I'm covered in bicycle grease and I think I smell.

I've also finally started going on rides again, and it's wonderful.

I went on WebSIS today and got a bit of a surprise...

Apparently I'm minoring in Anthropology!

Or rather, I saw "Minor: 21A, ", wondered 1) when I'd gotten around to declaring a minor, and 2) what the hell 21A was (and proceeded to look it up).

But yeah, fixing that now... Two degrees from this institute is bad enough; I really don't need a minor as well.

Also, apparently my computer was having trouble generating a 10,512 by 16,000 matrix. Sooo we're going to try making some smaller one, running code on them to shrink them, and then combining them. Silly matrices. (For my summer job, right now I'm just learning Matlab and futzing with a ridiculous amount of atmospheric data. Like, the base data set is somewhere in the range of 400 Gigabytes. It is ridiculous.)

Going to the MFA now...

Well, shit.

I seem to have this trend of thinking I'm close to failing (or at least getting C's in) all of my classes, and then...

ta-da!

doing fine afterall.

Finally got the last of my grades back today; it figures that, during my most difficult semester so far, when I'm taking six classes (albeit one of them pass/fail), TA-ing another one, manage to finally elevate in APO, and am working at the music library the whole time...

is my best one so far. I got one B. In 8.04. Remember that quantum was the class I was thinking of dropping earlier in semester when I got a 45 on an exam that had an average of 70. And everything else was a mixture of A's and A-'s, which are effectively equivalent at MIT. Plus a "P" for pass.

But really. What the hell.

I'm not complaining; I just feel like this is something that has been happening to me ever since I was in middle school - I think that I'm doing worse in a class than I actually am. Honestly, I think I half do it just to stay motivated or else I really would fail - because I totally have bombed exams, and it's ridiculously easy to do.

Eh, regardless, it's really really nice that the term from hell is over. Six classes is really not a very good idea, even if you do do reasonably well.

------

Summer: I live in an awesome room in pika now, and will be living there next year as well. Working several jobs, including the fact that I need to become more familiar with working in linux (kchen, you're my hero for teaching me the little I do know) plus Matlab. The Matlab help function is the most amazing thing ever, by the way. Need to write some emails, write a few documents for the radio thing later. Also pick up some Johnny Cash at the music library - keep forgetting to, and being sad when I run into Michael later and realize I forgot because there were ridiculous amounts of shelving to do. Perhaps writing it down will help me remember.

Living at pika is awesome - dinner every night (real food! including awesome vegetarian options!), no loud neighbors or traffic on Mass Ave, and a front yard to play gardener in. (I have a whole pile of seed I still want to plant... but sooo much weeding and raking to do. Sunday's job... and maybe tomorrow afternoon for a little while)

Anyhow - work tomorrow! I should send that email and go to sleep.

Basically: I apparently don't know how to not be too busy. Still, it's kind of fun :-D.

Oh, and a few days ago I put a Mac sticker on my Eee PC. Just to confuse people ;-).

"It is rather pleasing to find, in the midst of all this language of eigenstates and wave functions, that such specific and picturesque concepts as centrifugal force still have their place."
~ my quantum mechanics textbook, in a discussion of the relationship between vibration and rotation of linear molecules.

...yes, French and Taylor have some... interesting phrasing sometimes.

Gahhh finals. (At least I'm done with three of my six classes? Too bad they were the easy ones... Also done with my TA-work this semester, which I actually ended up really enjoying)

Hate this time of year. But! I'll be done with this semester of classes, for better or worse, within a week... hopefully the GPA won't fall too much :-D.

*chugs caffeine*

Calvin & Hobbes + xkcd! = awesome.

(I think I have summer UROP! this is also a good thing. plus I'm, errr, not failing quantum anymore. Which means I'm not dropping it, which means I have to do well on the final, but - it works.)

*sigh of relief*

it was 70 degrees out and gorgeous yesterday. The prefrosh are here. I'm very briefly not hosed, and I'm probably UTF-ing next year for Mission 2012, which Lisa is definitely the TA for (= amazing).

Basically, life decided to be (mostly) friendly to me for a few days. I'm enjoying it.

In the past week, I have...

Climbed a 35 year old mountain.

Seen the northern lights (most amazing thing ever. You have no idea what it's like to watch waves of light just... ripple, across the entire sky. It's impossible and beautiful and I never really understood it until I saw it tonight).

Smelled way too many dead fish.

Not tooled at all.

Seen my 12.001 textbook come to life.

Been really cold and nearly blown off of my feet.

And run around helping radio kids.


But yeah, Iceland is pretty amazing.

...I can't believe that tomorrow I'm getting on a plane to Iceland.

Yes, this is one of the ways that MIT rocks.

(first I have to wipe 20-odd minidiscs though... *sigh*. My radio students are pretty awesome though; I'm really really excited to see what they end up doing).

Two posts in one day! What is this?

Seriously though, I happened to be talking to Sara Seager briefly yesterday and she mentioned "oh hey, we think we detected methane on this exoplanet; it's going to be published in the papers in the next day or so," and then... I happen to see a link to this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23708164/ on the front page of livejournal. Just a bit awesome, no?

Okay, so I only have one class which I'm completely screwing up now. This is (almost?) acceptable. Got half a dev above average (aka, much better than I expected) on the 8.044 exam.

...really don't want to end up having to drop 8.04 though.

Finally figured out what was going on with the 12.001 lab earlier today.

But gahhhh 8.04 >_<.

HOSED.

And physics is eating my soul.

Plus some.

Gah, fluid physics pset. Time to fight with vectors...

Watch the video on this page:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/162

it would be really cool to make things like that.

Otherwise, first day of 8.04 consisted of "here's a bit of 3.091, and, oh yeah, we're using CGS! *everyone cheers*" Expected to rapidly become very difficult, but the first pset (due Friday, of course) is incredibly easy... on the order of "estimate to an order of magnitude how many atoms are in a pinhead. and a human. and the earth." I approximated a human as a cylinder... wonder if I could have gotten away with a sphere.

Somewhat annoyed at a professor - I will maybe rant about this more later. Basically a case of someone doing the marginally ethical not-telling-a-lie, but not-telling-all-involved-parties-all-relevant-facts. Result: I'm working with him to help run a class this semester instead of someone else, which I think is what he wanted. BUT, I told him several times that I was going to be quite hosed this semester, and no, really, if he could find someone else he should take them... turns out there was a friend of mine who was interested, but he kind of pushed her off to the side until he got me to agree to it. Where I only agreed because he seemed pretty desperate and assumed nobody else was interested. Gah. Did he think we wouldn't figure this out, or did this just not occur to him? I'm unclear about how to bring this up without either being rude, or sounding like an idiot. Anyway, annoyed and a bit frustrated about this.

Soon, we will resurrect the Order of the Lepton.

In other words, term's starting and the physics study group will start working together again.

(other news... I'm heading into to NYC tomorrow with some BC friends; hopefully will catch cheap opera & broadway, maybe dinner in Little Italy. Nom nom nom. And went skiing in northern NH today, which was fun despite rather icy conditions and then visibility dropping to nothing due to a snow storm.)

Wisdom from my senior year of high school:

"Evolution is crazy stuff... These little froglike creatures and squidlike creatures are all related, but the swimming ones and the walking ones all get claws at the same time. Let this be evidence against intelligent design: if we were intelligently designed, then whoever did it got drunk a few times in the process."

This was also back when physics class mostly consisted of drawing picture of partridges experiencing simple harmonic motion while suspended from a spring attached to a pear tree. What happens if you drive the pears?

There is no pear on the pear tree; it's winter.

For anyone aware of Improv Everywhere...

They did pantsless subway in Boston this year.

But I missed it.

(sad)

Mystery hunt starts tomorrow!

[also: trying to make Stellar sites sucks. It makes it really really difficult to make a change to large groups of files - for example, setting 10 files to be copyright protected, show up on the schedule for a certain date, and become visible the day before requires you to click "edit" for every single one of those files, go to another page and make all the necessary changes, "submit," and then repeat. With, of course, long wait periods while stellar/your wireless think really, really hard. At least I'm getting paid for this?]

So, so pretty: http://www-math.mit.edu/%7Edhu/Striderweb/striderweb.html

Bored. boredboredbored.

Just went to the local high school "Envirothon" meeting, and I'm so glad I did - it was good to see everyone, to meet a few of the new members, to see that the club that Allison and I started is still surviving, and above all, just kind of...

refreshing. To be around people who have no problem being excited about identifying trees and animals and just really, really knowing things about all the green and somewhat squishy things in the world around them. And dirt and rocks and frog calls. It's wonderful.

My teeth had better be fine by Saturday (the wise ones are theoretically coming out tomorrow) so I can go hiking, a bit.

Otherwise: bored. Perhaps will read physics books, or finally get around to making a resume.

I'm going home Saturday...

It's hard to believe that this semester is over already - I still feel like it just started. Hard classes, but I ended up only taking four this semester - plus I wasn't on crew anymore. So much more time, and more significantly, much more sleep. Still, kind of boring - I need something interesting to work on, besides analyzing the kinetics of this reaction or the efficiency of Carnot cycles.

(actually, even though my thermo exam was kind of long and hard, the first question was pretty cool - basically, it had us analyzing a hurricane modeled as a heat engine operating between the "warm" reservoir of the ocean and the "cold" reservoir at the tropopause. Go Kerry Emmanuel!)

It seems I'm going to end up being a "UTF" ("Undergraduate Teaching Fellow") for Terrascope Radio. I still need to confirm it with the professor, but it's pretty definite. I'm glad to do it - it's an awesome class, and I'd love to help with it, but next semester's going to be hard. I'm going to be taking 8.04 (quantum I), 8.044 (statistical physics/more thermo), 12.330J/8.292J (fluid physics), 3.985 (archaeological science), 12.409 (Hands-On Astronomy), and 12.080 (the EAPS seminar). The last three should be easy and fun; the first three are going to be very, very hard.

I'm taking a weather forecasting class and going skiing tuesdays and thursdays over IAP! I'm also looking forward to going to pika rush - so, so much tasty vegetarian food. Rush kind of makes me feel like a frosh again... oh IAP, how we love thee.

Probably teaching an earth sciences class for HSSP over the spring with another girl who's a senior - apparently I get to design all the atmospheres related parts of the curriculum. The trick is to make it exciting... does anyone have ideas for a really cool title for an earth sciences class?

Also helping out with a "Youth Terrascope Radio" program that's going to be run for local youth over the summer - I'm helping design the curriculum over IAP, and I'll be working with them about four hours a day for six weeks over the summer. Plus some hours at the music library over the summer (best relaxing job ever - I help make their newsletter; it's awesome). Hopefully will get some kind of UROP as well... need to work on that one.

Anyway, seems I didn't screw up this semester as badly as I thought I had as of a few days ago - somehow managed to pull an A in 5.60 (after really screwing up the first exam in that class), and other classes went generally alright. Grades aren't back but - not being on crew and not doing Terrascope gave me so much more time and more sleep that this semester went a lot better than the ones last year. Yes, some not-so-great things (I was a mess a week and a half ago, but that's its own story that's not getting told. Too bad), but generally - not bad. Mostly worried about some friends who really are having a hard time though... it's hard to know how/if you can help in a lot of situations. Feel kind of helpless, because you want to help, but there's honestly nothing you can do.

I'm looking forward to getting a big pile of books out of MITSFS, going home, and sleeping/eating/listening to music/reading sci-fi for break. No more wave equations or adiabats (of the wet or the dry varieties) until I get back :-D.

(I really, really wish all this Eckman stuff would go out of my head. I have to say, if I got anything out of 12.003, it's: Fluids in rotating frames do really, really strange things. Like, surface-layer mass transport in the oceans on a large scale is at right angles to the wind stress. It's ridiculous. If you really felt like it, you could derive it.)

Anyhow, I'm going home Saturday, stopping in NYC on the way for a few hours and seeing Rent with the family, and then going the last bit of the way. Looking forward to seeing the family and friends from high school and so forth again.

I'm going to go read some Terry Pratchett and listen to the Beatles. Because I can.

TWO of my friends just got into MIT (that I know about). I win at having friends who beat statistics :-D So, so excited to have them here next year...

Otherwise: finals. Equilibrium! Autocatalysis! Ozone layer chemistry stuff! (<--this last is actually kind of cool) Carnot cycles and hurricanes! Geostrophic flow, ageostrophic flow, isotherms and pressure gradients and boundary currents and the thermal wind relationship! Ahhh...

At least I'm (currently) doing okay in everything, so... all the better to screw it up now!

Woot, anyway, glad that I'll have froshlings from home here next year. Incredibly awesome. (I also can't believe I'm going to be a junior next year. Damn - that's more than halfway through this place. I kind of feel like I just missed a big chunk of time.)

I love the fact that listening to fiddle music counts as tooling for my HASS class - 21M.223, "Folk Music of the British Isles and North America"

Also, if you hadn't noticed, it's fall, pretty, and almost Halloween. Go bake a pumpkin pie (from real pumpkin, or you're lame) and look at the maple trees.

(Plus I'm capable of using zephyr now, and my ubuntu has wireless and a resolution that's correct!)

...sleepy...

Sorry if this made no sense, since half of it is MIT-language and I'm too tired to translate.

-M

Guess what?

MIT is hard. (8.03 pset... couldn't do it on my own. Strange, but fun working with the ESG group again. Like 8.022 again...)

And bicycling is fun.


Also, the experiment they did in 12.003 today with the equipotential surface and the ball bearing and the particle tracker was one of the most incredibly cool things I've ever seen. Basically: inertial frame, simple harmonic motion in a straight line along a parabaloid. Rotating frame, circles due to Coriolis force of period twice that of the inertial frame SHM.

Mmmkay, sleep...

Why am I on the internets when I could be asleep? Work at the music library 10-12.

Forgot how to write in sentences. Perhaps will remember tomorrow? Exaggerating non-sentences now.

Zzzzzz...

-M