Posted in Academics

Visualizing in Degrees

Students at Tufts University are happy to know that the old SIS (Student Information Systems) is being updated, scheduled to be operable by my senior year (2013-2014). It is certainly a much-needed improvement; the current system, aside from being incredibly slow during course registration and simply looking text-based and ugly, has an interesting sleep schedule. For example, the entire system goes down between 6pm-8pm every night, and "may be unavailable on Sundays from 6AM to 10AM EST/EDT for scheduled maintenance." I'm sorry, your database needs 18 hours of down-time per week? Yikes. So wonderful; SIS is getting an upgrade. It took a whole new building on campus, but it's going to happen. But what if SIS wasn't the only thing changing? I propose a makeover for our Degree Audit Reporting System, DARS. And it would look something like this:

Okay, you got me. I just wanted to show off this gorgeous graphic I've been working on....

Middle East Timeline

Since my first semester here at Tufts, I've been studying with the help of technology. And every college student knows there's no technology more intriguing during finals than Facebook. That's probably why I used examples from Facebook to study for Psychology the fall of my freshman year. But with the new Facebook timeline, it only seems fitting that this technology be used for a history course. After all, I've already written about ideas for an historical Facebook of sorts, so this exploration of middle eastern politics is simply the next logical step. Presenting a brief compilation of Facebook-timeline screencaps for important figures of the middle east. Disclaimer: Without having taken the class, you might not find these as hilarious as I do.

If any of that doesn't make sense, try Wikipedia. Back to studying: the final for this course begins in 1 hour.

The BIG Decision: Some Questions to Ponder

My fellow bloggers have done an amazing job of sharing some of their favorite things about Tufts (here, here, and here). Instead of reiterating these things (because I wholeheartedly agree with each one), I thought I’d take a different route in helping sort through the sometimes daunting college selection process. When I went through the college selection process, I found myself completely overwhelmed. Now, after spending almost an entire year at Tufts, I have a much better understanding of how I should have sorted through all the information about each of the colleges I was accepted to.

Below, you’ll find a list of questions that I think sum up the college experience. Take this list and answer the questions for each college you are considering. Numbers 1-4 on the list are certainly extremely important, but don’t forget to pay extra attention to numbers 5 and 6. In my mind, those are the things that will make or break your college experience. They definitely have made it for me. 

What Makes You Tick? (From Jumbo Days 2011)

Last year, I was asked to answer the question that every applicant to Tufts was asked: "What makes you tick?"  Simple enough, right?  Food, water, umm... well... ok, maybe not so simple.  Especially when you're representing the Tufts freshman class at Jumbo Days (when it was still called April Open House... oh, so long ago...).  Well, it's that time of year again, so I thought I'd post my speech to give you a taste of what you'll be hearing from this year's awesome speakers!

Before I can say what makes me tick, I have to ask the question: what is my tick?  This isn't such a simple question to answer – humans are complicated, and we don't produce a single sound or motion, like a clock.  We do have components, though: we have brains, organs, and we have hands – just a different kind.

My tick, my output, is the whole range of ideas, connections, concepts, and actions that I can produce, as Evan Moulson, as a human being, and as a member of the Tufts community.

That's getting kind of complicated.  Let's condense it.  If you were a clock, what would your tick look like?  In my case, my “tick” happens to be a near-constant stream of economic policy debates, Princess Bride quotes, and Star Warstrivia. 

TICK! Eliminating capital gains tax is a terrible idea because it only lowers effective tax rates for the rich.  TICK!  “I see you are using Bonetti's Defense against me.” “I thought it fitting, considering the rough terrain.” TICK!  The Millennium Falcon made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs – which is a measure of distance – because it used spacetime to its advantage and flew close to the Maw cluster of black holes.

That's actually pretty typical of a Tufts student's version of “tick-tock.”

15 Best Courses at Tufts

Thanks to the magic of Facebook questions, I've been conducting a university-wide poll over the past few weeks. Students in the Tufts Facebook network were asked to respond to a poll, asking: "Which were your favorite Tufts courses (Course Title, Professor)?" The sample is, admittedly, biased; I invited all of my Tufts friends on Facebook, and they perhaps invited theirs, but that makes me some kind of focal point. To try and balance this, I advertisements to vote were distributed to all of the on-campus dormitories, and Tufts Admissions encouraged students, via Twitter, to vote. At the time I wrote this post, the poll had 328 votes, allowing multiple votes per respondent. The results give us the top classes at Tufts University, as voted upon by (a portion of) the students.
 

Peacelight Suggests

My favorite courses so far would be Intro to Computer Science (Hescott), Rational Choice (Forber), and Intro to Acting (Lueger). All three courses ranked below, and I would suggest taking a good...