What I Learned at JHU This Year

By Nick G.

May

4

They say you learn something new every day. Well, if that’s true, then I guess you learn at least 365 things a year, which is a hell of a lot of things to have just learned. This year, my 3rd at Hopkins, has been a catalyst for a ton of growth, both academically and personally.

So, that being said, here are the top 10 things that I have learned this year, and why I feel they deserve to be on the top 10 instead of the bottom 355.

10.  There are places to eat that aren’t Chipotle. Yeah shocking, right? Before this year, my idea of “off campus dining” was pretty much the 7 or 8 restaurants that are within a stones throw of campus. This year, given several factors (including not having a meal plan and having easy car access), has led to eating off campus fairly often. I wish I had taken advantage of it earlier in my college career, but I am looking forward to continuing my eating exploration next year.

Gas stations serve this, right?

Gas stations serve this, right?

9.  Don’t trust gas station sushi. Because…just don’t.

8. Things you learn in class can actually come in handy outside of class. How many times have you sat through a lecture thinking “ughhhhh this is about as useless as teaching ants to synchronized swim”? If you’re me, the answer is a lot…however, there have been several things I’ve learned this year that I’ve found myself using outside of the classroom, from Android programming to using Bloomberg for stock market research.

7. Cops is an awesome TV show. It has become my new mindless entertainment obsession. I’ve learned a lot from it, too. For example, if you decide to floor the gas pedal when you see the blue and red lights behind your stolen car, you should probably pull over of there might be a taser in the future.

6. Group projects don’t always go smoothly, but differences in work habits can be overcome. It is a simple fact of life, we all have different work habits, and sometimes we are assigned group projects with someone who works differently. Fortunately, in my time at Hopkins, I’ve always gotten along reasonably well with my partners, however this semester I really had the first time I’ve encountered friction in a group. What it comes down to is that we had different work ethics and habits, and those didn’t match up well. We all knew what needed to be done and were capable of doing it (being that we are all very intelligent Hopkins students, of course), but when it came time to get it done together, things didn’t go smoothly. In the end, however, all the work that needed to be done was done and I think the whole group was able to grow for the future.

And I enjoy kiddie pools!

And I enjoy kiddie pools!

5. Find time to do what you enjoy. Through out the year, there were times where I certainly felt overwhelmed, and everyone has those weeks where they just have too much on their plate. What I found was the best way to handle it was to promise myself something fun at the end–a round of golf or a night downtown–to give me something to look forward to when it is all over.

4. When there’s free pizza involved, it’s defiantly something you should go to. If there’s free Chipotle involved, you should absolutely not even think about not going. Need I explain more?

3. Make lists. Lists on lists on lists. Seriously, they can save you more times than they’ll hurt you. Make  a list of exam dates, things you have to do this week, or even of songs you want to download. Whatever you use them for, they’ll help you keep your head straight in times of stress.

2. If someone asks you to be in their Harlem Shake video, politely say “no thanks” and continue on with your day. I think I can successfully say that I avoided that trend.

1. Go see the speakers that are brought to campus! Seriously, we get some crazy awesome people. Even the names you haven’t heard of before can offer a lot of really cool insights. This year alone, we’ve had two presidential candidates (Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum), a general (Stanley McChrystal), a New York Times columnist (Andrew Ross Sorkin), a Saturday Night Live cast member (Seth Meyers), the founder of Wikipedia (Jimmy Wales) and several other very cool speakers. Take advantage of their presence and go see them speak!

Thanks for reading,

Nick

Current Track: Homecoming by Kanye West

From Admitted To Attending: Favorite Academic Experience

By Nick G.

Apr

9

In the past, the Hopkins Interactive bloggers have posted common blogs about topics including their application process, their decision to attend Hopkins, and advice for incoming students. For the month of April, we’re changing up that format slightly. Each week, we’ll have a new theme, and each day, a new blog will be posted on that topic. We hope you enjoy reading these entries, and that they help you in your decision-making process!

Clearly, when you boil it all down, we’re all really only in college for one reason. On the surface, we may be athletes, frat boys, math club nerds or any one of the countless categories we’re constantly being sorted into, but at the end of the day there is only one we all share: students. We are all here for an education, and because of that every student will inevitably have a ton of meaningful academic experiences by the time we’re done.

In my three (!!!!) years here, I can say I’ve had no shortage of awesome academic experiences. From being challenged to create an artificially-intelligent computer that could play Battleship my freshman year (http://blogs.hopkins-interactive.com/nick/2011/10/just-1s-and-0s/) or boycotting a final last semester (http://blogs.hopkins-interactive.com/nick/2013/01/did-we-really-pull-it-off/), it is safe to say that I’ve done a lot here. But the academic experience that I think I got the most out of was last semester in a class called Object Oriented Software Engineering (OOSE, pronounced like a gooey substance flowing through a crack).

All too often, classwork is focused on the individual. You have problem sets to be done on your own, take exams by yourself and are frequently flying solo when writing a paper. All these are very helpful for assigning a grade; you have nobody but yourself to work with, so the grade you get at the end is yours and yours alone. But, especially when it comes to computer science, this is rarely how the real world plays out. Modern software is complicated to the point that if one person were to be charged with writing each application we use, we’d think Paint was the most advanced piece of technology since the Walkman. Indeed, literally everything now a days is coded in a team, so leaving school with the ability to work in a group is key.

Pretty much every computer science class I’ve taken in my time here has had some sort of group aspect to it. Typically, these will be two or three week projects, the professor gives your class a prompt of a program, you split into your groups and submit when your done. Don’t get me wrong, this is great, everyone gets a chance to work to build a more advanced piece of code than they would be able to on their own, thus getting a better understanding of whatever the current topic is. However, clearly this is very structured. Working part time over a week or two is not a ton of time to produce code, and there really isn’t much leeway in terms of what you actually produce at the end…you make a program that fits the assignment.

Enter: OOSE. At its core, the entire semester of OOSE can be summed up in “Form a group, go out and code, and by the end of the semester we want to be impressed with what you’ve done. We’ll be here to guide and offer suggestions, but everything else is up to you.” That’s right: no tests, no quizzes, and just a few short homework assignments on generally accepted programming habits. The first part of the class is spent with your group drafting ideas and designs for your program, trying to come up with something you can actually pull off and would be both unique and impressive. Then, you get to coding! Your group chooses the language–Java, Python and C tend to be the favorites, although Perl and Ruby have been chosen.

Every week, your group meets up with the professor and TA’s to present to them what you’ve done, what you plan on doing next week, and to seek out their help in how to proceed. Each week you were graded based on how well you achieved these objectives and how well your group is progressing. Instead of a final, your team presents a demonstration of your application to the class, giving you real world experience in showing off what you’ve done. Each group came up with something really cool–from Android apps to games to my group’s project, a virtual advising platform that would analyze a Hopkins student’s transcript to recommend classes for them to take in the future based on how well they did in previous classes, as well as several other criteria.

In all, I feel this was one of the most valuable academic experiences I’ve gotten. As someone who has worked in the real world of programming, I can personally attest that this class is as close as you will ever see to what will happen after graduation, and for that reason I feel that it offered a lot of valuable experiences.

Thank you for reading!

-Nick

Current track: Corona and Lime by Shwayze

 

So That’s What Having Sports Teams Is Like

By Nick G.

Feb

12

Coming from Connecticut, we don’t have much when it comes to our own sports teams. Obviously there’s UCONN, and the Connecticut Sun, but having dominant college and WNBA teams alone isn’t exactly the way to get your state’s athletics well known (no offense to colleges or the WNBA).  We had an NHL team, but I was 6 when they ditched us. Those who hail from the Constitution State are split, caught directly in the middle of New York and Boston. Our fans are dedicated, for sure, but are often found explaining why they support one city or the other.

Now, granted, I am not a huge sports fan. If the Yankees lose, I care, but I won’t be devastated. But one of the nice things about Baltimore is that the ‘locals’ most certainly do care. They care a lot. Living in a city that really isn’t divided certainly brings a different aspect to sports. You won’t see New Haven going crazy over an NFL game (Yale vs. Harvard, maybe), but here in Baltimore you most certainly did.

After the Raven’s victory over the Patriots in the AFC Championship, the city went nuts. From the comfort of my living room, several blocks from any bars or central gathering areas, we could hear fireworks going off in the streets and shouting in celebration. That’s when we all realized…win or lose, after the Superbowl, this city was going insane.

This lady brought an old fashioned train whistle with her downtown for celebration...needless to say, meeting her was a highlight.

Obviously, this was an entirely new experience for me. Not only was I finally able to to go bars downtown (yes, I’m newly 21), but I could go to bars downtown when they would be full of excited Baltimore fans. After gathering a group of Hopkins friends and joining with another friend from Baltimore, we went to a popular spot across the street from Camden Yards. The place looked like a Ray Lewis jersey factory where a purple paint bucket exploded onto every other article of clothing.

With every play, the bar erupted in either applause and celebration or a symphony of boos. Showing my Baltimore pride, I ordered a delicious crab and old bay pretzel and some Natty Boh, to be enjoyed surrounded by the excitement of the game. There have been a few pretty nervous moments in my life, but I have to say the last few minutes--unsure if this mob around me was going to end up being a happy mob or a very upset one--was pretty nerve racking.

In the end, obviously, it ended up being a happy crowd. People flooded the streets, including a guy dancing in a full body Natty Boh guy costume, and some news crews. All around us people were playing the “fist to car horn” game, and they were winning.  Part of me wanted to see a car get flipped over, but part of me was afraid to see what would happen if cars began being flipped. In the end, we were able to make it back to my non-flipped car and back to campus safely, while joining in with some of the celebrations on the street on the way (I high fived a guy next to us at a red light by reaching out of the car window, it was pretty epic).

And there you have it: the thoughts of someone who had never been in a championship winning city being in one for the very first time, and the once in a lifetime experience that came with it.

Thanks for reading,

Nick

Current Track: The Next Episode by Dr. Dre

 

P.s. If you want a video of what parts of downtown looked like, this one does a pretty good job of it:

When A Wealth of Useless Knowledge Comes In Handy

By Nick G.

Jan

23

Do you know what year Billy Bob Thornton was born in? Or how many people were, at some point in their lives, in the singing group Destiny’s Child? What about which Greek god is mentioned in the Hippocratic oath?

Well, if you answered 1955, 6 and Apollo to the above questions, you might be worthy of joining the newly-established SAAB trivia team, along with JHU_Noah, JHU_Kaitlyn and me (although, to be fair, we’re looking for a replacement for JHU_Kaitlyn after getting the question regarding a women’s tennis player wrong…we judge). A local pub, PJ’s, hosts trivia night every Tuesday, open to the public (though 21 to drink), with prizes raging from money off your tab to a free pitcher.

Hopkins students gather by the dozens to compete in the ultimate nerd-off, where knowledge of useless facts (on second thought, everyone should know Billy Bob was born in 1955 off the top of their head, so that really isn’t a useless fact) is celebrated. In addition to competing in regards to knowledge, teams also compete on team names…which I’d mention here, but pretty much all of the one’s worth mentioning are not Hopkins-Interactive appropriate.

So, when people ask about what the social life a Hopkins is life, nights like this tend to come to mind. We might not have the crazy parties, tailgates or homecomings you get at Penn State, Michigan State, or similar schools, but who really needs those anyway? Walking in to trivia night, although the place was packed, I could still recognize at least one person from each team, which allowed for some friendly trash talking and catching up on eachother’s winter breaks in between questions.  As a school not particularly known for its social life, it was a great way to see a good amount of my close friends in one shot, and to have a lo of fun doing it.

Here at Hopkins, at the end of the day, we’re all nerds. We celebrate and are open about it and are able to partake in fun activities because we recognize and embrace it. You also get to show off in front of all your friends that you knew that Hong Kong was the answer to “What did the British give to China in 1997?” (JHU_Noah may very well be the nerdiest of them all for knowing that). And, hey, you learn a thing or two while your at it.

Thanks for reading,

Nick

Current Track: Woo Boost by Rusko

Did We Really Pull It Off?

By Nick G.

Jan

3

At Hopkins and other similar caliber schools, one can obviously expect to work hard. You expect that you’ll be challenged around every corner, as well as learn to work as a team to get things done.

But how often do you get the opportunity as a class to get a 100% on a final? That’s right, the entire class–but it takes some risk taking and absolute trust in your fellow students.

Every student knows that there are times where a curve can be your best friend. Every professor has their own preferred curving method, ranging from “nope, too bad” to some which can be fairly generous in certain situations. Well in this particular class (a required computer science class, which has the same professor as a class JHU_Alex and JHU_Jordan took), the curve was very simple. The highest grade was always a 100%. So, if someone got a 90%, and that was the highest grade, everyone would be bumped up 10% (if the highest grade was truly an outlier, the curve would go to the next highest). But then the question arises…what if everyone just failed on purpose?

I don't know what I was working on, but it was probably super awesome.

Well, if everyone got a 0%, then everyone would get a 100% boost from the curve…giving us all a perfect score. And that is just what our class planned on doing, along with some other classes with the same professor. In the years that he had been teaching, this was always the policy, and it was always theorized that it COULD be done…yet before JHU_Alex and JHU_Jordan’s class pulled it off for a midterm earlier in the year, nobody had ever done it successfully.

The strategy requires complete trust in all your classmates–if someone goes in and takes it, they can essentially doom the entire class. After a very heated class debate on the moral issues of all of us failing on purpose as well as coordinating if we could actually pull it off, we decided the best thing to do was just to sit outside the testing room and wait for the exam period to expire. Obviously, just in case something happened last minute, we all studied as we would had there been no boycott plan in place, so we all knew the material the best we could know it.

When the day finally came, the plan worked perfectly, and we all got the 100′s we were seeking. But, you may wonder, why am I telling this story? Is it to brag? To rub it in to the rest of the school? No.

I tell you this because it is a scenario that I have never heard of occurring at any other school, nor do I think I will ever see it happen again. It is a rare opportunity that we were able to work together as a team to better all of our grades. Not only that, but by not taking a final we showed a point to the department–that perhaps the concept of a final exam is outdated. When it comes to computer science especially, final exams don’t really make much sense (at least, in my opinion). One’s aptitude in computer science is not really measured by their ability to take a final exam in a subject, but rather in the quality of code and the understanding they get from projects, not answers written on a piece of paper. By doing this, we certainly have changed some curving policies and hopefully will have shown that students much prefer a final project rather than a test.

Thank you for reading,

Nick

Current track: Original Don by Major Lazer (Flosstradamus remix)

P.s. I’ve been informed that the professor has since changed the grading policy, so if you’re hoping to enroll and just not hand anything in, tough luck :)

Hopkins Jeopardy

By Nick G.

Dec

2

Hopkins is an institution of knowledge. A place for learned doctors, mathematicians, historians and authors.  Throughout history, people have enjoyed watching other people’s test their knowledge on reality TV. At the forefront of this desire to watch people answer useless trivia questions in return for money is Jeopardy, the classic game show where the answers are given to the contestants and the contestants come up with the questions.

So, without furniture adieu, I present to you: Hopkins Jeopardy.

 

Majors With The Acronym
“BME”		 Places to Eat On Campus Buildings Named Gilman Hall People You See On Campus Dorms that Rhyme with
“Harles Hommons”
100 100 100 100 100
200 200 200 200 200
300 300 300 300 300
400 400 400 400 400
500 500 500 500 500

 

First I’ll take “Places to Eat on Campus” for 500…
Answer: This restaurant is a bit of a trek being in the Space Telescope Science Institute north of campus, but it has gained a reputation for being healthy and only serving delicious cheeseburgers, but only a few days a week. They have also recently expanded to a smaller “satellite” location in Gilman Hall, but it’s not the same.

Question: What is Azafran?

I think I resemble a young Sean Connery.

I’ll take “Buildings Named Gilman Hall” for 300, Alex…

Answer: This newly renovated building is home to an Egyptian Mummy, originally named “Boris” but renamed when it was discovered that he was, in fact, a she.

Question: What is Gilman Hall?

Well Alex, that one was a real toughie. Next I’ll take “People You See On Campus” for 200.

Answer: This Hopkins professor recently won the Nobel Prize in Physics for proving that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, and you can take classes with him as an undergrad at Hopkins.

Question: Who is Adam Riess?

Alex I’ve got to admit, that’s pretty impressive. I’ll take “Places to Eat on Campus” for 300, please.

Answer: This local eatery is known as CharMar and is known for it’s subs, convenience, grab-and-go sushi and being attached to Einstein’s bagles.

Question: What is Charles Street Market?

Too easy. Let’s go with “Dorms that Rhyme with Harles Hommons” for 500.

Answer: This is the newest of the Hopkins dorms, featuring over 500 single rooms in addition to its own gym and dining hall.

Question: What is Charles Commons?

Well then…talk about a challenge. Let’s move on to Final Jeopardy!

Answer: This woman was Johns Hopkins’s grandmother, and the reason why there is that extra ‘s’ in Johns Hopkins.

Question: Who was Margaret Johns?

Wager: Errything

Looks like I just doubled my winnings…not bad for my first time on a blog game show loosely based off of a TV game show and where a typed narrative of  ambiguous sentences where it is largely unkown who was talking (Is he Alex Trebek and all three contestants?). But hey, hope you learned something!

 

Thanks for reading,

Nick

Current Track: The Glory by Kanye West

 

‘Mo Bunny, ‘Mo Problems

By Nick G.

Nov

14

While living in the dorms may be a blast, especially since you have so many of your peers right in the same building as you, moving out on your own off campus has its advantages. One thing about the dorms which is “highly frowned upon”, and by that I mean not allowed at all, is having a pet in your room (yes, including fish, since apparently they pose a risk of escaping and infesting the building). Off campus, however, no such rules apply. And since the mice that live in our kitchen were getting kind of lonely, so we figured we should get some more animals here in the AEPi house.

Mo loves beanbag chairs and sweatpants (which she eats...)

Obviously we wanted something super adorable. We considered a hedgehog–but they weren’t snuggly enough. We considered a chinchilla, but they were too much like the aforementioned mice in the kitchen. We considered a ferret, but then we remembered that it is a ferret. Finally, we arrived at a solution: we needed to get a house bunny.

Enter: Monique, aka “Mo”. She is white with some adorable little black spots. She enjoys eating grass, playing with little jingly ball toys, and peeing in her food bowl. She’s 12 weeks old and is without a doubt the cutest thing ever.

The past few weeks have been especially difficult here at Hopkins, between midterms and group projects and other assignments. Despite spending pretty much every spare moment in the library, the times where I was free were spent with Mo. Having something soft and cute waiting for you at home is a great stress reliever, without a doubt.

As far as attention, Mo couldn’t be getting more here, especially when we have people over to the house. She has become the main attraction, more so than even me, and I don’t even poop on the people that come to play with me.

So, when you move off campus, be sure to get yourself something adorable and you’ll never have a lack of things to do or people who want to come over!

Thanks for reading,

Nick

 

Current track: Country Roads by John Denver (Pretty Lights Remix)

Nick’s Bag of Tricks

By Nick G.

Oct

18

I just love when a blog title rhymes so easily, don’t you?

In our modern world, we have to be prepared for a variety of situations. One never knows what’s around the corner…could it be ninjas? Somalian pirates? Fluffy bunnies? There is just so much uncertainty. With all this uncertainty in the world, survival is dependent upon finding the right balance of supplies to be carried with you at all times and overloading yourself with too much, therefore making it difficult to outrun said ninjas should the situation arise where they severely outnumber you.

While I’m sure you’d all like to know what is in my backpack, as many of the other bloggers are writing about the contents of theirs, I’m afraid much of what lies in mine cannot be share, as it is a matter of national security. It was once rumored that my backpack contained the secrets to nuclear fission, undeniable evidence of who actually shot Kennedy (both of them), and and step by step instructions revealing how Mitt Romney’s hair always looks so good. I will neither confirm nor deny any of these rumors.

That being said, what I can show all of you is not what I carry with my in my bag, but what I drive around with. You never quite know when you’re going to get stuck out in the middle of nowhere, and there are quite frankly just some things that everyone should always have in their car anyway. So, here are some of the key things that are always there with my on a drive.

1. Golf clubs. Because you never know when you’re going to need to practice your chipping or go on an impromptu trip to the driving range, it is always important to keep golf clubs in your trunk. After all, what would you do if your car broke down and you had to signal for help? A golf ball through someone’s windshield is a great way to get cars to stop on the highway.

2. GPS. Let’s be real–I get lost going the two blocks from my house to campus. If not for this, I probably would have ended up in Canada when driving down here. I even changed the settings so the voice has a British accent, because I trust people with British accents.

3. $5 sunglasses. Purchased shortly after I began driving way back in 2008, these babies have seen countless miles on the road. I was always afraid to buy a nice, expensive pair, assuming that if I did they’d be broken within the week. Figures, however, my $5 aviators have lasted nearly four years. Talk about getting your money’s worth.

4. 80 gig music hard drive. Hardwired into my car’s stereo and made to be entirely voice activated (i.e. you can ask my car to “Play artist Ludacris” and it will assemble and play a playlist of all Ludacris), there is enough music on here such that I could drive for over a month straight and never have to suffer through listening to the same song twice. Not bad, eh?

5. Infinity fast food napkins. A habit inherited from my dad, I’ve found it extremely useful to always keep a healthy supply of fast food napkins in the arm rest. You know how they always just stuff a bunch in the drive through bag, that almost inevitably end up getting thrown out?By keeping them you always have a good supply of napkins-helpful when something spills in the car or a bird poops on your windshield.

And there you have it, Nick’s most important things to keep in your car. Thanks for reading, everyone!

-Nick

Current track: Shark by Tommy Noble

Skipping Class to Go Golfing

By Nick G.

Sep

28

They say that coming to college is always a huge shock to the system. The newly acquired freedoms, all this independence that you haven’t experienced before, and coming home to a roommate instead of mom and dad for the first time can often be overwhelming to some.

But what I find is more interesting than this change in freedom is the change in freedom which comes through out one’s college career. We start off thinking we can do so much, which is entirely true, because we have so many newly opened doors compared to high school. But, what many people don’t realize, is that there are many doors yet to be unlocked. As I look back to what I was doing, was capable of doing, and my overall mindset of freshman year, I see a completely different array of options than I see now.

Take, for example, one of my favorite things: food. Just two short years ago if you said to me “let’s get food”, it was pretty clear that meant “let’s go to the FFC”. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Now, that same simple sentence of “let’s get food” could mean going pretty much anywhere, from Fogo de Chao (an all you can eat Brazillian steakhouse) to Miss Shirley’s for chicken and waffles to Ra for sushi. I can pretty much count the number of times I ate off campus (by off campus I don’t mean Chipotle across the street from campus, I mean off campus) on my fingers, and without using toes. Now, however, thanks partially to my car being parked a whopping 12 feet from the back door of the AEPi house and a lack of a prepaid meal plan, the city’s finest dining is at my fingertips.

If Caesar wants to golf, Caesar will golf. And I like to think of myself as the Caesar of Baltimore.

Another way in which things have changed has been the “we have an hour of free time to kill, what should we do?” solution. Sure, there is plenty to do as a freshman around Baltimore, but when you have a surprise of some free time, you become very constrained. Classically, my answer to this question was to go back to my room and play COD. However, this year, when class was unexpectedly canceled one day, going back home and playing video games was low on my list of things to do for that newly free time. Instead, I was able to find someone to go to a driving range with me and spent an hour hitting golf balls. Freshman year, if you had suggested that to me, I’d think you were totally crazy, but now it seems like such an obvious option to the free time problem. Alright, so technically the title of this post is kind of an exaggeration–class was cancelled, I didn’t exactly ‘skip’. I just wanted to be like one of the cool kids.

A final change that I would like to touch upon is life sans dorms. Coming to live in a dorm can be a shock at first, but moving back out can be just as much if not more shocking. Unlike dorm life, everything is in your hands now. No more security guard out front of the building 24/7. You have to actually remember to set the alarm and lock the door at night. No longer does electricity simply come from the wall and wireless internet magically become available by some sort of super human electricity and internet fairy. No, you actually get bills for that stuff. We might complain sometimes about how annoying it is to have to sign someone into the dorms who doesn’t live there, but it is a small price to pay for knowing that everyone in the building is authorized to be there. For sure, it takes a bit of getting used to, having to keep track of all the different elements of living on your own without ResLife there to back you up, but what you gain from it is a lot more freedom than with the dorms. You get a sense of independence, as well as some real people responsibilities.

So, as incredible as freshman and sophomore year are, there are few feelings better than being a wise old junior and being able to, well, do whatever. You know the city, you know the people, and you know the routine like the back of your hand. Baltimore is your oyster (is that how you use that phrase?).

Thanks for reading,

Nick

Current track: Don’t You Worry Child by Swedish House Mafia

 

A Penny for a Thought (of Nick)

By Nick G.

Sep

3

Well guys, my time to shine as a world renowned economist has finally arrived. After two years of studying the economy and 10 weeks on Wall Street this summer, the world media has finally recognized me up there with the ranks of those such as John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and Ben Bernanke.

My big break came last week, as JHU_Tess, JHU_Ruthie, JHU_Kate and I were leaving Chipotle after lunch. There was a news crew (and by crew I mean guy with a camera and microphone) standing out front of Chipotle, asking for peoples opinions on the penny and its future. Apparently, Chipotle is using a new pricing strategy aimed at eliminating the penny from its pricing of deliciousness, in hopes that it will help speed up lines.

"What would JHU_Nick do?"

So, as we walked past, we were asked to share our thoughts on camera. JHU_Ruthie checked the penny for grammar mistakes, and confirmed that it was all correct…helpful, but not really. JHU_Tess talked about the history of Lincoln and why he was on the penny, but that really has nothing to do with its future. JHU_Kate discussed the breakdown of copper and zinc and whatever other parts of the periodic table can be found in a penny, getting us a little closer to the real issue at hand but still not quite the answer Fox news was looking for.

Then they decided to let an expert handle the situation. After giving a rather long explanation about inflation, electronic currency, and the overall attitude towards change in our country, I think the reporter was quite satisfied with my answer. In fact, he offered to pay me–in the form of a penny, which I declined to accept on the grounds previously explained and because we didn’t have a contract worked out yet, so I didn’t feel comfortable accepting payment. They did, however, use part of my interview in their story, although they cut it down to basically say “get rid of the penny for ‘merica”.

And that is one of the coolest things I think about Hopkins…the fact that we have a Chipotle across the street from campus. Also that there are really cool opportunities all around you, you just have to keep your eyes peeled and your mind open and be willing to talk to a random news camera on the street. Even if it’s something you have never experienced or know nothing about, you can always take a shot in the dark and if it doesn’t work out perfectly, at least go home with a solid experience.

So share your penny thoughts in the comments below and check out the news video here!

Thanks for reading,

Nick

Current track: Keep Me Waiting  by Vitodito ft. Oza, Sia, Cary Go and Neon Hitch

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