Caltech

Humanities at Caltech

The students that come to Caltech are surprisingly diverse.  Even though the curriculum here is geared at training future scientists, students here go on to careers in journalism, law, writing, theater, politics, you name it.  In reality, Caltech is for students that want a very good grounding in science, for whatever reason.

This diversity is a wonderful thing.  Here I've met a future cattle rancher, someone who actually had to mouth-pipette in high school, and everyone in between.  However, this same diversity, when combined with Caltech's small size, is often a challenge to students with non-scientific extracurricular passions.

For example, why am I writing this blog post at 2:26 A.M.?  I help write for Caltech's student newspaper, the Tech.  The editor-in-chief and I worked on today's newspaper until 1 A.M. and finally took a break for food at the student-staffed coffee house.

At colleges with larger newspapers, the editor-in-chief often delegates stories to staff writers, editing to copy editors, and layout to layout editors.  But at Caltech, the editor-in-chief and a few other enthusiasts have to come up with stories, write, copy edit, and layout.  It's a lot of work.

The flip side to all of this work is that the most enthusiastic hobbyists can completely revamp the opportunities available to similarly-minded Caltech community members.  For example, former Tech Editor-in-Chief Marissa Cevallos (now a science journalist interning at Stanford's SLAC) changed the Tech from a student government newsletter into an award-winning newspaper.  One of the Tech's awards came from a beautifully crafted ad in the prank MIT newspaper!

A more recent example: just this past weekend, undergraduate Christine Kondos directed Caltech's first musical in fifteen years.  It was hilarious and really well-done.  Check out her interview at http://weblab.caltech.edu/features/21 if you're interested in learning more about Caltech's theater program.

The art of procrastination

Finally, I have some free time!  Perhaps I should be editing the umpteenth draft of my biophysics paper, but writing a journal paper is a pain.

Don't get me wrong-- I am ecstatic that I'm going to be first author (!) on a paper that will (hopefully) get published in an bona fide physics journal.

However, editing a journal paper on which you are first author is about as fun as washing dishes.  The first author is tasked with the less desirable parts associated with editing a paper: fix references, make prettier graphs, fiddle with wording, and so on.

I'm not the only undergraduate at Caltech that has to deal with the somewhat arduous process of writing and rewriting a journal paper.  One of my friends is currently writing two papers-- one paper is on his neuro-economics research and the other is a glorified version of a final paper that he wrote for his law class last year.  (I don't envy him.  His law paper is roughly forty pages long, which is way worse than my measly ten page physics paper.)

I've hidden a huge "thank you" to Caltech behind this semi-bitter diatribe on editing journal papers.  Not every enthusiastic undergraduate at a top college writes their own scientific paper before they graduate college.  Many undergraduates don't even manage to find a good research group and/or research project.

I don't think I would have gotten so lucky with my research at any other college.  In my opinion, Caltech differentiates itself from every other good science/math college when it comes to undergraduate research opportunities.  First, Caltech has a ridiculously low faculty:student ratio.  Second, Caltech professors actively want to mentor the brilliant Caltech undergraduates.  As a testament to the professorial enthusiasm towards grabbing brilliant Caltech freshmen, take a look at our many uniquely small, freshmen-only, research classes here, e.g. Ch10 and Ph11.

Put these two factors together, and you create a culture that fosters heavy undergraduate involvement in research.  It is easy for undergraduates to start researching as freshmen, switch research groups if their first research group doesn't work out, and even become the lead on a research project by their senior year.  For instance, I started out in Ph11 (six-student, two-professor, freshmen-only physics research class) and quickly discovered that engineering/physics was not my forte.  My sophomore year, I quickly switched over to working in the Phillips group.

That's enough procrastinating for now.  Time to work on that paper of mine....

Prefrosh are trickling in

Already, prefrosh and their parents are stumbling around Caltech's campus, eating lunch and dinner with current undergraduates, touring the Houses, even visiting classes.  (I think I saw one of the prefrosh in the Bi1x class this morning!)

Here's a list of nice, nearby places to visit, for the parents and prefrosh with extra time.

Pasadena definitely has its own charm.  Most of these are walkable, but Din Tai Fung and 99 Ranch require a car or public transportation.

• Huntington Gardens: beautiful flowers and art.  Some students go there just to study, because it's so relaxing.  Check out the new Chinese garden!  Also, marvel at how they get plants to grow sideways--
  
  
   
• Huntington Library: a treasure trove.  Housed in an unpretentious building inside the Huntington Gardens are the original Canterbury tales, one of the first edition Gutenberg bibles, original writings from all your favorite scientists (Newton, Pasteur, Galileo, Kepler), and so many more.
• Old Pasadena/Paseo: cute bakeries, yummy restaurants, shops, and a movie theater.
• Europane: my favorite bakery in Pasadena, and it's walking distance from campus!  Try their egg salad sandwich, which one critic called "the best egg salad sandwich in the SoCal area."
• Din Tai Fung: a dumpling chain, rumored to have the best soup dumplings around.  Watch out-- the lines are very long if you hit the place on a weekend.
• 99 Ranch: not exactly a "place to visit", but if you need some cheap produce or whole fish (!), visit this grocery store.  A cheap food court is nearby, and here's a picture of me, my roommate and the person behind the camera enjoying the huge noodle dishes there.
  
  
   

If you want something showier, there are some interesting places in L.A.

• Koreatown, Little Tokyo, Little Ethiopia, Thai Town, etc.: delicious and new.  If you're adventurous and haven't had Ethiopian food before, I recommend Little Ethiopia.
• Hollywood!
• Rodeo Drive/Beverly Hills Center: go here for pure sticker shot.  The prices are ridiculous and some of the outfits are absolutely garish, but it's fun to contemplate the life of someone who can buy and wear such expensive clothing on a regular basis.

With more time, you can even make a trip up to Santa Monica, Laguna Beach, Disneyland....

This Spring Break, I went to Koreatown for the first time.  Guess which one of the dishes below is pig intestines?

 

It's the dish on the bottom left, the one that looks like seaweed-wrapped pork.  Surprisingly, pig intestines are delicious.

If you think science is black and white, try doing research.

Finally, the worst finals week that I've ever experienced is over!  I've never taken six math and science classes in one term before, and I will never do so again.

Tomorrow I leave for Virginia.  But before I desert the blogging world, I want to tell you about my APh162 presentation.

Remember APh162, the quantitative biology lab taught by Rob Phillips?  During the last four weeks of the class, Andrew and I helped Linda Song with her senior thesis.  This past Wednesday, we presented our work to the rest of the class.

The details of the experiment are a little gory, but basically, we tried to find the binding energy between the lac repressor and the lac operon in E. coli by fitting a repression curve to a thermodynamic model.

Apologies for throwing a lot of jargon at you.  However, you do not need to understand the experiment at all to appreciate the following.

The day before the presentation, Andrew and I gathered our laptops, our painstakingly segmented movies of growing E. coli, and Linda's guide to data analysis.

At 10 A.M. the next day, after an all-nighter, Andrew and I presented our research to the entire APh162 class.  Some of our plots looked beautiful.  It's unfortunate that our culminating graph looked like a plot of clustered random numbers.

That's what a four-week science project is, right?  If you get "correct" results after only four weeks in lab, you are either very lucky or a cheater.  Hopefully, the APh162 graders agree with me.

Thank goodness I learned my way around a biology lab-- next term I'm going to TA Bi1x, the freshman biology lab for non-biology majors.

Love Sucks, but Viva la Vida sounds awesome

I sang a solo at Love Sucks!  (Surprise!)  Thanks to Dannah for going to Love Sucks and recording my song.

As you watch, keep in mind that this was my first solo!  I was really, really nervous.

The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxCNlstD5b8 in case the embedding doesn't work.

In high school, I sang in the shower and maybe the car.  Now, I sing six hours a week.

One of the underappreciated benefits of going to Caltech is that it's very easy to try new things.  Everyone can be on the varsity team for their favorite sport; everyone can join the newspaper, a stark contrast to some other, bigger schools; everyone can be involved in student government.  The only prerequisite for joining and becoming an integral part of any team?  Enthusiasm.

Apologies for the short and overdue post.  It's Finals Week at Caltech until Wednesday, and I still have a final problem set, a presentation to prepare, and one last final.

Life after college admissions

Today, I helped choose the Caltech class of '14.

Caltech's admissions system is, as far as I know, unique.  Caltech's Admissions staff consists of people who are paid to read Caltech undergraduate applications, current Caltech undergraduates, and Caltech professors.  I'm unlucky enough to be one of the Caltech undergraduates on the Admissions staff.

When I say unlucky, I mean it.  Choosing between two excellent students is brutal and far more difficult than splitting hairs.

I'm not just saying niceties to soften the inevitable blow for those of you that weren't admitted.  In your applications, you bared your soul on a piece of paper to a complete stranger.  I cried for your grandfather's death; I loved your devotion to your autistic brother; I lived through your shame of choking at a televised National Science Olympiad event; I read your Feynman essays and thought, "Yes, exactly!"

But that was only in the privacy of my own room, reading applications with just myself, my notepad, and my computer.  In committee, my favorite applications got slashed again and again to one disheartening word: deny.  Many others got sent to the waitlist.  (If you were waitlisted, there's still a chance!)

To those of you that were accepted, congratulations!  You deserve it.  Now you probably have the enviable task of choosing which college you want to go to.  I hope to see you at Prefrosh Weekend.

To those of you that weren't accepted: I'm sorry.  Your teachers love you, you kick ass in class, and you've done nothing but work hard for four years.  What was wrong?

To be completely honest, nothing was wrong.  For one reason or another, the committee just didn't think you were right for Caltech.

Remembering my own senior year in high school makes this all the worse.  When my friends didn't get into their top choice college, some of them just broke down.  You probably won't believe me now, but college admissions doesn't really matter in the long run.  Study after study has shown that where you go to college really has nothing to do with how far you get in life-- what matters much more is what you make of the opportunities you grab for yourself.

Best of luck to all of you.

P.S. I will never, ever participate in Caltech's Admissions process again, because it is so heartbreaking.

P.P.S.  Don't ask me when you'll hear about whether or not you've gotten into Caltech.  I have no idea!

SURFing

At Caltech, roughly 70% of students spend at least one summer SURFing.  Unfortunately, SURFs have nothing to do with surfing.  SURF stands for Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship-- basically, Caltech pays for you to spend a summer researching with the professor or scientist of your choice.

This year's SURF applications were due this past Monday.  Applications require recommendations, lists of courses, and a research proposal.  The research proposal is probably the closest thing to a grant proposal that we undergraduates will ever write.  Since not everyone gets a SURF, writing the research proposal can be a little stressful.  I'm not sure if the SURF committee even reads our research proposals, but I tend to assume the worst-- that the SURF committee reads our research proposals carefully, cover to cover-- and accordingly try to write a coherent mini-grant.

This year, I had an especially difficult time writing my SURF proposal.  Last summer, Professor Rob Phillips spoon-fed me my research project.  This year, he initially suggested that I look into morphogen gradients in developing embroyos.  When I wasn't completely enthusiastic about the idea, he essentially said, "Do whatever makes you happy, as long as it has something to do with biophysics and the Principle of Maximum Entropy."

My initial thought: cool!  I get to choose my own research project!

My second thought: shoot.  What the heck will I do?

A few nights before the SURF application was due, I started reading article after article after article on something that has always amazed me-- evolution.  I can't expect everyone reading this blog to share my excitement for evolutionary fitness functions, but bear with me as I tell you about the neatest experiment ever.

Remember Darwin's finches in the Galapagos Islands?  They're kind of famous.  Allegedly, Darwin first thought of evolution when he saw the finches' beaks... just like Newton first thought carefully about gravity when an apple fell on his head.  (Neither of these stories are completely true, but they're fun to tell anyway.)

What do birds have to do with evolution, one of the most seminal ideas in history?  The finches in the Galapagos have differently sized beaks, and each beak is better suited for eating certain nuts than others.  Big beaks can crack tougher nuts; small beaks can pick up smaller seeds.  So on the different islands in the Galapagos, finches have differently sized beaks-- they've adapted to the available food on that island.

In the most detailed and beautiful scientific study I've ever read about, Princeton U. Professors Peter and Rosemary Grant (husband and wife) lived on an uninhabited island in the Galapagos and carefully measured the size of the beaks of every single finch on the island for several years.  They also measured the sizes of available seeds and nuts.  Miraculously, the probability of seeing a finch with a certain sized beak lined up almost perfectly with a mathematical prediction of which birds were best suited for eating the available types of seeds and nuts.

First observation: the most uncomfortable position I've ever had to deal with while researching is going into the "cold room" in the lab for a few seconds.  Imagine living on an uninhabited island that is really hot and full of bugs for months at a time.

Second observation (and here's the science): isn't it amazing that we can predict the types of finches on the island just from knowing the environment in which they live?

These were the thoughts bouncing around in my head at 2 A.M. last Friday, as I read paper after paper on evolutionary fitness functions of E. coli.  At around 3 A.M., I decided that predicting fitness functions using the Principle of Maximum Entropy might work, and therefore stayed up until 9 A.M. writing my SURF research proposal about it.

Then I started my physics set, due at 5 P.M. that day, while growing/diluting/incubating cells for my APh162 project.

The first comment that Rob gave me about my proposal was-- and I quote-- "How do we avoid being naive nincompoops while working in this huge area?"  In a stroke of brilliance, I had managed to choose an interesting area of research that Rob didn't actually work in.

Not that it matters-- I'm going to work on evolutionary fitness functions this summer, regardless.  My spring term will probably be one gigantic literature search on evolution!  Oh, literature searches, how I love thee.

Out of Context at Berkeley

This will be a relatively short post, because I still have two problem sets to finish before this week is over.

I haven't told you much about Caltech's other a cappella group, which is named Out of Context.  (Isn't it a little surprising that such a small campus of all math/science majors has room for two a cappella groups?) Out of Context has worked so hard in this past year, and now they sound incredible.  Last weekend, they flew up to Berkeley to compete in the International Competition of Collegiate A cappella (ICCA) quarterfinals, and here are some videos of their performance:

http://www.youtube.com/user/OoCAcapella#p/a

My favorite song is "Lollipop", although I'm guessing that "Love Story" was a universal audience favorite. They didn't win anything, but it is very hard to win anything at ICCA's, which is the biggest and most prestigious U.S. college a cappella competition.

Fluid Dynamics (my group!), Out of Context, plus a cappella groups from Claremont, USC, and CSUN will perform two weekends from now at Love Sucks, the rescheduled Valentine's Day concert hosted by Caltech's groups.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

This past Saturday, Avery House hosted its Interhouse party.  As you probably know, Caltech Interhouses are special.  We don't just play some music and put out some beverages and chips; we construct a dance floor and much more, plus our wonderful frosh spent hours making sandwiches, brownies, and cookies.

Unsubstantiated rumor time: I heard that Caltech's big Interhouse party (all Houses hosted an Interhouse party at the same time) used to be one of Playboy's top college parties in the country... but big Interhouse was stopped when someone from outside the Caltech community knifed a bartender.  This was maybe a decade ago.  We no longer have a big Interhouse, and our smaller Interhouses no longer top Playboy's list of best college parties (if they ever did.)

Avery's Interhouse had a rather obvious theme:

That's a bunny rabbit/Trojan Horse contraption.  I thought it was the killer bunny from the end of Monty Python, but apparently not.

I forget what part of Monty Python and the Holy Grail this cow is from....

People in the foreground have made a moat between Avery's inner and outer pillars, and people in the background are painting drywall.  I might be one of those blurry background figures.

 

This is the packed dance floor, structured like King Arthur's Round Table!

The party was great, until it was shut down by Caltech Security at 1:30 for being too loud.  Apparently a neighbor a few blocks away complained?

All vacations have their price

And the price of going to Hawaii for a week was that I fell a little behind on classwork.

I'd like to use this post to remind you that Caltech is hard.  If you want to go here, you should know what you're getting into.  Sure, all the prestigious schools to which you have applied are also hard-- but in my opinion, Caltech is in a league of its own.  A large portion of Techers spend upwards of 40 hours a week on classwork.  Even Caltech humanities majors (a non-existent breed) must take Caltech's core, which apparently constitutes a physics and/or math major at a state university.

Don't get me wrong: I love Caltech because it's so hard.  I chose Caltech over Harvard and MIT because I wanted to be hit with a fire hose of knowledge!  However, fire hoses sometimes send you flying across the room.

For example, since I returned from Hawaii 1.5 weeks ago, I have completed three midterms and six sets!  That's not easy to do over Valentine's Day/Chinese New Year weekend....

-----

Above: On Single's Awareness Day, the boys in our House delivered roses to every girl in the House and cooked a delicious brunch for all the girls-- omelettes cooked to order, pancakes cooked in any shape we wanted, waffles, Eggs Benedict, bacon, sausage, biscuits, and donuts and cupcakes.  Yum!  I'm turned sideways, in a black dress, in the middle of the picture.

Also on Single's Awareness Day, I had a hot date with... my roommate.

-----