Caltech

Finally! Finals and Farewells

It's the last day of the semester.  I've turned in my last problem set, and I'm about to head out to my final lecture before diving into finals week (and into the pool - I have a swim meet this afternoon).  And now I can't help but thinking:  did I really make it through my first term at Tech?

Yes, and I'm alive, sane, and glad that first term is coming to an end (and not glad that pass-fail is halfway over).  So, to wrap up this blog here are the top 10 moments of my first term as a Techer:

10.  Procrastinating on homework to watch movies instead (although these were pretty good times for me to blog)
9.  The ShakeOut drill - what's more fun than volunteering to skip classes and get free food (the blood and gore was cool, too)
8.  Trick-or-Treating around the Caltech campus - President Chameau gave us candy AND ice cream!
7.  Solving the 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 Rubik's cubes for the first time
6.  Getting awesome roommates at Caltech (Teri and Nadia, you are amazing!)
5.  The last Chemistry 1a lecture - Somebody brought a laser pointer just like Professor Lewis's, which brought about many chuckles for a fun last class.
4.  The end of Rotation Week, which involved becoming a member of a house and earning the title 'frosh' instead of 'prefrosh'
3.  Going home for Thanksgiving Break - good food and no sets are a pretty good combination
2.  Walking up the stairs to find Teri in the transom (see my first post for details) ... this still makes me smile
1.  (You guessed it) Blogging for all of you!  Recording my experiences has not only been good for me, but has hopefully given you an idea about life here at Caltech.

So, I've learned a lot in this first term - how to study, where to find food on the weekends, when to turn in sets and labs.  Hopefully, I will be able to remember what I learned on pass-fail through out my next 11 terms at Caltech.

Good luck on making your college decisions!  Good bye for now!

The Fun Never Stops

Things that have happened in the past week:

-water balloon fights in the hallways of my house
-a pair of physics sets and a couple of quizzes topped off with the second math midterm
-prime rib night at the campus cafeteria (yum!!!)
-an awesome Ultimate Frisbee game between a couple of the houses
-an Interhouse party
-some neighborly pranking......

So Nadia (previously called the soccer roommate) and I returned from turning in the math midterm the other day to find our door covered in post-it notes.  Removing them all was a nice break from this week's workload, which had a lot of frosh shutting doors and refusing movies to get some work done.  Fortunately for us we have caring upperclassmen to make sure we don't go insane during the more stressful Caltech moments (thus the post-its and water balloon fights).

As busy as this week was with all of the work, now that it's over I look back and realize I had a lot of fun also.  I even had time to squeeze in a few minutes of Rock Band!  So, l learned that even the worst Caltech has to offer is manageable.  As long as we leave our doors open, there will people in the halls to talk to. ... And if we leave our door shut then there will be something else waiting for us outside of our door. 

So, contrary to popular belief, Techers do have a lot of fun - weekdays and weekends.  There hasn't been a weekend when absolutely nothing was going on.  This week there was the Page Interhouse party, last weekend had both the Euro Party (hosted by the European exchange students) and the Fleming Frosh party, and in previous weeks there was the Halloween party and the Ricketts GnG dance party.  I'm really looking forward to what kinds of fun the next couple of terms have to bring.

Anyways, I now proclaim this stressful week and awesome weekend officially over!  Time to get back to work .....

The ShakeOut and the Swim Meet

A few days ago, I had a gross imitation of a protruding bone glued to my forehead, a gash drawn on my arm, and fake blood dripping all over my face and arm.  No, I wasn't celebrating Halloween a couple of weeks late, I was a volunteer victim in the Great Southern California ShakeOut Earthquake Drill at Caltech.  At 10 am on November 13, the Fleming Cannon was fired to signal the start of an earthquake of magnitude 7.8, and participants on campus were encouraged to respond as if there was a real earthquake.

Even though the make-up was a lot of fun, the purpose of the ShakeOut Drill was to prepare the Caltech community for disaster.  Caltech security and student Health Advocates practiced rescuing victims from cardboard tunnels and transporting the severely injured to temporary health centers.  Alright, so I'm from the D.C. area, and I'm used to all sorts of drills for natural disasters and otherwise, but earthquakes are definitely still new to me.  Anyways, since I had serious (but pretend) head trauma, I was strapped onto a backboard and transported on one of the security carts (yay! I got to ride a security cart!).  The drill was a great way for me to learn about security and medical responses here and for Caltech to practice responding to disasters.

I also spent the weekend in Oakland, CA at Mills College swimming for the Caltech swim team in the first meet of the season.  The great thing about Caltech is our honesty about our athletic abilities.  Our cheer this weekend was "e to the x, e to the y, e to the x dx dy, secant cosine tangent sine, three point one four one five nine ...."  Enough said :D.  The meet was fun though - combine a road trip with a math set with a season of House and I've got myself an awesome weekend.  Oh yeah! I swam a few races, too, and even scored a couple of points for our team.  We're looking forward to a great season (and hope to get more swimmers for next year!).

So, this week is going to be tough with Thanksgiving Break coming up soon.  I've got two physics sets due this week! aaaaaa!  To be honest, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed right now with the extra homework, but I'll try to keep you posted on how my week goes.  'Til next time!

Where Has the Time Gone?

This week, mid-term grades are beginning to roll in.  Next week, I add one to my age.  The week after that I go home for the first time since becoming a Techer.  Then, in a month, first term is over.  So the question we frosh are asking (literally asking - Teri actually said this the other day) is "Can you believe it's already week seven?"

It's already been seven weeks, and I feel like I've just started to get into a settled routine.  I keep my calender updated, make a daily to-do list, and have been managing my time so well that I have found time to watch several movies in my House's entertainment room in the past week (I've been multi-tasking of course, I'm watching the Italian Job as I type this up).

Anyways, Caltech has a great system for adjusting frosh to academics here.  Obviously, Caltech attracts the brightest and most academically gifted students from all over the world.  So, how do you give the high school perfectionist a C instead of an A?

You don't.  The first two terms at Caltech are on pass-fail.  This way, we get used to seeing 70s or 80s (sometimes 40s and 50s) on our papers without worrying about grades.  We get a chance to learn without the pressure of grades and to be social without calculating the score we need on the next assignment to maintain an A or B.

Now, this doesn't mean that you can never do homework and never go to class and never try to get good grades - it isn't pass-pass.  I think that Caltech designed pass-fail for students to develop good study habits and time management skills that were probably not necessary in high school (I for one have pretty much never studied for a math test before Caltech).  Right now I'm watching a movie (still) with a few sophomores and juniors who can also take a couple of hours to just chillax.  Hopefully I'll be able to keep up my to-do list and watch a lot more movies in the years to come :).

I hope I'll be able to post again in a few days.  Tomorrow, I get to be a pretend victim in the pretend Southern California Earthquake, and on Saturday I swim in my first collegiate swim meet.  Tell you all about it next time!

Boo!

There were a couple of moments in this past week that really scared me.  The first was on Halloween (surprise surprise... I was scared on Halloween!).  We watched The Shining, which was so terrifying that I pulled my hood over my head to cover my own eyes.  Of course, some people found this movie more hilarious than terrifying.  That meant that my reaction to the movie was just as hilarious.

The next morning I woke up and dove straight into my first Caltech midterms.  So scary item number two consisted of a couple of several-hour exams.

I expected classes at Caltech to be difficult, and I readied myself for receiving less than perfect grades.  However, I don't think anything could have prepared me for Caltech's Core and Collaboration Policies.  All Techer's go through Core during their first two years at Caltech.  Core consists of basic math and science courses, so all frosh are taking the same physics, math, and chemistry classes.

As I said before, these classes aren't easy.  But adjusting from a public high school to a private school which emphasizes math and science has been fairly smooth so far.  Even though the problem sets are difficult and time consuming, knowing 200 other frosh who are working on the same set has its advantages.  Working together makes the workload much lighter.  And no - working together does not mean that I do one problem, you do the other problem, and then we trade and copy.  Working together means that we bounce ideas, compare numbers, and help each other until we both understand the question and the solution.

Alright, so I have another busy (but not so scary) week ahead of me, but I think I have time for another story.

Yesterday, Caltech held its second annual Olive Harvest Festival ... which meant my swim practice was canceled (boo hoo :().  However, both of my roommates ran off to basketball and soccer practice at 3:30.  Now, another important thing about Friday is that Chem Sets are due at 4:00.  Of course, I get a phone call at 3:40:  my soccer roommate forgot to turn in her Chem set!  So, I grab her homework from our room and turn it in on the olive walk at 3:45.  Then, five minutes later when I'm sitting in my House's courtyard, my basketball roommate sprints in wearing her basketball gear and runs upstairs to grab her Chem set.  I offered to turn it in for her when she ran back down so that she could get back to practice.

See! Collaboration is a very useful thing here at Caltech :)

Rotation Week

First Attempt at Starting Blog Entry #2:

So, the first time I heard about the House System at Caltech I forgot what it was.  The second time I heard about the Caltech House System I was exhausted from jet lag and forgot what it was.  Third time was a charm.  For those of you who are like me and tend to forget things that you hear about almost instantly, here is a brief written explanation of Caltech's House System.

To put it shortly, Caltech has eight undergraduate Houses with distinct personalities - Avery, Blacker, Dabney, Fleming, Lloyd, Page, Ricketts, and Ruddock.  All Techers are affiliated with at least one of these Houses (I say all because I haven't met anyone who has opted out of the Housing System).  Now, I'm sure I got very excited when I heard this the first, second, and third time because it is very reminiscent of a certain series of book which I like a lot :).

Anyway, in order for all of the pre-frosh to get to know each of the eight houses, there's this week-long process called Rotation.  Basically, during the first week of classes, I, and my fellow pre-frosh, had to go through all of the houses in a week. No - you don't have to physically move yourself and all of your stuff into a new room every night, you just visit each house for both a lunch and dinner sometime during the week.

To simplify the experience of Rotation Week, here is advice I would give to the next group of pre-frosh:

1.  Get used to the questions "What's your name?"  "Where are you from?" "What house are you rotating out of?" and "What are you thinking of majoring in?" - You will have to answer them  many many many times in a day.

2.  It's alright to forget people's names.  When you meet fifty new people a day, it's pretty much impossible to remember everybody.

3.  Break as many dinner rules as possible.  It's fun to watch people get water poured over their heads. (Someone will explain this more in depth eventually :D)

4.  Be yourself - the whole time.  Rotation is a great way to meet other pre-frosh and older Techers.

5.  Have fun!  Rotation week is pretty much the last week to chillax before diving into the real work of Caltech.

At the end of the week, we each rank the Houses on a scale of 1-20, and by some system mostly unknown to me we are placed into one of the eight houses.  Then, we fire the cannon and become real frosh!

I can't really compare Caltech's House System to the normal dorms of other colleges, but I really do enjoy it.  Even though there are friendly rivalries between the Houses, I feel as if it just brings the undergraduate community of Caltech closer together.

So, to end on a more comedic note, here is part two of the transom story that I decided to leave out of blog entry #1:

The transom is a way to get into your room just in case you get locked out.  But, of course, this is a rare occurrence.  One day, while I was chasing a sophomore who had stolen one of my books around the house, another sophomore managed to get past both of roommates and barricade himself in our room (all in good fun).  We were trapped outside of the room for several hours.  Since both of my roomies had other places to be that night, I decided to just go work on my homework elsewhere until they returned.  I came back in a few hours to find a pair of my roommates legs sticking out of the transom.  From there she was able to move our furniture out of the way, and we were then able to reclaim our room.  Seriously though, those transoms actually come in handy.

Caltech? Really?

  One of the first new things I discovered at Caltech was the transom.  I didn’t know what one was until I was filling out a housing form that asked for the condition of the transom.  This being completely new  to me (and apparently new to many people since there was a note saying it’s the ‘little door at top’) I immediately looked to the doorway, dragged over a chair, pulled the transom open, and screamed, “There’s a little door above the door!”

Then the older students next door laughed at me.

Hi!  I’m Janis, Caltech Class of 2012!  I’m a Marine Brat who has lived in Virginia long enough to call it home and has been in California long enough to notice that it’s already late October, and the season has not really changed.  I have a collection of Rubik’s Cubes, a fake allergy to peanuts, and an addiction to word scramble games.  I enjoy going to the pool so much that I have put up with the signature goggle tan of swimmers several times in my life.  And I love chocolate.

Anyways, now I have to make this rough transition from chocolate to the real topic of this post:  why I chose Caltech.

In all honesty, a year ago, Caltech was at the very bottom of my list. My original purpose for applying was purely to see if I would be accepted. I remember submitting my application in the middle of December and then thinking nothing of it until that random day in March when I pulled the big envelope out of the mailbox in total shock.  Even then, I went to school the next day and told my friends, “I probably won’t go there anyway.  I’ll stick a little closer to home.”

Fortunately for me, my Dad asked me if I wanted to visit Caltech in early April.  I was excited to be able to experience Caltech just for a couple of days (and, of course to get out of school for a couple of days).  In my first two days on campus, I watched the Stephen Hawking lecture, attended a house dinner, went to a couple of classes, walked across the set of a television show, ate at the Ath, and saw a water polo game.  But two days of exciting activities alone didn’t get me hooked on Caltech.

When my host and I walked around campus or into any of the labs or houses, she was able to introduce to me to pretty much anybody we ran into.  Then, later that night when we walked through her house, everybody’s door was open, and all the students would gather to work together on problem sets or to just socialize.  I really enjoyed how everybody not only knew each other, but how friendly everyone was to each other.  What other college has such a close-knit group of students?

Of course, I don’t know any, and that’s why I’m here.  And, so far, I’m really enjoying being part of this wonderful little community. 

So, this blog is for all of you who already love Caltech and for all of you who are considering Caltech and for all of you who just want to know what it’s like to be a frosh at Caltech.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to give everyone a taste of my frosh experiences at Caltech!