So, you’ve come for the spiel. Well, I hope you enjoy it. I mostly talk about some of the stuff I’ve done up until my 3rd year in College. I might update it to include more recent stuff later on, but for now I’d be surprised if anyone actually reads this.
What I’ve done
High School Teacher
In High School, I worked as a Physics and Math teacher for teenagers from an underdeveloped neighborhood. I helped prepare them prepare for the Prueba Saber, the Colombian version of the SAT. This exam carries a lot of weight. University admissions in Colombia are not hollistic and you are admitted or rejected based almost solely on how you do on the day of the test. Pretty brutal if you ask me. When I got to the school, the students were behind on their Physics and Math preparation. I worked there on Saturdays during the school year and on weekdays during the summer to try to help them catch up. They had many gaps in their knowledge and we had to begin from the very basics, but it was very rewarding to see the students learn and improve over the months that I volunteered there.
The picture above shows one of the classrooms I used to teach in. Its not me in the picture, but just imagine a tall guy in shorts sweating profusely instead of the teacher above and you’ve got the picture. The school’s name is I.E. Bertta Suttner, its located in the Nelson Mandela neighborhood of Cartagena, the city I grew up in. Nelson Mandela is one of, if not the, poorest neighborhoods in Cartagena, so it was humbling to go teach these students and see the conditions that they live in everyday. It would be nice to go back some day, but the pandemic and studying in the U.S. complicates things.
Physics Research
During my first summer at Grinnell College, I was able to conduct research with professors Leo Rodriguez and Shanshan Rodriguez from the college’s Physics department. We spent the summer researching black holes. We used general relativity, Riemmanian geometry, and tensor calculus to study 2-dimensional black holes. We focused on deriving the Schwarzschild solution from the Einstein-Hilbert action and on finding a field equation for a 2D conformal Weyl blach hole. Although this seems like a lot of mumbo jumbo, it is actually very interesting stuff and admittedly very mathy. The fundamental concept behind our research is that black holes are holographic in nature, which sounds and is cool. If you are interested, I suggest reading more here and watching this video by PBS.
Also, I worked under professor Leo Rodriguez during our research and he has a very interesting, although advanced, book on holographic black holes. You can find it here. Interestingly, I also do Brazilian JiuJitsu and Judo with Leo, which meant that if I messed up while researching, I would have to pay for it next time we practiced.
Alright, I’m joking…ok, maybe half-joking.
Data Analysis and Social Inquiry Lab Research Assistant
In January 2022, I got hired as a Python and R research assistant at Grinnell College’s Data Analysis and Social Inquiry Lab, or DASIL as its colloquially known. DASIL helps faculty and students at the college with any and all data cleaning, data wrangling, and data analysis tasks. The first research project I was assigned to involved the digitization of tens of thousands of 19th century Danish patent records for professor Hale Utar of the college’s Economics department. The task seemed gargantuan at first, but we were able to train a deep learning layout parsing model using Layout Parser that helped us immensely.
The layout parser helped us efficiently extract text from the patents, which came as PDFs. After extracting the text, we had to do a lot of cleaning since the images are old and the text can be hard for OCR engines to read.
Recently, DASIL began hosting a series of Python Workshops. I am in charge of creating the content for the Introduction to Python and Python for Data Science. This content is in the form of code notebooks and tutorials that the students will be given access to prior to and during the workshop sessions.
Data Science Mentor and Computer Science Tutor
In January 2022, I also got hired as the mentor for Grinnell College’s Introduction to Data Science course and as a tutor for the Computer Science department. As a mentor, I am in charge of holding class sessions twice a week to reinforce the concepts taught by the faculty. The course is taught in R which may or may not have some of the most unhelpful error messages in the history of coding languages. Thus, I see myself as the Moses of the class, helping guide students through the error messages and their confusion into the land of knowing how to code in R. Mentor sessions for the Introduction to Data Science course normally have around 10-20 students (it’s optional so not everyone comes) and I usually give a small lecture to make sure everyone gets the topics of the week. After that, the students work on their projects or labs and I help if they are having trouble.
As a Computer Science tutor, I also hold 2 weekly tutoring sessions. They are both 2-3 hours long, but are focused on helping students with concepts in Java and C. I often teach students fundamental concepts like recursion, trees, or linked lists. I also help them troubleshoot and work through their code.
Other
Besides the jobs mentioned above, I’ve worked as a grader for the statistics and computer science departments. I also worked in catering before the pandemic hit, but never got back into it.
What I like
I think I’m a pretty simple guy. I like Sci-Fi and Fantasy movies, attempting to choke people but getting choked instead (I’m talking about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, don’t make it weird), basketball, and videogames. I am currently the president for Grinnell College’s Brazilian Jiu Jitsu club. It’s not because I’m good, I just tricked them into it.
In terms of movies, I would have to say some of my favorites are: The Lord of the Rings trilogy (cause of course), Brazil by Terry Gilliam, The Princess Bride, Event Horizon, and V for Vendetta. I also like reading novels, my favorite probably being A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin.
I actually played basketball in high school. I was the starting small forward for my high school’s team. I don’t play as much anymore, my knees aren’t what they used to be. Also, I am a Clippers fan (please don’t judge me). To be fair, I started watching basketball in the Lob City era of the Clippers and they were pretty cool back then. Now, the only thing they bring me is emotional turmoil.
I like all kinds of videogames. I play mostly hard games, like the Souls series or Super Meat Boy, but some of my favorite games are story-focused RPGs, like The Witcher 3. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to appreciate shorter games that put an emphasis on telling a compelling story, rather than large games that can sometimes feel bloated or menial. I recently played Disco Elysium and loved it. I also recently played through Celeste, loved that as well.
Where I’m from
I was born and raised in the city of Cartagena, Colombia. If I had to summarize Cartagena in two words, they would be hot and humid. Don’t get me wrong, I love my city, but I don’t miss the constant sweat and sunburn. To be fair, Cartagena is a beautiful city. Located on Colombia’s carribean coast, it boasts a UNESCO World Heritage city center and amazing beaches. It’s Colombia’s biggest tourist attraction for a reason.
I spent most of my childhood either playing basketball, eating nuggets, or both. I also watched a lot of movies. Like a lot a lot. I think maybe one too many, but I digress. Growing up, I never imagined I would go to college in the U.S., let alone Iowa of all places, but I’m glad I did. Here in the U.S. I’ve met so many people and done so many things I never thought I would get to do. I hope the rest of my time here is just as good.
Anyways, thanks for reading through this. I hope I didn’t bore you too much. If I made you chuckle even once, you owe me a quarter. I only accept quarters via pigeon though, so good luck.
