Semester 9

Yet another interesting semester has passed, my 9th one at OU, but my first as a grad student. The transition to grad school was a little tough, but, as with everything, it was fine once I adjusted. Not living on campus was a pretty huge change for me, but a good one. Here are some of my memories from this semester.

• Andrea DenHoed, Rhodes Scholar (my reaction: "are you serious? no, really?")
  
• Having a degree!
  
• Having a house!
• Having a car!
• The desk project (you guys should really visit university surplus)
  
• Trying to decorate my house
  
• Another Thanksgiving in Norman with Matt + Die Hard (when I really should have been writing a paper instead)
  
• River Church
  
• Community Group
  
• Happy Hour and Slushies at Classic 50s
  
• Bugging Holly almost every day
  
• Nickel Creek concert in Dallas (+ walking around with St. Francis)
  
• Tuesday lunch at the 2:8 House
  
• Not losing power during the ice storm
  
• Having Tuesday lunch at our house on Monday of finals week and a "study party" there too
  
• More Tootsie Rolls
  
• Candy Canes + power series
  
• Mooching my first meals at the caf from freshmen and RAs
  
• Really trying research for the first time
  
• Still hating research for the 3rd time
  
• The customary two weeks of crying that seem to come in the middle of every semester
  
• Physics....
  
• Not getting a "C" in physics this semester
  
• Pretending like I didn't have semester-long research papers to do for the first two-thirds of the semester and not doing homework every night of the week
  
• Having people from Project visit
  
• Having friends that aren't college students!
  
• Lots of procrastination by cleaning
  
• Rearranging the kitchen cabinets for Katie
  
• Emails from Dr. Morrison at weird times in the morning
  
• Having a life that didn't just involve school
  
• Roadtrip to Boulder, CO
• Watching shows like "America's Next Top Model" and "Beauty and the Geek" with Holly, Rita, and Cindy
  
• Studying at the honors dorm...and then getting to leave because I don't live there
  
• Watching The Office...and then a movie with Jon and Mike every Thursday
  
• The occasional walkies
• Giving people advice for grad school
  
• Playing Bang!
  

As always, additions to the list are welcome.

National Merit Essay

So, I'm going through old files on my computer to clean stuff up and I found this gem. This is the closing paragraph of my National Merit Essay, last revised September 16, 2002. I had a really great plan for my life:

Next year I plan to study the Classics and Business Management at college. Hopefully my high school experiences with clerical and organizational responsibilities will have prepared me for my course of study. During my undergraduate years I hope to spend a semester or two abroad in Australia. After graduating, I plan to go to law school and eventually practice in the area of estate planning.

Funny, I didn't do a single thing I wanted to do, nor do I really plan on it...

Die Hard

"It seemed like a good idea at the time"
-Bruce Willis, Live Free or Die Hard

What a great response to what happened.

papers

Rule of Thumb: if you have a paper to write, never, NEVER, start watching the first movie in a trilogy that you haven't seen during the weekend before your paper is due.

blog-o-sphere

I endorse this blog: http://www.naomi-lynn.blogspot.com/

Yay!

Physics

Physics made me cry today. Stink.

Be With You

You know, I've discovered a lot of music in the past few years that I really love, but somehow, I always come back to Rich Mullins. I keep rediscovering the music I loved as a child, but now I understand it a lot more than I used to.

Be With You

Everybody each and all
We're gonna die eventually
It's no more or less our faults
Than it is our destiny
So now Lord I come to you
Asking only for Your grace
You know what I've put myself through
All those empty dreams I chased

And when my body lies in the ruins
Of the lies that nearly ruined me
Will You pick up the pieces
That were pure and true
And breathe Your life into them
And set them free?

And when You start this world over
Again from scratch
Will You make me anew
Out of the stuff that lasts?
Stuff that's purer than gold is
And clearer than glass could ever be
Can I be with You?
Can I be with You?

And everybody all and each
From the day that we are born
We have to learn to walk beneath
Those mercies by which we're drawn
And now we wrestle in the dark
With these angels that we can't see
We will move on although with scars
Oh Lord, move inside of me

And when my body lies in the ruins
Of the lies that nearly runied me
Will You pick up the pieces
That were pure and true
And breathe Your life into them
And set them free?

And when You blast this cosmos
To kingdom come
When those jagged-edged mountains
I love are gone
When the sky is crossed with the tears
Of a thousand falling suns
As they crash into the sea
Can I be with you?
Can I be with you?

faith

Remember when I used to write in this blog? Yeah, me too.

I'm not going to write much because I need to study, but let's just say that this semester has been really, really rough so far. It's going to get better, I know, but right now I just don't want to deal with this. So much change. I kind of feel like my foundations have been shaken and I'm searching for some solid ground. I'm going to keep walking by faith and trusting in His goodness.

Isaiah 55:8-9
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.

"As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

That's something I need to meditate on some more.

Gifts and Curses

I think blogs have gone out of style. Oh well, that means it's okay if I never update mine.

I think I watched about 4 hours of the office today with my whole family. Sweet!

I will be returning to Norman in less than one week. I will have a house, a car, and I will be in grad school. Things will be the same, but different.

Semester 8

Wow, what a great year. I can't believe I've graduated already. Here's what I'll remember about my last semester.

• 2nd Annual 80s French toast at Fenway. The side ponytails were awesome.
• Tootsie Rolls. And Tootsie Roll wrappers. A lot of both. Probably well over 3000.
  
• Andrea's Day of Beauty, aka the Miss OU pageant. An enlightening experience.
• Spandex!
• Discovering the duck pond
• Valentine's MT
  
• Quantum...
• The general grad school crisis
  
• The month long cry-a-thon in February/March due to Vanderbilt calling me about a potential fellowship
• The 48-hour visit to Nashville complete with delayed flight.
• Vanderbilt rejecting me
• Naomi's visit: snowcones, the duck pond, and getting soaked in the rain on the way to Andrea's
  
• Purdue visit with my mom
• The great flood of '07 in Norman
• Glorieta
• The Game
• The most excellent Chris Valentine's prank (Just Married...)
• Amy Grosser visiting
  
• Easter in Mustang
• The awesome electronic waterguns from Danny's mom and the attacks that promptly followed on all those studying in the classroom and Chris and Mike and Chris...and Chris
• Passing the waterguns on to other people to squirt Chris.
• The most boring semester of classes ever.
• Getting mistaken for an RA again.
  
• Watching The Office. A lot.
• Study Party Bingo.
• Rain just about every day for the last two or three weeks of school.
• The Wasielewski family randomly sitting behind the Weisbrook family at commencement.
• Dr. Fagan bossing us around (loudly) at graduation.

There may be more, but not tonight. I'm going to sleep and then I'm going to Chicago tomorrow.

another lame post

For anyone who cares, here is a picture of my new (used) car:




Also, I would really like to read this book. In case you were wondering.

on being home...

Church cookbooks are the best. Period. I think everyone needs a standard Betty Crocker or the Joy of Cooking cookbook to get the full gamut of recipes. But after that, church ladies make the best food and therefore, the best recipes and, collected, the best cookbooks.

I also have acquired a car. It is neat. I'm happy. It's a Honda. That means it shouldn't die on me. :)

I'm basically doing a whole lot of nothing while I'm home. This is good. This is also bad. Now that car shopping is over, I'll be doing even more nothing. Unless I actually start cleaning up my room. Motivation is sadly lacking...

My sister is bored a lot recently too. So we hang out sometimes.

Also, my quantum grade was not very nice to me this semester. Oh well. I'm a grad school student now, so it doesn't matter.

That is all. Except that The Office is awesome.

Cali

I want to go to California. Seriously.

Wrapping things up...

I graduate in one week. That's absolutely crazy. My four years of college here are kind of a fuzzy blur, but I have many dear, amazing memories from this place. God knew what He was doing when He brought me here. And I'm pretty sure He knows what He's doing by keeping me here, even if it occasionally seems like the dumbest idea in the world.

So, I can't sleep. I'm terribly sleep-deprived, but I laid in bed for an hour and a half to know avail. So, I got up and read for a bit. I'm going to make another attempt after I finish writing this. These past two weeks have been crazy. I spent 40 hours two weeks ago working on my capstone project/report. Our presentation was last Monday though, so that's completely over. Thank goodness. As is my extra credit paper for numerical methods. I think I overcomplicated that paper a bit. Oh well, that tends to be my typical approach.

This summer is sneaking up on me. People keep asking if I'm excited about Chicago. The answer is "yes", except that I haven't really thought about it much. I'm just trying to survive the next week. Then I can graduate in peace and go home and start thinking about summer.

There's a few unknowns for the fall too. I still don't quite have a place to live. Neither does Katie though. There are two or three potential houses, so that's a step at least. A car for the summer/fall would also be nice too. Hopefully that will work out. Again, something that will hit the radar after graduation.

Life is going well, though, in all honesty. It's been a rough couple of weeks, but I'm getting through. God is faithful . I will make it.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

-Emily

capstone

Capstone report: 61 pages and counting. It's due at 5. This should be fun.

school

Remember when I used to write in this thing on a regular basis? Wow.

Well, I'm ready to graduate. And by that, I mean "I'm ready to be done with capstone" and quantum, and thermo, and numerical methods....

I got a 29% on my quantum test today. I hit the average. Awesome.

Grad school decision = OU
Advisor = Dr. McCann

Currently Listening: Indelible Grace
Currently Reading: if only I had time for that...

Purdue

Purdue is a lovely place. Definitely a college town.

My mom and I got pizza tonight and there were Tootsie Rolls in the box with it :)

I wish I wasn't working on my capstone right now :(

March 14 = Wednesday

I'm exhausted and I'm tired of crying every day. Actually, the two are probably connected...

Why do legal pads seem to not count if they're not yellow?

It's been a Copeland week, so my iPod is coming to Nashville with me.

Okay, back to packing.

Spring

Oklahoma is turning beautiful again. :)

I fly to Nashville tomorrow to visit Vanderbilt. I'm meeting with 12 different professors for about 30 minutes each. I'm scared.

test

Template

New template. I didn't make and therefore don't completely like it. I'll either revise it or scrap it entirely soon. We'll see.

Also, Blogger is very confused and doesn't know if I should be seeing the old features or the new features.

More decisions...

This cartoon is awesome, but only like one of you will get it.



Why is it that right after you make a decision a bunch of great alternatives come your way? Right now a lot of places besides OU sound really great for post-graduation. IBM sounds good, either for summer or as a job. Purdue I could really take or leave, but they accepted me and offered me a TA position. Vanderbilt, on the other hand, called me this week twice about my application that I never finished online and didn't submit, but they want to talk to me. Too bad Tennessee sounds like a great place to live and the program sounds interesting. But you know what, I made my decision and I made it for a reason and those reasons haven't changed. I just need to trust God that I am making the best decision and keep going. *sigh* I really do have a hard time making decisions. Also, a prof at OU that I loved having for class but is apparently hard to work for doing research apparently wants to talk with me and a friend about doing research with him. Wow. I think I really do have a lot of options right now; aka, more decisions.

notice:

Oh yeah, just in case you guys forgot:

Decisions

I made a couple of decisions today. Actually, I'm fairly certain these decisions were made awhile ago but for some reason I couldn't quite justify them, either to myself or to other people. Mostly to other people, actually.

Decision #1: I will be staying at OU next year. Unless something very big happens that would cause me to seriously reconsider that choice. Even if I get into Purdue and get funded, I will stay here. I've had a few people tell me that I should try to go to a better school. Honestly, I could probably get into whatever school I wanted to, maybe even get funded at a lot of them. The best reason that people had for telling me to leave was that it would be better for my career if I want to be a professor. That's definitely true. I can't and won't deny that. However, there are, in fact, things that are more important than a career. I've spent the past 3.5 years here focused on academics. That can't change entirely, seeing as I am still going to grad school, however, there's a lot of stuff at OU that, while not as a whole "better", is better for me at this point. I feel like I would have a lot of opportunity to grow spiritually if I stay at OU. Granted, this opportunity has probably been here the entirety of my time in Norman, but I didn't take it. I'm sure there are opportunities in Indiana as well, but I think having to adjust to a new environment and friends and professors would have the potential to distract me a lot from more important things. I have amazing friends in Norman, friendships that are getting deeper to the point where we are challenging each other. I'm not ready to give that up and I think that those are perfectly good reasons to stay in Norman at OU.

Decision #2: I will be going to Project Impact this summer, probably in Chicago. This decision was also mostly made awhile ago. I think my mom wants me to come home for the summer. Part of me would like that, but the rest of me knows that I fall into really bad habits at home. Having my own car at that point would help, but I think this is a time that I really need to be building good habits and again not focusing on anything school-related. Oddly enough, I'm also really looking forward to living with and getting to know more girls. I am getting better :)

Green

Okay, I thought I'd revive this template for awhile.

Purdue

Update: the Purdue application finally went in today. About a month late.

And one of my reference letters at least has been sent.

I'm feeling pretty accomplished here.

Baby steps...

It's really late and I should never write this late....

It's 3:15 in the am on a Monday night and I am working on Numerical Methods. I think something is wrong. Oh well. I'm blaming quantum. Semester scapegoat = quantum. Shrug.

Tuesday lunch is tomorrow. Yay! I accidentally got four people to write letters of recommendation for me when I only need three. Oh well. My Purdue application is also ridiculously late. Again, oh well. I'm not particularly keen on leaving this state anyway. This semester is blah. That's about all there is to say about it. People are still wonderful though. So that's still a plus.

Meh. I'm going to finish up my numerical methods and then sleep for a bit before attempting quantum again. Sadness. I wish I was better at math.

Goodnight.

Old Cold Coffee on the Dashboard

I took the GRE yesterday. I was pretty pleased with the results, which means I don't have to think about taking it again. Most excellent. Now I just have to figure out whether I'm taking the physics GRE in April. Unfortunately, I think the answer is "yes".

Yesterday afternoon I went to the mall with my sister so she could shop for jeans. I returned with no jeans, but I did find Super Scrabble for 50% off, which I immediately bought. I win.

Break is drawing to a close. I need to pack. I have a lot more stuff going back to school with me than I left with. I go down to Rolla on Wednesday afternoon and then I rendezvous with Ellen there on Thursday morning. I'm actually a little bit sad. This has been a good break. Having something to work on (i.e. GRE studying) has helped me a lot by occupying my brain. I'm pretty excited to get back, though. And I'm still really pumped about the 12 hours I'm taking. Hopefully it will actually be easier than last semester. If not, I think I'll be confused and then I'll probably cry. Crying is a typical default solution.

Semester goals: do less homework; be more introspective; work at correcting problems I notice with myself rather than just ignoring them.

Currently listening: Blinders On, Sean Watkins; Here to There, Nickel Creek
Currently reading: Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis

Semester 9

Yet another interesting semester has passed, my 9th one at OU, but my first as a grad student. The transition to grad school was a little tough, but, as with everything, it was fine once I adjusted. Not living on campus was a pretty huge change for me, but a good one. Here are some of my memories from this semester.

• Andrea DenHoed, Rhodes Scholar (my reaction: "are you serious? no, really?")
• Having a degree!
• Having a house!
• Having a car!
• The desk project (you guys should really visit university surplus)
  
• Trying to decorate my house
• Another Thanksgiving in Norman with Matt + Die Hard (when I really should have been writing a paper instead)
• River Church
• Community Group
  
• Happy Hour and Slushies at Classic 50s
• Bugging Holly almost every day
• Nickel Creek concert in Dallas (+ walking around with St. Francis)
• Tuesday lunch at the 2:8 House
• Not losing power during the ice storm
• Having Tuesday lunch at our house on Monday of finals week and a "study party" there too
• More Tootsie Rolls
• Candy Canes + power series
• Mooching my first meals at the caf from freshmen and RAs
• Really trying research for the first time
• Still hating research for the 3rd time
• The customary two weeks of crying that seem to come in the middle of every semester
• Physics....
• Not getting a "C" in physics this semester
• Pretending like I didn't have semester-long research papers to do for the first two-thirds of the semester and not doing homework every night of the week
• Having people from Project visit
  
• Having friends that aren't college students!
• Lots of procrastination by cleaning
• Rearranging the kitchen cabinets for Katie
• Emails from Dr. Morrison at weird times in the morning
• Having a life that didn't just involve school
• Watching shows like "America's Next Top Model" and "Beauty and the Geek" with Holly, Rita, and Cindy
• Studying at the honors dorm...and then getting to leave because I don't live there
• Watching The Office...and then a movie with Jon and Mike every Thursday
• Giving people advice for grad school
• Playing Bang!

Seventh Semester in Review

Agh! only one more semester of undergrad left. Crazy. This was an amazing semester. I am so blessed to have such awesome friends. This was by far the hardest, but most rewarding semester academically that I have ever had. I think almost every waking minute was spent doing something school-related. Not that I'm particularly efficient at doing my schoolwork. I had great friends to suffer with, though. The Matt, Danny, Emily, Katie, and Stephanie Sunday study parties were pretty great. With special guests such as Andrea, Johnny C., Luke, David, Jon, and Amber. I have a lot of good memories from that room. :) Below is a list of things I remember from the semester. Feel free to add any you might think of.

Semester highlights:

• Nickel Creek live at Cain's Ballroom: "stealth mode"; basketball-sized stegosaurus, darts of humiliation
  
• shugs
• mafficking
• Matt McCord Day 06 (okay, I wasn't actually present for that one)
  
• throw-up parties (hmm...I wasn't actually present for that one either)
  
• dragging Katie to Walmart--twice
• Sunday study parties: Tootsie Roll artwork; alarm clocks in the ceilings
  
• Matt practically living in honors again
• doing the Boggle and Jumble with Danny in Lasers
  
• living with Stephanie and having Katie right across the hall
• Steph, Katie, and I freaking the rest of the girls in the hallway out by being chipper and talking in the bathroom early in the morning
  
• homework-procrastinating walks around campus with Matt
  
• artwork on the classroom markerboard (often courtesy of Miss Andrea): Pier One Targets Crate and Barrel with deadly lasers; the chemical structure of grillz.
  
• snowcones in November
• Fenway
  
• Andrea's amazing hair colors
  
• Tuesday lunches: boring Kyle; Torrey and Chase never existing at the same time
• the Mizzou game roadtrip: "You just lied to everyone in this room."
  
• thursday nights and the 6 hours that entailed: paradigm, learning about sound systems; manual labor :)
  
• the never-ending thanksgiving break paper-writing marathon
• Thanksgiving in Mustang: chasing geese, dr. mario
  
• ice cream runs with katie at 11pm, followed by grilled cheese
• my mom visiting and getting to experience the homework marathons
• Valerie + math
  
• spandex (andrea...)
  
• Steph's birthday party: crazy 6 am (don't give her coffee...ever); all 15 or so of us singing "the itsy-bitsy spider" instead of "happy birthday"
  
• hall party instead of studying for morning tests that are very conveniently followed by:
  
• snow day #1: 3 movies, 2 trips to the caf
  
• snow day #2: not a whole lot more
  
• only one all-nighter
• feeding a small country with my meal plan
  
• finals week awesomeness: Not studying (of course) + Tombstone, Top Gun, and Indiana Jones. Do movies get any better than that? being done at 10 am Wednesday; Tuesday lunch every day; forward-biased ficuses; ice skating; not wearing tie-dye on the day that Kyle did
  
• the "how is Emily going to get home?" fiasco that ended up working out just fine
  

office

AGH! Why do we have two versions of Microsoft Office for Macintosh but the one for Windows is in Lawrence, Kansas. Stink. I need Word.

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope yours was wonderful.

I'll post a real update soon.

Wikifriends

hell week

So, this week went from being the worst week ever, to being pretty much amazing. The laser report and presentation is done. Plus, classes are cancelled today due to inclement weather. This is the first time this has happened in the 3.5 years I've been here. Absolutely amazing. I feel like this semester is completely survivable now. And honestly, I'm glad that 9 page single-spaced paper about lasers fabricated on silicon is done with, because now I can actually enjoy this day off, and the weekend, and next week. Awesome.

I hope something cool like this happens to everyone else not at OU. Good luck these next couple weeks. You can do it!

fortune cookie

So, this is the fortune I got in my fortune cookie tonight at the caf: "Remember three months from this date. Good things are in store for you."

I laughed. A lot. Only today would this be funny.

thoughts about, well...stuff

I went to get advised today and ended up talking with my professor for quite awhile. It was a good conversation, but I can't help but feel torn on what I want I want to do with my life.

We discussed the fact that I want to be a professor and he basically told me that getting published is key to being hired and kept as a professor. This makes sense as it seems to be key to getting tenure anyway. What he basically told me was the best way of doing this was to go to school for my masters and Ph.D. and then maybe do a postdoc and/or work in industry for a bit and that basically then I would be really hirable at a research institute. Here's what I'm thinking at this point in the conversation: no wonder there aren't many female professors in my department. By the time I got through all that school and work, I'd probably be about 30. My final goal in life is not to get married, but I would love to be married and have a family some day, which often happens around that age. I don't necessarily want to be "successful" in life. That's not my goal and that's not my reason for wanting to be a professor. It's not for the lifestyle; it's not to be able to be my own boss. I want to interact with students. I want to teach and I want to teach well. I think I'm going to stop telling people that I want to be a professor and start saying that I want to be a teacher. Unless I absolutely fall in love with research in grad school, I don't think that's what I'd want to focus on. I may just have to be a lecturer. I don't know. It was just an odd conversation and I could tell that I wasn't on the same wavelength as he was.

Other than that, life is going quite well. I survived my three tests last week. They weren't stellar, but they'll do. I think I'm mostly caught up on all the prerequisite material I was lacking at the beginning of the semester, which is wonderful because that means classes are getting a bit easier material-wise.

I got stuff about ordering graduation invitations in the mail yesterday. Scary. I don't want to graduate. Maybe I should change my major. Engineering Physics would do nicely for keeping me here another three years...

That's all. I'm going to go slip into cyber-oblivion for another month now.

OMG! LASERS! *pew* *pew* *pew*

Will I ever learn to make only one copy of my homework instead of collecting it on illegible scraps of paper and then having to recompile it later. Really, I hope rewriting it at least reinforces the material.

music

I have been to three concerts in the past 1.5 weeks. This is unheard of. I saw Cody Dunbar (local artist) two Fridays ago, Nickel Creek on Saturday, and Derek Webb tonight. All of them were really good, although Nickel Creek was my favorite by far (because they're pretty much amazing and my favorite band). I love that concerts just make you like and appreciate the artists even more. Music is a wonderful thing.

Everyone should go here and get Derek Webb's new album for free: http://www.freederekwebb.com/

I really will write more later. When I can actually find time to think.

Shakespeare's

I saw a guy wearing a Shakespeare's Pizza shirt on the South Oval today. I thought that was pretty sweet.

speak but a whisper; i'll hear a sermon

I went to IHOP at 1:30 in the morning today with Chris Waters. We finally got our funnel cakes.

So, this semester should be tough. Good tough, though. Last semester was bad tough. Meaning one class consumed all of my time and energy and I mostly forgot the other ones even existed.

I'm taking solid state devices, electromagnetic fields, digital design lab, quantum electronic devices (referred to as QED), and modern physics for physics majors. The last two are pretty much for fun, or at least not required for my degree plan. I'm going to try to get QED to count for grad credit though, which would be helpful.

I've already got a ton of homework, which, once I sit down and do it is really a good thing. It should get my in gear pretty quick.

Okay.

Currently Listening: In Motion, Copeland
Currently Reading: Laser Electronics, Joseph T. Verdeyen

contentment

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (James 1:17)

This past week has been absolutely amazing. I am incredibly blessed. I don't even know how to describe it, so I'll try to explain the past week.

I arrived on Saturday around 11:30 am. Dropped my stuff off and Mike/Jesse/Ryan/Martin's house and had lunch with my parents and then then dropped me off at Lindsey and Cindy's house. They are two leaders at the BSU here. I had never met Cindy and barely knew Lindsey but it was really nice to get to talk with them before a huge group of people was there. I slept for a large chunk of the afternoon and then did some serious grocery shopping with Cindy that evening. Sunday morning I went to Trinity and it was so wonderful to be back. It's weird to say that Trinity feels like my home church now more than The Crossing does but it's true. That's something that I could never really say about Christ the King when I went there.

Sunday afternoon and Monday was our MT (Ministry Team) retreat. It was a great time of getting to know people and planning. There was more unity there than I have felt in a long time. Everyone had the same goal and I know our team really wants to see an impact made in Cate and Honors. I really didn't know what to expect going into the retreat, but the thing I was amazed at coming out is the amount that the off-campus people are dedicated to helping those of us in the dorms reach the freshmen. Usually, I think that I would feel awkward asking people to do things and give rides, but I know that they want to do it.

We moved into the dorms Monday night once we got back from the retreat. Even that was good. There were six or seven of us moving in and it was definitely a team effort with everyone moving everyone elses stuff upstairs.

Tuesday, I did some errands and we had the all-MT meeting in the evening. Also good. Afterwards, those of us dormies and some non-dormies came back and did some more planning and we prayed for each other and for the freshmen moving in.

Wednesday was pretty relaxed. I don't actually remember much of it. Thursday was a massive move-in day for the freshmen. We got to help so many freshmen move in and meet them and their parents. A lot of them seem to have come from Christian backgrounds and even the other ones seemed very open to us, despite the fact that we were Baptists...

That night we played games in the lounge and then watched a movie. I got to talk to my dad on the phone, which I hadn't gotten to do in awhile, which was nice. I also got to talk to one of the freshmen girls in the Honors library for awhile. Friday was more meeting people and then helping Andrea clean a little bit. It was great to see her and talk and catch up on life. India is a very far-away place. That evening was the pizza bash. This was the first year that I went to the pizza bash as part of the BSU. A pretty big group of us went to Danny's house afterwards to hang out. Some chaos ensued, but it was really fun. There were a bunch of freshmen and a bunch of internationals. I was really worried at first how the two were going to mesh, but I shouldn't have even bothered worrying. Even the random messes and broken glass in the kitchen weren't a big deal. I think the freshmen and the internationals really enjoyed meeting each other.

Saturday we all descended on Cate Center in a huge mass for lunch, and that afternoon I kind of disappeared out of freshmen-land. I walked over to Kyle's and hung out and talked there for awhile. I came back to Cate with every intention of meeting and hanging out with more people in the dorms, but I think I had kind of reached my limit with new people. Wes picked me up and I went to visit him and Scott in the new house. That was just what I needed. I love it when hanging out doesn't always require talking and sitting on the deck with the storm approaching was great.

Today was church again with more internationals. I got to meet some more Koreans at church this morning and then Steph (my roommate) and I got to go over to a Korean guy's apartment in Traditions for traditional Korean food. Amazing food and a great time meeting new people. I really do love hanging out with internationals, even though I forget it sometimes. A picture of them and Steph, Jon, and Travis (the Americans) is below.



More hanging out and talking tonight.

Overall, the past week has been amazing. I think God has given me the gift of temporary extrovertedness for the time being. I've been able to meet and converse with new people in the past week better than I ever have been able to before. I admit, though, that sometimes I think that if I was someone else, I would be wanted myself to shut up. Overall, however I feel tremendously blessed to be where I am right now. I feel surrounded by people to love, people who love me, and I feel that I am home, exactly where I am supposed to be.

May God bless you my friends.

Yes, I am still alive

I am in Norman and am busy, busy, busy. Will update more later.

chillin'

I'm just chillin' in my room at home. It is absolutely lovely to be home. See the fam, veg out, play card games, watch movies--the routine. I am still pretty excited about being back in Norman on Saturday. What I am not excited about, however, is packing. Ugh. Part of the problem is that I am attempting this packing thing a little too early. It actually needs to be attempted a little closer to the deadline. The other problem, though, is that I have to pack using stuff that will stay in my room. Usually I pack in big bins that my parents can take home with them. However, this year, since I have to be in Norman on Sunday and can't move in until Monday, my stuff will have to get dumped at someone's place for a day or two, meaning my parents can't take the excess home. Just so you know what packing does to my room, a visual:

It gets a bit messier than my room at school ever does. Probably because I can't be quite as much of a pack rat at school as I am here. And actually, the state of my room cannot be fully attributed to packing. It's actually almost that bad most of the time when I'm home.

In case you couldn't tell, I made it home from College Station safely. I even made my early morning flight. Thank goodness. I was terrified that I would miss it for some reason. Paranoid, I suppose...or desparate to get out? not sure.

Okay, well, I totally had more interesting things to say, but being tired seems to kill my brain like that. Anyhow, see you guys soon. :)

The Birds

Hmm...the top of this page says "blog." They stole my title...

A crow started chasing me as I was walking to my dorm today. I turned around and glared at him as he flew back into the tree. When I turned back around and kept walking he tried again. The third time, I got my water bottle out to throw at him. I think he got scared that time, but I'm not sure because I was at my door by that time. It was weird. The girl in front of me that it chased ran away. There were also four guys on the balcony watching this happen repeatedly. I can't blame them. There's nothing else more interesting to do in CS.

I discovered two artists/bands this week: Copeland and Bela Fleck. Haven't listened to either one all that much, but I think I could grow to like them both a lot.

In other news, I think I'm changing my major...again. Yay! Electrical, here I come. Technically, this is the third time I've changed my major. But only one was a really major major shift.

Okay, I'm totally procrastinating my poster presentation that I'm supposed to make. Crap-o-rific.

posty post post

Countdown to home: 11 days. Thank goodness.

Countdown to Norman (aka my other home): 18 days. Wow. Sounds so close when I put it that way.

I'm glad to see such enthusiasm for sitting in on classes. I was retarded when I was registering last Spring. I had thought about registering for Modern Middle East just in case I decided to take it, but I thought better of it, so I didn't (even though I could've kept it with all the rest of my classes). So, instead, I think I'm going to try to go to the first day and see if I can enroll. Then I'd just go ahead and get a history minor, because I really like history. Like, a lot. Ah, well. One more idea just floating around in my head....

So...I decided, based on the amount of not-studying I have done thus far for the GRE that I will not be taking it in the week I am home before I return to Norman. So.....who wants to take the GRE with me? Or at least, who wants to drive me to OKC? Any takers? Come on, I know everyone really, realllllllly wants to have "vocabulary time with Emily" every week. I'll let you guys think on that one.

So, I actually have to work these days, quite a bit, actually. It's rather weird. And rather draining. I wish I liked robots. Or that I understood dc motors better.

In other news, Naomi signed a lease yesterday and will be moving out in a couple of weeks. How weird is that?? Yeah, I know, pretty weird for all you guys who haven't met her...And she's also considering grad school in industrial engineering. doh! There you have it: all Weisbrooks are doomed to be engineers. I couldn't have escaped if I tried. Naomi is proof.

Okay. I'm going to go sleep now. Or read some Wodehouse. Or read about PSpice.

le honours

Hello, when did the honors college decide to start offering good perspectives classes? For instance, this semester: Arguing About War by Ben Alpers and David Ray (quite possibly two of the best profs I've had at OU) and U.S. and Middle East with Dr. Hamerla and Joshua Landis (who is supposed to be amazing). Grr…so many classes I want to take this semester, but can't or aren't.

work

I feel like I've spent more time doing work stuff in the past week than in all the rest of the past month combined. I've gotten up every morning at 8am to work (killer, huh?). I've spent about 2.5 hours every morning searching for parts for the robot and about 1.5 hours every day discussing parts with the other people in my group. A bit tiring, actually.

To help matters, I haven't been able to fall asleep anytime before 2 or 3 am. Yeah, I'm exhausted. I'm not setting my alarm tomorrow. Sweet.

Another college-town-in-the-summer weekend ahead of me. Possible trip to Houston on Sunday for swing dancing. I hope that works out this week...

update: TEXAS

So, I'm sitting in the computer lab listening to big band/swing music and doing the typical browse the Internet thing when I'm supposed to be researching what motors to use for our robot. Hmm...this doesn't sound all that atypical. Motors--this sort of reminds me of last fall in my electronics class. I'm not going to lie though, I am getting better at this whole robot thing. All you e-physics majors are going to be flocking to me for help when you have to take electronics...

I ate lunch at Chipotle today and I walked by a guy reading The Quantum Theory of Light as I was sitting down. I love college towns. This is probably because I love college.

So, it was the fourth of July this past weekend. I had a lot of fun. This was kind of unexpected because a ton of people were out of town. My roomie flew home to Denver, my suitemates went to San Antonio and almost everyone else I know here went to Dallas for the weekend. I was pleasantly surprised on Saturday to get a call from Gracie, one of Daniel's friends inviting me over to watch Space Camp with her and some friends. What a great product of the 80's. Perhaps I will purchase it at some point and force you all to watch it. I also went to her house for the fourth for some grilling, hanging out, fireworks, and Firefly (also a good watch). In addition, we played Extreme Team Sorry (aka, the world's best board game to ever have its rules modified by people with too much time on their hands). This we really will have to play sometime. It's almost as good as Scrabble.

By the way, Texas A&M takes hating Texas (u.t., that is) to a whole new level. For instance, aside from their fight song entirely dedicated to beating u.t., I've seen a ton of these shirts (and others) on campus:


That verse is probably a bit out of context...

The convenient thing however, it that while OU simply inverts the Longhorn symbol (an infringement of copyrights, which means it has to be done under the radar), I'm pretty sure someone at A&M has the "saw 'em off" longhorn symbol copyrighted themselves and therefore can do whatever they want to with it.

I was bored, so I started reading From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman. It kind of puts a different perspective on The World is Flat. It's hard for me to believe that he went from being a reporter in Beirut to writing about economics and globalization. Weird. Either way though, he writes about both quite well.

Okay, I better get back to my motors now. Adios.

reading list

Anybody remember making this list?

1. Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe - Douglas Adams
2. Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
3. 1984 - George Orwell
4. Animal Farm - George Orwell
5. Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser
6. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas
7. The Chronicles of Narnia (1-3)
8. The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
9. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
10. Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
11. Ghost War - Steve Coll
12. The Stars my Destination - Alfred Bester
13. Tarzan of the Apes (and The Return of Tarzan) - Edgar Rice Burroughs
14. The Things They Carried - Tim O’Brien
15. The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
16. Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
17. The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
18. Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
19. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
20. Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt
21. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
22. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
23. The Stranger - Albert Camus
24. See No Evil - Richard Baer
25. The Bourne Supremacy - Robert Ludlum
26. The Bourne Ultimatum - Robert Ludlum
27. The Battle for Christmas - Stephen Nissenbaum
28. The Metamorphoses - Franz Kafka
29. August 1914 - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
30. The Lord of the Flies - William Goulding
31. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
32. Three Blind Mice - Agatha Christie
33. Charles Dickens
34. The Once and Future King - T.H. White

Wow, that was spring semester 2004. We were merely freshmen...

My progress on that list is as follows: I own the italicized ones. I've read the bold ones. Pathetic. Thankfully those aren't the only books I've read in the past two years...

weeks 2&3: TEXAS

Right, so I can't really tell the weeks apart, so that title might be a bit of a lie.

Pretty much all I've been doing the past couple weeks is learning about oscillators and robots and sensors, watching movies, and watching the sky. The weather last week was absolutely amazing. Warm and rainy/muggy. I'd personally prefer to nix the muggy part, but it was much cooler than it had been. I've also been studying GRE vocab words. Goal: beat Naomi. Hey, it's something to work on. But actually, I think it'd be pretty cool to get my PhD at either Purdue or Stanford (depending on what degree) so a good GRE score might help out with that a bit. I'll probably end up at Mizzou or something...

Does anyone remember 3rd floor, crazy-hair-like-a-future-physics-professor Will? (Possible last name of Carter) Yeah, he transfered here. And he's doing research here this summer. I saw him the other day at a research luncheon and was reminded of just what a small world we live in.

So, my mom sent me this article today. Probably only the title is necessary to read. That school was the other REU I applied for. And their REU started the 25th. It would be weird to be there right now.

You know, in some ways it seems like Texas A&M was a dumb choice over California, but
after being here a few weeks, I've realized that knowing even one person in a place can make all the difference. I've gotten to hang out with Daniel and random friends of his quite a bit while I've been down here. It's been really nice, especially since they're the type of people I would hang out with if I was at school. It's been awhile since I've gone into a totally new situation where I knew no one (i.e. freshman year at OU) and I had forgotten how hard that is. Hopefully this will give me a better perspective for the fall and will encourage me to be a better friend to the freshmen girls on my floor this year than I was last year.

Okay, a few pictures of the sky before I go.










Rainbow


And proof that it is possible for a university to have a sense of humor. OU's is just sadly lacking. This is the little cafe on the first floor of the civil engineering building.

template

New design. I think this is the first design I've had where I've used a picture I took myself.

pictures: TAMU

Okay, this might be a little boring, but at least it might be a bit visually stimulating.

Pictures from the first two weeks. No people involved in these.


Don't you feel welcome now?


Like OU, A&M also appreciates the community that benches bring.


A&M has some pretty cool trees. Some of them remind me of the ones at Rice in Houston.


This underpass goes from the stadium under a big road and train track to a parking garage and parking lots. OU needs one of these. Badly.


The flag room in the Memorial Student Center.


The library here is cool enough to have an annex and a walkway thingy.


Clock from the clock tower.


Cool clouds from the rain this morning. I felt like an idiotic meteorology major staring at the sky and clouds and taking lots of pictures.


This cool metalwork was on one of the buildings here.


Door from said building.


Go here if you don't remember what happened.




Entry.


Approach.


They didn't have a bonfire the year Kennedy was shot.






The center of the memorial where the center pole of the bonfire stood.


The memorial at night.



I'll post more pictures later if I take more.

week 1: TEXAS

Okay, I'm happier than I was when I wrote my last "post" (if you can even call it that), so now I can expound upon what has happened here.

Here's a summary of the past week:

Characters:
Becky: roommate
Daniel: friend from home
Gracie: friend of Daniel's that I met in Columbia last summer.

I got here last Saturday night around 8 moved my crap in and unpacked. My dorm room has so much storage space, it's ridiculous. Too bad I only brought a suitcase of stuff with me. I think Becky and I wandered around that night to find food since nothing on campus is open.

Sunday: I'm pretty sure I did nothing. I think I finished reading Kite Runner though.

Monday: opening session. Met with my professor to figure out what we're doing.
Tuesday: library to attempt to get semi-relevant books on subject matter. I ran into Daniel in Blocker when headed to the computer lab. A semi-impressive feat considering the size of this campus and the number of people here.

Tuesday through Friday is basically a blur of me trying to figure out what in the world we're supposed to be doing for research. I know we'll be building robots, most likely using FPGAs (Field-programmable gate arrays). The other REU guy working with me seems to be really excited about this. Clearly, he has never had a robot as a class project before...

Thursday night I played racquetball with Daniel and his (now-former) roommate Robert. I had never played racquetball before. It was fun. I'm still sore. The rec center here is ginormous.

Up until Thursday night I was generally in a very pessimistic mood about this whole summer research thing. Mostly because I was bored out of my mind. Every night generally consisted of me reading books or something similar to what I was doing during the day. Not cool. I'm still not really optimistic about the research part of the summer, but perhaps I will survive the summer anyway.

Saturday, our REU group went to dinner and then to see the Omen at the theatre. I definitely saw previews for that movie and thought, "I'll never see that." It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but I'd never choose to see it if the group hadn't picked it.

Yesterday, I went to church with Daniel and was afterwards introduced to Fritella's (Italian food) and 42 (game with dominos). All in all quite fun. Last night, I went to Houston to go swing dancing with Gracie and another guys from the A&M swing dance club. I'm pretty sure I really like swing dancing now. It's a lot o' fun.

It was kind of interesting at the group dinner on Saturday night someone asked (when no profs were present) how many people were actually working 40 hours a week. Not very many people seemed to be. It seems that people's work loads are entirely dependent on the prof they are working with. And that probably stems from how much those professors work themselves. Interesting thing to keep in mind when looking at advisors for grad school...

Anyhow, that was my week. Now it's back to the grind of figuring out what I'm supposed to be doing here.

*edit*
Just had to mention that I find it amusing that the majority of the people I know who dance fall into one of three categories: a) physics major, b) engineering major, or c) drummer. (or some combination of those). I don't think that's just the case with the people I know either.
Most amusing t-shirts seen last night while dancing: 1 NASA shirt, 1 Matlab/Simulink shirt.

One last thing. Yesterday, I was disappointed to find out that we Sooners are not as original as I thought: http://bigevent.tamu.edu/. I don't know if A&M created the BIG event, but now I know we didn't...

college station: part 1

so, in case you were wondering, i made it to college station and i'm still alive...however, that's all i'm going to say right now, because i'm sleep deprived and exhausted. we'll just say i'm "adjusting" for now.

update

The past few days have included more bumming. The power went out around 5:30 Monday night. It was kind of dark outside, but we managed for a couple hours. I laid around for awhile and then went to bed around 9:30. Around 11:15, Seth came into my room and we started talking since neither of us could sleep. Around 11:45, after repeatedly talking about it, we decided to go to Waffle House since we were pretty much bored out of our minds. As we're getting ready to go, I take a flashlight upstairs with me to grab something. I come back downstairs and hear Seth in the basement. I look down the stairs and see light. A decent amount of it. And it's flourescent. Yeah, the power turned back on right as we were about to leave. Almost lamer than its turning off in the first place.

Yesterday I turned 20. Weird. Today, after 3 hours at the Sprint store, 4 of us walked away with new cell phones. I am soooo up to date with technology now.

Oh yeah, and at some point Nickel Creek decided that it would be cool to play in Columbia right after I leave. Yeah, they're going to be here June 4. Grrr. Anger.

camera

ha, i have a new toy to play with now.



maybe you guys will actually get to see some pictures from college station...

"cleaning"

i'm pretty sure that whenever i come home from college, cleaning my room consists of rearranging all my crap more efficiently so i can fit more crap in the same smallish space. grr...

grades

indeed, this was the semester of B

mr. richens was the last person to give me a B. ap bio. 8th grade.

that in-between time...

so, i am home. i've been working for my mom for the past week. this is mostly to keep myself from being a bum and not doing anything. unfortunately, i am not used to getting up at 7 every morning, or more accurately, i am not used to doing it consistently and getting enough sleep to make myself a pleasant person to be around. therefore, i have been kind of bratty this past week...which basically means my mom is the one that gets to deal with that, since i haven't hung out with anybody that's not family at all.

wow, run-on paragraph...

so, we leave tomorrow to go to lawrence. seth is graduating. yay. everyone is happy about this.

i am bored. i am glad that seth is coming home. it will be his exclusive job to entertain me, because i said so. excellent. (it's okay. i'll be gone in two weeks. it's a temp job...)

i was looking at job stuff and grad school stuff today. i think that i would like to work for texas instruments, mayhaps. i also think that grad school at stanford would be pretty sweet. good thing my brain is usually full of many such brilliant ideas. actually, there is a prof at stanford that does research in organic semiconductors. pretty cool stuff.

blah. folks, my life is boring. i have nothing interesting to talk about because nothing interesting is happening. i'll try again later.

summary

a summary of the past few days (or so...):

i made it home.

finals week was...interesting. i was not a very good student this semester.

i am the proud owner of three new tie-dye shirts. (i should have been an art major).

it appears that i am living in the dorms again next year. that will make four years in university housing for each of the weisbrook children.

my room currently looks like it got hit by a tornado. only better.

i have too many books. especially too many that do not actually belong to me. everyone will get their books back eventually. i promise.

i found out what kind of research i will be doing at a&m. i will be working on the development of nonlinear dynamical computer systems. however, i am not sure what that means yet.

i start work for my mom tomorrow. i think i will be the official errand girl/jack of all trades.

i am currently listening to bon jovi. sweet.

now i am going to bed, because 7:30 am is early.

the home stretch

i am tired of awakening at 6am to study. other than that, no complaints.

the thunder and lightning tonight was lovely. i'm very glad that the windows in nielsen open. probably the only place on campus besides cate where that is an option.

satisfy me

the next two weeks seem to be looming. my final report for lab 3 is due wednesday, i have a signals test thursday night, a couple of homeworks due somewhere in between and i'm not feeling so great right now.

i spent most of yesterday either in bed or throwing up. it was pretty great, let me tell you. i think it was either food poisoning or some sort of stomach virus like andrea had a couple of weeks ago. i feel a lot better now though. just pretty tired and achey.

that's about all in current news actually. this weekend was really nice. got to hang out with people and relax. it would have been nice to get more work done, but sunday's "adventures" weren't exactly in the plan.

new

ha! i updated my template. it's probably not finished because i didn't work that hard on it, but hey, at least it looks different.

happy easter everyone.

complicated

in case anyone didn't know, i'm going to be in norman all next year. there will be no study abroad in england. sad, i know. actually, i'm thrilled. odd, but true.

marvelous light

well, i realized this week that i am slacking even more than usual. folks, this is bad. i'm just not really caring about school all that much this semester. classes aren't exactly thrilling...to say the least, i'd much rather talk to people.

so, spring break was a couple of weeks ago. i went to glorieta. it was wonderful. just what i needed spiritually and emotionally. i came back extremely rested. amazingly.

in the past four days i have found out a lot that will dictate the next year of my life. sunday, i found out that i was accepted to the reu at texas a&m. i emailed fermi that night, just to make sure that i did indeed get rejected. not to worry, an email in my inbox the next morning assured me that i did. yesterday, i accepted the position. today, i got an email from the reu at the university of california - santa cruz. they accepted me too. it's a really good thing i already accepted the position at a&m, otherwise i'd probably have accepted the one in cali. for goodness sake, santa cruz is right on the ocean...but, i think that a&m is the best for helping me figure out grad school.

i also got an email from study abroad today. it would seem that i was "accepted" to reading, however, in my degree program, i can only go for a year. that's out of the question, as i do have an agenda of how i want my schooling here to go. i don't want to put off graduation a semester, since i only decided on study abroad because i could still make it out in four. i'm going to go by the study abroad office tomorrow and see what my options are. in all honesty, i wouldn't be heart-broken if i couldn't go abroad. i love norman, i love ou, and i love my friends here. i'm not sure uprooting a semester before i graduate is really a great idea anyway. even though i'll be here for year 5 anyway. my mom tells me that grad school is a lot different and that i'll stop hanging out with my lowely undergrad friends. sad thought.

housing

dear housing,

can i please trade the free cable in my room next year for a telephone in my room. that would be spectacular.

sincerely,
emily

come thou fount

Well, I obviously didn't get around to changing my blog's appearance. I did contemplate changing it to one of the sample ones (the bright pink one actually) just for spite, but decided it would probably be awhile until I changed it again and I didn't want to look at pink for that long.

That's all, but this hymn is absolutely amazing.

Oh, to grace how great a debtor,
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wand'ring heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, Oh, take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
-Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

p b & j

who wants to give up homework for lent with me?

i had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner tonight. mental note: eat these more often. they are tasty.

reu's are all mailed in and applied to. sweet. texas a&m, university of california - santa cruz, and fermilab. texas, california, or illinois...why do i get the feeling i won't be spending the summer in cali?

went to hillary's pirate birthday party on friday night. as we were walking/running along elm street some dumb person leaned out of his suv window and threw a mcdonald's cup of water at me. i was a bit confused at first, especially since i thought it was a water balloon. i was just thankful that it was water and not beer or soda or something fun like that. odd thing was though, i was the only person not dressed pirate-like. karma perhaps?

agh!

well folks, it looks like i'm well on my way to pulling an all-nighter in honor of going to houston...

i'm procrastinating

surprising, no?

i have a lab report, a matlab assignment, a lab quiz, and part of a project proposal to finish before i leave norman tomorrow. slacker extraordinaire.

a couple comments on valentine's day. this year's was lovely. not that v-day has been bad in the past, but this one seemed especially nice. the weather was absolutely gorgeous for one. it was all-around just a good day, although, i can't really remember what i did for the life of me. aside from dinner with the evans 4 guys +jon and david and talking to katie on the south oval, i can't remember much else that was non-school related.

i do have a complaint about valentine's before i finish, though. can people please stop complaining about or calling attention to the fact that they are single on this fine day? news flash: singleness is not the end of the world. really. i promise.

okay, rant finished.

De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da

so, i've been listening to the police for the past few days. like, a lot. that's pretty cool. i'm gaining an appreciation for 80s music. that's good, since i missed it the first time around.

lab iii is taking over my life. i suppose this is to be expected, but still, it seems its the only class i ever think about or do homework for during the week. that really needs to change. i also really need to start doing stuff for my honors research.

i got profs to write my letters of recommendation for REUs etc. the first one is due next week. neat. and i wrote my essay for study abroad. at least i'm kind of feeling on top of things there.

i was sick for a lot of this week. being sick is no fun. i skipped my one class on monday and spent the majority of the day sleeping. i think that was probably helpful in getting me better sooner.

that's pretty much it. this weekend will be spent doing massive quantities of homework since i will be in houston for the second half of next week. that's right, i will be visiting texas for the first time since being at ou. neat.

:)

*contented sigh* i needed that.

thesis

i checked out my first thesis from the library on tuesday. it appears my life is all downhill from here.

i've been moody...

i've been in a complaining mood lately. shame on me and sorry about that guys. i'll try to work on that. a couple of bad days is not even roughly equal to the the end of the world.

birthday

we celebrated my dad's birthday tonight, meaning family dinner and cake etc.

instead of putting the correct "number" of candles on the cake, we improvised. we used some of the big number candles that we had laying around. 33 +1 lone candle. it works in hex...

see, you really can't blame my weirdness on me. how could i come from a family like this and still be normal?

---

cool thing that happened today: my dad gave me another power adaptor for my laptop since he had a couple just lying around. ah, the benefits of having an ibm employee in-house.

books!

today's reading dilemma:
which "textbook" should i read?
physics of the body or the world is flat

or...maybe both?

in other news: i will not be arriving in norman until monday night

2006

happy new year everyone!

sheesh, 2005 was a long year.

went to see narnia the other day. i liked that they played the dictionary game. although, they got a cool word like gastrovascular out of the deal. the only word i got out of it the last time i played was dejecta. how useful is that in everyday conversation? oh, wait...

i finished the drafts for my reu/lab internship applications today. now i need to proof them and then all that's left is my study abroad application. writing an essay on "why i feel qualified to study abroad". blah, blah, blah.

okay, it's 4:30 in the morning. i'm going to bed now.

5th semester in review

I admit, I wrote this a couple of days ago, I just haven't gotten around to posting until now.

Fifth Semester in Review

• I completed 4 more ECE and 2 more CS classes. I only need 29 more hours to graduate.
• For the first semester that I can remember, I had no mental/emotional breakdowns. I'm going to attribute this largely to that fact that:
• I had my first voluntary, self-selected roommate. this semester taught me that I am not one of those persons designed to live alone.
• Nickel Creek--who Danny unwittingly introduced me to--was my favorite band this semester.
  
• I spent the majority of my semester hanging out with the freshman boys of Evans 4. only mildly strange.
• I spent another large chunk of time programming in S18 in the sub-basement of Carson.
  
• I was mistaken for being home schooled quite frequently. (Naomi felt the need to inform me/clarify that this is not a complement)
• I realized that I am in the perfect major for myself, partially due to the classes that I enjoyed (ECE classes) and the classes that I enjoyed less (CS).
• I built my first robot where I actually felt like I knew what I was doing
• Andrea joined OU Crew (this may seem irrelevant to my semester, but trust me, it wasn't)
• By some miracle, I kept my 4.0
  
• I spent ridiculous amounts of time checking my email, facebook, and reading other people's blogs (i.e. stalking people)
• I decided to study abroad
• I had my first job/internship interview (and got to wear my first suit. ugh.)
• I saw my first opening-night movie. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
• I started doing the boggle and the jumble in the paper on a regular basis.

This was also the first semester where I had to seriously deal with most of my friends living off-campus. It was an interesting experience. I lost touch with many of them simply because I am bad at staying in touch and it was inconvenient. Knowing people with kitchens did, however, allow me to cook every so often. Each cooking experience was, of course, accompanied by a phone call to Mom for instructions.

This was also the first semester where I largely stopped going to RUF. A lot of this was due to being busy and lacking energy and motivation. The fact that it met at Lloyd Noble made me a lot less inclined to go. I am trying to figure out where my priorities lie so I don't screw up with this again next semester.

Yup, guys, those are the milestones.

This is probably the first semester where I am unable to say of it that it wasn't better than all of the previous ones. It wasn't a bad semester by any means, but for one thing, if Andrea hadn't been my roommate I would most likely have driven myself crazy and had a dozen mental breakdowns and bouts of loneliness. It was a bit hard dealing with not having most of my good friends living near me and having to meet a bunch of new people and finding a new group of people to hang out with. All in all, though, a good semester. I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the next.

mail

today was a good mail day. 2 word smart books and my prospectus from Reading. soon my vocabulary will be educated, powerful, and erudite.

christmas

i suppose it's not technically christmas day anymore, but hey, i haven't gone to sleep yet, so it still counts.

christmas was really nice this year. very relaxing.

on christmas eve, our family (all 5 of us) watched kids during the first christmas eve service. (part of the obligatory family bonding time). we then went to the christmas eve service. when we got home, we kind of decided to open gifts. my parents pretty much decided that since the older we get, the more picky we are to shop for and the more frustrating it is...they would just give us a few gifts that we actually wanted and then cash.

so, here's the (as andrea terms it) "loot" that i got for christmas:

• 2 nickel creek cds
• 2 word smart books (still in the mail)
• a few dvds
• an itunes gift card
• a book of su doku puzzles (i'm completely addicted after a day and a half)
• a che shirt from china
• a scarf/shawl thing from china that i will have to figure out how to wear
  
• a jane austin action figurine
• cash

we went over to the delwoods tonight. sat around, ate, talked, played apples to apples. it only took daniel 7.5 hours of intermittent asking in order to get us over to their house. i like the delwoods, they're neat people. i still don't quite understand how we lived in columbia for 13 years before meeting them though...

still attempting to learn vocabulary. considering trying to take the gre at mizzou while home over break. we'll see what happens. also a potential trip to colorado. we'll see what the siblings decided about it.

i was looking back on my christmas post from last year and all the books i got and said i would read. i think i read about 2 out of the 15 or so during the course of the year. failure. again.

coming tomorrow: emily's semester review

stuff

first off: andrea, your comments are worthless, but unfortunately i'm giving in to their powers of persuasion.

i'm home. i've actually been home since saturday. neat. naomi and seth got home today (wednesday)

i love getting mail at home. i got a credit card application and something from the army today. also neat.

i'm trying to figure out where to apply next summer. current top options:

• fermilab in chicago
• reu at texas a&m
• reu at the university of alaska
• reu at university of california, santa cruz

we'll see what happens. i suppose what i end up doing will depend on where i get accepted and whether i want to do more comp sci stuff or ee stuff. gosh, i wish i wasn't so horrible at decisions.

in other news, vocabulary learning hasn't really started yet for the break. i am a complete bum. i am getting a lot of personal satisfaction from redesigning the study abroad website though.

that's all. off to saint louis tomorrow to visit the relatives. should be fun.

andrea and kyle owe me some pictures. i expect those soon.

merry christmas everyone.

finals

4 finals down. 4 teachers i shouldn't have to see again. most likely ever. 2 finals left. apathy is closing in strong.

i've got an operating systems book that's begging to be burned...

loud hour

in the words of andrea:

"They think this is loud hour? They have no idea."

*sigh* sometimes i really miss last year...

balderdash

so, apparently banine is not a word. rubbish.

a certain somebody would probably be really good at balderdash...

stealing second

dang, that nutella stuff is good.

why am i still procrastinating going to bed?

robot

things i forgot to add to my christmas break to-do list:

• spend time with my wonderful sister who's coming home especially to see me


• study abroad application


• other cool and useful stuff
  

so, i had to build this robot for class and i was taking pictures tonight. andrea was kind enough to help me out. we're a sorry lot, trying to keep from going insane this late in the semester.

these pictures are mostly to entertain naomi. everyone else has current firsthand knowledge of just how weird we are.

the robot looks like this:


andrea appears to like the robot:


they have coffee together often:


andrea appears to really like the robot:


underside/being weird?


andrea appears to be cheating on the robot with...a stapler? weak.


your advice for today:
when building a robot near the end of the fall semester, do not build it out of metal as it makes carrying the thing around a very cold process.

homeskool

andrea's question of the day:

"emily, does it bother you more that you only hang out with homeschoolers or that people think you were homeschooled."

thoughts? discuss.

code!

do you know how many emails i have sent with that title recently? that and "old micro-p tests", although the latter is mainly due to replying to old emails out of laziness.

i decided to update my blog instead of wasting even more time on facebook. i feel this is slightly more productive. maybe.

to summarize my life for the past few days:

• i spent the majority of wednesday studying for my micro-p test. i feel a heck of a lot better about this one then the last one. i imagine i'll still get a 'B' in this class, but oh well, i still enjoyed the class a lot.


• wednesday and thursday i programmed for operating systems and we turned in our last two projects. cool


• also found out wednesdayish that our ewb project in honduras where were going to be designing and installing a water system is scrapped because someone else just kind of installed one. sigh.


• went to bed last night at 9:30. it was amazing. got up at 6 and took a shower with intent to program. went back to bed for another hour. proved my patheticness once again.


• worked on robot this afternoon for about 5 hours. it actually kind of worked. i think mechanicals may not think we are incompetant any longer. sweet.


• tried to get saferide to take us to barnes and noble tonight. i think the girl on duty thought we were crazy. totally lame.


• pancake breakfast at jaime and laura's tomorrow. yay. then on to another day full of programming: database and maybe micro-p. at least the two are entirely different.

i'm totally ready to be home again.

plans/things to get done over break:

• vocabulary: for my own personal benefit and as gre prep


• scholarship applications


• reu applications


• google application


• application for outstanding junior (because that obviously applies to me...)

i'm sure i'll come up with lots of other ideas that are lovely but also won't happen.

that's all for today. i need to go program more.

doubting thomas

Can I be used to help others find truth
When I'm scared I'll find proof that it's a lie
Can I be led down a trail dropping bread crumbs
That prove I'm not ready to die
-Doubting Thomas, Nickel Creek

thanksgiving

well, i'm home. and actually have been for a few days now. i love being home.

there's no electricity in my room right now. only my room though. and my closet light actually works. it's weird. so i have an extension cord running to my room from the bathroom so i can have a lamp in my room. hopefully this will be fixed by the time christmas break rolls around.

as usual, there is more furnature in my house now than the last time i was. good thing i wasn't disappointed in that arena.

i had really great plans to do a lot of homework over break. in that respect, i'm basically a failure. but i have gotten to relax a lot, which might actually be better for me. and there's still another day of work left to be had.

i have managed to play lord of the rings risk and scrabble. i really like scrabble. a lot. today's new words learned from scrabble:

• ravel -
  1. To separate the fibers or threads of (cloth, for example); unravel.
  2. To clarify by separating the aspects of.
  3. To tangle or complicate.
• jinn -
  plural of jinni; in muslim legend, a spirit often capable of assuming human or animal form and exercising supernatural influence over people.

seth likes to make up words when we play scrabble. a lot. so it's always a bit of a vocabulary/bluffing test to know whether the words are real or not.

i also don't think it's fair when a word means it's opposite as well. (see ravel above)

in other random thoughts: professors are really nice. i talked with a couple professors here that my mom knows to get help with projects. they don't even know me and they're still really nice and helpful.

that's all.

currently listening - why should the fire die?, nickel creek
currently reading - something about sql/jdbc

failure

i came to the brilliant realization today that i am deathly afraid of failure. the same goes for dissappointing people. no wonder i'm frustrated with life right now.

bath

i gave my chacos a bath today (today being thursday). that's kind of weird. they're clean now though.

it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth

i want to go camping.

chessboxing

it seems as though the majority of my friends have decided to quit blogging. that's not a huge problem i suppose, seing as i have the awesome professors at mit who blog and let me know about relevant recent events like chessboxing. pretty sweet, eh?

i just got back from going to see la traviata with mike. it was interesting. opera is not my favorite medium and i admit that i do prefer it in english. i can still appreciate it in italian though.

i got virtually nothing done today. tried to write my program for micro-p, but haven't finished yet. i'll work on that tomorrow i suppose. i also get to go into the lab tomorrow and try to figure out how our robot circuit should be put together. neat.

dang. jimmy john's is good. especially when it's free. i can't believe i didn't discover that joint until the summer before college.

i think i'm off to go do some sort of studying. adios.

jobs

this whole looking for work thing stinks. the whole email/interview/thank you cycle is vicious. i think i should just stick with being a professional student.

smooth jazz hour

so, um, tomorrow is going to be a rediculously long day that involves wearing a suit. drat. class, speak at question/answer panel for high schoolers, eat lunch with same, interview with ibm, finish tuesdays lab, help someone learn micro-p, ewb meeting, finish operating systems project. sheesh.

i went to a "diversity dinner" tonight for ibm. it was nice, actually, and i got a chance to talk to some people. i'm betting they'd probably give me some sort of job if i want one, seeing as i'm female and all (aka "diverse"). so i'm interviewing with them tomorrow. someone from the office in new york. that would be pretty cool. i've never been to new england at all.

let's see, what else. got advised this week. i'm taking a colloqium class, despite the fact i had decided not to do honors. that was mostly because i didn't want to take a dumb colloqium class. i'm actually interested in dr. porter's, however, so that changed things up a bit. it also sounds like study abroad is very feasible. most excellent. current choice: reading university, approx. 30 minutes outside london. very awesome. apparently it's a quality engineering school as well, so credits would transfer and i might be able to swing honors and a history minor.

hmm...this post was all about school. oh wait, school is my life. lame. i need a hobby that doesn't involve a computer. or eating.

canadian, eh?

hmm...thus far, it's been a good week. yesterday, for unknown reasons, and despite being a monday, was most excellent. i discovered, whilst returning from class yesterday that i actually do like my major. it seems that i go through this crisis every semester. apparently, it's not my major i hate, just the first 6 or 7 weeks of the semester. bummer for me, i suppose.

i also decided, partially based on my dismal practice gre scores, that i need to expand my vocabulary. i think the word smart book may be returning with me after thanksgiving. it probably wouldn't hurt to review some latin vocab either.

played bocce ball for the first time today. i'm pretty bad, but that's not too much of a problem. maybe i'll get better.

built a digital logic circuit in lab today. makes me wish that my section of digital design had had a lab with it. i pretty much dominated that circuit. w00t.

ibm is having some sort of jank in the union tomorrow, so i suppose i should get a bit dressed up and go. drat. i hate dressing up. there will be no suit involved either. the suit thing at the career fair was complete rubbish, but it is a nice suit.

i leave you with a funny link. check out this article.

dr. pepper

does anyone else find it ironic that they gave me a dr. pepper cup at crossroads tonight?

unless this a sign of changes to come...

2 + 2 = 5

x = tuesday night, andrea and emily swear off desserts and sugar (after one last cookie)
y = wednesday at the cafeteria, they have hot chocolate cobbler for the first time all semester (i've been waiting for it...)

x + y = irony

persians

50 billion persians can't be wrong.

your advice of the day: when you get invited to join honor societies and they offer free food at the informational meeting, don't join the first year. they'll invite you back and you can get free food again the next. free food at college must always be top priority.

it's come to the point where i have to remind myself to take showers. i think that is probably a bad sign. actually, anytime you can't remember when the last shower you took was is a bad time. oh well, at least i'm doing my homework. one must always have priorities.

my first test of the semester is tomorrow. i suspect the next ones will follow shortly thereafter. lucky me.

i need sleep. therefore i am going to bed. goodnight.

this entry only took me three minutes to write. yay.

a regatta saturday

andrea has requested an update, which is rather dumb, seeing as she lives with me. oh, well.

life is somewhat better now. at least in the academic realm i think i am finally at the point where i am starting to understand stuff. at least i hope i am understanding it since i have to explain it to other people sometimes. oddly enough, i think i like my microprocessor class, which is assembly language apparently. it's neat stuff. actually, i'm starting to like most of my classes, seeing as everything is becoming more interesting/more work. why do those two have to go together?

i think that every dorm room needs a plant. however, once you acquire yours, do not feed it powerade. it makes the plant sticky and may kill it if it is not a hardy plant. my mom still claims that plants like diet coke though. i don't happen to have any diet coke lying around however, and i'm not about to go find some just to prove her theory/kill my plant for real this time.

hmm...my train of thought just switched from writing this blog to something else, so i think i'll end here. back to go work on electronics and operating systems. i am so cool.