One of my favorite things about Hopkins is the huge range of classes we get to pick from. As someone who has double majors in Computer Science (which is in the Whiting School of Engineering) and Economics (in the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences), I regularly take classes in both schools. Before registration day, I always meticulously make a list of classes that I might be interested in taking, but I always add too many because there are so many options. The wide variety of classes has allowed me to explore my interests and discover new ones.
Here are some of my favorite classes I have taken so far:
1. FYS: The Science Behind Fiction
A First-Year Seminar (or FYS) is a small, 10–15-person class on an exploratory subject that helps Hopkins students ease into college academics. There are FYS classes about pretty much every and anything you can think of from “Jane Austen! Exploring the Magic of her Fiction” to “Why Chemistry Changed History.” In my first semester at Hopkins, I took “The Science Behind Fiction” with Professor Tyrel McQueen. The basic idea of the class was to discuss whether some of the spectacular things we see in fiction (like Iron Man’s suit or time travel in Interstellar) are even theoretically possible. Every week, we would be assigned a book or movie and then research and discuss whether some of the fictional scientific marvels could ever be a reality. Through this course, we covered topics including physics, computer science, chemistry, and a lot more. In the last week of class, Professor McQueen took the class to his lab to show us how he was extending the limits of what is possible through his work in programmable material science (using artificial intelligence to program atoms!).
2. Monetary Analysis
This course is an economics elective I took with Professor Ludmila Poliakova because I was curious about how the stock and bond markets work. I had an idea from hearing these words thrown around on the news and online, but I didn’t fully understand the complex mechanisms that made them work. Through this class, I learned about interest rates, stocks, bonds, and the federal reserve system. We often had really fun and interactive activities in class. For example, when we were learning about asymmetric information (a situation in which one person in a transaction has more information than the other), we had a mock auction for candies in class; one person knew more about how good the candies were than the other.
I am a Teaching Assistant (TA) for this class as well. It has given me a new perspective on the material, and I now feel like I understand it better. This semester, the class also had multiple guest lecturers like Dr. Laurence Ball (who is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a consultant for the International Monetary Fund) and Dr. Jon Faust (who has been an advisor to the Federal Reserve Board).
3. Linear Algebra for Data Science
Hopkins offers four different versions of linear algebra: Linear Algebra (in the department of mathematics), Honors Linear Algebra, Linear Algebra and Differential Equations, and Linear Algebra for Data Science. I decided to take the data science class with Dr. Mario Micheli because I wanted to explore applications of mathematics, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Through this class, I realized how much I enjoy working with data mathematically and decided to start the Data Science Initiative with HopAI.
Now those were three of the classes that I’ve really enjoyed taking so far but I’d like to give a special shoutout to the classes I am most excited to take in the future. Next semester, I am taking a special class in the Economic Department called “Reality Roundtable.” This is an invite-only class with 10 undergraduates, as well as graduate students and professors. Every week, this class meets to discuss how economic theory has real world applications. I am super excited about this because it will give me the opportunity to engage with the material more deeply and discuss ideas with some of the most eminent scholars in the field.
Other than that, at some point during my time at Hopkins, I’d love to take a HEART Class (Hopkins Engineering Applications and Research Tutorials) or HEROIC (Hopkins Engineering Research-Opened Investigation Courses). These are 1–2 credit seminar classes in which a professor or a graduate student teaches undergraduates about their research. This gives students an insight into cool new directions in a low-pressure setting, and I have heard great things about these classes from all my friends who have taken them.
Every semester, more than 5,000 undergraduate courses are offered at Hopkins. Even through a very, very small fraction of them, I feel as though my intellectual horizons are being broadened daily.
