Glen Heinrich-Wallace '09 discovered a passion for physics...

"I fell in love with physics. I think it was the earliest sign at Bennington that things weren't going to go the way I'd expected before I got here."

What Glen Heinrich-Wallace '09 did expect: that he would come to Bennington, spend most of his time studying literature, and become a writer. "I definitely still have that ambition, but I realized I also have a lot of other interests. So I took full advantage of the freedom offered here and ended up studying six different subjects in my first year."

Among the broad spectrum of classes he took in his first term was Physics I: Forces and Motion. The Walt Whitman lines that graced the top of the syllabus ("I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems...") were Heinrich-Wallace's first clue that this class was going to be different than he'd imagined, but "about a week or two into it, I realized this was going to be really amazing."

He was struck by how closely he could work with Jason Zimba, the mathematical physicist teaching the class. "I can't remember how many times I went to Jason's office after class and talked with him for half an hour about stuff we were working on, along with more advanced applications of it," says Heinrich-Wallace. "The amount of love he has for his subject and the clarity with which he explains it is fantastic." By the middle of the spring, Heinrich-Wallace was trying his hand at building a Kelvin Thunderstorm, "a brilliant design where ionization in water is put into a positive feedback loop, and makes a spark with no outside energy whatsoever."

Heinrich-Wallace was also beginning to piece together a few designs of his own--namely, some early mental sketches of how he might shape his education. One point of inspiration was a lecture given by Zimba during Family Weekend, in which the physicist discussed the parallels between physics and poetry. The first-year student was fascinated by Zimba's description of the elements the two disciplines held in common--for instance, the imaginative possibilities in rigid forms like the equation or the sonnet. In time, Heinrich-Wallace began to think about other parallels, particularly "the similarities in how creativity works within academic pursuits that most people see as being radically different," he says. "Many people don't realize that mathematics isn't mechanical. It's actually a very engaging process. The best mathematicians are the ones who can look at a problem in a new way, just as the best writers are the ones who can look at a theme in a new way." It became increasingly clear to Heinrich-Wallace that these connections could form the center of his studies at Bennington.

In his second term, he began to put his ideas into practice. In his Scenery for the Theater class, he studied the technical aspects of theater and how to analyze a script for information; in Shakespeare: Comedies and Tragedies, he looked at theater from a different vantage point, discovering the poetry in Shakespeare's plays. In Aesthetics, he created a final project that examined the aesthetics of math. "Math and geometry have shaped and influenced the visual arts since ancient Greece," he says. "I started with Pythagoras, the use of the number phi and the golden section in the Parthenon and Renaissance architecture, and went all the way up through fractal art. I wrote a paper on it and put together a presentation to the class. Seeing the people who weren't really into math getting interested in it and asking questions was really rewarding for me."

For Heinrich-Wallace, the connections he was making in his work turned out to go hand-in-hand with his connections to friends and housemates. Though he plans to spend next term delving further into science and literature--his schedule includes classes on calculus, computer science, Charles Dickens, and further work in physics--his social sphere spans the disciplines. "Some of my friends and I do this thing called Five-Minute Plays. We sit down at dinner and each get a napkin and a pen. One of us gives a prompt--a line or a prop or the name of a character--and then each of us spends five minutes writing a play. We type them up later and perform them en masse in our house living room on the weekends. And I love that.

"One of the great things about Bennington that differs from high school is instead of just talking about your crazy ideas, you actually do them."

Classes Glen Took in His First Year:

Fall Term:

• Landmarks of 18th Century British Literature, with Annabel Davis-Goff. "A fantastic class that looked at the development of the English novel from Dafoe to Fanny Burney. I was exposed to Tristram Shandy, the first experimental novel, which is one of the most profound and difficult books that I have ever read."
• The Language of Music, with John Van Buskirk. "I had virtually no experience with music when I went to Bennington. After taking this class I have a much greater appreciation for it."
• Photography Foundation, with Jonathan Kline.
• Physics I: Forces and Motion, with Jason Zimba.

Field Work Term:

• Park Record newspaper, Park City, Utah. "FWT overlaps with the Sundance Film Festival, so I did some film reviews. But even more interesting was discovering that the assignments I was most engaged with had something to do with science: reporting on the wetlands around Park City or the environmental impact of substances used in snowmaking."
  
  
  

Spring Term:

• Scenery for the Theater, with Michael Giannitti.
• Shakespeare: Comedies and Romances, with April Bernard and Mark Wunderlich.
• Aesthetics, with Karen Gover. "We spent three months trying to answer two questions: 'what is art?' and 'why do we care?' I would say that neither was answered but that the exploration gave me many new viewpoints to look at art of all kinds with."
• Physics II: Fields, with Jason Zimba.

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