WhatShouldKnowMudd

[I'm probably going to regret leaving this up. It seems very what-the-blazes-is-that-adjective of me. Lunch. Hungry. Feel free to abuse this abominably but recognize I also know that it is bad and was written in a fit of ?wanking?. Must rememeber the rule: KISS: Keep It Simple...]

At the moment I am furious at all the things I never know that are going on.

Rather then throw a rant into the universe, "I think when I graduate I will write up a document on all the things I wish East/Mudd? people had thought to tell me and give it to the next proctor to give to all the poor frosh." But, as I am angry, as in the poem on wearing PurPle perhaps I should start now...

At the moment this is a mind splargh. Much culling and adding needed. Should be more succinct. And yet also more complete.

MuddLinks

There are 3 underground channels of communication at East:

• east-dorm-chat-l Reffered to as schmack. Subscribe for at least a little bit to see what it is like early on.
• Wiki: http://www3.hmc.edu/~jkentdobias/funwiki/index.cgi?RecentChanges
  • contains list of DormStuff which people are welcome to use.
• Live Journals: http://www.livejournal.com/ Try doing a search on interests such as hmc, Mudd, etc. to find the public portions of friends journals.

Every other dorm has dorm and chat lists: subscribe atwood-dorm-l subscribe case-dorm-l subscribe linde-dorm-l subscribe north-dorm-l subscribe sontag-dorm-l subscribe south-dorm-l subscribe west-dorm-l

subscribe atwood-chat-l subscribe case-dorm-chat-l subscribe linde-dorm-chat-l subscribe north-chat-l subscribe sontag-dorm-chat-l subscribe south-dorm-chat-l subscribe west-dorm-chat-l

The CS System: Most Useful (UsefulComputerSites)

• If you want to add yourself to any list go to http://www.hmc.edu/cis/doc/how-to/email/listkeeper/
• When they refer to "Electronic Reserve" they might mean http://eres.claremont.edu/
• When you come to mudd you are given an 'Odin' account. Note that when you take CS60 you will get a 'turing' account and that there are also 'math' accounts.
  • Note that the accounts are for different servers, meaning that transferring files between them can get... interesting, at least if you don't really know what you're doing
• There is a lot of useful CS information squirreled away at http://www.cs.hmc.edu/, http://www.cs.hmc.edu/qref/, and http://www.hmc.edu/cis/doc/
• CS Dictionary: http://www.nightflight.com/foldoc/index.html

Advice:

• Passwords you should make sure you should know and can learn by asking people: The Academic Buildings (locked at night), the computer labs, the mail room, the lounge, storage, the laundry room. If you are a math major find someone to tell you the password to the math lounge. Other passwords you may or may not ever need: math computer room, Linde kitchen.
• Academic Interests:
  • If you want information in different fields of what's going on on campus (talks, career opportunities, events), sign up as much as you can for the majors(or announce) lists even if you aren't in that field. I mean this! You'd be surprised at how many useful and interesting things are going on that you won't hear about otherwise. Some majors such as math and physics have seperate announce lists for non-majors, others, such as cs-majors-l you can just sign up directly regardless of your major. Also bio has a very good list bio-announce-l, I think it is. (I don't know if you need to be a math major to be on math-majors-l, but I do know that you need to be a physics major to be on phys-majors-l, but if you can't find out how else to get the information sign up anyways then they'll know to cc you and might be nice enough to do so now and again if you can't figure out how else to find out). See Listkeeper (link given above) for how to sign up. Note there is a lot of information that gets sent out to the majors/announce lists that you'll never see unless you sign up.

Here are the lists: subscribe cs-majors-l subscribe bio-majors-l subscribe chem-majors-l subscribe eng-majors-l subscribe math-majors-l subscribe phys-majors-l

• All of the majors have speakers that come to give talks. This is usually once every week or every two weeks. Usually 4:15-5:30pm. At the moment: Physics Tuesdays (Edwards), Math Wednesdays (Big Beckman), Bio Wednesdays (Pryne), CS Thursdays. I'm afraid I don't know the others. Sometime a page should be created for this on wiki so nonmajors can find it? What would be nice would be to get one person from each major to make note of which upcoming speaches would be best to see? -K
  • BioColloquia
  • [CS Colloquium page]
• You can sit in on classes that you're not taking. The bigger the class the less they'll notice. If your bold enough you can bluff your way out of this. If not, they'll let you anyways (at least in all the cases that have come to my attention). This may be more useful then attending random speeches, though it is hard to make yourself do this. Try not to be afraid. If you want to, DO IT. And to blazes with the world.
• You can't do everything. The point is recognize your options. There's not enough time. Which is better: a few in depth or many stretched thin? If your taking a single class that is worth two but is half as long that's the same as taking that single class worth one the full length. Recognize that it is doubled. You should not treat it as a single work load and assume you can now take twice as many classes. Or at least if you do you should recognize what you are doing. Recognize the choices you are making.
• Special Opportunities
  • ACM
  • Putnam
  • ICM/MCM
  • The system as far as getting summer job here in the different fields
  • ITRgames, Crack in the AC, ?gaming-l
  • Oldenborg
• Jobs: around campus, career fairs
  • Grading/Tutoring?: A GoodIdea if you have some time. Not only can you earn some extra cash, but it helps you review the material in your field. Consider doing this for at least one semester after your frosh year. Plan on setting aside 3-4 hours a week for grading (may be more or less for certain classes). Tutoring time can vary widely, but it's probably about 4-6 hours a week.
  • Other On-campus Jobs: The Biology department usually hires a few students to help clean, set-up, and maintain laboratory stuff. Other departments probably have similar jobs that require relatively little time or expertise.
  • another thing I don't know: The good & the bad? How to apply.
• Other Things to know Events/Opportunities?
  • Madfeast
  • other MmcAthenaeum events
  • Something I don't understand: meals after colloquium. I have never gone. I don't know how this works.
    • Often a prof will send out an announcement about talking to the speaker before/after their talk. This is usually a good way to get in on dinners, I'd imagine. Other than that, it helps to show interest, be around right afterwards, or have a prof trying to encourage and make you feel welcome because your major is so new. (Mikel should recognise this one too)
    • You have to sign up for CS Colloquium dinners in advance, and there are limited slots. This is because CS Majors are required to attend at least 2 Colloquium dinners per year. I'm not sure how non-majors signing up would be dealt with.
  • Once a year (I think) the Pitzer dining hall has a special event where a group of traveling chefs come to the place and cook up really good food. (This year included such courses as lobster bisque, steak, crab salad, and a lot more). It is a very good idea to keep an eye out for this, and go when it happens.
• The more Main Notes on what Classes to Take and When to take them
  • Passing out of stuff (e.g. Bio52, CS5, core math?)
    • If you pass out of CS5, you have to take CS60. (It's probably "you need to take some other CS course," but all of them require CS60) CS5 usually has a system where if you complete the homework for a particular week in advance, you don't have to do the homework for any of the previous weeks. So if you're lazy and don't want to take CS60 but can pass out of CS5, enter it and then do the final project. Of course, if you're that lazy, what are you doing at Mudd?
      • Wait, did they just change the rules this year? I graduated without ever taking any CS classes at all and I hadn't heard of graduation requirements changing for the classes below me. -AlexBobbs
    • If you pass out of Bio52, you have to take some other bio course.
      • For certain values of "pass out of". If you do obscenely well on the pass-out test, then you may just get credit for the course. Just ask RyanRiegel.
    • For other subjects, if you pass out, you don't need to do anything special. (I think...)
      • In physics and math, at least, you get credit for courses you pass out of, instead of having to take some other class. You still have to take the physics lab(s) for the course(s) you pass out of, however.
        • You can pass out of Mechanics lab if you've taken a sufficiently similar college lab course before.
  • Common/spiffy electives to take (Discrete, 60...)
  • Hums. Relative difficulty/coolness of concentrations, off-campus classes you may not know of, etc. Check HumClassReview
    • Languages. Modern languages (French, Spanish, German) have placement tests you can take at Scripps at any time. The one I took (French) was surprisingly easy. With no real review in three years, I placed into advanced French. (I had had 5 yrs of French, your milage might vary) I'd recommend taking placement tests for any language you took in high school and might want to continue. Do this early, say at the end of frosh year, so you won't have forgotten too much. If I still remembered everything, I probably could have started taking upper level classes right away.
• Acquiring Books For classes
  • Honnold: Check out hum books: you can renew all year, and do so online
  • Email your profs: they'll tell you what books you need ahead of time. Huntley, the local book store, won't. This way you can buy on-line. Also see MuddTextBooks
  • Borrow books you don't want to buy. See BookSale. Email Schmack. Very useful.
  • There's usualy a pizza and book exchange at beginning of semester. Emails go out to students-l, but don't count on it.
• What you should know about where you're going from here?

BTW, the title of this page makes me think of a list of places that ought to recognize Harvey Mudd, say for the purposes of name-dropping, or that ought to recognize it but don't.