♪ Can't keep my hands to myself ♪
- Hi, my name is Alaena Roberds,
I am a sophomore at Brown University.
I am studying applied mathematics,
and I am also on the rowing team,
and part of Storytellers Club.
♪ Ooh I'm a rebel just for kicks now ♪
♪ I been feeling it since 1966 now ♪
♪ Might be over now, but I feel it still ♪
- I usually wake up around eight in the morning,
7:30, eight, and I go immediately
to breakfast with some friends at one of the dining halls,
one of the main dining halls on campus.
And after that, I go to a 9:00 a.m. class,
either French or Math.
Then, I have one more class in the afternoon.
After that, I go straight to practice,
at the Boat House, which is about a mile from campus,
along the river, and I am at the Boat House
for two and a half to three and a half hours.
After practice, I usually go with the whole team,
and we'll eat dinner together,
again at one of the dining halls on campus.
And after that we all split up and go study on our own,
at a library, or sometimes in my room.
♪ We could fight a war for peace ♪
♪ Ooh woo, I'm a rebel just for kicks now ♪
♪ Give in to that easy living ♪
♪ Goodbye to my hopes and dreams ♪
♪ Stop flippin' ♪
(cheerful instrumental music)
- [Interviewer] Alright, so what is this building?
- Okay, so this is the Applied Math Building,
it's the Applied Math Department, and this is where
a lot of my professors and my academic advisor,
they have their offices here,
so I'll have a lot of meetings here,
not as many classes, but lots of office hours.
- So when you got to Brown, did you know
that you wanted to be an applied math major?
- No, originally I was thinking Engineering,
something STEM related.
But I definitely switched around a lot,
I took a lot of different classes my freshman year,
in like all sorts of different departments,
and I think that that helped me explore quite a bit.
I switched around for a while, I was thinking Engineering,
Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Public Policy--
- So you started to hop around to all of them.
- I really hop around, yeah.
Which is nice about Brown, you don't have any requirements
until you start your concentration,
and then you just have those requirements to fulfill.
So you really have like a ton of room to explore,
which I think is really helpful 'cause I,
I realized after the fact, that I really didn't know
what I wanted to do, or what I wanted to study.
- Sure, but sort of that exploration
helped you to figure that out. - Yeah definitely, yeah.
- So, what is the Brown Applied Math Department like?
- Well there's a couple different tracks you can take,
they actually have a lot of different options you can do.
They offer Applied Math Computer Science,
that's a concentration,
and they also have Applied Math Econ.,
which is really popular here.
And then they also have regular strict Applied Math.
And you can do Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science.
- [Interviewer] Overall, what is sort of the environment
like academically at Brown?
- [Alaena] I would say, if I had to describe it,
I would say it's really cooperative,
like between students, and between faculty too,
like they are really working with you to make sure
that you are taking classes that you wanna take
and you're enjoying your classes.
And I would say just like Brown as whole
really, really wants you to enjoy the classes you're taking.
And they have so many different ways to make that happen,
you can take any class you want for a grade,
or you can take it pass/fail.
So encouraging people to take classes
that you know, they're scared of taking,
or that they're uncomfortable taking,
kind of without risk of failing,
and because of that too, since you know the GPA,
there's pass/fail, there's class for a grade,
I feel like people aren't you know, competing between
like GPAs and stuff like that because it's really hard
to kind of compare where you stand versus
where another student stands.
It doesn't seem super, I mean it's hard,
which makes it somewhat competitive,
just by being difficult.
But it's not competitive in the sense that students
are competing with each other.
- Sure.
(upbeat instrumental music)
So what are your weekends typically like for you at Brown?
- So I usually have practice in the morning on Saturday
'til noon, one maybe.
In the evening, like later evening, night, there's usually
you know, various parties around campus,
last night there was a big Harry Potter (laughs)--
- Harry Potter themed party.
- Harry Potter themed party, which is a big event at Brown,
it's pretty famous.
- Oh 'cause a, Emma Watson?
- Oh yeah, yeah Emma Watson, yeah.
She actually lived in the dorm I'm in now, so--
- Oh okay, there ya go.
- Yeah, so it's a fun event.
- So there's some other schools in the area, RISD--
- RISD.
- Providence College. - Providence College.
- Is there a lot of interaction between the Brown community,
and those communities?
- The RISD students and Brown students can take classes
at each other's schools, which is not something you can do
at Providence College, and the other schools.
So I think because of that, there's more interaction
between these two schools.
So yeah, I mean I have a couple friends
that go to RISD I can definitely you know,
interact with that community more so.
("Lay it down")
- [Interviewer] So this is the Boat House?
- Yes, this is Boat House, right behind you.
- Great, so you're on a crew team,
what does a typical week in crew look like?
- We practice every day, sometimes twice a day,
all afternoons but yeah, occasionally we
have some morning practices,
probably like two or three times a week
we would have morning practices.
I rowed in high school, and so I definitely
wanted to continue rowing in college,
and I knew about the crew team here,
I had some friends that were on it.
So that was something that I came in
knowing that I would join.
Well the main competitive season
for NCAA rowing is the spring,
so in the spring we probably have a race every week
for all of April, most of May, and maybe one race in March.
♪ Tell your friends you ain't coming out tonight ♪
♪ Wrap your hair girl, tie it up tonight ♪
- [Interviewer] Why did you ultimately decide on Brown?
- I think that that was probably one of the main things,
like it seems like the school puts in a lot of effort
to make sure that you can take classes you want to take,
and have professors that you like,
and really just like, make your learning
what you want it to be.
It's very friendly, which I think is different than,
like definitely different than middle school,
and definitely different than high school,
and just like any school prior to this.
I think that it's, Brown's a nice size,
like it's 7,000 undergrads, about 7,000 undergrads
which is pretty nice because I think that there's like
so many different communities that kind of like,
are overlapping, and I think it's so intimidating
you know to go to a new school, especially if it's far away,
but it seems like people have a pretty good
attitude about making friends, which is so helpful.
- Right.
- And so nice, so that's probably
what's surprising. - Great.
♪ Wanna lay it down, so I can lay you down ♪
♪ All my ladies say lay, lay, lay ♪
♪ Wanna lay it down, so I can lay you down ♪
♪ So lay on my pillow ♪
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