Summer of Math! REU in Geneva NY

Ray Ibrahim, Verrazzano Class of 2019, completed a major in Mathematics. 

It was a cloudy, damp Wednesday morning. I had just packed my bags and threw any loose items in the back of my car that may be useful. I was going to spend two months in Geneva, New York participating in a mathematics Research for Undergraduates (REU) program. Before embarking on my three-hundred-mile journey, I swung by my friend Bing’s house. Equipped with only a quarter of a tank, Bing’s Costco membership card was my ticket to that sweet, cheap fossil fuel. After promptly filling up my tank and returning my one eye closed one eye opened friend to his humble abode, I set forth on the I-81 to Geneva.

With the sun ablaze, I arrived at Geneva at around three in the afternoon, perfectly late for the campus tour with all the other participating students. This gave me time to unload my soccer mom Mazda and get situated in my super humid room. After sweating my butt off moving stuff from my car to the third floor of a house built in the 1800s, which I had thoroughly convinced myself was a wooden oven at this point, another student came by to pick me up and bring me to the group. From then on, I was part of the Summer 2018 Math REU group at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Throughout that summer, I was able to work alongside another student and mentor on a problem in Graph Theory. It was an incredibly useful experience to come up with original ideas and present them, as well as argue our positions to convince others of our results. I was able to visit two universities, namely Rochester Institute of Technology and Cornell University, to get a feel of what graduate programs are like and talk to current graduate students. The most amazing experience by far was flying to Denver, Colorado to present our research results at MathFest 2018. It was awesome going to a huge conference, seeing wonderful talks from all kinds of mathematicians, and of course all the free promo merchandise given out was a bonus.

In the end of the program, I left with a near complete paper with my REU partner and mentor. After working on this paper further with incredibly helpful reviews and suggestions from Professor Kevin O’Bryant, I was able to find critical errors and apply fixes as well as flesh out some other parts. All in all, the REU has been a wonderful academic experience for me and I have come out a better person.