held any territories in the Southern Hemisphere, and everyone knows that lizards are cold-blooded, so the Reptilluminati can’t have ventured out here to see this first-hand. The facts just don’t line up. Clearly, something is afoot. And I think I know what it is.
What are the biggest countries purportedly in the Southern Hemisphere? The Malvinas, Argentina, Rhodesia, and South America. The United States purportedly has an embassy at one, has two embassies indirectly at two via the UK embassy and the Zimbabwe embassy, respectively, and refuses to acknowledge the existence of the last. One, two, and one. One, one, and two. Fibonacci numbers. Auspicious. And check out what the initials of those countries spell out. I always thought that there was something fishy about the Antarctic Treaty. It prohibits anyone from setting foot on an entire continent, yet most people have never even heard of it.
That’s because Earth is on Mars.
It is very important that we not alert the US government, as they would be sure to retaliate were they to know that we had unearthed their greatest lie yet, one that not the most recognised of conspiracy investigators have discovered. The Earth is a globe, resting on the Martian surface. They don’t patrol Antarctic waters with an invisible multinational navy and engage in land wars over seemingly useless archipelagos because the South Pole doesn’t exist. It’s because anyone who tried to reach the South Pole would hit their head on Mars. They don’t send probes to The Red Planet to learn about it or to make money, but to search for methods that we might escape from this gravitational prison. This also explains the fake Mars that the NASA has in the night sky. Everyone knows that planets are supposed to have retrograde motion, but Fake Mars just constantly circles east to west once per day. It’s obviously a hologram.
It is unclear whether Earth has always been on Mars or if we have only recently landed here, though if the latter is true, the landing was almost certainly orchestrated as part of the government’s nefarious plan. I have also not yet determined the motivation for this particular cover-up, though it almost definitely has to do with money. More investigation is definitely necessary, and I will likely know more after the personal chat with the Prime Minister of Argentina in a platinum bunker full of krypton that I have planned. I encourage all of you to investigate for yourselves. You can examine Fake Mars for any clues as to our precise location on the real Mars’s surface, harass NASA officials online or in person, or participate in that new satellite class with Chris Lee and design a satellite to try to detect Mars’s surface.
In conclusion, I have conceded to change my world-view from a flat one to a round one because that’s what real thinkers do. We actually look at the world around us and, when what we see doesn’t match up with what we expect, we change our minds to explain. We don’t just blindly hold onto crackpot theories like evolution and gravity and grapefruits just because we’re too afraid to see the truth. This is what differentiates us from mindless Science believers. And this is what has enabled me to make the proletariat’s greatest discovery of our time. They’re not just lying to us about the shape of our planet. They’re lying to us about which planet we’re on. This madness needs to stop. Wake up, broomans! Rise against, shoaliners! The Man has gone too far this time! Tune into your conch shells, because the revolution is coming. Date: soon, and location: Mars.
Crossword Puzzle
Across
1. Wide-mouth pitcher
5. Like Dark Souls or Borderlands (abr.)
8. The very top
12. With 36A, an infamous Frenchman
14. The smallest constellation
15. Common Bar VIP freebies (2 words)
16. Kanas-based movie company
17. Dad to Grandpa
18. O.J. Simpson Judge
19. __ sham bo
21. Followers of effs
22. Häussermann invention
24. Like Molly and Meth
27. Store welcomers
30. Gunpowder or Darjeeling
33. Apparent border in sewing?
34. Part of a three-piece
35. Parkland survivors’ opposition
36. See 12A
38. Started on (abr.)
39. Of positive electrolytic charge
40. A nose, __ eye
41. Exists
43. Priest’s subject (abr.)
45. Outlandish
47. Ice-cream option
48. Energy units
49. Loudly lament
Down
1. “But no more deep will I ___ mine eye” Romeo and Juliet
2. Atilla and Genghis Kahn
3. “Totally wicked dude!”
4. Harry’s ginger friend
5. 12A took power after one
6. Fool, in Australia
7. Wildebeest
8. More sore
9. One who takes an exam early?
10. Catchall currency of the UK
11. Petites size
13. Facebooks thumbs (abr.)
20. Sandwich moistener
23. Giving rewards to
25. Nautical flags
26. Vas__ das?
28. Dorothy’s Aunt
29. 12A’s island of exile
31. Spanish ‘this’
32. Egyptian sun god
33. Reaction to dust
34. Texas-based gas chain
37. Where 12A is buried
42. Windows file format
44. Lawyer’s must
46. Mississippi neighbor
Horoscopes By Drunk Editors
WINGDINGS!
Only 4% of Your Life
Below is an edited version of an essay I wrote during my Junior year of High School that pretty much explains why I decided to go to Olin. I hope it’s entertaining, and maybe evokes some reflection or thoughts or something.
—
The United States of America is huge, and the number of colleges within it is enormous. Because of this, high school students spend days, weeks, even months feeling stressed out and terrified of their futures. The process of preparing for college is extremely scary because as much as we can speculate about connecting the dots of our long-term plans for our futures, we really haven’t got a clue what the world will look like even a single year from now. When it comes down to it, college applicants should try to realize that their life will not be completely determined by the next four years.
That being said, no human can deny the human factor of fear. It is natural to feel fear of the unknown, and the future is exactly that. The idealistic solution to fearing the future is to think only of the present moment, which is virtually impossible in contemporary society, especially within our education system. Educational opportunity relies heavily on planning for the future. It is therefore impossible to avoid fear. Another possible solution to this fear is to rely on the assumption that any school that is a good fit for you will accept you and any school that rejects you did so because they would have been a bad fit. But there’s a problem with that idea too, because for everyone to get all of their needs met by one college, there would have to be an entire unique college for every student. There is no college that has it all, and there is no student who will be able to follow all their dreams in four years.
I am glad I finally made this realization because it convinced me not to rule out art school as a legitimate option for college. It all began in a crowded subway station under the streets of Brooklyn, NY. My mom and I visited four liberal arts colleges on the East coast over the past 3 days, and now we were headed to Pratt Institute, the first art college I would ever see.
“I think we get off here…” I mumbled, squinting at a map.
A man in a blue windbreaker and a baseball cap eyed us, obviously eavesdropping.
“Are you going to Pratt?” he asked.
“Yes, we are!”
“I’m headed there too. I can take you there” said the man.
“Wow thanks! Do you work there or something?”
“Yes, I’m the head of admissions”.
The A-train pulled up to the yellow line and my mom and I looked at each other quickly, our eyes wide with incredulity, before following the man through the automatic sliding doors of the train. For the next 2 hours, in the train and then in his cozy office at Pratt, Mr. Swan talked to us about the ups and downs of college education, fine arts in the contemporary world, and the importance of industrial design and engineering. He never once directly complimented Pratt or placed Pratt or arts education in general above any other kind of education. His last words were “Just remember that the next four years will not determine your life”.
I cannot honestly say I loved Pratt very much after going on a campus tour. I certainly was expecting more aesthetically pleasing buildings from an art college. But for my first perspective of an art school, the concept was heaven. A school of 4,000 motivated kids who, unlike an astonishing number of high school students, actually wanted to go to class and learn. The way I see it, you have to be pretty darn crazy to want to go to a prestigious art school so why would you be there if you aren’t passionate?
My biggest concern with art school is that they do not seem to recognize the importance of the integration of sciences, such as physics and chemistry, with art. For example, an industrial design major could design an elegant car, but without integrating science into their education, they won’t understand the physics that are necessary when considering aerodynamics and mileage, or the chemistry that could influence progress towards renewable fuels. It seems clear to me that many art degrees are simply incomplete without certain scientific knowledge.
Humanity is evolving as a species, and as a thinking society. New problems cannot be solved by art or science alone, and education must evolve accordingly… wait this is totally true but it’s a different point than the one I’m trying to make here… Here we go. Undergrad college is literally only 4% of your life, so if life leads you somewhere else, or you end up wanting to do something totally unrelated, or you just hate everything about it, you’ll be totally fine. It’s just part of your journey, it’s not an end, and stagnation is the worst thing a human can do anyways so just relax and do something that makes you happy.
Never Out of Season Review
This is an apocalyptic nonfiction set in the present. Robert Dunn plaintively presents the problem of modern agriculture, and tells the story of the few scientists and projects hoping to save the world.
The problem, briefly:
We’re dependent, globally, on a few species of plants.
If any of them develops incurable pests or pathogens, society as we know it will likely die.
Key Takeaways
Dunn’s major point is that biodiversity is of critical importance. Basically, if one key crop species is infected or infested, unless we have already invested in finding alternative varietals of that crop (bananas, potatoes, rubber trees, coffee, cacao), we’ll experience massive global shortages, and the shortages might last indefinitely.
He argues with clear frustration that efforts to preserve and catalog biodiversity are underfunded and receive too little attention overall.
Like many environmental books, it’s written by a scientist who sounds scared and frustrated. Like most environmental authors, Dunn asks the reader to consider the long view. Rapid-producing monocultures mean short-term profit at the cost of global resilience.
Food Security
90% of nutrition globally comes from 15 species of plants.
Any given species of plant can be targeted by a pest, pathogen, fungus, etc. If that crop-killer works on one plant in a monoculture, it can take out the whole crop. The Irish Potato Famine is a prime example.
In order to produce the most product, most farms plant whatever one crop species creates the highest yield. Basically, biodiversity is disincentivized, because planting something other than the highest-yielding species is like throwing away money.
Modern Materials
Rubber comes from rubber trees, primarily in Southeast Asia, usually planted close together.
Brazil has had rubber tree plantations, but there is a pathogen there that attacks rubber trees. If that pathogen reaches Southeast Asia, rubber on Earth will become a scarce resource within a year.
There are a lot of stories like this in the book, making the point again and again that our situation is precarious.
If something starts killing one of our major crop species, pandemic is likely, and we don’t have alternatives at the ready.
Dunn also cites a decline in public funding for the study of crop diversity, insects, and pathogens. We have some seed banks, but not a lot of libraries, databases, or staffed laboratories. The situation is worsening rather than improving.
What can we do?
In Michael Pollan’s New York Times essay “Why Bother?”, he relates his reaction of letdown and disbelief at the end of “An Inconvenient Truth”, when the viewer is asked to contribute by changing lightbulbs:
“The immense disproportion between the magnitude of the problem Gore had described and the puniness of what he was asking us to do about it was enough to sink your heart.”
Dunn’s book has the same disproportionately small ask. Like Pollan, he advises the reader to plant a garden– then participate in adding to our digital databases through citizen science:
Citizen Science Projects
Plant Village is a database and forum for the sharing of crop health information.
Students Discover is a set of lesson plans for kids to track plants, pests, and pollinators in backyards and schoolyards.
Citizen science is cool; cataloguing bugs and plants is a genuine contribution to the field of biodiversity.
Is that all?
The real ask is implicit– here’s what Dunn is not asking:
Create political pressure to increase funding for studies of biodiversity. At a town hall, I asked my representative why climate change was not on her slate of priorities. She told me frankly that she doesn’t hear about it much from constituents. If you want your representative to represent you, tell them what you need!
Make plant genetics or pathogen study into your passion and crusade– become a researcher. Dunn points out that there are fewer than ten specialists globally for each of several major food crop types. So, one more researcher can have a huge impact.
However, assuming you’re not up for a major lifestyle change, an account on iNaturalist is a nice way to turn nature walks into scientific data collection expeditions! There is a shortage of data, so citizen science really is worthwhile for this application.
Imposter Syndrome
Singapore!
Talk to anyone who studied at NUS (National University of Singapore) and you’ll soon see why Singapore has all the right ingredients for a memorable study away experience. From academic excellence to cultural diversity, it’s no wonder that over a dozen Olin students have studied in Singapore at NUS. It explains why NUS students want to come to Boston and study at Olin – we have so much in common!
Singapore is as a global commerce, finance, transport and education hub and considered the most ‘technology-ready’ nation by the World Economic Forum. Singapore has a unique blend of the East and the West, the old and the new: it is clean, has great roads, transportation, airports, and a cosmopolitan life. Yet the basic eastern values and culture are also evident in the lifestyle of the people who inhabit this small island city-state in Southeast Asia. The blending of so many cultures (Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Eurasian) offers a unique worldview for both residents and visiting students and scholars.
The multicultural population of Singapore is well known for its friendliness. Students from the US quickly acclimate to life here thanks to the prevalence of English — spoken by a full 75 percent of its population. In fact, English is Singapore’s official educational language. Besides being a diverse and beautiful place to study, it is also extremely safe. Singapore has strict drug laws which has resulted in very low crime rates. The city streets are clean and secure as is the public transportation system. Singapore is second only to Tokyo for the World’s Safest Cities according to TripAdvisor.
Singapore is also known as the city that never sleeps. The city is alive with people and activities throughout the day and well into evening. Night owls in particular will love life here, where shops, restaurants and other attractions remain open way into the wee hours. NUS exchange student Hong Giap Tee speaks highly of the fusion of local cultures in Singapore’s cuisine, and recommends that visiting students experience it. If you decide to study at NUS, the school pairs international and exchange students with local students who can introduce you to many aspects of the cultural life of Singapore, including delicious Singaporean fare!
If you’d like to learn more about Singapore, let us know and we can connect you with our Global Ambassadors (students who have lived or studied in Singapore). If you want to explore a semester abroad at NUS, email studyaway@olin.edu.
Solar-powered ‘supertrees’ in the Gardens by the Bay in a world-class nature park in Singapore
This temple is located on one of the off-shore Islands surrounding Singapore. Some of the islands feel as though you travelled 30-40 years into the past.
Olin Goes to the Picture Show
Olin Goes to the Picture Show
Last semester, Olin students went to a private showing of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Something along the lines of 300 students managed to venture forth from the bubble (admittedly only to recreate it somewhere else) and arrive not only on time, but early, to the movie theater. We probably haven’t given as much credit to the brave souls who organized this, so here is a little bit more. This was an undoubtedly awesome experience, and a unique one not just for my time at Olin, but for my entire movie-watching career. Take a few more seconds to remember it before I mar it by way of explanation.
I think that a glimpse at what audiovisual entertainment may have looked like in the past could prove useful. Consider the post-war years of cinema. Movie theaters were no longer confined to populous cities. For multiple reasons, they had managed to spread to rural areas in many parts of the modern world. War-time leaders had recognized the value of propaganda and news-reels for maintaining morale and the war effort, and recognized building cinemas as important public-works projects. Going to the movies had become a common pastime for a much larger portion of the population, across multiple demographics. Even young folks of different sexes could mingle without any chaperoning, something that would have been scandalous anywhere else. “Playhouses for the masses” and “Democracy’s theater” were just some of the fanciful terms for movie theaters at the time. It offered a truly unique location for a community to come together and ensured that cinema was a social experience. It was still a form of entertainment but one rooted in more than just the sensory. Even if there was a bit of nationalism, it was still ultimately rooted in a sense of community.
Now this is undoubtedly a glorified notion. The mere fact that Hollywood loves creating films about the power of films makes me think we might be getting a good dose of movie magic (The Disaster Artist is the latest example, though it’s got nothing on Cinema Paradiso). It is undoubtedly a mythology that the studios and theatres themselves are interested in promoting. But keep this narrative in mind as we juxtapose it with our usual viewing experiences in the late teens of the twenty-first century.
I watched Star Wars again a good six days after Olin did, back home in Los Angeles. The screen was a bit bigger (IMAX), the seats slightly more comfortable (tempurpedic, with armrests). But, unbelievably, when Yoda got on stage and told me that “the greatest teacher, failure is,” I think one person in the theater may have chuckled. Now I’m sure that my memory exaggerates, but six days before at the time of this monologue, I am confident that the whole movie theater burst into laughter, for at least two minutes. Hearing the words of so many of our professors spoken from the mouth of a little green puppet who can call lightning from the afterlife was equally parts unnerving, hilarious, and touching. It was even on one of the Candidates’ t-shirt options.
I don’t think that the unique part of this Olin-at-the-cinema experience was subconsciously analyzing every moment of the film for its insights into the Olin experience. I could try to convince you that when you saw BB-8 extend more and more appendages to, uh, plug fuses, it represented the way you try to divide your time over more and more activities. And that Rey is feeling imposter syndrome because she is neither a Skywalker nor Obi-Wan’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate. That moment of identification in the film, and nearly uniform laughter that followed, was merely the effect of something more subtle.
It started with the pre-movie buzz. People mingled around, interacting in different ways. They searched for their friends, bumped into others. They were excited for the film, and they were excited for each other. Then the film began, and I realized just how much I was being affected by the people around me. Maybe you were stirred by the smiles and cheers of your fellow Oliners; I’m certain I saw your enthusiasm mirror and augment theirs, too. As a hulking spaceship was torn apart by the light of a sacrificial jump to lightspeed, perhaps the silence and sharp breaths of your peers became a fundamental part of your experience. Waves of feedback riding along the connection between people.
Another interlude. Why don’t we consider the average internet-age audio-visual entertainment experience for a moment. Let’s start by assuming you don’t go to the movie theatre. Today there are countless shows and films that you can watch at a moment’s notice, whether you pay for them or not. The possibilities are endless, though more often than not it can feel like an undeniable overload. At the same time, every streaming service wants to provide you with the most personalized experience they can, recommendation after recommendation being served to you by Big Data itself, so that you can have the content that you want. It’s an individualistic view of entertainment.
But don’t worry, you’re not alone. Just do the math: Netflix claims that it’s subscribers view an average of 125,000,000 hours of content every day. It’s currently estimated that there are 35,000 hours of content uploaded to the streaming service. By the Pigeon-Hole Principle (shout-out to Sarah Spence Adams and Discrete), at least 3,572 people watched the same show or movie on any given day. And by similar reasoning, a minimum of 3 people began watching the same content within one minute of each other.
Are you feeling a sense of community yet?
Now let’s assume you did make it out to a movie theater. Bump 3 people up to 50, or even 500 people watching with you at the same moment in time. Sitting in a crowded theater makes you intimately aware of the concurrent viewers who may or may not be ruining your experience. I think I would be hard-pressed to find many people for whom that awareness easily and always translated into any sort of connection with the rest of the anonymous audience. Simply viewing the same film isn’t enough. You don’t respond to their reactions the way I think we responded to each other in that movie theater. For the most part, we have divorced TV and films from any sort of social experience, and most definitely from a community experience.
I have perhaps drawn in too much detail the differences between our showing of The Last Jedi, and the rest of our movie-going careers. You get it. Olin is a community. Olin saw a film. It was dope. The reason I can’t leave it at that is because what I felt reminded me of something else. Something which might give insight into the real difference between the experiences you’ve just read about (and maybe experienced? Damn, do I hope this is hitting any sort of chord). I’ll tell you about it in two more paragraphs.
The more a film is capable of absorbing you in it’s myriad details, textures and plots, the more we tend to praise it. We are usually eager to be drawn in to what we see, and loosen our connection to reality. To experience the lives of other people, and worlds far removed from ours (that secretly are our own). That’s why we purchase larger TV’s, and 22.2 surround sound systems. The fundamental art of film is the art of manipulation, and we are the willing subjects.
But this unconditional immersion is not the only way to watch films. When I watch films extremely analytically, I experience them differently. Sometimes I do it for fun, and sometimes there are films which demand viewing in this way. I need to both delve into the composition of any individual scene and shot, and still be conscious of all those which have come before. It requires a constant tension, a balancing act of distance from the film. That feeling is precisely what was familiar, sitting among Oliners. My familiarity and connection with the people in the movie theater was an anchor against the pull of that visual tide. The solo critical viewing is an active and sometimes difficult one, while this was an effortless tension, floating between the flashing lightsabers and the thoughts and reactions of those around me.
All I’m really trying to say is that I was very grateful to add community-movie-theater viewing to my list of cinematic experiences. Am I being a touch romantic? I tend to be, when I think, talk, or write about film. Did you feel something different that evening? At the close of the The Last Jedi’s second act, Kylo Ren extends his hand to Rey over the carnage of their fight for freedom. Maybe you immediately thought of Olin’s mission when you saw Rey torn between throwing out the past, or building off and learning from it instead. Maybe you felt a resonance with your peers at the struggle we all face in building our futures. Ah! You were entranced when you saw that these two characters, with such different experiences, had the same pain in both of their eyes. I’ll never know for sure, but there’s a chance you thought there was something unique about that 4:30pm showing on the 15th of December.