Category Archives: Boston

Co-op Payout

Last Thursday was the Wentworth career fair. All the students were doing their best to look appealing and professional. Many still had haircuts from over break, because apparently that’s what people do during breaks. Nearly every one of my peers had donned ties or skirts for the occasion, and it was a treat to see so many of them dressed up.

I went with the intent of talking to employers and scouting their departments. The Friday previous, I had committed to work for the summer doing biological research at Northeastern. I found a host of great companies, but most of them did not know they needed applied math majors yet. Of a gym full of employers, only 4 marked that they were looking for applied math majors. Lincoln Labs was the one that looked most enticing. I had a diverting and semi-fruitful job convincing the employers that they were indeed in need of math majors.

Also during this week, I have been accepted to two more co-ops in California and in Wisconsin as well as the Select Scholars program I was talking about before. I guess my trick is to apply broadly ask Lauren from Coops and Careers to make sure my application materials are hire-worthy. The more difficult task is keeping school priorities straight, but most students know how to prioritize academics.

Spring Break Around Home

Last week was spring break and every day was an adventure. Not every adventure was in Boston, because I was home, but many of them were still nearby.

Kicking off the week, I spent Sunday drilling with a reenactment group based out of Dunstable. These were Revolutionary war reenactors, so many men of my age and ethnicity would be soldiers – I drilled while armed with a firelock :). Some of you may know this group as the End Zone Militia for the Patriots. I forgot to ask if I could post pictures, but I will probably get some later.
After drilling with the men for a couple hours, I joined the ladies downstairs. I learned to sew a backstitch and worked on one seam of a gown. There are some nice needle-shaped holes in my fingers now, but the half-seam I finished in an hour looks fabulous.

The next day was First Monday at Jordan Hall, which is less than a quarter mile from Wentworth. First Monday means free concerts organized by the man who used to be the president of the New England Conservatory. For March, we had chamber music from Schumann, Dvorak, and Crumb. I had never heard of Crumb, but his piece in the concert was a real draw for me. The composition featured an electric flute (who ever heard of an electric flute?? Awesome!)

WIT Student Ben Guest and myself #SpottedAround at Jordan Hall before a chamber music concert

Tuesday, I gave blood and was basically too tuckered out to do anything else. I talked with a really cool medical assistant who appreciated that WIT students still organize blood drives, despite controversy with the FDA.

Wednesday, a couple of my Wentworth friends came over and we hiked around south Massachusetts and northeast Rhode Island. We hit seven geocaches in one day without paying a cent for a geocaching membership!

Thursday I had a throwback day to fall semester and did another “escape the room” puzzle. This time I went with my girlfriend instead of a team of engineers and in Providence instead of Boston (we had coupons). We meant to go earlier in the year, and got snowed out, but the manager decided to let us go for free over break! The experience was different, but the result was ultimately the same, of course. We completed Escape Rhode Island’s ExMachina puzzle, which, at the time, had a 13% winrate *dusts off fingernails*.

Notice anything in common with these things I did over break? I’m a college student on a budget; none of them cost money. Admittedly, the escape game was a gift from nice the manager, so something like that takes a little luck and begging. With a couple friends and a little creativity, you will never run out of things to do around here.

HackWITUs So Cool

A hackathon is a friendly competition for students to network with other students – and sponsor representatives 🙂 – while making hardware or software tools and games. We provide free food, space, power, internet, other hackers, some hardware, some APIs, workshops, and prizes. Free.

One thing: we get a lot of questions about who can and cannot come to a hackathon. Everyone is invited and anyone should be able to enjoy the time. We have some events and workshops planned that require 0 computer science or programming experience. I’m not a computer science major…

Last week, the head of the group that is organizing Wentworth’s Hackathon announced that we have entered CRUNCH TIME. HackWITUs 2017 will be Wentworth’s first annual Hackathon. The planning committee has been preparing since fall semester for this event that lands on March 25-26. One of our members even made a blog just about us! We have our own website designed to spread information and show off our development skillz (even though it’s a static webpage, it’s cool enough that it feels interactive).

Behold our fancy logo and website!

We’ve been reaching out to sponsors all over the place to gather the resources to put this on for the people that come to the event. So far, we’re getting stuff/help from various departments and people around the school, Microsoft, Facebook, edX, kwidil, goPuff, and a few others. I always bring my resume to hackathons for a shot at jobs with sponsors; some companies sponsor hackathons and send a representative as a way of scouting talent.

Like us on facebook!

If you can’t come this year, this will be an annual event. So hopefully I can meet you next year :D.

❄❄❄ Snow Days ❄❄❄

These couple weeks have had two glorious snow days. Normally I’m the first one to detest snow. The cancellations set my education back a day and usually mean a good deal of shoveling at home. Those crystals spell white doom for the long-distance commuter. In previous years, my 90 minute commutes have doubled to nearly three hours.

This time around though, the lack of school saved me from a good deal of misery. I’ve been somewhat unwell since Monday, but by the time Thursday rolled around, I’d had more than my share. I had been sniffling and my hands were bone dry from washing them between classes.

On the day off, I caught up on ages worth of work. I closed some ends on my open applications for summer programs and grad school, cleaned my room, started a fitness challenge with my friend, and worked on planning Wentworth’s awesome first hackathon. I did some homework too: numerical analysis a day early, an outline for an essay due soon, and some molecular biology research.

Second Year Undergrad -> Grad school

Later today, my first graduate school application will be complete and submitted. Perhaps students halfway through their second year of an undergraduate degree do not apply for a Master’s, but circumstances are just too perfect.

There are a couple programs out there that accept applications from students prior to their senior year, like Boston University’s School of Public Health Select Scholars Program. Undergraduates in their junior year can gain early acceptance to the graduate program and complete their senior year at Wentworth. The program is a unique opportunity for undergraduates with an interest in public health to enroll in a top graduate public health program and join a cohort of peers through accelerated placement and subsequent graduate training in public health. The program provides early immersion in public health, giving students the opportunity to explore different options that are available in this field and connecting them with faculty mentors for academic and career advising. Image result for public health from https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi39tH0uezRAhXK2SYKHez-CrUQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.healthcaregeorgia.org%2Ffocus-areas%2Fpublic-health.cfm&psig=AFQjCNHB3EJGOd5DxCE_yQj6Ri7t-fRZgg&ust=1485954458954683

Our Applied Math Department invites speakers every week to talk about things someone can do in a mathematics-related field. Late last semester, two representatives from BU were here to talk about public health opportunities and Travis DiJoseph, associate director of academic affairs, came to speak too and mention their Select Scholars Program. There’s a lot of work in statistics and computation to be done in the public health field, and especially interesting to me are the bioinformatics and biostatistics applications.

I was filling out my CV to apply to the program and realizing how much more qualified I am now than I was than last year. Thank you Wentworth!
You can expect more details about building a CV in a later post.

Wolfram Visit

The start of this year has been absolutely crazy. I think perhaps I overcommitted and am in over my head. Regardless, cool things keep happening so I will try to keep it the work rate.

Last Tuesday, Stephen Wolfram visited the school to give a talk about what he does and what computational thinking can do for us. He is convinced that computational approaches to old problems are the future of science. In addition, he described ways that any number of normally boring processes can be automated, replaced, or obsoleted.

That’s the reason that he built his Wolfram Language. He was originally mostly a particle physicist, hanging around the same crowd as Einstein, but a bit younger; he was good friends with Richard Feynman.

Earlier that morning I had gotten to direct Wolfram to his presentation room and explain a little bit about the school. Because of this, some of the faculty from the computer science and math departments invited me to come along with them and Wolfram to dinner! They had made reservations at The Squealing Pig for that evening. By the time students attending Stephen Wolfram’s presentation were done asking questions, time had slipped away and the hour was slightly past 7:30.

Time had slipped so much, in fact, that we missed our reservations at The Squealing Pig and Wolfram opted to go to Au Bon Pain in the interest of getting food quickly. Talking is hungry business and everyone wanted to go home.

We did go to Au Bon Pain and talked for a long time there and two of the three students that came to dinner got autographed books.