a puff of logic

Leaving on a jet plane...

2009-06-19T23:23:34Z

x-posted on blogger

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.

preview

2009-04-16T17:22:13Z

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

yay life

2009-04-09T15:36:33Z

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.

midterms

2009-03-07T19:28:36Z

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

2009-01-08T18:08:46Z

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?).

reading week

2009-01-05T17:39:14Z

See subject.

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

end of semester 1.1, but mostly rocket lab

2008-12-14T20:35:31Z

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!

foreign language

2008-12-03T01:01:48Z

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!

my last week at home

2008-08-25T18:10:15Z

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!

apuffoflogic @ 2008-08-22T00:31:00

2008-08-22T04:34:29Z

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.

holy crap

2008-08-07T14:44:01Z

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.

elite education article

2008-06-22T23:39:07Z

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

It's long, but worth reading.

laptop

2008-06-17T23:37:24Z

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.

heat

2008-06-09T22:58:42Z

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

decided, finally.

2008-04-30T05:56:36Z

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

Princeton 2012.

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

best pants EVER

2008-04-23T02:12:48Z

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

CPW Blog!

2008-04-20T13:53:41Z

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

CPW 2008: So I think I'll go to Boston

The Thursday morning of CPW, I woke up bright and early to take a physics league test before zooming off to Metropark station to catch my 10 AM train. A couple days before, I had arranged to travel with Edward, another ‘12 from a town near by mine. We met up at the station, and to our surprise and delight, there were 4 other MIT ‘12s there, taking the same train. Here’s a picture of the six of us:

The train took around five hours to reach South Station in Boston, but the six of us entertained ourselves pretty well during the journey. Like the nerds we are, we passed time by throwing out logic puzzles for each other to solve, and math jokes, like this one:

A physicist, a biologist and a mathematician sit in a sidewalk cafe, looking at the building across the road. Two people go into the building, but three people come out.
Physicist: "This must be a measuring error!"
Biologist: "This is proof of procreation!"
Mathematician: "If one more person goes into the building, it will be empty!"

The train finally arrived at South Station at around 3:18 PM and from there we had to navigate to MIT student center. Here we are buying tickets for the T (only $2 to go from South Station to Kendall).

Look! The first sighting of the dome! We’re close.

We arrive at the check in place in the Student center around 4PM, but I had to hang around till about 4:30 before my host, Amina, arrived. She even left class early to meet up with me.

After a short walk to McCormick, we reached her room and I finally put all of my luggage down. Amina lived in a very spacious triple. I wish I had taken some pictures of McCormick; the dorm was very bright and clean. Quite a contrast from East Campus, a dorm I will visit later. But different folks, different strokes.

It turned out that two of the girls (Yun and Kathy) from the train were also temped in McCormick, and Yun had friend who was a current MIT student friend who offered to take her and any prefrosh she met to dinner in Cambridge. We headed over to the Student Center to meet him, his friends, and their frefrosh.

A thing about walking around in Cambridge: Watch out for trains. As my group was walking down a street, we only just in time noticed a freight train coming toward us and we had to sprint across the tracks. We were assured us that this was not a normal occurrence.

When we arrived at Mary Chung's too, there were some other hosts/prefrosh there too, including Joseph, who was another guest blogger. He wanted to take a picture of the table for his blog, so I took a picture of him as to not repeat pictures in these blogs.

The hosts were adamant about the “never pay for food during CPW” thing, and paid for all of us!

After dinner, I went to the biology open house, where I met up with my friend Judy, who I met at camp many years ago. I think it's great MIT can bring people together that haven't seen each other in years. I'm sure there were other people I knew previously at MIT this weekend, but with 1000+ prefrosh running around, I didn't get a chance to see them.

I then headed off to the CPW opening ceremonies and festival. It was great seeing all the activities that you can be involved in at MIT. It's also amazing how much effort the student groups put into CPW and making sure the prefrosh had a good time. There was breaking dancing, smoky soda, a HUUUGE Twister game, Bubble Tea among other things.

It was here that I met Kevin, one of the two Kevins who went upstage during the opening ceremony, but it turned out that it was not his birthday. He, Judy, and I hung out for the rest of the night. We checked out the roof party on top of Baker. The party wasn't all that great, but the view from the top of Baker is amazing. I just wish I had a better camera so I could have captured it better.

Towards the end of the night, the three of us ended up in Burton Conner, playing Uno and planning out what we would do tomorrow. We agreed upon getting up around 8:15 (blasphemy!) to go and get waffles at Next House for breakfast and then checking out some classes. The schedule for CPW is crazy. With so many activities, classes, and just plain random events (many of them hosted appropriately by Random Hall), the three of us had a pretty hard time deciding what to do. Around 1 AM, a Burton Conner resident came in and asked who wanted a tour of the dorm. Burton Conner is a really nice dorm; if I decide to come to MIT, I think this would be one of the first choices. There were some really funny things hanging up.

Like this advertisement:

And this, which had to be the world’s biggest crossword puzzle:

The tour ended around 2 AM, and I headed back to McCormick to get some sleep. The next day, Judy, Kevin, and I met up in Next House to get waffles. Kevin went a little overboard.

I spent the majority of Friday exploring the academic part of MIT life, like classes and research and whatnot. After breakfast, Kevin and I headed to a class called Math for Computer Science. It was an unusual class, as it was taught in the TEAL mode. The students at the table we sat at were really nice; they forsaked their practice problems to talk to us about campus life. After class, I took a tour of the applied math lab. Here’s one researcher, who modeled how thin pieces of metal came together due to surface tension when placed on water.

I wanted to go to a class in my prospective major, so I headed off to an environmental biology and chemistry class. I sat in an empty classroom for about 10 minutes with 3 other prefrosh before someone told us that the class was moved to the room right next to us.

Empty room:

Real classroom!

The professor was so enthusiastic about the subject matter and really seemed like he wanted everyone to love it as much as he did. I left this class early to go to my UROP tour of a brain and cognitive science lab, which was gratefully located in the building right next to the one I was already it. Usually, there is a lot of walking involved when you switch events during CPW. In the BCS building, there was a hack!

The tour was short, but pretty cool. Our guide told us that a lot of money is involved when doing neuroscience research (because of all the expensive technology you need), and MIT is a great place for this because there is a lot of funding and resources available. Here’s a picture of said expensive machine:

After my UROP tour, I hung around with some people I met and food was involved somewhere in there. We were basically biding out time till 8PM, which was when the ball drop was, at Senior Haus. They didn’t actually drop it at 8 PM, but there were A LOT of bouncy balls. Sadly, I couldn’t get a picture of the balls in mid fall, but Senior Haus looked pretty cool lit up in the dark.

I headed off to meet the bloggers and I met the bloggers. I had decent length conversations to Mollie and Chris, which was pretty cool. I also spoke to Snively for a bit. I have to say, a lot of the bloggers look a lot different in real life than they do in their banner pictures. Here’s Snively and me.

A 9, I went walking (or rather running) around campus. For a really long time too. This really cool guy named Jack led me and some friends around. Anyways, the night ended with donuts before I stumbled back to McCormick for bed, again around 3 AM. The next morning (Saturday) was beautiful. My friends and I took this opportunity to walk around and take pretty pictures. Here’s some:

Sailing on the Charles:

Boston Citgo sign:

Runners along the river:

Wow, I bet you can get a really nice view from the top of that building:

Dome, sweet dome:

Kresge:

The Metal Sponge:

I then went to EC (the dorm) for some food with Kevin. EC is so different from McCormick and really awesome, in a crazy, vibrant, always something going on way.

Human sized hamster wheel:

We also went in the dorms to look around. The walls of one of the lounges:

Murals along the wall:

I had to leave EC early to go the a capella concert. It was well worth going; I love a capella. All of the groups were so talented. Sadly, I don’t have much singing talent and would never be able to sing in one, but they way they harmonize everything just sends shivers down my back. All of them were amazing.

For dinner Saturday, I met up with some people from summer camp (NJ Governor’s School for Engineering) who also got into MIT or are current students, or just happened to be visiting. We all went to this small Italian restaurant in Boston, which was my first time across the bridge this weekend. MIT can’t be located in a better place. The bridge’s only .3 miles long (I checked on gmaps pedometer) and Boston’s such a nice city. The restaurant we went to was not that expensive, but really good. Here’s picture of the group in front of the restaurant:

After I ate dinner, I joined my friends at the Chinese Student’s Association for their dumpling eating contest. Whoever could eat 15 dumplings in the fastest time wins. Here are the two winners:

At night, Kathy, Yun, and I ended up walking across Harvard Bridge AGAIN to got a party at SigEp. The party wasn’t great, but we had fun amusing ourselves during our walk across the bridge.

By the time we got back, our feet were REALLY tired, and it was late, so we just sprawled out on the couch in McCormick and shot the breeze for an hour or so.

The next morning sadly, we all had to depart. Bye MIT, maybe I’ll see you next fall?

IN CONCLUSION: CPW was great for me, as someone still deciding which college to attend, to really get to see what MIT life and culture was like. I didn’t get much sleep, but when there’s a booklet of literally hundreds of events to do, who has time for such a trivial thing? It’s amazing how much effort MIT puts into welcoming the prefrosh and how nice everyone was, ranging from the professors to the undergrads there. During the short time that was CPW, I got a taste of what the next four years could be like, and the kinds of people I will be in contact with. The future looks good.

so I think I'll go to Boston

2008-04-14T01:21:23Z

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

le sigh

2008-03-10T22:57:31Z

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:::

complaining and HOD

2008-03-03T02:05:11Z

I had a nice weekend, and I know I'll have a very nice week coming up, but this is not about that. This entry is about the Heart of Darkness essay that Mrs. Brand assigned us, due this past Friday.

Ah, Brand essays. I wouldn't call them the bane of every AP English senior's existence, but nonetheless, with procrastination and being lazy and coupled with just plain not liking the book, many of her take home essays ends up being done the night before. I'm no exception to this rule. I always start the essay early, but being honestly the slowest writer I have met in my life (seriously, you guys have NO idea how long it took to write my college essays), I always end up with having only the intro done after my first day of writing.

So with this Heart of Darkness essay, it was no different. But you see, usually with other books, I enjoy the reading. Such is not the case with Conrad. Call me plebeian and simple, but his draw out, flowery, multi-claused sentences are hard to follow. It's hard to read, hard to understand and worse to write about. The saving grace time was that we were given a passage to analyze, thus eliminating having to scour the ENTIRE book for quotes.

So here's the scenario. It's Thursday night, around 5 or 6 ish, and I'm writing my essay. Which means I'm on AIM and facebook and checking gmail. And the thing about me and AIM is that I check everyone's away message. Constantly. Every time I sign on, that's the first thing I do. Right click, view contact info wherever I see that little yellow, away-message indicating notepad. And I see this:

what have I ever done to you, joseph conrad?

You know why I like Chinua Achebe so much?
Because he hated Heart of Darkness.

fuck heart of darkness and joseph conrad.
trying to finish before LOST.

An outcry! Against Conrad, against HOD, for Chinua Achebe. Oh the unifying powers of an unwanted essay. That's one of the benefits of having one teacher for AP English. The grade that suffers together, complains together. At least that's what I've gathered from the above example. Not everyone though, was vented via away message. Some were calm, seen here:

Essay.
Cell.

HOD Essay, i'll prolly be working til 12.

There were even those who were more forgiving (by now, I was purposely looking for HOD related away messages and facebook statuses):

I'm actually starting to like Conrad's writing. If only I didn't have to write about it....

[Name Removed] is finally home from rehearsal...and writing an essay on that loverly Heart O' Darkness.... HOORAY FOR NO SLEEPING!!!!

Perhaps their compliments were sarcastic. Some students were so distraught that they could not find the words to describe their emotions:

jlkgjkchmklj,mdfjhtiu;lhjhbgjfghtt87y79y9ghjkt869r8iy7uighuytjdrk

At least, I assume that is was about HOD. As the night progressed and people started finishing and turnitin.com-ing, there was a change in away messages. A rejoice rang out:

[name removed] is so done with heart of darkness for lifeee

[Name Removed] is finished with Heart of Darkness forever.

I eventually finished my essay too, around 11PM.

The above away messages brings me to this point: I know that as a group, seniors (especially second semester ones) like to complain. Between going out and writing about how the style of Joseph Conrad's writing enforces a mood of mystery, the majority of students would rather hang out with their friends. But such this is the largest gathering of negative away messages since, well, the junior research paper.

two things

2008-01-13T23:17:20Z

My Princeton interview was scheduled on Monday, but due to the impending snow tomorrow (snow day maybe?), my interviewer rescheduled it to possibly Wednesday. I Googled my interviewer, and got a tad bit intimidated.

In other news, our photosynthesis and cellular respiration labs were due Friday. That means I don't have to learn about them anymore! We can finally finally move on to better stuff (yay genetics). Seriously, if there's anything I hate learning about in all the science classes I've ever taken, it is photosynthesis and cellular respiration.

EA results

2007-12-15T17:49:05Z

MIT 2012!
most likely. Still applying to Princeton and UPenn.

What I Do Instead of HW

2007-11-25T20:21:34Z

Ummmm yea... I don't look like ANY of them.

apuffoflogic @ 2007-09-30T18:50:00

2007-09-30T22:51:24Z

Holy shit, tomorrow's October.

Quote of the Day

2007-09-08T21:03:48Z

Today was our first marching band real performance. It was the football game against Shabazz.

Marching band is always great for funny quotes, I heard this as we were walking into the school, after the football game.

"Have you seen my boobs recently?"
"Is that an open invitation?"