The most difficult part of acclimating to my life at Olin has been the lack of open and potent communion for ideas, skills, abilities, and thoughts. We are a highly resourced, intelligent, and multi-faceted group, yet our pathways for creating and sharing with one another are impeded by some invisible barrier.

“Why?”

I’ve been asking this questions repeatedly for months now, each day revealing new insights, but the most powerful shift in my understanding has been that I am not the only one who feels this way. In fact, so many of us desire to have new channels of expression, new spaces for creation, and most importantly new ways to share and learn with each other. Or, shall we say, more skillshare.

There ought to be a stronger medium for skillshare to occur. We are seeing shifts towards this (SLAC perhaps being the godfather of this cultural evolution) but if this is what we want, all the soft mummers must coalesce into something real.

In DREAM (Designing Resources for Empowerment and Making) we have been exploring what these real solutions might look like. Our nebulous thoughts have condensed into a plan.

With our final project we want to strengthen skillshare culture on campus, by creating means for peer-to-peer teaching. We plan to create new student positions for students who will operate in all aspects of campus learning, to facilitate these interactions beneath the umbrella of the library. The library is an ideal place, as it is morphing into the hub for resources, community, and change. This new role belongs in such a context where the structure and culture we wish to incite are already beginning to exist.

These student facilitators would be in charge of maintaining a database of each student’s skills or ‘superpowers’ that they are willing to teach other students and matching student-learners to student-teachers, as well as serving to facilitate interactions in either capacity. Students would have access to both the student facilitators and the database and could use either/both depending on their need. More loosely, the student facilitator’s purpose is to draw out the ‘superpowers’ of the Olin community, create channels for people to connect with one another, create structure and space for skillshare to happen, protect contributing students from burnout, and form a healthy atmosphere of Make\Share. Ultimately, the student facilitators would help in slowly shifting our culture towards stronger communion of ideas and a more investigative and creative Olin.

The axial goals of the student facilitators are to promote a culture that supports peer-to-peer teaching, and strengthen our community in supporting and valuing one another for our individual interests and skills. This project, and more importantly culture shift, is intended to specifically empower learners to feel more comfortable asking for help and guidance, and to generally empower everyone at Olin by acknowledging their superpowers, obvious and otherwise. In essence: everyone should feel like they have something to contribute, because they do.

It can be intimidating to be around people who know more than you because you feel that you should know those things as well. We are all here to learn more than just what exists within our majors, or at least we should be. We all have so much to offer the community. Whether your skill is being exceptionally knowledgeable about mechanics, nailing an interview, or drawing unicorns, I can guarantee that there is someone at Olin who wants to learn it.

If you are interested in this project and have ideas, feedback for us, or want to help out, please email us at olinskillshare@gmail.com. We’d love to hear it, and get you involved!

The collective I,

Hannah, Susie, and Mikhaela

I.

Last spring I met a man whose mother raised a servant. Hakim, at 24, went home each night, set down his backpack, and put off his school work to feed and care for his mother. This wasn’t his only option in life: he’d recently turned down a good job offer on the other side of the city because it would be too far from home. His girlfriend wished he could go out for dinner more nights. But for Hakim, dinner was pork on rice or pork on noodles with his mother, and he made it every night.

When I first asked Hakim why he didn’t take the better job, he said of course he wanted to. He couldn’t take that job because he owed his mother more than that. She had slaved for years through his childhood, feeding him good meals each day. She provided a home with a roof over his head. She taught him to talk and how to behave. She sat through his fits. She put him to bed.

Here was a woman who’d given him life itself. He didn’t just owe her a visit. He owed her everything.

This conversation immediately filled me with intense guilt. My own mother, at that moment, was letting me study 9,000 miles away in Singapore. I hadn’t called home in weeks.

II.

When I was born I never signed a contract. Everything my parents gave me, they gave me unconditionally. The arm of the law would has no retribution if I packed up right now and never spoke to my parents again.

Familial duty is something beyond that. It is the recognition of the love and care my family gave to me. It’s a token of gratitude. It’s the realization that I will one day be in their position, upset by the fact that I won’t get a moment’s consideration among the busy lives of my children.

Thinking about this, though, quickly becomes overwhelming. Attempting to pay our parents back for what they’ve given us is a slippery slope that ends in the realization that the debt we owe to our parents is infinite. If they gave me two decades of care when they raised me, should I forego the nursing home and give them one decade of care in-home? How far does this go?

There are enormous differences in how people and cultures view the duty we have to those who raised us. But I think most people do agree on a few things:

1. Everyone, by simply being born, has some obligation to spend time with and help their family.
2. This obligation shouldn’t be all-consuming.
3. The only way to answer the question of “Am I doing enough?” is to put yourself in the their shoes, and to answer “Am I content to live in a world where everyone does as much as me?”

III.

When talking about charitable giving, I often hear the argument that the only reason anyone gives to charity is to make themselves feel good. It’s true that there are dozens of controlled studies that show giving disposable income away makes you happier than spending it on yourself. But this is far and away from the only reason one should give.

We are only able to live the lives we are living by taking part in a society that’s given us so much. Access to clean water, power, internet, and education are benefits we’ve gained by mere virtue of being born in a place where these things are given unconditionally. When receiving a gift so grand from the world, it seems natural and obvious that we should do our best to pay it back. The act of donation fulfills a real and necessary obligation.

This line of thinking, I think, is often met with derision because it, too, is a slippery slope. After all, if I really wanted to do the most good I could with my money, I would be donating nearly everything, living in destitution as I strive to pay back my infinite societal debt.

To this, I can only give the same rebuttal that I gave to Hakim: I should act as a member of the kind of world I want to live in. Perfection, they say, is the enemy of good, and my ideal world is not filled with perfect people who have a crippling need to give everything. But it is a world where we should feel a need to give something.

In trying to figure out what to give in that world we want to live in, it’s helpful to look at the world we do live in. In the US, the average person donates roughly 3% of their income to charitable causes. Those least able to give tend to be those who give the most, with the poorest 20% of Americans giving 4.6% of their income, and the richest 20% giving 2.2%. This divide is even more extreme in the Greater Boston Area, where those earning less than $25,000 per year donate an astounding 14.5% of it, while those earning $50,000 to $100,000 donate less than 2.1%. [source: https://philanthropy.com/interactives/how-america-gives#msa/14460]

IV.

Ultimately, the question just as important as “How much should I give?” is “Who should I give to?” This personal question often has personal answers. It is common, for instance, to give money in return to places that have supported you: a donation to Olin College or to the Girl Scout troop in your home town. It is also common to give money in support of issues you feel personally connected with.

A different kind of giving, encouraged by a growing movement called Effective Altruism, simply tries to do the most good for the most people with each dollar. Effective Altruism focuses on charities with evidence of good deeds done, rejecting the notion that all charities are created equal.

The fact is, there are some charities which are hundreds of times more effective than others. Take, for example, the issue of blindness. Many guide dog training schools are funded by charitable donations, and of course they are all doing a good thing. But the cost of training a guide dog and its recipient is about $40,000. On the other hand, around the world, there are 1.2 million people who are completely blind due to trachoma. Curing a child of blindness from trachoma, including delivery, administration, and overhead, costs less than $50. Curing an adult can cost less than half that. For the cost of providing a guide dog for one blind person, the Fred Hallows Foundation (operating in Rwanda, Palestine, Myanmar, and Bangladesh), can fully cure blindness for 800 children.

This reflects a common trend where the charities doing the most good are also the ones helping those who need it the most: those in deeply impoverished areas, often those living on less than a dollar a day.

GiveWell is a juggernaut of an organization which attempts to find the charities who are most effective. Their research is extensive, and all freely available at givewell.org

They currently recommends four top charities:

The Against Malaria Foundation, GiveWell’s top choice, provides funding for long-lasting insecticide-treated net distributions for protection against malaria in developing countries.
GiveDirectly transfers cash to households in developing countries via mobile phone-linked payment services.
Schistosomiasis Control Initiative fights a neglected tropical disease in Sub-Saharan Africa which impacts children’s ability to stay in school, and commonly causes long-term developmental problems.
Deworm the World Initiative fights for the same cause as SCI in developing nations worldwide. DtWI focuses on advocacy and technical assistance to governments.

While I certainly encourage anyone to donate to these particular charities, I more emphatically encourage you to actively dig into GiveWell’s discussions of the issues, find effective causes that you support, and direct your passion toward them.

Giving to charity is certainly not the only way to give back. It’s arguably the least personal. But it fills an incredibly important need. These charities are run by people who understand these issues closely. They have proven themselves to be powerful producers of societal benefits. Giving back to these causes is a fundamental first step.

V.

Hakim now lives with his girlfriend, in an apartment two floors down from his mother. I now call my parents every week. Both of us, I think, are content to live in worlds where everyone does the same.

Here it is. My last article for Frankly Speaking as a student of Olin College of Engineering. What shall I talk about this time?

Maybe I can talk about who I was before Olin, why I came here, and how I changed and developed as a person. That is a very senior thing to do, right? Well, it is not exactly a spectacular story. Those of you who know me have heard some mashed up version of it. Seizures , social isolation, family bullying, imaginary friend, demons , aliens, robots, Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde – pick your plot and point of view. Why I came to Olin has very little to do with any of that. I decided to become an engineer because I was building a card tower on an Alaskan cruise and someone said I should be an engineer – whatever that was supposed to be. I decided I wanted to go to a “student made” college because I saw the trailer for the movie Accepted. And since Olin’s college colors were blue and silver, and nicely intersected my previous two decisions, it seemed like a good fit. After I got rejected, I applied again a year later because I simply decided that I would come here.

So that is it. I came to Olin because I am a shallow, impulsive, stubborn, bored idiot…who thought I could figure out how to be a person. In all my time here, I can tell you that has not changed one bit. I wanted to know what it was like to sit with a friend at lunch. I wanted to know what it was like to have a go-to reputation. I wanted to start a company. I wanted to know what it was like to be invited to go somewhere. It all happened (at Olin and at another college) and I am still a shallow, impulsive, stubborn, bored idiot who has no idea how to be a person. I only know how to be me.
Maybe I could give senior advice. Grains of knowledge I’ve acquired through the years—which you will likely disagree with. Like how rice cripies are a valid substitute for rice. How you should go for a walk at night and look up at the stars. If you want to understand what love is, talk to a wall. Don’t assume someone is arrogant just because they don’t tolerate your BS. If you don’t like who you are, then become someone you do. Don’t believe anyone who tells you something is bad without telling you what is good, and don’t believe anyone who tells you something is good without telling you what can be better. Only talk to people who listen. Never apologize for your silence or your opinions, only your mistakes – and always admit when you are wrong. Writing a book is easy; publishing a book takes as much effort and perhaps more time than launching a startup.

Maybe I can talk about things some Oliners say which baffles me. Like how “everyone at Olin is the same.” People tend to associate with people like themselves, who share their values, their views, their interests. So how many Oliners have you taken time to know? No one at Olin is the same—I can guarantee it purely on the fact that people argue and clubs have skimpy attendance. Nothing is more indicative of diversity than people who do not agree with you. Than people who do not prioritize the same stuff you do. Than people whose values are different than yours. And they have every right to be that way as much as you have every right to be who you are.

Maybe I can talk about food privilage and how I think both meat eaters and vegans are…no, I should avoid that. As someone who is allergic to everything but rice, eggs, fish, and a select few vegetables – I will revel in my own privilege of being able to say sushi is the only thing I can really eat at restaurants and not having the burden of other options.

Maybe I could give my shpeel on my problem with the word “feminism.” How using a gendered word to call for the end of gendered words and language is hypocritical. How anti-patriarchism makes a lot more sense. How it is the linguistic equivalent of saying you are an Islamist because you believe in religious equality, but Muslims are an oppressed not-actually-a minority—not because you are actually practicing being feminine or a Muslim. How all these reasons are probably why people keep misunderstanding the feminist message—because it is a constructed word intended to mean something people naturally understand to mean something else. Not because of our perceptions of gender, but because of basic brain pattern matching.

Maybe I can talk about my job choice. How I turned down the first job offer I got with Scholastic and how easy it would have been to take it. But I turned it down because I did not want to be stuck with a job I could have done 4 years ago and thus would have devalued everything I have been working toward. How I ended up with another job offer after 2 months of searching which matched everything I did. How important it is to not take something that is easy and safe, while dismissing your capabilities, just because you don’t have any other options yet.

Maybe I can talk about Frankly Speaking. How all my offbeat, extremely long, very self-centric and controversial articles were an attempt to inspire people to write and incite discussion. To let people know that it is okay to write about anything. That it is okay to be you and have opinions, no matter how weird or controversial you think they are.

A lot of maybes here. A lot of things to think about. A lot of things to say. And I still have no idea what would make a good “last article.” While I am quite obsessed with death in the majority of my writings, endings have never really been my thing.

Dear Future Shane,

10 years from now, huh? I presume by now you’ve figured it all out. Probably gotten that top engineering job at that company that makes that product that helps businesses make more money when working with other businesses. Oh yeah. You probably even have equity and a sweet 401k. And obviously, you’re a charitable person giving $100 a year to Red Cross and even helping out at the local soup kitchen once a year (and by help out, I obviously mean put some groceries in their bin at market, because who actually has the time to drive all the way there – seriously). You probably even tip 20% every time you eat out.

I do realize however that you may have perhaps gone weird in the head and “tried to be happy” or something like that. Well, even if you have, it is really not too late to change. If you start now, you could land that previously mentioned engineering job by the time you’re like 42. That leaves you 20 years to prep your retirement fund. If we have gotten to this bad situation, I assume there are some changes that need to be made so I decided to write you a whole list of ways you should be a better person.

Ways you could be better person:

Work on that body. By this point, I’d expect you to be at least 6’2” with a six pack. Both of these are 100% necessary to be a successful human.
Have a bunch of really awesome stories. There is nothing people love more than telling a cool story and then having someone else tell an even cooler story. So you can be that guy! Always have a story ready and you’re guaranteed to be a hit at parties.

Learn how to dress. You’re probably wearing khaki shorts and blue tshirts everyday. I’m disgusted. Throw out the khakis and burn the blue tshirts and we can set our eyes on new horizons. Maybe try a purple tshirt or maybe even a teal one. Match that with red shorts or, maybe, some lighter tan shorts and we’re in business.

Always have a plan for everything. Perhaps, you like “winging it” occasionally or just doing what feels right. Quit that. As they say, the best days are well-organized and efficiently executed.

Don’t view yourself as static. Of course that are things you could be better at. Obviously you have some flaws. Don’t despair, but also don’t admit defeat. Just because you’re accepting that you’re not the best public speaker doesn’t mean you shouldn’t find ways to improve yourself.
Don’t take people for granted. There are probably still so many incredible people in your life. You’ve probably gotten used to that by now. Having friends who can solve any problems, friends who, at the drop of a hat, would rush to help you or friends who tell you your jokes are bad so you can strive for better material – don’t ever get used to that. Look around you and make sure you truly, genuinely appreciate the people in your life. Oh, and tell them that. Yup. It’ll be awkward, but go tell them that you appreciate them.

Well, all that should keep you busy for the next little while, but I’ll check in soon.

Sincerely,
Shane

Here’s a question for you: what did you learn when you sketched bugs in Parcel B with a group of your classmates during the first week of Design Nature? I’d venture to guess that your drawing skills didn’t improve much, you didn’t learn anything particularly earth-shattering about bugs, and you didn’t develop a better understanding of how to build a biomimetic hopping toy. So why was the assignment important?

Less than a week into the design curriculum at Olin, you were exposed to the idea that design doesn’t happen in isolation; it takes into account both context and society. You can’t just sit in your design studio building Solidworks models; you have to interact with the outside world. That’s the contextual part – design interacts with, depends on, and is inspired by the real world. You’re also required to work with your peers. That’s the social part – design isn’t individual; it depends on collaboration and communication even within an individual project.

A year and a half later, UOCD spirals back to the idea that design doesn’t happen in isolation. This time you spend the entire semester interfacing with a group of people to understand them and how to design to help them. You’re studying a different part of the design process than you did in Design Nature, but what you’re doing is still rooted in the idea that design can’t happen solely in the studio.

The way design works at Olin is starkly different from the way a traditional engineering education is structured. Ben Linder uses the word “layers” to describe the traditional curricular approach: students start by taking a math class, layer a physics class on top of that knowledge, and then eventually have the opportunity to take an engineering design class. He uses the word “stream” to describe what happens in Olin’s design curriculum: students take several classes about design, and each subsequent one builds on a set of core ideas.

Ben feels that a layer curriculum focuses on credentials and on authority. In that kind of environment, students are treated like they are unqualified until they complete the last layer, meaning students often don’t identify as engineers until graduation. By contrast, a stream curriculum makes each student a “professional engineer from day one,” which University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) refers to as ‘The Olin Effect.’ You come into the design stream an engineer, you are appreciated and respected throughout the curriculum, and you leave an engineer with more experience.

Ben says it’s “much healthier to engage a subject at an intermediate level over a long period of time than to have an intense introduction that ends early.” He thinks that streams might be a better model for the way people learn: we probably don’t build knowledge in layers; instead, we fit new pieces of information into the framework of what we already know, drawing as many connections between concepts as we can (if you’re curious about this, check out Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Constructivism). If you’re learning math, physics, and design at the same time in the same course, you can’t help but draw connections between them, but if you take math and physics during your first year and design during your fourth, it might be difficult to see how they relate.

Ben also believes that a stream curriculum facilitates a culture of feedback – in his words, “if you think experienced people know what’s best, you don’t ask students for feedback, but if [students] have standing, then you can take advantage of the most obvious fact… there is no other group of people who know the experience better than the students who are currently having the experience.”

Most engineering schools don’t cover much design, especially beyond engineering design, which left Olin no choice other than to experiment with how to teach it. By contrast, analysis is traditionally a big part of engineering education, so there’s a well-established, content-driven process for teaching it. Just look at the course titles – any engineering educator knows what you mean when you say you’re taking “Dynamics” or “Differential Equations”. The established way might not be the best way, though: Mark Somerville thinks a stream model could benefit the analysis curriculum as well.

Mark and other faculty members have been thinking about analysis education at Olin. Mark observes that students tend to graduate with more confidence in their design skills than in their analysis skills. He attributes that outcome in part to the the design stream, which he views as one of Olin’s real successes – it’s a “set of experiences students have over the course of four years that explicitly relate to each other, enabling them to build a set of capacities”. He thinks there might be a way to do something similar with a different set of courses.

They hope to run an experiment next year which allows first-years to opt into a 16 credit pilot version of an analysis stream (8 in the spring, 8 the following fall) to replace Linearity I and II, the physics foundation course, and either Dynamics or Signals and Systems. Ideally, the analysis stream might extend beyond two semesters, but a two-semester pilot makes sense both because it doesn’t interfere with too much of the curriculum and because an experiment with a one-year duration can run a complete cycle every year.

Our goal is to start a conversation about what continuing to explore the concept of streams would do to the way we think about Olin’s curricular experience. Streams might not need to be academic: imagine if you took Engineering for Humanity, Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship, and rounded if off with involvement in SERV. Could that be considered a “service stream”? What streams do you think already exist, even if we haven’t thought of them that way? How would the curriculum change if every course was part of a stream?