"Be a participant in life, not just a spectator."
"Be happy."
"Pursue your passion." - Dave Gustashaw at Olin and MIT for Impact.

Impact went pretty well. We ended up with 11 companies. Around 75 students came to the panel discussion and ~150 probably came to the career expo itself. Olin made a very solid showing of ~20 students, so I was pretty pleased about that since it was in the middle of the day and a 45 minute drive from Olin. Not sure what to make of the MIT turnout though...

There is already talk of what to do next year, so it's looking like Impact 2006 may really be the first in a series...

So I'm happy, but very tired and unfortunately getting tired...so this week is going to be a bit rough. Thankfully it ends with a 3-day weekend, so I'll probably be able to catch up.

Ah Halo, how I missed thee

Well today didn't quite pan out as I had planned - no working for $$ ended up happening. BUT in the Impact booklet is done and properly formatted to be printed, there are Impact posters everywhere, another announcement will be in the Digest - and I've resigned myself to the need to send another e-mail on Saturday since apparently nobody bothered to read the first one. Not that I'm bitter or anything. Anyhow, I'll just be glad when it's done. We've pulled things together quite well, but it's definitely eating every moment of free time I have...but I digress.

Tonight I managed to hold onto probably 1.5 hours of free time and played Halo with Kevin, Michael, and Steve. Other than the times when Michael went crazy and started killing all of his teammates (us), it was consistently fun even if I'm pretty bad these days (and it was even fun during his moments of mania). So yah, highlight of my day was to play a video game that I haven't played in probably more than 6 months? Good times good times.

A little The Lance Thrower and then it's off to bed, so I can get up reasonably early, still get rest, and work on Allen's research since I've been doing a poor job of it to date.

An Old Friend and a Birthday party

Well I never know what to do when I don't update this for a while. Do I cover all that's happened or not happened since my previous entry or do I just head off on the current trends as if there has been no pause?

I guess I'll opt for the later since I really don't feel like writing for several hours tonight.

I had lunch with Natalie, an old HS friend, this afternoon. She studied biology at OSU for 3 years and then headed to Northeastern to get her Doctrate of Pharmacy in Fall '04 while her boyfriend is after a PhD in computational biology at BU. We've been meaning to get together since I got back from Scotland and finally the slacking lost out. So I've now meet the b/f of several years and we managed to catch up over lunch (in which I had a really good thai peanut sauce).

In other news, I just got back from Sarah's (last summer roommate) birthday party in which there was quality pizza from College Sqaure and (perhaps more important) a great game of pictionary for a group of nine of us. It was great fun and I was definitely into it after a bit of lagging at the beginning. I really need to try to find some more time to spend with friends before the end of the year...

Speaking of...I suppose I should detail what I'm doing with my time at the moment. Much to my surprise, I'm still enrolled in 4 classes even though I only need two to graduate and 3 to be a full-time student. The winning classes are:

1. SCOPE - because I sadly don't have a lot of choice. We're still locked in a battled trying to get the hardware to behave as we want it to.
2. Politics of the World Economy - I wanted to take this course for the past 4 years at Wellesley and we just happened to get a PoliSci adjunct at Olin this semester who is teaching it. Great fortion. The catch is that they wanted to make the class open to everyone, so there are definite disparities of knowledge and global understanding that are proving difficult. At present, the class is pitched way too low for most of the upperclassman and seemingly too high for several of the underclassman...this dynamic is definitely a problem. On the plus side, the readings for the course are really interesting and I'm being forced to read them, so that's good.
3. Non-Linear Dynamics and Chaos - my last math course at Olin and my first with John Geddes (the Olin professor originally from Scotland). This class is great. It's challenging and my lack of Matlab experience over the last 2+ years has made it harder than it should be, but it's just spectacular. We don't have tests. Instead we write four math papers over the course of the semester and work through "case studies" which are basically problem sets that teach. Each class begins with 20-30 minutes of lecture and then it's studio time for the next hour and a half while John, Mark Somerville, and a student TA walk around and help you if you get stuck. It's a relatively hands-off approach to teaching, but it's really engaging.
4. Foundations of Computer Science: I signed up with the full knowledge that I would probably drop it and yet I must confess I'm still engaged and interested in the subject matter. We'll see if that enthusiasm survives our first homework assignment...

And of course I wouldn't be Will if I wasn't working on a bunch of stuff outside the classroom too...perhaps too many for my own good? Project include:

1. Social Mobility Research with Allen Downey, one of Olin's computer science professors
2. Development of a web application to manage Cross-Registration at Olin (on which I want to use a cool new web technology called Ruby on Rails)
3. A web application for competitive debate teams with Frances (also a Ruby on Rails app)
4. I'm also trying to help Chris and Katie rebuild the Olin Semantic Directory so we can use it to store additional information in an alumni database of sorts.
5. Lastly, I'm working with a group of students at MIT to put together Impact: http://web.mit.edu/impact/. A career expo for students at MIT and Olin interested in careers that serve society and the environment. It's been an interesting journey, but it is definitely a burden that I'll be happy to remove after Feb 14th.

And of course there's the search for a job...I think I'm going to aim towards journalism and consulting even if it's late in the recruiting season and see if something comes up...

I wonder if anyone still reads this? Anyhow, that's the quick update for now.

Oh and if anyone is looking for a good King Arthur series, then I'd completely recommend Jack Whyte's Camulod Chronicles. I'm currently on The Lance Thrower which is about Lancelot and Arthur. Good stuff. Whyte couches the traditional story in history and weaves a wonderful tale.

That's all for now.