What it means to be an artist at Hopkins

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Name: Greco Song

Year: Class of 2013

Hometown: Fullerton, CA

Area of Study: Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

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Hi, everyone. I’m Greco, today’s guest blogger. I’m a sophomore majoring in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChemBE)and am currently involved in Student Admissions Advisory Board and an a cappella group called Vocal Chords. Here are some introductory stuff in bullet points:

• If you would like to know about classes I’ve taken, dorms I’ve lived in, etc, you can read more about me here. On that page, you can even ask me questions!
• I also have an admission-sponsored twitter account which you can follow (JHU_Greco).
• This is my second time guest blogging. You can read about my a cappella group in my first guest blog entry here.
• Also, check out my freshman blog here.

Today I’m going to talk about an art class I took this semester. Being a ChemBE major, only taking classes from the department can sometimes be too much math, matter-of-fact type of learning, etc. In other words, it’s freakin’ boring. I did that in the second semester of my freshman year and I felt like a robot. That’s why I try to take at least one random course that’s not as much science/engineering every semester. This semester, I took this art course called The Artist in the Museum: Making Books.

Now, many of you might wonder how making books is art. When you just look at books, they’re not that interesting looking. Every book is just bound pieces of same-size rectangular paper. But this is not the kind of book we studied in our class. Out class dealt with “artist’s books”. Artist’s books can be in any forms and contain anything that the artists want. I mean, really, they don’t even have to be “books.” An artist’s book can be just a bunch of colored blocks connected with a single string. As long as it’s bound by something it can be an artist’s book.

During the first third of the semester, our class went to many museums including Walter’s museum, Swaren Museum, and even our own Peabody library, MSE library, and Evergreen library to explore different kinds of books from different time periods. We first saw a lot of really really old books in Peabody and Evergreen. All of those old books had the “traditional” structure but had exquisite illustrations, all of which were hand-drawn and –colored. Since books represented wealth back then, a lot of them had really nice leather covers and beautiful end pages. Then in other museums we saw modern artist’s books. My mind was absolutely blown away with their creative and unique structures and contents. Some had amazing pop-ups, and also some very interesting textures. One even had an electric motor inside the book! Where else can you find such an exotic creation? The collection struck as surprise and this is when I started to really think making books as art.

We spent the rest of the semester trying to create our own artist’s books. Being the first book-making class ever offered in our school, we didn’t have a lot of resources, so we couldn’t really play with the book structure. However, we could do whatever we wanted inside the books. People had some great ideas. My classmate decided to make gorgeous textiles out of the illustrations we saw at Peabody, print them out on pieces of fabric and sew them into the pages of her book. She also included really awesome photos of models wearing her fabric. Another classmate created a cut out fairy tale book that turned out to be absolutely incredible.

My book combines my interest in photography and my respect for one of the most influential contemporary poets, Mark Strand (b. 1934). The photos in my book are inspired by the way his poems convey elegance and beauty. Mark Strand does not decorate his poems with unnecessary adjectives or adverbs. Rather, he creates scenes with concrete imageries in a simple, modern language that everyone can understand. The poems themselves are “moments of deep introspection.” In this book I have taken Strand’s approach a little bit further by breaking down his poems into single words and rearranging them into unique, thought provoking shapes. By removing the familiar sentence structure and, thus, constraints, I have the poems speaking for themselves. In my photos, I, too, wanted to create simple and elegant compositions—staying away from biased colors, manipulative camera angles, and shallow depths of field. I also experimented with cut-out frames. It started out as a mere curiosity at the semester’s beginning that grew into an obsession. I feel if I can capture the moments of inspiration inside these small, limiting frames, I can do the same in my seemingly monotonous life.

If the readers can find beauty in such minimally embellished black-and-white photos, they are then free to be inspired by almost anything—they just have to open their eyes, look around, and realize that there are so many enchanting things around them. Like what Strand said, “Each moment is a place you’ve never been.”

At the end of the semester, we had an opportunity to showcase our work at our school’s Evergreen Museum. It was really awesome seeing my work at a museum! Who can have such an awesome opportunity like that? Not many. And my book even had its own pillow :) I invited some friends over and there were also other people from local area.

Even before I took this class, I did a lot of photography stuff, but I always wondered if I was actually an artist. But when I went to the exhibition, I then felt like a true artist.

One of the things I love about taking art courses at Hopkins is that there are no art majors in classes. In fact, Hopkins doesn’t offer art major (except Peabody…). So the people taking these art courses at Hopkins are coming from a variety of academic backgrounds. I myself am majoring in Chemical Engineering, which has nothing to do with art, and my classmates also had no artistic backgrounds before taking the class. My professor also teaches at MICA, an art institution right next to Hopkins, and she told us that she gets way more interesting perspectives at Hopkins than some the classes she teaches at MICA. And seeing all the end products proved that one doesn’t have to study art all his life to become an artist.

My Top 5 Favorite Classes at Hopkins

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Name: Evelyn Clark

Year: Class of 2010

Hometown: Waycross, GA

Major: Public Health (social sciences), minors in Anthropology & Theatre Arts and Sciences

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1) Thinking and Living with Animals (History of Science and Technology)

Thinking and Living with Animals is a Dean’s Teaching Fellowship course taught by the most amazing Italian man named Massimo.  Graduate students can apply to teach courses on the material that is their particular expertise and the Dean of Arts and Sciences decides which ones will actually bet taught at Hopkins—and luckily for me, this one was!

I took this course the semester after I switched out of pre-med to try to expand my horizons and find new interests.  It was the first time it had been offered (but is currently offered again this semester!) and there were not very many people in the class.  We talked about all kinds of things I would never have given second thought to—like whether or not animals have agency and the issues behind scientific testing on mice and other animals.  I particularly loved this class because it was on a subject I would still know nothing about if I hadn’t taken the chanced and registered for it—but now I feel like I actually know what I’m saying when vegetarianism or animal cruelty comes up.

2) Anthropology of Clothes (Anthropology)

As an anthropology minor I am always on the lookout for exciting anthro classes, and as a girl I absolutely love clothes.  Put them together and what do you get?  That’s right… Anthropology of Clothes!  I will admit that I had no idea what to expect when I signed up for this class and it positively blew away any expectations I could possibly have set.

We looked at fashion, clothing choice, and the concept of modesty in lots of different cultures throughout history.  My favorite assignment had to do with fashion through the generations—we had to interview two people each from three different generations (I chose my dad’s mom, mom’s dad, mom, dad, and two sisters) about not only their concept of dressing up and what that meant at different points in their lives, but also what their favorite outfits were and what colors or materials they like to wear.  Even though the paper was “a minimum of eight pages” mine turned out to be 32 (including some pictures).  Interviewing my family about a subject I had never asked about was not only very fun, but super informative as well; there were distinct gender differences regardless of generation, as well as inter-generational viewpoints that jumped off the pages at me.

3) Theatre Performance (Theatre Arts and Studies)

So, as a theatre minor I take theatre classes here pretty seriously.  And while they are all really fascinating, my favorite is Performance.  Though most classes in the minor are performance-based, this class in particular is different because instead of working on short scenes from different shows throughout the semester, you audition first and work on one play to be performed at the end.  This is especially great if you would be doing a play that semester anyway, because not only do you get to work with wonderful, professional directors, but you also get course credit for your rehearsals!

4) Museums and Globalization (History of Science and Technology)

This was another class that I signed up for randomly that ended up really surprising me.  Museums and Globalization is actually a video lecture class, and half the students go to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio!  There are two professors, Prof. Kargon at Hopkins and Prof. Levin at Case, who take turns lecturing each week while we sit in front of a large video screen watching the students 400 miles away as if we were all in the same room.  We were divided up for reports and presentations with students from both schools in each group, and towards the end of the semester some of their students even came to Baltimore!  We all took a trip down to D.C. to have a personal tour by the curator of an exhibit in the newly-opened Smithsonian National Museum of American History.  I even made a great friend, with whom I am still very close (hi, Matt!).

5) Ethical Issues in Health Policy: Public Health and Health Care (JHSPH)

Don’t be alarmed if you don’t remember seeing this course offered on the ISIS website, because I took it down at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.  The summer before my senior year I quite literally woke up one morning while I was studying abroad and decided I wanted to go to law school, particularly for health policy and legislation.  Since I’m a Public Health major and am required to take classes at Bloomberg I thought this one would be perfect given my interests… and it was!

This was a very small class; there were about eleven students total from all different areas of study—some were PhD candidates, masters students, medical students, an the occasional undergraduate.  We only met once a week for three hours in a little room and all sat around a table discussing the issue of ethics in health policy.  However, the reason I loved this course was less because of the material (though it was certainly interesting!) and more about the atmosphere.  It was the first time I really felt like I knew what I wanted to do, and I was actually doing it—with other people who wanted to do it too!  It took me away from being an undergraduate and helped me see what my life may be like in the future—and that was absolutely invaluable.

Teaching About the Social Web

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Name: Daniel Mirota

Year: 4th year Graduate Student

Hometown: Flemington, NJ

Major: Ph.D. in Computer Science, focus in medical applications of Computer Vision

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By now, many folks around campus may have noticed the film crew that was on campus in the first week of November.  They were filming for The Social Network the upcoming film about the start of facebook.  The film crew being around reminded me of the course I taught with Carol Reiley, “Computer Vision Application for Online Social Networks” or informally facebook 101.  I wouldn’t doubt most of the readings of this blog have a facebook account. 

It was my first time teaching, aside from being a TA.  Carol and I worked tirelessly to complete the design of the course and write the curriculum.  We even stayed on campus through New Years to have the course ready for intersession.

When intersession started, we had ~150 slides for the first week of class.  With this many slides we though the slides would last to entire week.  However, we used them all in the first day and found that we needed to quickly work to keep up with the class.

Our class was the first time, to our knowledge, a facebook computer vision application course was taught at Hopkins.  Teaching a class so fresh and current I found very exciting.  As Carol and I researched the different features of facebook we discovered many interesting parts of the facebook API and what possibilities were available for Adobe Flash and other multimedia application.

By the end of the course Carol and I were both very impressed by all of the student projects.  We presented a tough course covering a broad range of topics from a brief history of facebook, to basic computer vision methods and developing in a web framework.  All of our students did a wonderful job.

Overall, while taxing at times and requiring some late nights, teaching the course was very rewarding.  Hopkins gave us a great environment to teach in.  Carol and I also thank the Digital Media Center (DMC) for finding our curriculum an innovative use of technology and granting us funds to purchase webcams and wii-motes.  Both of which are available for student projects at the DMC.  So take advantage of the DMC anytime you can.  They have many resources for all of your media needs.  As well as people there to help with their service and don’t forget the game room.

It was excellent teaching the course.  I received a real appreciation of what it takes to build a course from just an idea to making the course successful for all of my students.  This level of experience I personally feel is only available from teaching an entire course.  While my experience TA was also satisfying, it was simply not the same.

Marketing at JHU

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Name: Preeta Reddy

Year: Class of 2011

Hometown: Fremont, CA

Major: Psychology major, minor in Entrepreneurship & Management

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Marketing is a very interesting part of the Center for Leadership Education, which is why I’ve taken an active interest in it this past year. After completing Principles of Marketing, I was able to participate in a two-week long Intersession course during which I heard from Baltimore-area speakers who provided invaluable information about media marketing as well as public relations and then visit New York City where we heard from companies like NBC, CBS, and MTV about media marketing. In the spring semester of 2009, I took Advertising and Promotion, where I and other classmates worked closely with Nissan and EdVenture Partners (our liaison with Nissan) to create awareness about the Nissan cube ® on the Hopkins campus.

During the Intersession course I learned about the specific work that P.R. agencies did – crisis management, fostering a good reputation, building awareness about certain initiatives (e.g. green initiatives) that a company was implementing, as well as the specific work that media firms did – developing programs, keeping track of viewership/listeners, marketing to specific markets, among others. The trip to New York City was a great way to get exposure to huge media giants as well as reputed P.R. firms.

The Advertising and Promotion class was a unique, hands-on experience where our class formed a marketing agency. Serving as co-manager of the Campaign Strategy and Implementation department, my co-manager and I as well as the rest of our team were responsible for creating the “big event” that would generate interest and exposure for the Nissan cube ® on campus. The other departments, Advertising, P.R., Research, Budget, and Reports/Presentations, played huge roles in the marketing campaign. Research conducted thorough surveys and tabulated data in a short period of time to give crucial information to the rest of the class, which we used to determine how to tailor our campaign to the Johns Hopkins undergraduates. P.R. helped get funding and donations for our campaign as well as exposure to the non-Hopkins community. Advertising created a website, two commercials, as well as multiple flyers and banners, as well as employing various non-traditional methods such as a flash mob and an actual cube made out of PVC pipe to garner attention to our campaign. Budget kept track of spending and added value while Reports/Presentations gathered all the work we had done during the semester and created presentations and reports to present to our client, Nissan.

Basically, there was something for everyone in this agency, whether it be analyzing research data or coming up with ideas and executing commercials. In a nutshell, I think that perfectly exemplifies the marketing world, and especially the type of unique experiences that you can have at Johns Hopkins University in the CLE department.

Class-A-Holic

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Name: Tabitha Moses

Year: Class of 2011

Hometown: Oxford, England

Major: Cognitive Science

Previous Blog Entries: What’s up in Wolman 3 East, Fall Break

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Hi, my name is Tabitha, and I am class-a-holic. I have no control of this disease and end up attempting to take far too many credits every semester. Let me explain what I mean by describing my semester so far…

So, this semester began very stressfully for me, but in a good way if that’s possible! I started off the semester with a first week schedule of 28 credits, and not because I really needed any of those classes they just all sounded fun. This is my problem. My friends call me crazy, but I can’t help it, I have too many interests, and there are so many classes I want to take!

I am not sure if it is a good thing or not but Hopkins caters to my addiction very well. Every semester there is an add/drop period, which allows you two weeks from the beginning of the semester to change classes and add more, after this two weeks you can still drop classes, you just can’t add them.

So, at the beginning of this semester I made myself a “first week schedule” which contained most of the classes I wanted to take that didn’t clash in times by too much. My plan was to go to all of the classes, get syllabi, see what the work load was like, and if I was interested in the course material, and then drop down to a reasonable number of credits for the second week. But here’s my problem: I liked all the classes I showed up to. For most people this is a good thing, but for me it wasn’t because I could not cope with taking 28 credits (I’m not even sure it’s allowed if you’re not a engineer!) Well, okay, I am lying a little, there is one class I didn’t like—Statistics—but it’s the only pre-med class I’m taking this semester so I have to take it.

So, what do I do about the rest of the classes?! Well, if you’re me you whimper pathetically at your friends and ask them to decide for you, which sadly (and very meanly in my opinion) they don’t. Then I was stuck. This is a mean school with too many good classes, I can’t believe that I am turning into the sort of person who wants to take 28 credits…that is not me, I am lazy, and very proud of my laziness! Anyway, I finally came up with a plan, which was to go through each class and decide which had the most work required of it, and then drop that class, well, those two classes. It was terrible! (Yes, I know I am melodramatic, I think everyone around me does after they had to deal with me for those two weeks!)

Anyway, the two classes I dropped, I am very sad about, so would like to mention them, I also plan on taking them again, I just hope they are offered again.

* Theory of Knowledge – this class is with Professor Michael Williams who is a great professor, and the subject matter is really fascinating to me, you learn all about different theories of the mind and how we acquire knowledge. However, it is a 400 level class, with a lot of difficult reading, so I decided to drop this one.

* Sleep, Dreams, and Altered States of Consciousness – this class is so cool, I really loved the subject matter, and the professor is great, he teaches you how to read EEGs one weekend instead of a class. However, this class is normally taught every year, and had a lot of work associated with it: 2 quizzes, a midterm, a final, a paper, and a group research project with presentation, so I decided to drop it.

While I did drop these two I did continue going to altered states of consciousness for the second week just because I wanted to learn about it. I am definitely taking that course next year, and I can’t wait!

As I no longer have a copy of my “first week schedule” I thought I’d share my revised “sensible” schedule with you here.

Okay, so I need to stop focusing on what I dropped, and look at what I’m taking, so here are my classes for this semester.

Language and Mind

Well, I’m taking this class for two reasons, the first is the fact that it’s required for my major (Cognitive Science) and the second is the fact that it sounded really interesting. I actually didn’t know I had to take this class when I signed up for it, so that shows that I actually do want to take it. Now I have to be honest, the class is not the most interesting of classes right now, but that has nothing to do with the topics, I still find the topic to be fascinating, and I just hope this class picks up a bit over the semester.

Statistics 1

Okay, this isn’t exactly a class I was looking forward to. I have to take it at some point if I want to do anything in psychology or cognitive science research, and for pre-med, but I have done some stat before. It’s not too bad so far, and hopefully it’ll stay that way!

Introduction to Moral Philosophy

I have only one fault with this class…it’s a 9am. I am not a 9am person, and I am having a little bit of trouble getting up for this class, but JHU_Mandy is in it too, so we’re able to tell each other what we miss! This is a required course for a bioethics minor, which I might be doing, and it’s also an interesting course, especially because of my TA (teaching assistant). A lot of the big classes have TAs that you meet with in a smaller seminar form for one class a week, and they go over what you’ve been doing in class that week and we have discussions about the material. I have had this TA before for another philosophy class and he’s really good because he knows how to keep a fun discussion going while explaining the material.

Philosophical Implications of Clinical Neuroscience

I’m not sure whether this class has ever been offered before; it’s a 400 level class out of the philosophy department taught by a doctor at the hospital who was originally a philosophy PhD student. I really love this class. We essentially spend all of our time discussing different bioethical and philosophical issues in neuroscience and how people try to deal with them, as well as our thoughts on them. The course was really over-subscribed but the professor insisted on keeping the class small so discussions would be good, so I’m really lucky I got in as a sophomore as there are grad students in the class as well. I would really recommend this course to anyone interested in psychology, philosophy, cog sci or neuroscience: it is great.

Social History of Languages

I would say this is my second favorite class. We meet once a week on a Friday afternoon in a seminar style class and discuss various aspects of different languages and social issues surrounding language. What I really enjoy is that part of our home work is every other week we have to write a couple of questions and comments on the reading, which is basically a chance to ramble about our thoughts on the reading for a couple paragraphs, and I think it’s fun that doing that counts as work!

Organism and Machine

This is a kind of weird class that I almost didn’t take because it clashed with one of the many other classes I almost took! I ended up taking it because not only did the topic sound fascinating, but also one of my friends recommended it because she had the professor last year and really liked her. It’s a weird class, and meets once a week for 2 and a half hours, so it’s sometimes hard to focus but it is fun. There are 9 of us in the class and the class is based around looking at different people, mainly philosophers, and their views on humans and organisms, and how they relate to machines. Are we all really just complicated machines?!

Also, if you are wondering what the picture is, it is a mosquito-machine, I thought it was kind of cool!

Careers in Psychology

This course was added just before the add deadline. It is a one credit course from the psychology department which is going to meet once a week on a Thursday evening after spring break and bring in speakers from different areas in psychology to talk about their jobs, how they got there and what they do. It sounds fun!

And that’s it. That’s all the classes I’m taking this semester. There were a couple other classes I almost took (and turned up to the first class of) but I won’t bore you with those details, I am sure you have had enough of my class shopping by now.

As I am sure you can tell, I was not joking when I said I was a class-a-holic. I know, I know, it’s a very sad thing to admit to, but I really can’t help it…honestly! Last semester I tried to do more extracurriculars, research, and a job thinking it might force me to take less classes, but that didn’t work very well, so I had to cut down a bit!

I won’t bore you with any of the other things I do around campus now, but if you want to know more feel free to ask me on my personal thread on Hopkins interactive and I’m happy to talk to you.

I want to leave you with one last plug for my favorite little café near campus: Carma’s Café. It’s just off campus on 32nd between North Charles and St Paul, and a great little place to sit and eat and do some work. If any of you are visiting campus you should go there and get some great food and listen in on many of the undergrad and grad student conversations going on around you.

That’s it for me, good luck to you all in whatever you’re doing!

Life as a Hopkins BME: Reflections on Junior Year

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Name: Tanmay Gokhale

Year: Class of 2009

Previous Guest Blog Entries:

November 26, 2007: Baltimore Marathon, click here.

November 21, 2006: Life as a Hopkins BME: The Sequel, click here.

April 24, 2006: Life as a Hopkins BME, click here.

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I’ve written a few times before about my experiences as a biomedical engineering (BME) student at Hopkins (see links above). Biomedical engineering is a very popular major on campus and the program at Hopkins is ranked the best in the country. Starting in the fall of our junior year, all BMEs take a series of classes called Systems Bioengineering. These classes (formerly known as Physiological Foundations) present the engineering perspective on human physiology – we look at the types of topics any physiology class would cover, but focus on things like mathematical modeling rather than qualitative descriptions of systems.  There are now three semesters of Systems Bioengineering, or “SBE” and each course has its accompanying laboratory section. SBE I focuses on the cardiovascular system, SBE II on the nervous system and SBE III has an emphasis on theoretical systems biology.

One of the greatest things about the way these courses are run at Hopkins is that they are not just taught by one professor. Because of the size and breadth of the faculty both at the undergraduate campus and the School of Medicine, a number of different professors are brought in to teach in their area of expertise. Unlike at most other schools where one professor would teach an entire physiology course, in SBE I last semester, we had 8 different faculty members come in to teach different parts of the course. One whose expertise is in electrophysiology taught us about neural conduction, another who is considered an expert on circulatory system physiology taught us about the mechanics of the heart, and a third who is a pioneer in modeling of heart function showed us how heart problems can be modeled through computer simulations. Quite often, the material they were teaching is based on discoveries made in their own laboratories!

The lab part of SBE is something I particularly enjoyed last semester. Every two weeks, we would have a lab section with an experiment based on what we had learned in the lecture course. Often, our experiments involved using frog models to test properties of neural conduction and muscles. In our third lab session, for example, we focused on understanding the properties of skeletal muscle. We had gone over the structure and action of the muscle in lecture and we performed experiments in lab to demonstrate what we had learned. To do this, we isolated the semitendinosus muscle from the leg of a frog. We worked in pairs of two and were responsible for all our own dissections. We had to isolate and remove the muscle and prepare it to use in our experiments. (All the pictures in this post as well as the second video were taken by Shannon O’Connor)

Someone from the class has posted a video of the professor demonstrating the dissection here:

We hooked up the muscle to our experimental apparatus and looked at the effects of applying loads and electrical stimuli to the muscle. You can see the response of the muscle to electrical stimuli in the video.

In another lab session, we isolated the ventricle of the a frog’s heart. We had studied in lecture how cardiac contraction occurs, and in the lab, we explored how that contraction could be changed by a number of outside factors.  My partner and I isolated the frog’s heart and removed the atria so that the heart would not contract on its own. We then performed a couple different experiments to test the properties of the heart muscle. First we applied tension to the heart to see the effect on the force of contraction. Then we exposed the heart to a couple different solutions and drugs and saw how they affected the force of cardiac contraction.

Not all the labs we did involved animal dissection. One lab used a computer program (that was originally developed by one of our professors!) that simulated the entire human body and in particular, the cardiovascular system. The simulation allowed us to see the effects of different medical treatments on the cardiac system by monitoring our “patient’s” vital signs. We also were able to simulate patients with different cardiac problems and see which treatments could improve their conditions.

The Systems Bioengineering courses and labs have been some of the most interesting courses I’ve ever taken. They’ve combined my interest in biology and medicine with techniques of engineering and mathematical modeling. Through the labs, which have been a lot of fun, I’ve been able to see the experimental applications of what we’ve studied in lecture – an exciting introduction to the cardiovascular system.

What’s Up in Wolman 3 East

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Name: Tabitha Moses

Year: Class of 2011

Hometown: England

Major: Neuroscience

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So, I have a blog to write, and I have no idea what to write about, so I think I’ll just write what’s going on in my head! I am currently sitting in my common room – Wolman 3 East, the best freshman dorm. Will and Grace is on in the background and I’m debating whether or not to make myself some tea.

Coming up is the last week before reading week, and I am debating making a list of things that I want to get done by the end of the week but something tells me that might be a bit depressing! Okay, so I’m making it sound bad, like I have a lot to do, and I do have a lot to do, but it really isn’t too bad, especially if I try and do some of my work before the day it’s due. Amazing really, you would have thought I could have learned that in high school!

One of my major problems at the moment with work is the fact that one of the books I have to read, for Philosophy of the Mind, is really interesting, so I just keep reading that, and not doing the other work I’m meant to be doing! At first I thought it was a good thing. I have the philosophy that it doesn’t matter what work I’m doing as long as I’m doing some work, but now I have a load of other work that I really need to do. I guess it’s a good thing though, that I’m enjoying my class I mean. I’m really looking forward to next semester’s classes, I’m taking:

Calculus II – okay, so not so much looking forward to this, but it is a pre-med requirement and a requirement for the Neuroscience major.

Cognition – it’s apparently very similar to Introduction to Cognitive Psychology, which I’d wanted to take this semester, but didn’t have space for, so I’m glad I can take something like it.

Expository Writing – I really need a writing course, and this one is on ethics and science, which I enjoy learning about, so it will be good!

Cognitive Neuroscience – another course that I really liked the sound of, it explores the brain and how it carries out mental processes.

Introduction to History of Modern Philosophy – this course sounded really interesting and we read philosophers who I have heard my friends talk about and wanted to learn about, so I’m really looking forward to it!

I’m not doing intersession this year, although it did sound great, but I haven’t been home (England) in 3 months, and figure a few weeks with my friends will be good. I plan on going to stay with a couple of friends at their universities, and see how they compare. Maybe next semester I’ll write about how they compare!

Well, a couple of friends have just come into the common room to find out if I want to go to dinner. Something tells me dinner is better than studying! So, I’m off to the FFC (fresh food café) to see if they have anything good.

Gangster Films

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Name: Andrew Langer

Year: Class of 2009

Previous Guest Blog entries:

December 5, 2006: My Path to IR, click here.

March 27, 2006: Baltimore’s Music Scene, click here.

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Ask any Hopkins student about it, and they’ll tell you that registering for classes each semester is a struggle. You’d probably think that online registration would make thinks easier, right? Think again. When everyone in your year gets up at the exact same time on the exact same day to register online, the internet doesn’t necessarily run so smoothly. Students scramble to click into the perfect class and section, because no one wants to wake up for a 9am class.

When I saw that the Film and Media Studies Department was offering a class called “Gangster Films” this spring semester, and that it had a 15-person limit, I knew that I had to get into the class. I woke up on that fateful day in November at 7am and executed the perfect amount of clicks in order to beat the online traffic for spring registration. Never have I been so excited to get into a class.

As an International Relations major, it’s somewhat difficult to take classes that aren’t related to economics, political science, history, or language because there are a fair amount of requirements. However, I’ve managed to dabble in classes in the Film and Media Studies Department, as is the case this semester. Gangster Films is probably the most fun class I’ve ever taken and will ever take in college. As an avid lover of films like The Godfather and Goodfellas, I knew that Gangster Films would be a perfect fit for me.

The class meets every Wednesday afternoon for two and a half hours, and we are required to watch two films per week. The course syllabus takes us from films in the 1930s (Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, to name a few) all the way to more recent films like Goodfellas and Bugsy. When I originally saw the course listing, I was drawn to it because I assumed that it was strictly about mafia films. I have a strange fascination with the Italian mafia. I was totally wrong. Gangster Films has opened my eyes to an entire genre of films that I had no previous knowledge of. I’ve been exposed to films with actors like James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart (though I have seen and enjoyed The Maltese Falcon) that I might not have seen were I not in this class.

The best part about Gangster Films is the change of pace it brings to my weekly schedule. Instead of spending my Wednesday afternoons learning about supply and demand curves, I get to discuss Gangster movies in class with about 12 people. While it is certainly a fun and relaxed class, it is also intellectually stimulating. Obviously, there are more to these movies than meets the eye, which is why we analyze every aspect of pivotal scenes, and ultimately how these movies are reflections of American society at the time of their production.

My favorite films out of the ones we have watched so far are High Sierra (with Humphrey Bogart), White Heat, G-Men (both with James Cagney), Point Blank (with Lee Marvin and John Vernon, the latter of whom you might recognize from Animal House), and the original Scarface (made in 1932, featuring Paul Muni). Recently, we watched The Big Heat and Bonnie and Clyde.

The point of all this is that even if your major is incredibly stressful, you can find the time to take fun classes. Gangster Films is the epitome of a “fun” class. I would recommend it to anyone with room for an extra class in their schedules or anyone looking for the ultimate, a-typical Hopkins class.

Jumping Around JHU

4

Name: Wren Haaland

Year: Class of 2009

Hometown: Chapel Hill, NC

Major: Public Health and Romance Languages

Favorite Hopkins —: Favorite Hopkins Intersession class has to be my own, duh! Extreme Jump Rope all the way. :)

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The month of January is a really different time at Hopkins. We have a three week period called Intersession, when classes are totally optional. Students are free to use this time to relax at home, study abroad, or take a class. I came back to campus to do Wilderness First Responder certification, a requirement for being an Outdoor Pursuits instructor. We spent our time learning how to care for injuries sustained in the wilderness, which is technically any place where definitive medical care is at least an hour away. During intersession I spent my days in the WFR classroom, but in the evenings I had my own classroom … I taught a personal enrichment class called Extreme Jump Rope

There are two main types of intersession classes: academic exploration and personal enrichment. Academic exploration classes are offered for credit, whereas personal enrichment classes are purely for fun. This article from the Gazette (click here), a newspaper published by the University, talks about Extreme Jump Rope and a few other personal enrichment classes that were offered this year. Some of the students in my class were also taking a wine tasting class, going on school sponsored trips to NYC, and learning conversational Mandarin.

You might be wondering, what is it exactly that qualifies me to teach a class called Extreme Jump Rope. Well, I was on a jump rope team for half of my life now. I say “was” because this past fall I “retired” from a ten-year career doing competitive jump rope. Jump rope has always been a huge part of my life, through elementary, middle, and high school, and even last year as a freshman. I decided to keep doing jump rope when I came to college, even though my team, the SkipSations (www.skipsations.org) was 300 miles away from Baltimore. I had to work really hard to stay in shape so that I could compete with my team over the summer at the World Rope Skipping Championships, held in Toronto, Canada. The competition was really fun because it turned out that all the hard work paid off: my group won gold medals! Here’s our picture right after we got our medals. I’m on the far left.

The News-Letter, JHU’s student published newspaper, wrote the following story last fall; click here.

So anyway, my class met two nights a week for an hour each time. Over the course of five classes, we covered lots of different styles of jump rope, including speed, freestyle, and double dutch. At first we did some extra fitness stuff too, like planks and lunges, but by the end I couldn’t convince anyone to stop doing double dutch so that we could do lunges. I was really surprised at the overall skill level of everyone in the class. I guess people who go to Hopkins are talented at everything!

The picture here shows the kinds of tricks that everyone was doing by the end of class. Haha, just kidding, that stuff takes a really long time to learn how to do. This event is called double dutch pairs freestyle because there are two people doing tricks in the double dutch ropes. The person on the left is doing a trick called frog (basically a handstand) and the person on right is doing a pushup. That’s me on the far right, turning.

When you come to JHU, I definitely recommend staying around for Intersession. I think it’s really fun to be at school and experience the college atmosphere without having any stress about classes or homework. Of course, I guess there is something to be said for lounging around at home. Still, I had a great time this Intersession and it was a great way to start 2007.