<p>I'm looking forward to it then!</p>
<p>I've experienced two years of horrible dining at my boarding school already, so this is important to me. What's the food at Caltech like?</p>
<p>From what I was told on my tour yesterday, tech food is not a point of complaint. </p>
<p>-Oren</p>
<p>The food is not bad. Particularly, the lunch food is of good quality and selection. Dinner is also good, but it can get repetitive. Recently some changes were made to the dinner menu to give us new variety, so that makes it a bit better. </p>
<p>However, I visited my girlfriend at Harvard for a week, and I really liked their food. Good muffins :)</p>
<p>Craig,</p>
<p>Thanks. I really appreciate your informative post. </p>
<p>I am looking forward to all subsequent installments from you, Ben, Alleya, and other helpful Techers.</p>
<p>How easy is it to switch houses if you get put in a house you don't like?</p>
<p>Also, how do people usually eat their meals? Is dinner with just their house and are lunch and breakfast at any specific time?</p>
<p>I think that it should be noted that you are not "put into a house" randomly and what not. At the end of rotation, you rank the ho(u/v)ses and the students in the ho(u/v)se have a lot of say into where people end up. The point is that this results in happy frosh most of the time (in my opinion, at least). As far as switching ho(u/v)ses, it depends somewhat on which ho(u/v)ses they are. In general, it's the decision of the ho(u/v)se that you wish to move into.</p>
<p>The ho(u/v)ses have dinner together, as provided by the board plan required for on-campus students. It should be noted that it is perfectly acceptable to visit a different ho(u/v)se's dinner as well. Lunch and breakfast are very flexible, and for on-board students involves buying food with a declining balance at one of several locations on campus. The food is pretty good, and you get it when you have time. These places have hours, but they are broad ranges. Most people have a break from classes at noon-1, so it's busy around then.</p>
<p>why the u/v???</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So the south hovses were built back in the 30's. For one reason or another, they all have "house" spelled Roman-style, i.e. "___ Hovse". The north houses, for whatever reason, instead have the house name spelled as "___ House". </p>
<p>So crayonfrosh was just covering his bases. Some people will care if you use the "wrong" spelling; I tend to use house when speaking about the houses in general, and quite often use "house" for the south hovses regardless of the "correct" spelling.</p>
<p>Durran,</p>
<p>You'll find that a lot of the food is made-to-order, which is nice. There are good vegetarian options, as well. Be prepared to encounter strange and interesting (not in a bad way) pizzas. And, I don't know if anyone's brought this up, but people generally don't finish their declining balances. The only people who have any real complaints about the food are the JPL engineers who have been eating it for upwards of 15 years. :p</p>
<p>Could you tell me just the quick version of what each house's reputation or appeal is? People keep talking about it, but i'm not sure which is which. I guess I'll learn some next week, but i'd appreciate it now.</p>
<p>Maybe I'll end up saying something about it, but in the meantime check out the Wikipedia article on the Caltech House System.</p>
<p>i was born in the Former Soviet Union -- in what is now Ukraine -- and my parents always cited as a virtue of the Soviet people a closeness and filiality absent from cultures with less hardship. it would be obscene to compare the piddly academic work we do to the challenges of perpetual poverty, but something qualitatively similar is probably true at caltech.</p>
<p>people form close bonds here, primarily through the houses.</p>
<p>i'm generally ambivalent about the houses. i've always hated herds, and there's no doubt that a few of our houses are (collectively) stupid, occasionally violent herds. but even in the ones i find most unpleasant, i'm always genuinely surprised and happy to rediscover the closeness of the people and their fundamental decency to each other. even through activities that i myself appreciate least, i see people form the strongest relationships they've ever had; that's beautiful even if you do it while drinking yourself silly and throwing chicken organs.</p>
<p>often people say about the house system that its goal is to socialize cloistered, antisocial frosh -- to "force them out of their rooms." actually, nobody ever forces anyone to do anything. (strangely, the language still irks me.)</p>
<p>but something less sinister is true about the effect of the house system. by dividing people up into groups of about 100, caltech creates minicultures of a size anthropologists have discovered is about optimal for living or working together. in reality, what helps the shy and the unusual students is that it is much easier to build an identity in a group of 100 than of 900. and that allows some techers to have their first really meaningful connections with others here.</p>
<p>there are problems, too. no matter how great they can be, the houses are exclusive social clubs, and that comes with some of the stupid backbiting and pettiness such things engender. that's sad and disappointing. but pettiness and backbiting are everywhere i've ever looked, and they're easy to avoid once you see them.</p>
<p>the perfect solution fallacy says that one ought not to criticize an arrangement because it doesn't solve all the problems that could be solved. i am sympathetic to this observation.</p>
<p>in the house i like best, the defining quality is a sense of natural warmth. that probably makes up for the rest of it.</p>
<p>
Could you tell me just the quick version of what each house's reputation or appeal is? People keep talking about it, but i'm not sure which is which. I guess I'll learn some next week, but i'd appreciate it now.
</p>
<p>So, I personally try to avoid giving specific information about any of the houses out online, because it's far to easy to misinterpret things that way, or unintentionally give the wrong impression. Also, any information you get when you ask "what are the defining characteristics" tends to be highly polarized and stereotypical, or else seems so vague as to be useless. </p>
<p>Trying to describe any one house is difficult enough when you can actually see them in action; online, I feel you only get, at best, a very superficial impression, which can be pretty unfair.</p>
<p>I'm a big fan of the house system; I can honestly say my house and the friends i've made as a result is the main reason I"m happy here at Tech. Thus, I try to avoid pre-biasing any prefrosh for or against any of the houses, so that they can give each one a fair chance.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
You'll find that a lot of the food is made-to-order, which is nice. There are good vegetarian options, as well.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>The food's decent, but the vegetarian options are very limited in both quantity and quality. (Or so I've been told) While Caltech Dining Services tries to be as accommodating and helpful as possible in this, obtaining adequate vegetarian meals is largely the responsibility of the student. </p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
And, I don't know if anyone's brought this up, but people generally don't finish their declining balances.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Or you can be at -300. With declining balance a little bit lower next year, I'm going for -400 in the fall...</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
The only people who have any real complaints about the food are the JPL engineers who have been eating it for upwards of 15 years.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>I'm afraid that's not the case. Don't get me wrong; the food is a lot better than people will tell you during pre-frosh weekend, but it gets old in a little over a term, not 15 years. It's decent; nothing stellar, nothing terrible.</p>
<p>
[Quote]
The food's decent, but the vegetarian options are very limited in both quantity and quality.
[/Quote]
</p>
<p>The Food Committee this year has formed a Vegetarian/Vegan Committee which, as I understand it, is seeking to find better food that CDS can provide based on student input. Historically, this sort of thing has been effective in improving quality and diversity of food.</p>
<p>As for talking about the houses, we are not allowed to make any statements which can unfailrly bias students towards or away from the house. When I was a prefrosh, this irritated me to no end because I felt like I didn't understand the houses as individual personalities. However, rotation is much better than I think the average prefrosh gives it credit for ahead of time. You will understand the houses soon enough, and there is somewhere for everyone. It's just very difficult to make any broad statements about any of them without blatantly violating rotation rules. :)</p>
<p>there's a guy in the psychology department at harvard -- looking up the reference wouldn't be in the spirit of these stream-of-consciousness posts, but he can't be hard to find -- who studies happiness. lots of studies have shown that we're rigged to come back to some equilibrium level of happiness. that is, your "absolute state" (within bounds) isn't that relevant to how happy or sad you are -- just the derivative of that state with respect to time. changes for worse are sad, changes for the better are happy, but you always come fairly soon after to rest at your (presumably genetically determined) equilibrium.</p>
<p>this would have to explain why caltech isn't pure and endless bliss. today's a sunny day. i was walking around. we have these funny raised circular fountains in front of the performance hall and i was walking in circles on one. today's the kind of day that in the east announces it's spring, but here it's a liar because every day feels quite like the first day of spring, except the ten days a year when it rains.</p>
<p>the reason i made at least twenty circles on this thing in slow big steps was because i was working out a math problem (2 of 3 parts done!). and this isn't a comfortable state. math is great because you can keep everything essential in your head and just walk around this bonsai campus and do your homework. but what's shocking to me is how rare it is that you're actually enjoying it. most of the time you (meaning me) are beating yourself up over how you're stupid and you should have solved that faster.</p>
<p>one of the smartest people i know had an insight that i thought was quite useful. he said, the work is more fun if you realize it's what you would have been doing anyway. he's not quite right. it's what you'd have liked to be doing anyway. (philosophers have formulated a notion of first and second (and nth) order desires. first order desires are things you want, and second order desires are things you want to want, but may or may not actually want. and so forth illustration coming.) surely, if i had just a four year vacation after high school, my desire would be to spend it stretching and expanding and exercising my mind and my collaborative skills and my endurance. but when it comes down to it, you don't really want to do anything that's involved in that when the moment comes. it's hard and it hurts, like real exercise (not this pansy intellectual kind). nobody normal wants the extra ounce of pain, but in more reflective modes, you choose to have it. still, it makes it easier in the moment, if you realize that you would decide to do this if you were given the choice again.</p>
<p>anyway, perversely, caltech is my ideal vacation, which i have to work fairly hard (psychologically) to enjoy.</p>
<p>one of the houses is having their annual interhouse party today --- this house takes this party seriously. for over a week now they've been building it (in the backyard of the admissions office, since the real house is out of commission for a little while.)</p>
<p>many people who come to caltech seem to be flabbergasted by the intellectual abilities of their peers, but i guess this got stolen from me because i had the good fortune to learn before getting here how amazing people can be. so i didn't get that part. but i certainly am amazed in other ways. like this building business.</p>
<p>apparently, you see, there are kids here who -- in a fairly small group -- can hammer together some large, elaborate wooden structure (maybe with a huge papier-mache elephant on top) with inset ponds and and and ... where do you learn to do this stuff? i certainly missed the class.</p>
<p>the dedication, too... the classes don't ease up for this stuff, but people still organize things of immense scope. my friend dima organized an event that cost around $30,000 -- probably more -- bringing the band jimmy eat world to campus. getting the funding, clearing things with all the campus organizations, arranging for security, having a barbecue to feed a few thousand people... i guess maybe college is where the real world starts and it's not all kid stuff anymore.</p>
<p>i guess the theme is -- i'm amazed and humbled by the big feats of creation and organization done by my classmates -- and waiting to see what they'll do without all that stupid homework to get in their way (but armed with the knowledge that stupid homework gave them)</p>
<p>you are such a good writer :) thanks for doing this!</p>
<p>Ben! Why did you leave the party so early!</p>