How the Ripple came to be

by Zawad

This is a tale about blogs, bonds, and boba. To be more specific, it’s about how I got roped into making this blog exist.

It was the first day of October. I was a wide-eyed frosh, blundering my way through MIT. On that day, I’d been lured once again to the ESP Office, this time with promises of a ‘snack’ if I attended a meeting. I arrived, and once my eyes had adjusted to the sensory overload of the office clutter, I spotted it. Boba.

(The boba is actually not relevant at all and I will ignore it ever existed for the rest of this blog post. Why mention it at all? Drama.)

The meeting was for ESP’s Community Working Group. The term ‘Working Group’ might conjure up a black-and-white image of old men with sagging cheeks discussing how to fill a 400 page report with 100 more pages of– I’m gonna stop you there. Because our working group (affectionately called CWG) is… not that. It’s a bunch of plucky undergrads sitting around a horrible mess (underneath which legends say lies a table), trying to come up with cool ideas to build connections between people at ESP Programs!! Ok, maybe that doesn’t sound cool to you. But what about a puzzle hunt? Meme channels for teachers?? What about, dear reader, this very blog you’re reading???

Indeed, it all started at that meeting. While I spent most of it trying to figure out the weird words everyone was saying (which at the time included Summer HSSP and ESPerimental Summer Program), we managed to come up with several ideas for building community at programs. One of the most discussed was Student Confessions – handing the mike over to students and letting them say whatever they thought. Sound familiar?

Next week, we discussed possible details for our ideas. There wasn’t much hope for Confessions. Would people have enough interactions to even care to post? It would survive for the 2 days of splash, and then die out? Would we have to *gasp* submit fake confessions to seed it?? It seemed like too much work for too little gain.

But we had all seen the spark in the idea, and we wanted to keep that spark alive (what we really wanted was to build the next big confessions page). And so the idea evolved. There was another plan for a yearbook, or some sort of video. They all mashed together into this hybrid blog/vlog thing.

And so the plans were set. We would set up a wordpress. We would seed it by writing posts ourselves (hehe). We would put the blog on emails, signs, and have a *presence* at Splash. Everyone would know that the Ripple comes after the Splash…

One week passed.

‘Oh no, I’m busy with classes and Cascade.’

Two weeks passed.

‘Splash is still a month away, right?’

A month passed.

‘WordPress is hard :(‘

After much procrastinating, I finally got the site up. It looked pretty bad. Janice sprinkled some of her magic in, and it was… slightly less bad (and after a recent redesign, it looks great :0).

Because of how late the blog actually got started, we got caught in the tidal wave of the week before Splash. And all the grand plans of signs and *presence* were forgotten in the rush to make sure everything was alright.

But once classes ended on the final period of Sunday, we got to work. We drafted a snippet to add to the closing email, sent out to all students and teachers, asking for blog entries. And we got several, on topics from LaTeX to the MIT Tunnels to the very spirit of Splash! Of course I procrastinated on putting those up as well…

And now the Ripple will continue beyond just after the Splash. I can’t wait to read the blog posts you guys have to share, this summer and beyond!

ESP Art Through the Ages

by Janice

I’ve never blogged before, but I’m going to give it a shot. I have been making art and am currently one of the ESP historians so I have decided to combine my experiences for this ~virtual tour~

That wraps up our virtual tour!

What are your HSSP backronyms? I challenge you to illustrate them and send them into esp-blog@mit.edu

Like! Comment! Subscribe! am I doing this right?

Wandering Through The Tunnels (And Why You Should Too)

by Nathaniel Waterman

It was the second day of Splash, and I was staring up at the dome of building 7. I had some time to kill before my first class, so I began to wander.

I came across a some papers taped to the wall, which claimed to be an unconventional tour of MIT. With nothing better to do, I followed the string as it slithered away from the construction-paper sign. It led me through a few buildings, occasionally ascending onto the wall to provide a fact or explanation by way of more papers taped alongside it. By the time I checked my watch, I had followed this tour deep into the labyrinth of MIT.

My watch indicated that I had five minutes to get to class. I glanced at my schedule – my first course of the morning was a two-hour lecture on what promised to be a thoroughly dry subject. I decided that this string would be a lot more fun than listening to someone talk for a hundred minutes, so I continued through the innards of MIT.

I could describe my wonderful journey from that point on, but I’ll summarize to save your time and mine: I poked my nose into every unlocked door I could find, on the highest and the lowest floors, and it was amazing. I found charming workspaces, concrete tunnels, nooks, crannies, overlooks, and all manner of secret, out-of-the-way places. I found a rolling office chair by a picture window, and pondered life as I watched cars and hurried people rush by beneath, cowering under the rain. These were the most serene two hours of my life.

I encourage you, during your next Splash experience, to do as I did. Stare at the pits and cracks in the concrete walls. Contemplate some piece of hidden architecture, or find an unexpectedly cozy spot. Recline in an out-of-the way bench.

Wander without the shackles of strict time-blocks around your wrists. Be free, at least for an hour or two.

This post’s author also shared some of the pictures he took on his wanderings around MIT. You can view them in Some photos from my Splashing on The Ripple.

You can submit blog entries at esp-blog@mit.edu.

LaTeX applications for the STEM-uninclined

by Yassie

Every year I, as much of a Humanities person as the year before, show up to Splash and take a bunch of STEM classes. This year, intro to LaTeX joined the mix. I have next to no coding experience, and I’ve honestly forgotten what a Boolean is by now. I also have no idea what an integral is. I will not be handing in sheets upon sheets of dazzling latex-coded homework, for alas, I am in pre-calculus. So why, Yassie, why did you take this class if you’re not going to use LaTeX for what it was made for, pretty PSETs? I strolled into his class eager to leave with some knowledge about how to make math, and text in general, prettier, though this is too vague an explanation to fully capture my current uses for LaTeX. Let me explain.

Artwork, and what I believe is an integral of sorts.

I sat in class as my teacher put this scary equation on the board. ”Code it,” he said. “Okay,” we said and coded. Pictured at the bottom of Fig. 1 is this equation, hand-coded by yours truly. But what’s that on the top half? Art. While Ascii art has its limits, LaTeX art has none. The sky’s the limit. Code some bees.

Biology lab report calculations

Upon returning home, I decided that I should find some practical use for LaTeX. Biology lab reports were the way to go. I said goodbye to the monstrosities that are -Km*(V/[S])+VMax and hello to a nice equation. Gone are the days of excessive parentheses and ^-1. Do not fear, LaTeX is here! I look forward to temporarily decreasing the entropy of the universe in my lab reports as it increases in my peers’.

Phosphofructokinase and 🙂

What is phosphofructokinase? As I and the rest of my biology class discovered a few weeks ago, it’s an enzyme that phosphorylates a fructose 6-phosphate in glycolysis. It has since become a meme. We fear no man, but we fear phosphofructokinase. With the help of LaTeX, I can turn phosphofructokinase into a textual form that better instills fear. On the other hand, LaTeX can also make smiley faces with $\smiley$.

Real hats!

Near the end of the class, one of my teachers told us about the realhats package. Instead of a chapeau or circumflex accent, ^, LaTeX gives a letter an actual hat. I no longer take French, but willingly peered into the depths of my brain to unveil some words with chapeaus. This task was well worth the reward.

As my knowledge of LaTeX (and math and biology) continues to expand, I look forward to using LaTeX for more practical things. For now, I indulge in hats and dynamic art forms.

You can submit entries for The Ripple by emailing esp-blog@mit.edu.

Why Dumb Stuff is Good

by Blaise

ok so ya boi went to splash right, lots of us did, and if you recall, many popular classes were Certifiably Dumb. why, you ask, is dumb stuff so popular? well you see, dear reader, there are a few things that children truly love, chief among them being food, competition, learning, and laughter. trust me I’m a professional child. the problem with the whole kids love learning this is that school sucks. and yeah we’ve probably all figured out that school sucks,, but my theory as to why is that it doesn’t incorporate enough other Childish Joys of Life. therefore, combining Dumb Stuff, or laughter, and learning, we end up with classes like Into the Depths of Wikipedia, a very popular series of classes at spark and splash. conclusion: kids need more dumb shenanigans,, and food. make school fun again, give us Laughter, Food, and War. oh and when you BOOMERS try to tell me about how we don’t have the budget for that, or when schools do incorporate good stuff we don’t appreciate it,, you can get off of my lawn because you never do anything right!! okay!! yesterday I went to a mandatory pep rally!!! you suck at this! I just want a dodgeball game followed by pizza,, and it should NOT be REQUIRED because THATS NOT FUN. and also, we’ve been figuring out how to have fun for no money literally forever. it is one of our true callings. we will find ways to entertain ourselves given, like, a gym and a bag of pepperoni. let us be children. give us the opportunity to have fun and be dumb or we will take it ourselves. and them’s the facts.

Here are some pictures we think represents “opportunities to have fun” that happened in Splash this year! Click on a picture to make it larger.

You can submit blog posts by emailing esp-blog@mit.edu.

Write for the Ripple!

Couldn’t get enough of Splash this November? Well do you know what comes after the Splash? The Ripple! ESP is creating an official blog for Splash this year, so that you can share your amazing experiences taking and teaching classes.

If you’re a student, we can’t wait to hear your stories! Tell us all about running through the Infinite, learning cool things from CAD to Cooking, and making friends at a Walk-in activity! Or, you could show it to us with pictures and videos of Splash!

We are also welcoming blog posts from teachers. Perhaps you can talk about your crazy weekend teaching 8 sections of a super popular class, or what you learned while researching the Majapahit for your class on Java!

Wondering how to come up with a cool blog post idea? You can take a look at these prompts for inspiration:

  • MIT campus is a labyrinth and many students have stories about adventuring through its twists and turns. Tell us about your adventure through MIT campus.
  • Meet someone cool during Splash? Introduce them to us! Or write something with them!
    Come from some faraway land? Tell us about your journey to Splash!
  • Any meme submissions?
  • Did you make food for a class and eat it? Is there any cool food you ate at Splash? Tell us about it!
    MIT has a lot of cool buildings, paintings, sculptures and statues. Share your favorite pictures of MIT’s campus!
  • Didn’t take enough pictures? Draw something cool that happened during Splash, and tell us about it!
  • What’s your favorite class? What did you do during the class? Tell us about it!
  • What surprised you the most about Splash?
  • Any advice for people going to next year’s Splash?
  • If you were to do this year’s Splash all over, which classes would you have taken? What are all the classes you wished you could have taken but couldn’t go to?
  • What is your opinion on ducks

We hope you have a great time at Splash this coming weekend, and have some cool stories to tell. Submissions for the blog will open after Splash ends – be sure to check your emails or check back on this page for details!

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