Another Update (Finally!)

Captain's blog, stardate 2947.7....
I know I'm being horribly slow to update. Sorry about that. It's so hard to find the time to do a post, although I know being busy isn't a very good excuse not to stay in touch with people.

So let's see, what's happened? Oh yeah, Thanksgiving. That already seems like it was about a billion years ago. But it was really fun. I got to see my high school friends, and some of my teachers, at homecoming, which was super exciting. They're all doing their college applications now...poor kids. If you guys are reading this, know that you shall finish everything and then get into an awesome college and have loads of fun, just like I'm having right now. (Obviously, MIT is the best of all possible colleges, but if you go somewhere else that's fine too.) So anyway, Thanksgiving. Sorry, I'm really tired right now, but I want to at least try and write something before I get too busy again and don't have the time. Yeah.

So on Thanksgiving, my whole family was there, and I played D&D with my brothers and my sister Maggie. We had to teach my little brother Stephen how to play: I don't think he really understood the rules, but he gathered enough to throw ninja stars at monsters when it was his turn.
Sample Dialogue:
John and Elizabeth: *doing arithmetic*
Maggie: So Stevie, do you want to ask John to give your character a Justin Bieber CD for his birthday?
Stephen: Sure. Is it my turn yet?
Elizabeth: Yes.
Stephen: I throw a ninja!
(Don't worry, we don't like Justin Bieber. Or rather, we don't like the two measures' worth of one of his songs that we've somehow heard.)

Thanksgiving pretty much rocked, but of course I didn't get any work done because I was too busy having fun with my siblings. So when I got back here, I had to write a draft of my final paper for Shakespeare class and do problem sets for all my other classes. Not fun at all. And on Monday I was super tired and couldn't focus at all, so I didn't really get much done. But I worked really hard yesterday and today so now I'm pretty much finished.

Other miscellaneous bad stuff: I got a really low grade on my physics test, but the average was only two points more than my score, so statistically I was average. Anyway I'll, like, study and stuff, so there's no need for parents and/or authority figures to bug me about it. I know what I'm supposed to do, OK? Anyway, now my test average in physics is an 82, which, since our professor says he won't curve our scores, is a B-. And I was telling my friend about this, except I said B flat instead of B minus. The most reasonable conclusion to draw from this is that I need to sleep, so I think I'll go do that now.

Sorry this post wasn't very entertaining! Perhaps next time I get around to it I'll have something more interesting to say.

The Voyage Home

Captain's blog, stardate 2834.4...
So, I finished most of my work. I still need to do my SAT prep lesson at some point, but I don't need it until Sunday afternoon. And now that I've decided what I want to write about for my Shakespeare final paper, I have to write the first draft in like a week. My professor said I picked a good topic, though, so I probably shouldn't have too much trouble with it. He's pretty cool. He assigned us to watch a really violent movie of Macbeth, so I didn't watch it cause I hate bloody movies and asked him if I could skip that assignment and he said it was OK.

Now I'm waiting to get on the bus coming back to New York. I should get home by 3am or somewhere thereabouts, and then I'm going to high school homecoming tomorrow! I'll finally get to see all my dear BxSci friends (who are the main reason I'm keeping this blog in the first place).

In other news: I'M STILL ALIVE!! Go me! We only have about three weeks left in the semester, and then I'll have survived my first term at MIT...assuming I'm not annihilated by work in the intervening time, that is. I think my chances of survival are pretty high, though.

In other other news: I should really figure out how to organize my thoughts so that my blog won't be so stream-of-consciousness-y. You'd think that's a life skill I would have learned by now. It's amazing no horrible fate has befallen me yet. Being able to write a coherent blog post is like knowing how to bake cookies: If you can't do it, you won't have any cookies unless somebody bakes them for you. Heehee...browser cookies actually don't have anything to do with writing coherent blog posts. I fooled you! But they are very useful things to have, just like regular cookies. Mmm...cookies. I think I just lost my train of thought. Actually, I think my train of thought decided to make stops on a completely different line and I didn't notice and ended up in Queens or something.

See what I mean about the stream-of-consciousness nonsense?

Miscellany

Captain's blog, stardate 9224.7...(I just realized I've been forgetting to repeat digits in my "random" numbers)
Ah man, why can't I ever make the time to update this thing? Answer: I'm lazy. Or if you want to sound smart, I'm pretty sure indolent means the same thing, but I'm too lazy to look it up! I should really go study for my math test or something, cause I have a math test tomorrow. And a chemistry test on Monday, and a physics one on Tuesday. What fun. (By the way, I know it's hard to convey sarcasm through typed words, but if you tried to print a copy of this page, the sarcasm would be so thick it would jam your printer.)

In good news, I finished the PowerPoints for my Splash classes last weekend, and my friend is coming to stay with me and take one of my classes, and bringing her Plushy Spock to chill with Plushy Kirk! Speaking of which, I need to vaccum my room before tomorrow afternoon. Bleh. Given how badly I fail at other household tasks such as cleaning and laundry, I can't imagine that will work out very well. Also, I'm semi-excited for the concert choir concert on Saturday evening (after my Splash classes).

In bad news, my Splash classes are full of mostly homeschoolers, who probably know more than me about everything I'm going to say. Hopefully I won't embarrass myself too badly. In other bad news, I bought a ticket a long time ago to see Harry Potter tomorrow evening. A bit after that, some person in charge of activities for the freshman class got like 300 tickets to see it this evening, which all my friends got but I didn't since I already had a ticket. But then I remembered that my friend is coming tomorrow afternoon so I won't be able to go off in the evening and watch a movie by myself. So I guess I'll go next week or something. Except not, because the only days I'll have any time to do anything will be when I'm home for Thanksgiving and it would be kind of mean not to hang out with my siblings since that's the reason I'm coming home. So maybe the week after next if they are still showing it down here, which seems likely enough.

Oh hi...

Captain's blog, stardate 2874.9....
No, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, I've just been extremely busy. I have plans to hang out with one of my friends for most of the day tomorrow, so I had to get all my work done early. I think I did problem sets for about 6 hours yesterday. Anyway, I'm done now. I'm also tired so I apologize in advance for the incoherent writing.

I guess I should talk about something, huh? In physics we're doing RL, LC, and RLC circuits (that's circuits with resistors, capacitors, and inductors, for those not in the know). Basically you have to solve differential equations except since our physics class doesn't require those you just have to write the equation and then know what the solution is. The equations aren't even that hard though--the most complex one is for RLC circuits with a driving force, which we learned haw to do in 18.03. It's a second-order nonhomogenous linear differential equation. (Sounds more complicated than it is, I swear.)

In math we just did step and delta functions and now we are learning about Laplace transforms. I guess I shouldn't really bother trying to explain what those are. In chemistry we are doinng pretty basic stuff. (Oh haha, basic, cause we learned acids and bases today...I didn't even mean to do that. My subconscious has a lame sense of humor. Seriously, I wouldn't make a joke that bad on purpose.) In Shakespeare class we just finished with Hamlet and watched a Russian movie of Hamlet where the ghost looked like Darth Vader. (I drew a picture of him saying "I am your father" to Hamlet.)

Well, since my life has pretty much been composed of problem sets and miscellaneous singing since I last posted (oh haha, composed, singing, I get it. What is with my sense of humor today??) I can't really say anything else. Oh wait, I can! Both of my Splash classes are full and I still haven't planned out my lectures. I'm scared now.

See you later, folks!

Yo, people!

Captain's blog, stardate 2849.1....
Hey there folks, sorry for taking so long to update. Last week was pretty busy for me and I was really tired the whole time. So, not the best circumstances for blog updating. This weekend, however, I got to sleep! And my Shakespeare class was required to go see a performance of Henry IV, Part I today. This meant that I couldn't teach SAT prep today and had to get a sub--which in turn meant I didn't have to come up with lesson plans yesterday and could go shopping.

Yes, I went shopping of my own free will. I bought some nice gold braid and then....I went CLOTHES shopping! I went to the Salvation Army store and bought a random article of clothing to cut up. It took me a while to find something that was the right color, but that I wouldn't be willing to wear, so that I wouldn't feel guilty about ruining it. They have lots of nice shirts there. There was this one gold sweater that was so awesome I couldn't resist buying it. It was so bright and pretty and I needed a new lucky shirt since I'm sewing stuff on my old one. I'll test it out during my chemistry exam tomorrow. I have the feeling it will be very lucky, even though it doesn't have a black collar. I could always wear a black shirt underneath and then it would look like one of the uniforms from the 2009 Star Trek movie.

Hmm, other news. We read Henry IV, Part I and Henry V in Shakespeare class. Henry V had this lovely line at the beginning of Act 3, Scene 6:
Gower: How now, Captain Fluellen? Come you from the bridge?
It took me a couple minutes and a glance at the footnotes to figure out that they were talking about an actual bridge, not the starship kind. It didn't help that throughout the play people kept talking about how they would succeed in their "glorious enterprise".

Got to go to my a capella group practice and then sew more stuff on my shirt. See you all later.

Updating in 5...4...3...2...1...

Captain's log, stardate 2845.6....
This is going to be a mostly news post to make up for all the completely uninformative ones I've been providing you with. Not that important information about which fictional characters' names can be spelled out using the periodic table isn't informative...it's just that some of the point of this blog is to help you guys keep up with my incredible exploits, so you've got to give me a chance to brag about those.

1) The concert choir (which I'm in, or why would I be mentioning it?) is going to be singing in a concert (*gasp*) on November 20 at 8pm! There will be other singing groups too, but the concert choir is totally the awesomest. We're gonna sing some Carmina Burana, the Bach Gloria in Excelsis Deo (assuming we manage to get it right by then because gosh it's hard. Also it doesn't help that there are two soprano lines so we make less progress in sectionals than every other voice part and then we get in trouble for not knowing the music. Yeah.). Also we're gonna sing some other songs that I don't really know, and the Hallelujah chorus, which is really fun.
Anyway the point of that was to say if you just so happen to be near MIT on the evening of November 20 you should definitely come to hear us, because we rule at everything in the world (except singing Bach. Which we will hopefully rule at by the time of the concert.)

2) The parenthetical remarks in that announcement took up around half of the text. This is a mark of bad writing! Avoid it like the plague! (The plague avoids all marks of bad writing!)

3) I survived my first round of tests at MIT and didn't fail any! Congratulations to me!

4) I'm getting pretty good at swimming, and the swim teacher said our class would go in the deep pool in a week or two. Aren't you all so proud?

5) Gym classes at MIT go by quarters, so swimming will end pretty soon and we get to take a different class. Wanna know what I registered for?
...Fencing!!
(Now I can impersonate Sulu except with a shirt! I'm so excited! That is totally not the reason I'm taking the class! My frequent use of the word "totally", like, totally makes me sound like a valley girl!)

Busy, Busy, Dreadfully Busy

Captain's blog, stardate 8172.4...
Well, I finally remembered that I'm supposed to be updating this blog. I guess that's a good start. If I had anything to say, that would be an even better start. Let's see what we've got.
Had a physics test on Monday. Had a math test on Wednesday. Had two problem sets and an English paper due today. Have a chemistry test on Monday. Have lesson plans to come up with for the SAT prep class I'm teaching. How the heck one is supposed to teach reading comprehension I have no idea. Guess I'll be figuring that out pretty quickly.

If I keep up this style of posting I'll have to invent a new label, Whining. I hope it doesn't come to that because nobody wants to hear me complain about how college is too hard and all that nonsense.

Oh right! I can talk about what we're doing in classes. Well, in physics we're just starting capacitors. The professor had a 100mF capacitor that he charged up, and then when he released the charge it blew up a wire, which is pretty cool because hey, explosions! Mindless destruction is always enjoyable!
Our chemistry class started out learning about electrons. Then we learned about atoms. Now we're going to learn about molecules. I make it sound like I'm in third grade here instead of college but if you want me to be more official, we learned about orbitals as solutions of the Schrodinger equation, radial probability distributions, electron distribution, and periodic trends. I believe that sounds impressive enough for the time being.
In math we have learned how to solve first-order linear differential equations using integrating factors and about autonomous equations, stable/unstable equilibria, and phase lines.

Oh, by the way, just so you know, I have a life outside of classes, which consists of singing, trying to stay in touch with everyone back home, and avoiding writing my blog. Oh, and eating when I remember to do that.

Since this was a really boring post, have a funny video I found floating around on the Internet.

Procrastination

Captain's blog, stardate 8327.9...
Please note the fact that the title of this post could refer either to the procrastination I'm doing by blogging instead of finishing my 18.03 (*) problem set, OR it could refer to the procrastination I've been doing by not blogging as I promised to. It's like a G-rated double entendre. I don't know the correct term. (See why I'm not an English major? Other than the excellent reason that I go to engineer school?)

(*) 18.03, for the uninitiated, means "Differential Equations". It's faster to refer to classes by their numbers rather than the class name. "Differential Equations", for the really, really uninitiated, means "math".

Oh right, I'm supposed to say what I've been doing! Let's see...I joined two extracurriculars, concert choir and a nerdy a cappella group called the Asymptones. This is, by the way, more than the number of extracurriculars I've been in during my entire high school career. Just saying. But anyway YAY SINGING. I had concert choir rehearsal last night and it was totally awesome. We are doing a concert (gasp! Who would have imagined?) sometime, I don't really know when, and we're going to sing a Gloria by Bach and some Carmina Burana, which is nice because I have the Carmina Burana CD so I can practice. The soprano line in one spot has a high C; it's so crazy and awesome at the same time. By the way, I can apparently sing a high C now, because I did at my audition for the Asymptones, which makes me crazy and awesome at the same time! (Not to mention egotistical, given the sentence I just wrote.)

Anyway, classes are going well. I have three problems left on my 18.03 p-set, so I'll probably finish it tonight. It's due on Friday...time management skills for the win! It's so amazing, we have to do work here! In high school, I never had more than an hour or so of homework, so this is really refreshing. (Somebody once compared studying at MIT to taking a drink from a firehose. Well, firehoses are refreshing. I rest my case. (See why I'm not in law school?))

Oh, and how could I forget, proctoring the SAT diagnostic for the SAT prep class I'm going to be teaching. (Yes, I have a job. Only on weekends, though.) On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is fascinating and 10 is watching paint dry, this was OVER NINE THOUSAND. If boredom could be used to power machinery, I could have obliterated the planet with the Death Star laser after proctoring that stupid test.

See, the test is as long as an SAT, which is about four hours. "Well, heck," you may say. "That's not too bad. I've taken the SAT, and it wasn't that boring." Well yeah, if you're taking it you have test questions to answer, and that gives you something to do for at least a third of the time in each section. "But I've spent way more than four hours in precalc, and it wasn't that boring." Precalc is only 45 minutes at a time. "But I've...uh...been in a ridiculously boring meeting for four hours, and it wasn't that boring." Well yeah, because you can just zone out for a while and think about D&D. Or even sleep, as long as you look like you might be awake. Or doodle in a notebook. If you're proctoring, you can't do any of those things, because you have to write remaining time on the board every five minutes. So you can't really even think about something else, because you'd get distracted and not write the time punctually. Thus, four hours can be spent watching a cell-phone timer count down, while getting up every five minutes. Doesn't that just sound thrilling?

I feel so sorry for high school teachers. They go through that all the time, and I never stopped to think how awful it might be.

Other than that, though, I love this place!
Quirk out, for now.

More Classes!

Captain's blog, stardate 2643.3...
So. Yesterday I had classes. Maybe I should talk about that. Righto, here goes.

I got to sleep in, because my first class (math recitation) isn't till 11am. Some of you high school kids might not know what recitations are. If you do know, go to (*). Else, continue reading. (I have a tendency to think "else" instead of "otherwise". Too much time messing around with calculators, I think.) As you probably know, most introductory classes are very large. To make sure everyone can keep up, the class gets split into recitation groups. Each group has its own recitation, typically taught by a grad student/TA. During recitation, we review what went on in the lecture, get questions answered, and do practice problems.

(*) Good for you, you know what a recitation is. So yeah, I had math recitation, and it was pretty cool but kind of silly because what we did in class was mostly review, so we reviewed review. (If you analyzed a theater critic's writing and then went over what you'd written, you'd be reviewing a review of a review of a revue!)

Right afterwards was chemistry recitation, pretty much the same deal of reviewing review. It will get better though.
I have swim class right after chem recitation, so I rushed over to the sports center and asked where the entrance to the pool was, only to find out that phys. ed. classes don't start until next week. Yay.
Then I had Shakespeare class in the afternoon; we are reading The Tempest and have to finish it by Tuesday, so that should be fun! An excuse to do some reading! Oh gosh, I'm going to have to write English papers eventually....
I auditioned for the concert choir and got in, so that should be extremely fun.

And that's pretty much all that happened yesterday (other than me doing problem sets, which you probably don't need to hear about.)

*Sneak peek at what's happened so far today*
"Physicists are like babies; they still smash things together." --My chemistry professor

What my college tuition is paying for: Hundreds of Ping-Pong balls, to be thrown at styrofoam balls suspended in the air as an imitation of the Rutherford gold-foil experiment!

Chem professor: *does calculations* Based on the number of balls which rebounded, the radius of the styrofoam balls is 1cm. It's amazing, it comes out right every year.
Everyone: Yeah, when you do all your calculations with 1 significant figure...

Me, thinking: If we still had IDs called OSIS Numbers, like in high school, then my ID # would be a MITOSIS munber!

And Some More Updates Without A Clever Title For The Post; Why Can't I Ever Come Up With A Halfway Decent Title?

Captain's blog, stardate 8979.3...
The past few days haven't been super eventful, because Fun Activities at Random Hall, (aka Residence Exploration activities--they are supposed to help you meet people at various dorms and choose the right one, except Random had all the best activities because they are awesome) have ended.
Still, there's probably enough for me to scrape together a post and let all you guys know how I'm doing.
I still haven't starved to death; it helps that my dorm's dining hall was open a couple days this week and *gasp* they serve meat! And vegetables! And fruit salad! And dishes containing more than two ingredients! In short, things way better than anything I can cook! There was corn and broccoli and IT WAS AWESOME.
Anyway, moving right along. I took my 18.02 (multivariate calculus) and 18.06 (linear algebra) placement exams a while back. I didn't study, so I had to make up the formulas for surface integrals and the Gram-Schmidt orthonormalization formula, so when you learn those be comforted by the fact that I can't remember them for more than two seconds at a time.
Somehow I passed anyway, so I'm taking differential equations, which I've been hoping to learn for a long time. When I was eleven, I had a little book with stuff to fill out (just for fun), like what my favorite color was, what I did with my friends, etc. One of the questions was "If you had one wish, what would it be?" and I put "That I would learn differential equations". No world peace, no cure for cancer, just differential equations. Goes to show that I was pretty selfish at eleven, not to mention ridiculously nerdy. I also put down that my favorite video was "Calculus lectures" and my favorite song was "Freight Train Gets Lorentz-Contracted", which I had made up the words to. Told you I was self-centered back then. (By the way, if you'd like to know how that song goes I'll give you the lyrics).
Anyway, I digress. What else happened...ooh! We registered for classes! Besides differential equations, I'm taking 8.02 (second-semester physics--somehow getting a 5 on both the Mechanics and Electricity/Magnetism AP Physics exams gets you placement out of...mechanics! You still have to take E&M! If you don't pass both, you have to take mechanics! I do not understand this at all, but I don't really mind since I forgot everything about E&M anyway.) Also I'm taking intro biology (it's a requirement to graduate, so I figured I should just get it out of the way) and, for my humanities class, Shakespeare. Freshmen here are only allowed to take four classes so we don't overwhelm our poor little brains. Oh, we're also allowed to take physical education, so I'm doing a beginner's swim class since I'm relatively incapable of swimming and you have to either take a swim class or pass the swim test to graduate.
Well, that's about all the exciting news I have to report for the moment.
Oh wait! Make sure you read my "About Me" blurb, cause I changed it a few days ago!
Quirk out!

These Wonderful Past Few Days

Captain's blog, stardate 2856.4....
I was going to finish that last post on the bus, but I didn't have time.
Now I have time. (I AM AT COLLEGE NOW PEOPLE) So prepare yourselves. This won't be too detailed, hopefully.
After I got back from Six Flags, I...

• played D&D with John and (supposedly) Maggie, but I ended up being her character for most of the game.
• saved copies of our character sheets on my laptop so we could play D&D when I come back for Christmas break.
• Had a readthrough of our Star Trek musical (which I finally finished) with all the kids. It features 6 episodes from the original series (two from each season) and all the movies (with the exception of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, in which nothing happens for two hours while awesome music plays. They later used the theme from that movie for the Next Generation credits.)
• Set off with mom, Maggie, and Stephen for Boston, bidding fond farewells to the remaining members of the family.
• With Maggie, made up a song about "The Bridge Crew Who Don't Do Anything", which features characters from TNG. (Sorry TNG. *pats Picard on his shiny bald head and is told to get off the bridge*)
• Decorated some stickers on the bus. I wanted to put a picture of them, but I forgot to take one and don't feel like doing it now. Suffice it to say they leaned towards the nerdy side.
• Saw a truck which said "Rand-Whitney" on it. Why is this something you should care about? Because Yeoman Rand, a character in several early episodes of Star Trek, was played by a woman named Grace Lee Whitney. After a quick Internet search, I can report that the company Rand-Whitney was founded before Star Trek came out, so this is merely an amazing coincidence.
• Stayed with my mom's friend for the night. Maggie and I shared a room and tried our best to gossip about boyfriends.
• (Today) Went to the Boston Children's Museum, where I acted like a little kid for a couple of hours. It was extremely fun.
• Was given a smooth rock by Maggie and named it William Gladstone.
• Checked into my dorm at MIT, where I am at the moment. I have a room all to myself! My Star Wars poster is hanging proudly on the wall as I write.

Now you're up to date. This post may have been lacking in Sparkling, Witty Prose (TM) but it serves its purpose. Coming up next, one for my family.