A Semester at University of Illinois

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[Pictures explained at the bottom of the post.]
Over the past year, I have said goodbye to so many individuals--friends--whom I will never see again.  In my summer (2011) in Belgium, this semester at the University of Illinois, graduating seniors at Olin, and in the coming three months in Palo Alto for summer 2012.  

I was recently at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign for the Spring 2012 semester.  I took this opportunity to experience life at a big public university, a chance that I probably would never get again after I left Olin.  Going from a 330+ student school to a 30,000+ student school was a great big change.  And it was a wonderful experience.  In the end, it made me appreciate my temporary visit there as well as the culture of Olin that I will go back to in the Fall.  

Olin in stick figure form

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Uh oh. My calendar informs me that there are only 12 days until the end of classes and about 3 weeks until all of my projects are due. That also means about 3 weeks until I am half-way through my time at Olin. Not really sure which of those is scarier.

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SERV's annual Kickball event. Good excuse to lie around outside.

It's definitely a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel moment considering how challenging this semester has been, but it's also quite alarming since we have barely started out Stuff of History project, still have a chapter of German to cover, need to take all of the data we've collected in DICIEO and turn it into something useful, and finish designing the product we will be proposing in UOCD.
It's the weekend! Not just any weekend, but a 3-day weekend with beautiful weather forecast and hardly any work to get done. I  consider it the universe's belated birthday present to me, although I did have an excellent birthday on Tuesday. Yes, there were meetings to be had and work to be done, but my friends made it a brilliant day nonetheless. Start with free coffee and a book:
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And end with some cheese, bread, and other non-pictured refreshments:
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But this weekend isn't just an extended birthday celebration, it's a much-needed break from the past couple of weeks and a chance to prepare for the final push to the end of classes...

March Madness [SERV style]

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Last month was FULL of awesome community service projects!  This post will be mostly photos, partially because I love pictures, and partially because I am pressed for time =].

relayforlifecommittee.jpgThe first thing that happened [of high importance] was Relay for Life, the American Cancer Society's number 1 fundraiser.  The idea behind this amazing fundraiser is that cancer never sleeps, so neither do we.  Members of teams take turns walking around the track overnight.  We celebrate our survivors, remember those we've lost, and fight back against this disease, to try and make a world with less cancer and more birthdays.  I'm a member of the Wellesley College committee [pictured here, at approximately 4 am]


Celebrate!

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Despite being fairly busy, this past weekend has had lots of opportunities for de-stressing and having fun, starting with double holidays, since it was both Easter and Passover. Saturday night, some friends invited me to eat the Seder meal-and kindly accompanied it with a follow-along transliterated flow chart.This was a first for me, and something I'm glad I got to experience. Later that evening I went to the Vigil (a late-night Easter church service) and ran into some Needham-ites I know and hadn't seen in a while-it's always nice to feel like I know local people. The next day, OCF had Easter dinner-and just as I was recovering from the jelly-bean induced coma, SAO/CORe (student government) stepped in to prepare for elections with a study break featuring blocks of chocolate so big we had to take a hammer to them.


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So, Christos Anesti, Happy Passover and remember to vote!

The Class of 2013 enters a fight to the death!

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Not really. But the Class of 2013 did have the chance to watch a fight to the death a few days ago.

Not really. But we did watch a theatrical fight to the death. Together!

Olin asks for a bit of money from students every semester (welcome to college, folks!), but student representatives always find a good way to strategically give it back. Each class has a fund to pull from throughout the year, and our reps thought the class might enjoy a ride on the Hunger Games bandwagon, and substantially subsidized the ride using class moolah. The result: a mental break on a Friday night, the ability to talk somewhat intelligently about current pop culture (reaching outside the Bubble, perhaps), and quite the car ride with some classmates.

Here's the group before heading out (photo graciously taken by Jacob '12, an innocent passer-by). See if you can spot the costumes -- Hunger Games characters and otherwise.

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Olin Unfiltered

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UO.pngFor their Entrepreneurial Initiative project, a few Olin students have decided that they want to share with others a side of Olin that isn't typically shown on the website or even on tours. In order to do this, they are creating and showcasing videos on a YouTube channel that share stories from students' perspectives. Have you ever wondered what it's really like to attend classes at Olin? Well, here's your chance to find out!

There are a lot of videos being added, covering everything from cool projects to passionate pursuits like Taekwondo demonstrations.

Adventures in Time Management: 9-5

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As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I ran a brief life-hack experiment regarding treating college as a 9-5 job. I can't claim originality of the idea-I know I've heard it mentioned a couple of times before, but I don't remember where I first encountered it.

As you may have noticed, Oliners are a busy bunch. We take challenging-is-an-understatement classes with enthusiasm, pursue extracurricular interests passionately and usually can't resist getting involved in any good project. This semester alone I've been regularly involved in 4 classes, teaching engineering at a high school, a Spanish language co-curricular, the student Catholic association, writing this blog, job searching for the summer, a three-college culture and leadership group, and getting sucked (very willingly!) into late-night conversations about politics, philosophy, meta-Olin and "woah, how does that work!".

I have two key observations to set the context for this experiment:
  1. There are so many awesome things to do and learn in the world!
  2. I'm happier when I eat and sleep and have quiet-time regularly.

In order to maximize my ability to do both of those things, I've decided to just try a couple different time management/work theories and see what happens.

The 9-5 theory is pretty simple-treat classes as a clock-in/clock-out job. No wasting time on the job; no putting things off until midnight; but at 5pm, you're done.

I can't believe the weather right now. It was 85 yesterday. 85 EIGHTY-FIVE. IN MARCH. </mindblown>

It was a lot colder today - I don't think it got above 73. It meant the barbecue we had doubled as a space heater. But we've had two barbecues in two days, I can't complain.

The last two days have definitely been my favorite. I finished almost all of the work I needed to so there was a lot of just lying in the sun reading books, eating barbecues, riding my scooter around, and finally getting into Boston. But words don't convey sunshine, so let me just show you.

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Hmm, so warm. Hence the shirtless people everywhere.

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I don't even know what's going on here. 

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Charlie grilled us seem beef. Some of the most delicious food I've ever had.

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And we finally got into Boston! I've been wanting to do this forever. Unfortunately the late barbecue meant I wasn't able to get any sunset shots of Boston but a) I still did some night photography and b) you can't really complain about lying around eating fresh barbecue in the sun whilst listening to Stan Getz.

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More lounging around. Because we can.

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Hmmm, fire...

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