Tufts Blogs

We’re a little over half way into the fall semester, but I keep thinking about the spring.

Sitting at my desk in Northern Arizona, I’m realizing this might be the last time in my life I’m at home for an extended period of time, which is honestly kind of a bummer. I’m currently studying remotely (which is harder than I thought it would be), and I plan to return to campus next semester and enjoy the rest of my junior year on the campus I’ve been at for over two years. I’m excited to live with some friends for my remaining year-and-a-half at Tufts, work on projects with the Indigenous Students’ Organization at Tufts (ISOT), which is now a little over a year old and has big plans for the future. I’m also especially eager to take some interesting classes in math and philosophy. Both departments have put out course descriptions for what they’re offering in the spring, and there are so many wonderful classes to pick from. A few I’m especially interested in are:

Math 260--"Markov chain Monte Carlo" is a graduate-level class in which we learn about some pretty fancy and interesting topics in math that together create “an incredibly powerful technique with a zillion applications,” according to the course description. It couples nicely with a class I’m taking this semester called topological data science, and my hope is that after taking both of these courses, I can obtain a position at the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group, a Tufts lab that fights gerrymandering. The professors from both courses are involved with the lab (and one of them founded it!) so I think I have a decent shot

Phil 120--"Metaphysics" is an upper-level undergraduate course on one of philosophy’s core subjects. I’ve already taken classes in every other core area (ethics, logic, epistemology, language), so I’m especially excited to round off my knowledge of the basics in philosophy. Metaphysics is a broad category, and in this class specifically, we’ll talk a lot about identity: what it is that a thing stays the same thing even though it can change over time, how someone who was once a child can now be a student at Tufts. What, basically, is essential for an entity?¹

Aside from classes, I’m hoping that COVID will eventually clear up at some point and I can hang out with people again. Tufts is doing a great job managing cases, with only 11 positive tests among nearly 15,000 tests conducted this week, but it’s important we stay vigilant. I have good memories of going into Boston over the weekends, exploring antique bookstores and trying foods that don’t really exist in Northern Arizona, going to jazz concerts and catching the SMFA shuttle back to Tufts at night. I miss Tufts, and when I go there I’ll miss home, but it’s become sort of a second home--one I’m excited to return to.

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¹ questions shamelessly adopted and modified from the Tufts philosophy course booklet