March 2012 Archives

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's Spring Break! It's 64 F and sunny outside, so why not ride my scooter to Wellesley and have breakfast at Starbucks? I could even write a blog post!

The fickle fates of New England spring sent us an absolutely gorgeous day (sunny and seventy, for those of you who aren't in the area), and even after a mild winter like we've had this was cause for celebration. All day long, people congregated on the lawns by the dorms and in the Oval in the center of campus, dragging with them laptops, frisbees, picnic meals and the couches from the dorms. The rule of thumb was, if you can do it outside, you probably should.

Greetings, readers! You get a break from me, and instead get to hear from Chris Marra ('12) and Greg Marra ('10). Yeah, they're related. But not twins. Oliners often joke that this place is a bit like Hogwarts, so this post is rather appropriate.

Anyway, Candidates' Weekends just wrapped up here, so we're all thinking about who would fit in with our strange crowd, and I suppose the Marra brothers want to put in a vote for the Weasley twins. I wouldn't mind, but personally, would prefer Neville. Or, more accurately, Matthew Lewis (*swoon*), who, incidentally, is from Leeds, where I studied last semester! My Leeds to-do list included meeting him, but it wasn't in the stars. Ah well.

To read their post, click "Continue reading". I take no responsibility for the bad parts and all the credit for the good parts.

The last of the 2012 candidate's weekends is coming to an end--it's been a quick and extremely exciting journey.  Snow has finally fallen, and spring break is only two weeks away.  Classes have certainly vamped up, and projects have taken up a huge slot in my life.  I'm excited about all three of them, which I promise to talk about at various points in the future.  My to-do list is ever-growing, but I thought I'd take this moment to tell you a bit about my UOCD team.

This past week was our first UOCD design review.  We decided to take a group photo =].  My team consists of Sarah, Brendan, Josh (all Olin'14), and Ben (Babson '15).  We all think differently, and have a great time working with one another.  Plus, we make really elaborate analogies about things that you probably wouldn't associate with UOCD, and have a great time.