As a rising senior, I’ve spent a lot of time recently meticulously planning out my senior schedule to maximize the amount of cool classes I can take. I’ve spent 7 terms at Caltech so far, and while most classes have been interesting and have taught me a lot, here are some of my favorites that I would take again in a heartbeat if I could!
Computing Systems (CS 24)
Of all the CS courses I’ve taken at Caltech, CS 24 was one of the most challenging but also the most rewarding. This class was extremely thorough – one of the projects entailed implementing a memory allocator from scratch in C (a low-level programming language). This was challenging, but I walked away from this class with such a strong understanding of how computer memory works. We learned about security vulnerabilities like side-channel attacks and Meltdown. This sparked my interest in security and ultimately led me to focus on security engineering during my summer internship at Apple.
Squishy Engineering (Ch 113)
This course is all about soft matter, or anything that seems as if it’s both a solid and liquid. I took it for fun and, we learned about all kinds of soft matter from mayonnaise to soap and mucus. The professor prepared a lot of demos that we all got to do in class – one of which was adding salt to hair gel. Normally in hair gel, there are lots of polymer chains that repel each other and trap water inside, which gives it both jelly and solid properties. When salt is added, the charges in the salt ions shield the repulsion between the polymer chains, causing the structure to break down, turning it into a liquid. We also learned about what happens when you mix fluids of different viscosities (thicknesses). Specifically, we added glue (thicker and more viscous) and soap (thinner and less viscous) together, and used food coloring to notice the weird and beautiful branching patterns that happen as the two fluids mix.
American and Comparative Politics (SS 231)
This class was taught by the professor of the lab I SURFed with (Alvarez lab!) my freshman year. The class only had 4 students, so the professor allowed us to suggest any topics we wanted to learn about. Then he would prepare material on those topics we requested. We also got a lot of cool experience in the field, such as observing voting centers and meeting with the Pasadena city clerk, two experiences that I likely would not have had if not for this class. My favorite part of the course was the final project at the end. We each presented a proposal to address an issue of our choice. I proposed a new policy that would invest in research at the intersection of healthy and affordable foods, along with a “health tax” on fast food menus, to address the lack of healthy options in food deserts. It was energizing to be able to discuss my ideas with my peers who were also extremely interested and bounce ideas off of each other.
Reflecting on this list of my favorite classes, I’m excited for senior year! The computer science major at Caltech provides a lot of flexibility, and I don’t have many requirements left for my final year. This leaves the door open to take many more CS classes, or beginner-friendly courses in other subjects that just seem interesting!
