Student Squared: Charlie Barker ’27

In this recurring series, Features writers interview one randomly generated student to make campus feel a little more familiar.

Q: How’s sophomore year going?

A: So far it’s been going well. It’s been going a lot better than freshman year. Much less stressful … Less running around trying to figure out how to be your own person all of a sudden.

Q: Makes total sense. And where are you from?

A: I’m from Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.

Q: Awesome. Tell me a little bit about home for you.

A: It was a very nice place to grow up. It’s sort of like the suburbs of D.C., so it’s not the most interesting or exciting place necessarily. But I was within walking distance of a great public high school, in an awesome little neighborhood, near a climbing gym, and walking distance from a metro into the city, so it kind of had just about everything you could want.

Q: Word on the street is that you’re a pretty incredible rock climber. Can you tell me a little bit about that? How did you get started, and what does it look like for you now?

A: I actually got started at a birthday party … in second grade. [After that], I did it sort of casually with the [recreational] team at the gym, like once a week. In middle school, I was doing that and horseback riding and ice hockey. And then I got to about seventh grade, and my parents [told me], you have to pick one. I was too scrawny to be good at ice hockey. And also my mom was worried I was going to get a concussion. And I had developed a severe allergy to horses. I really enjoyed rock climbing, so I went with climbing as a serious competitive sport, starting in about seventh or eighth grade. I did it a ton through high school, and have kept it up in college, though not as much, because there just isn’t as much time to spend 15-16 hours a week in the climbing gym. But I really like it. There’s a great climbing club here with a bunch of awesome people.

Q: I want to hear more about climbing club!

A: We have practices three times a week where we just go to the gym for a couple hours, and all climb together, and then get dinner in Val afterwards. It’s 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., Monday and Thursday, and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday. It’s great. It’s an awesome group of people. It’s very casual, very lowkey, which is super fun, because it’s really good to have an excuse to leave campus and not think about work.

Q: You live in the Zü. How’s that going?

A: It’s awesome. It’s a really, really great community. It’s nice to live somewhere where it feels like you know everyone else and they all know you. And everyone is friendly and happy to be living there and all have a shared set of values and goals for what they want their life to look like … It’s super awesome to have a place that feels more like my space. Especially physically removed from campus a little bit. It’s nice to have a physical formalization of work-life balance.

Q: What does a typical day in your life look like?

A: I mean one development of sophomore year is that I have started operating on a pretty fixed schedule, which has actually been really good. I normally wake up around 8:30 [a.m.] to make myself breakfast and drink a cup of coffee in the Zü, and I get to campus around 10 [a.m.], and then I’m normally here at class or doing work until, like, 4 or 5 [p.m.], at which point I’m normally either climbing or I have to get back to the house to do laundry or cook or eat someone else’s dinner. And then I’ll do a little bit more work after dinner, but I try to be done with school stuff for the day by around 10 [p.m.], just to not let it drag out too long, because otherwise, it’s sort of all-consuming. It’s almost like a nine-to-five.

Q: Sounds like a pretty good schedule you’ve got there. I’ve actually been wanting to ask about your mug since we sat down but I haven’t. And now seems like a fitting time. I feel like all people who live in the Zü are always carrying around a really cool coffee cup.

A: Yeah, this has been my mug of the week. It’s like a goblet; it can fit a lot of coffee in it, but it’s also tall, so it can fit in a car cup holder. I had a beer stein last week. Stuff just sort of accumulates in that house.

Q: What’s the best class you’ve taken so far at Amherst?

A: Last semester, I took an Intro to Russian Lit [class] called “Love and Death.” The class material is just so cool. It’s a fascinating historical period, and their literature is really interesting to study because they were so hyper-focused on writing about the times they were living in … in a way that’s a little bit rough around the edges at the time because it was the first couple decades of real literary intellectualism in Russia.

Q: I also took a really great introductory Russian literature class last year, even though I’m definitely not a Russian major. It’s such a great department.

A: Oh no, I’m not a Russian major either. Can’t read the alphabet.

Q: That leads us right into my next question … What are you majoring in? I think I can kind of assume since we’re sitting in the physics lounge right now, but … ?

A: I am majoring in physics, yeah. Maybe also math, but probably not also math. Maybe accidentally math. But yeah, majoring in physics. My other favorite class was [Professor of Physics and Department Chair of Physics and Astronomy David] Hanneke’s “Oscillations of Waves.” Such a good teacher. I love it. I don’t know. I came into college half expecting to be a physics major and half expecting to be an English major. My plan was sort of to take a physics class, and if I liked it, I would be a physics major, and if not, I would never take a math class again — not actually — but I took “Waves” … and loved it. It’s an awesome department. All the professors are so smart and so enthusiastic, and so are all of the people who can take the classes with you.

Q: Did you take physics in high school?

A: I did, and it actually wasn’t my favorite class. But it was just something I’ve always been interested in. If you asked me at age nine what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would [have said] a theoretical physicist, which maybe gives you an idea of the slightly pretentious and insufferable person I was giving off for the first decade of my life. Which I don’t think has totally left, and I also think my answer is different now.

Q: What is your answer now?

A: Something more applied. I think there’s a lot of really interesting stuff going on with people taking the mathematical methods for physics and throwing them basically on whatever problem they can find. So like climate science modeling, geophysics, even social physics — the physicists take on behavioral economics. It’s all really interesting stuff, and it’s fun because it takes the same rigorous quantitativeness and applies it to a problem that you can actually point at. Because a lot of physics research that gets done these days, as awesome as it is, is about stuff that doesn’t “not exist,” but you can’t explain to your mother why anyone should care about it, which makes it feel, at least for me, harder to find the motivation to do it. Not to rag on any of the professors here who all do awesome research … But I think at the end of the day I would like to do something about the world at the scale of the human experience.

Q: Very interesting. What’s one thing that has surprised you since coming to college?

A: I feel like basically every month here, I learn more than I did in the entire four years of high school. So that’s been what’s surprising to me; I assumed I was going to learn more and learn differently here than in high school, but just how much more vital and real and really enjoyable it has been as well.

Q: Is there any advice you want to share, or anything that you wish I had asked you about?

A: I don’t know. I feel fairly unqualified to give anyone advice.

Q: No! Everyone is qualified to give advice.

A: Try to do something you enjoy. That’s trite. Take a physics class, take a Russian class, take a class with [Professor of Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies and Elizabeth W. Bruss Reader Katrina] Karkazis, for sure, she’s a genius. Move to the Zü if you want to. We have a lot of openings next semester. We have an open house this Saturday. Come for brunch. Anya Hardy-Mittell [’26] is going to make a slew of awesome baked goods.