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.