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I'm off to lovely Botswana tomorrow! I'll be there till August 30th doing environmental engineering research. I'll seriously be lacking internet and forms of communication in general. I'm definitely going to blog about it, but that might have to wait till I get back and transfer everything from written journal to online.

I gave a tour today, the first day of Preview weekend. And I tripped in front of like 40 people. -_-

I'm a tour guide here at school, and for the past two weeks or so, I've gotten "OMG THERE'S 234928304982304 PEOPLE HERE AT 11 NEED GUIDES HELP!!!" emails everyday. I never knew so many people came to visit Princeton everyday. It's kind of ridiculous.

In other news, I know exactly what I'm going to be doing Sunday night, after I get back from Ultimate Frisbee Sectionals: Furiously writing my gender paper because I am simply unable to write it now.

I've also met with my adviser and picked classes, at least four out of the five that I'm going to take. My adviser is new to the university, so he isn't that up on administrative things (getting forms and course technicalities) but he seems nice. I told him what I was interested in and what I didn't like, and he was really trying to find classes for me that fit that (which is: nothing too finance related, nothing proofy, more applications based). My proposed schedule looks pretty good. No class till 10 AM, no labs. So far I've got:
ORF 245: Engineering Statisitcs
MAT 301/MAE 305: Engineering Math I (I wimped out and took this instead of "real" math department 3xx class)
COS 323: Applications of Computing in the Social and Physical Sciences
CHE 260: Ethics of Engineering Technology

and one more humanities class that I still need to pick.

Back to attempting to write my paper.

A flurry of activity ensues as everyone is preparing for midterms. All I can say is that the recorded math review lectures are a godsend.

I just have to get through Wednesday, and then I'm home free. Then Georgia for spring break!

BEN FOLDS (yes the caps is completely necessary) is coming to Princeton in February for our Spring Concert and I got tickets. For $25. This is so full of WIN!



In other news, I changed my computer wallpaper to a picture of DNA sent through an electrophoresis gel (or maybe some other medium. Bio people, correct me?).

See subject.

Yea... be back the 20th. Assuming I survive.

I'm back in SPF! The first semester is officially over, save finals in January. Well sort of. I still have my writing seminar paper that's been hanging over my head for ages that I have not yet started for fear of death by boredom. I am definitely going to start it after I finish this entry (if I say it on lj, it must come true!).

In other news, my birthday was on Friday. I had an awesome time skipping (my last) 9AM physics lecture and then spending the hours from 11 AM - 6:30 PM in lab doing analysis on my rocket data. It was death. The problem was too many students who didn't know what to do (myself included) and not enough TAs to go around. The whole format of the lab hours was such a waste of time. However, what we had to do is actually pretty awesome, and I will try to explain it here because obviously it is extremely crucial to everyone's well being. Anyways.

- - - -skip if you do not want to read about physics/rockets- - - -

You might remember a couple of entries ago I mentioned launching my bottle rocket for EMP class. In the rocket was an accelerometer, which, like its name, measures acceleration. We took the data that we got from out rocket launch and graphed it, time versus vertical acceleration. Simple enough. All the time I spent in the lab, though, was for the second part of the lab. We had to recreate the launch data using only known constants (pressure of the gauge, mass of the rocket, length of the launch rod, area of the nozzle, air pressure, you get the picture). So for example, you would use the equation netForce = initialMass * acceleration = initialPressure * nozzleArea - gravity to figure out the initial acceleration, and then assuming that it is the same the whole time the rocket is on the the rod. After it leaves the rod, they tell you that the acceleration doubles (this is a little flakey, but its the only big assumption we make). From there, you can use all the laws of mechanics, rocket equation, drag, Bernoulli's, etc to figure out the pressure, mass, volume, and acceleration of the rocket without ever having to launch it. How the physics just works out is very cool.

So in the end, we plot our theoretical launch data over our experimental launch data, and we (ideally) get a pretty graph. After some tweaking of the initial constants (water mass isn't actually .5 kg because we spilled some, initial gauge pressure isn't actually 70 lbs/sq in because I didn't actually pump it to that level, gamma isn't exactly 1.4 for air because it is made up of many different types of molecules) here is said pretty graph:



I'm a bad person and I did not label my axis. The x is time in seconds and the y is acceleration in meters/second^2. It's not an amazing fit, the theoretical acceleration goes ALOT higher than my experimental data for reason unbeknownst to me, Weihan, Mike, or Sam (our brave grad students who agree to TA this crazy class). But it's still pretty awesome. Yay for applied science!

I just watched someone's Chinese oral presentation on facebook for their 101 class. Man, I never knew how awkward and unnatural these kinds of skits sounded till I listened to one in a language I already knew. Not to bash their language skills but rather the phrases that they learn in class. They're all so formal!

This is my last week at home, as I leave on Saturday. I've finally started buying college things and packing. There's this corner of my room that I've devoted to all my bring to college things. I haven't pack much clothing yet, mostly just sweatshirts and jeans (the things that I won't be wearing in the next week. Here's a picture of said pile of crap:



There's a lot of stuff to be done before I leave. I've reminded next year's Ultimate Frisbee club presidents to go and recruit at freshman orientation, I've cashed my last paychecks. But I still have to buy a whole list of things, get new glasses, hang out with my friends, find my ipod charger thing (I think I might have left it in China).

Saturday, Saturday, Saturday!

I have eight days till i leave this town. I'm ready to leave right now to at least find some distraction. Buffy can only do so much. 

The price of higher education doesn't really hit you till the bill comes at your door, demanding to be paid. That being said, I recieved my first tuition/room/board/other crap invoice in the mail yesterday from Princeton.

This is a really interesting article about "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education."

It's long, but worth reading.

I just ordered a shiny, new Macbook Pro! I've converted. Though I'll still probably have to run Boot Camp or Parallels for the Windows only engineering software. 

Today we had an early dismissal due to the heat, and tomorrow, we have a "heat" day, AKA no school. This is amazing.

1:54 AM: I clicked submit reply. I am officially part of



More on my reflections of this later I guess, but I really need to get some sleep.

Please, someone, PLEASE buy these pants. I will love you forever!

My MIT CPW blog is posted on the admissions website! Here's the link; you should all see it!

I have returned from CPW! Prepare for a verrry big entry on it soon! But as for now, sleep!

A conversation between me and a freshman, during track.

Her: Are you a senior?
Me: Yea, I am.
Her: Do you know where you're going to college next year?
Me: Yea, I'm going to MIT.
Her: Oh cool! So you're not uncomfortable about going to MIT even though there was that shooting last year?
Me: um.... that was Virginia Tech.

:::headdesk::: :::headdesk:::