Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my study away blog!
A few meta things first.

Why I'm writing my first blog
 I want my family and friends to know what I'm up to. Otherwise my mom will try to call me everyday :). Also, in 5 years, I want to look back and see all the silly things I did.


My writing style
 I'm going for quantity over length of posts (hopefully the quality will still be there). So my posts will be short. I'm not going to write down everything I did, but rather present one or two interesting cultural/sociological/whatever things I learned that day/week. If you know me (which presumably, you do if you're reading this), you probably know I like writing very informally (with lots side comments). Improper grammar/spelling is a guarantee.

...All right more about France!

More about my study away experience. 

Here's where I'm going: 

École Polytechnique, right outside of Paris, France. Ecole Polytechnique's nickname is "X"

Let's do a quick comparison between X and Olin (my home institution)

OlinX
LocationNeedham, MA, USPalaiseau, France
Year founded19971794
Number of students~350 undergrad2000 undergrad
~700 grad
Types of majorsEngineeringEngineering, Math, Science
Famous alumniNo one... yet!Nicolas Carnot (X1812): the heat engine/2nd law of thermo guy

Henri Poincaré (X1873):he formulated the Poincaré conjecture

Benoit Mandelbrot (X1944): Father of fractal geometry

Serge Dassault (X1946):CEO of Dassault Group... you know the guys who make Solidworks and cool fighter jets.

Joseph Fourier (Faculty): no explanation needed!
André-Marie Ampère (Faculty): see above!


This will definitely be an interesting experience for me!

Your job as the reader
...is to ask me questions (Steven, how well do you speak French? Answer: pas mal) ! Post them in the comments.

That's it for my first blog post!


2 comments:

  1. To be picky about facts, SolidWorks was created in 1993 and originally based in Concord, MA. It was later bought by Dessault Systems. So I think we can only credit Mr. Dassault with having tons of money and good taste in CAD software...

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  2. I am looking forward to reading your blog!

    Rui

    ReplyDelete