Biography and Autobiography

Terrible Times; A Reflection on Olin’s Community

Let me start off by introducing myself, since I am a caller writer here. I’m Jeff Stanton, I’m in Olin’s Level of 2010, I will be a Junior this fall, and I am pursuing a class in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Olin.

This past year at Olin has been a large one, especially for me. I took many interesting courses, greatly increased my knowing of ECE topics from software to hardware, improved significantly at billiards, continued my studies in music and entrepreneurship and hew down in line with an awesome group of friends including students in the classes of 2009, 2010 and 2011. I visited Scrap Italy in Boston for no fewer than four birthday dinners, flew haunt to North Carolina for three separate graduations in my relatives and managed to coax myself and my friends away from our studies desire enough to get off-campus and have tons of fun together.

Olin students Leif, Dani, Thomas, myself and Jessica wassail a birthday and the end of a great year by going out for dinner.

The last year has also been one in which I have clock on to see the strength of our small community and to understand how much people here carefulness about each other. At the start of the 2007 fall semester, two Olin students passed away in a motorcycle founder. Although I was not particularly close friends with either student, they were still Olin students and I was shaken up by their deaths. We all grew a bit closer that day and together we got career our grief and launched full-swing into the year.

A bit over two weeks ago, Jessica - a associate of the class of 2011 and a very close friend of mine - passed away following medical complications. I and some of her other friends knew ancient on, but the announcement did not hit Olin until a few days later. About 50 Olin students - myself included - are living on-campus this summer pursuing numerous jobs or research. The rest are scattered about the state and the world. Even before the announcement came out, I was torn aside from by the passing of my best friend. At some points I sobbed until no more tears would get. People stopped by to check in on me, making firm I was all right - at the time, the announcement had not gone out, and out of thoughtfulness for the family I couldn’t tell everybody until the notice was sent out. I remember hearing that the email was about to be sent Sunday ceaselessly - 5 days after I heard - and I headed for the lounge. As I arrived, people who were already out in the lounge watching the Red Sox bold were just looking up from their laptops after reading their email. The looks on their faces and the hugs we exchanged said so many things simultaneously: stagger at the loss of a community member; sympathy for my liability liabilities of a close friend; an understanding of my pain the foregoing days; a disbelief that a third member of our tight-join community had died in less than a year.

Read more...