This week, The Argus sat down with Los Angeles, Calif. native Ford McDill ’25. As a leader of the Disengineering Club and Financial Manager of the University’s radio station, McDill told us about maxing out the math major’s credit limit and the joys of discovery. He is dismayed to have omitted his affinity for chili dogs during this interview.

The Argus: Why do you think that you were nominated to be a WesCeleb?

Ford McDill: Oh my gosh, I forgot that’s the first question always asked. I feel like I’m in a lot of different groups, and I’ve met a lot of people throughout my time at Wesleyan. There’s Disengineering, WESU (88.1 FM), [and] the math department.

A: Thinking back to your freshman year, both in terms of the groups you were a part of and who you were as a person, how do you feel you’ve changed over the years?

FM: Good question. Well, I’ve thought of a lot of new jokes to make, which always go over well. But on a real note—well, that is actually pretty true about jokes—mostly, I just feel like I’ve honed in on what I really enjoy doing and the things that bring me joy. Before, there were things that I would do, where I was like, “Yeah, this is, like, fun.” But now it’s like everything that I’m involved in is like, “Wow. This is awesome. Like, this is the coolest thing ever. I can’t believe I’m doing this kind of stuff, because it’s crazy. It’s crazy.”

A: Was there a moment when you felt yourself settling into those things? Or has it been more of a slow process?

FM: Kind of a process. Some of them I knew that I would really want to be a part of, like the radio station. I was one of the leaders at my high school radio station, and I had a show there [called] “AMFM: All Music Ford McDill.” I don’t know why I ditched that [name] at Wesleyan. Probably my biggest regret. With WESU, I have my regular music show, “Audible Eras”, but then I also have “Two’s a Crowd with DJ Itsikl [Isaac Moss ’26],” an improv comedy show. Last night we were mascots for the Super Bowl. I was Bears McKenzie, the mascot for Boston’s fictional Single-A team, the Boston Baked Bears. They’re an okay team, but they’ve been around for a while, I think since 1909.

A: I heard some of them got taken out in the Great Molasses Flood.

FM: Yeah, that was really the beginning of the end for the Boston Baked Bears. 

A: You mentioned the math department, and I know it’s a big part of your identity. When did you know that was something you were really gonna pursue?

FM: Oh, man. It’s just been fated since the beginning. I used to wake up before my parents at like 5:30 [a.m.], when I was three or four, and I would be like, “What should I do now? I’ll see how high I can count, or count my coins, or arrange them in symmetric stacks.”

A: Both your parents are filmmakers—how did math enter your life?

FM: Probably from my real father. That’s his joke; that’s his joke. I don’t know where [math] comes from, but a lot of people in my family are teachers, and I love to teach.

A: Looking forward, I know you’re thinking about academia or taking time off before grad school. At present, what do your future ideas look like?

FM: I definitely want to take a gap year. I want to travel, probably road trip. Road trips are my favorite thing in the whole world, because you just get to see so much stuff, and it’s such a slow, rewarding process. So I’m looking forward to having some fun and taking a break from school and learning.

A: To what extent do you feel like your upbringing in LA informs who you are?

FM: At least exploratorily, I would go to all these fun places in LA without a car, so I’d have to take the metro system. I’d be like, “Okay, well, I only have to wait like, an hour and 15 minutes for this bus, and then I have like, two more transfers, so I’m set! It’s only like three and a half hours.” Now I’m like, “Oh, wow. If I have a car, it’s like, so easy to go places.”

A: Tell me more about your involvement with Disengineering.

FM: Disengineering is a club where our goal is to combat forced obsolescence. The goal is to take electronic waste and repurpose it as electronic instruments. There’s an e-waste pile on the bottom floor of Exley [Science Center], and we just scrounge around there. And we build these amazing [creations]. I think they’re really, really, really cool. But a lot of people maybe don’t have the same view of them because it is a lot of, like, beeps and stuff, but I think it’s really awesome.

A: Tell me about the creation you’re most proud of.

FM: I made an instrument last year for the forum called the Resonanz Körper. It’s a three-and-a-half-foot aluminum stud, and it had buttons on it, and it would be played like a cello, standing up. Unlike a piano, where you can play in any key, [the Körper] is tuned so that you can play in any pitch, but you can also tune it to just play in a single key, and it sounds kind of weird, but the sound waves match together more perfectly—the wavelengths are more divisible into each other.

A: Tell me about your thesis.

FM: My thesis is on topological data analysis, which does not have to do with maps. The way to think about it is if we have a bunch of data points on a sheet of paper, they might be organized in some special way to have gaps. It could be in a donut shape on this paper, and depending on what your data is, those holes can represent gaps in knowledge, or things that we need to work harder to learn about. If you have like, millions of data points, how can we find these holes and use those to learn things about our data? Especially large language models are trained on billions and billions of training data, so it can be really useful to simplify data down in a reasonable manner that we can process as humans, and topological data analysis does a good job of doing that. So I’m working on, like, faster ways to find those holes.

A: Something you said about finding holes in data, trying to figure out what we still need to know—do you think about that with your own life? What are you still looking for, trying to figure out about yourself, your place here?

FM: I think there’s a lot, frankly, because, if you think about all the things that could be done in the world, I haven’t done most of them. Doing new things is how you stay young. That’s why I love learning and traveling to places and seeing cool things. 

A: Thinking back, are there things you wish you did differently here or wish you had approached it differently?

FM: I do sometimes wish that I took more [diverse] classes. Because you talk with people, and it’s like, “Wow, the history of time and stuff,” and that sounds great, but I did kind of pigeonhole myself into math. I have taken, like, a ton of math classes: the credit limit, so, 16—you can’t [get credit for] any more. But overall, I’m pretty happy with the experience. And I still have one big semester to go. I still have to go streaking and play music in front of the whole school; hang out with people; go sledding.

A: I went sledding yesterday! It was awesome.

FM: Have I told you about danger sledding? Well, okay, first of all behind the observatory, that’s an excellent spot. You go really fast. But danger sledding is between Hewitt and Nicolson—you know those stairs by the tennis courts? It’s a really steep hill, and it just ends at Vine St., so you have to bail before you get to the road. Saturday night, there was a ton of snow. I think I went down twice, and it was just like, “Wow, this is really fast. But dang, this is serious.” Oh my god. Sledding is the greatest. Maybe one of the top three most fun, free things where you go, like, really fast. So awesome! You just go so fast!

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Thomas Lyons can be reached at tlyons@wesleyan.edu.