What I love about StuyCS
One of the things I love about StuyCS is that we've built a true Geek culture.
Last week, we had a last minute visitor - Stephen Wolfram. Well known for Mathematica and more importantly, Wolfram Alpha, without which our students wouldn't be able to complete all their homework.
The only problem was that we had about 24 hours from when the visit was confirmed til the talk was to take place.
It was a little rough, but we pulled it together - convinced the the administration to let us use the auditorium, sent a letter out to the teachers and in general get things ready.
I've heard our auditorium holds anywhere between 400 and 800 students – the kids filled the place!!!
Only at a place like Stuy.
The talk was great talk and the kids followed up with terrific questions. Dr. Wolfram spoke for about 40 minutes and then stayed to answer questions for another 40. Had the auditorium not been booked after school, I think he would have gone on for another hour.
What I loved is here we have a Math/Science/CS guy, but to the StuyCS students, he's a rock star.
The next day I got comments like:
"That was amazing," "I've heard talks by brilliant people before, but never a visionary," "He's actually building the future," and "that was the best hour of my four years at Stuyvesant."
All in all, it was well worth the craziness of putting it together at the last minute.