So. School. Wow. This is going to be a long year. Shall I run down my courses? Yes? Alright then.
AP Physics. A class that has already inspired multiple breakdowns. School starts tomorrow.
AP US History
Honors Chem
Honors Brit lit
Honors German III (well, to be fair I'm pretty sure this one will be an easy A even if it's called honors. Last year I managed a 100% average, so....)
Honors Pre-Calc
Gym (half year)
Civics (half year)
This should be fun. And it occurs to me that it's rather sad that I'm sitting here wondering whether it's overkill bringing my graphing calculator tomorrow. Because the answer is obviously yes, but I worry, and most of the people in my physics class are going to be seniors, and I'm a junior, so I really don't want to be unprepared. Did I mention that I'm paranoid? And I have procrastination issues- sort of. I start my summer homework on August first sort of obsessively every year, which seems like a positive point. But, on the other hand, I just finished it all today. And I may occasionally fail to start essays until the night before they are due. But I've only waited until midnight once!
In other news I'm finally signed up for driver's ed. My birthday was only in April, so when it starts in October it won't have been quite eight months since I could have taken the class. It occurs to me that I should be more upset by this. I really should get to bed, so I can get up at 5:30.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
MIT and Partnering
So. MIT and I need to have a little discussion. They sent me this email:
Dear Emma,
You haven't responded to any of our other emails regarding getting on
the MIT mailing list and getting some interesting/cool materials in the
mail, so we'll stop bugging you. But I begged my boss to let me try one
last time, telling him that bad haiku is the key to connecting with
people.
If you respond to this email, after having ignored the others, it will
make admissions officers everywhere rethink their use of bad haiku in
the admissions process. Let's change the world.
Here goes...
Hi, how's it going?
We would like to send you an
MIT brochure.
It's free, really cool,
And we think you will like it.
Click the link below to request it.
(That last line had nine
syllables. Did you catch that?
We knew you were smart.)
Now, what you have to understand is that I don't reply to many college emails. I ignore most of them without even thinking. But MIT, there's a reason for that. It obviously isn't that they are a bad school, because they're very good at what they do. It isn't even because I'm not interested in the things that they teach, since I'm seriously considering engineering. But that's all that they do. If I was one of the math/science geeks who hated English and History it would be one thing. But the biggest college related decision I'm going to have to make is whether to major in Engineering/Physics (depending on whether the school I choose offers Engineering), History, Creative Writing, or Literature. So MIT's one sided approach is the problem. Sending me butchered poetry? Not the way to convince me to apply.
Now on a related topic:
Partnering Classes are hard. And I am really sore. And bad at finger pirouettes. But seriously, the classes were a great experience and I feel like I learned a lot. RIBT (Rhode Island's ballet theatre) is all girls right now, but we got some men who work with the local-ish professional companies to come help teach the class. It doesn't seem like it should be so different from dancing by yourself, but it really is. You hold your weight differently, etc. Instead of leaning slightly forward you're supposed to lean into the guy, and you really have to trust them completely.
You know those trust exercises where you fall back and have to trust the person to catch you? We did some stuff like that. The girl stands on her point shoes in fifth (feet crossed so that one foot is right in front of the other) with her arms up in fifth, a circle above her head. The guy basically holds her waist and tips her in all different directions while she has to stay stiff as a board. It sounds easy. I promise that it isn't. But still, I deffinitely learned a lot, and it's always fun to do somehthing different.
Dear Emma,
You haven't responded to any of our other emails regarding getting on
the MIT mailing list and getting some interesting/cool materials in the
mail, so we'll stop bugging you. But I begged my boss to let me try one
last time, telling him that bad haiku is the key to connecting with
people.
If you respond to this email, after having ignored the others, it will
make admissions officers everywhere rethink their use of bad haiku in
the admissions process. Let's change the world.
Here goes...
Hi, how's it going?
We would like to send you an
MIT brochure.
It's free, really cool,
And we think you will like it.
Click the link below to request it.
(That last line had nine
syllables. Did you catch that?
We knew you were smart.)
Now, what you have to understand is that I don't reply to many college emails. I ignore most of them without even thinking. But MIT, there's a reason for that. It obviously isn't that they are a bad school, because they're very good at what they do. It isn't even because I'm not interested in the things that they teach, since I'm seriously considering engineering. But that's all that they do. If I was one of the math/science geeks who hated English and History it would be one thing. But the biggest college related decision I'm going to have to make is whether to major in Engineering/Physics (depending on whether the school I choose offers Engineering), History, Creative Writing, or Literature. So MIT's one sided approach is the problem. Sending me butchered poetry? Not the way to convince me to apply.
Now on a related topic:
Partnering Classes are hard. And I am really sore. And bad at finger pirouettes. But seriously, the classes were a great experience and I feel like I learned a lot. RIBT (Rhode Island's ballet theatre) is all girls right now, but we got some men who work with the local-ish professional companies to come help teach the class. It doesn't seem like it should be so different from dancing by yourself, but it really is. You hold your weight differently, etc. Instead of leaning slightly forward you're supposed to lean into the guy, and you really have to trust them completely.
You know those trust exercises where you fall back and have to trust the person to catch you? We did some stuff like that. The girl stands on her point shoes in fifth (feet crossed so that one foot is right in front of the other) with her arms up in fifth, a circle above her head. The guy basically holds her waist and tips her in all different directions while she has to stay stiff as a board. It sounds easy. I promise that it isn't. But still, I deffinitely learned a lot, and it's always fun to do somehthing different.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Confession
I have a confession to make. I have a gummi problem. It's all because of german (which is also the reason that I now call them gummis instead of gummies). I've been taking german at school for the past few years, but even that might have been okay. However, I've been to a few german club meetings, although not many. At one of them we did a gummi bear tasting. We tried gummi bears (not gummy bears, whch now just sounds weird to me!) from several different companies and rated them. Haribo was, quite naturally, the winner. It is a german company that makes many gummi candies, although we can't get a lot of them in the US. And from that point on I was a little obsessed (no, really, only a little. I know what serious obsession looks like. Harry Potter anyone?).
I sort of collect Haribo bags of diferent sorts, like the frogs, and I've got a bag of gummi bears from France when I went last summer and of gummi peaches from Sweden which my mm brought me. But I did not realize how bad my problem was until last night. I was with my family and we had gone to see Julie and Julia, the new movie (which is very good). At one point we see Julie go into a grocery store. Behind her, in the back of the shot and HOLDING NO IMPORTANCE AT ALL is a rack of Haribo candies. I kind fangirled, like squealing quietly etc. over the Haribo, and grabbed my brother. Over the background of the shot. At this point I realized that yes, I really do have a problem.
Moving on. Grammar. Many people in this world not have any, so every so often I'll be adding a small grammar point onto the end of a post.
Of v. Have.
As in "I should of gone to the store." This is, incorrect. When you write this, what you are presumably trying to do is write down the sounds that your mouth makes when you say "I should've gone to the store." They sound very similar, but they are not the same. When you say 'should've' you are using a contraction of 'should have' and thus if you decide to write it out that is what you should write. 'Should of' does not make sense.
I sort of collect Haribo bags of diferent sorts, like the frogs, and I've got a bag of gummi bears from France when I went last summer and of gummi peaches from Sweden which my mm brought me. But I did not realize how bad my problem was until last night. I was with my family and we had gone to see Julie and Julia, the new movie (which is very good). At one point we see Julie go into a grocery store. Behind her, in the back of the shot and HOLDING NO IMPORTANCE AT ALL is a rack of Haribo candies. I kind fangirled, like squealing quietly etc. over the Haribo, and grabbed my brother. Over the background of the shot. At this point I realized that yes, I really do have a problem.
Moving on. Grammar. Many people in this world not have any, so every so often I'll be adding a small grammar point onto the end of a post.
Of v. Have.
As in "I should of gone to the store." This is, incorrect. When you write this, what you are presumably trying to do is write down the sounds that your mouth makes when you say "I should've gone to the store." They sound very similar, but they are not the same. When you say 'should've' you are using a contraction of 'should have' and thus if you decide to write it out that is what you should write. 'Should of' does not make sense.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Oy Vey
SO. Now I'm back at work, which means more dead bat updates, which I know the world has been waiting for. Continuing on the topic of bat wings, today I'm going to be getting trained in using the machine to test the stretchiness (technical terms...) of bat wing skin. The guy whose project it has been is going to be moving back to Washington state in about a week and a half, so I'm apparently going to do this.
Also, I seriously have ridiculous homework. Physics... How the heck should I know how much a pickup truck weighs? Seriously? And because it's technically a college book it wants me to say how much information in one of the tables can be verified using equipment found in a dorm room. Of course, I'm in high school and living at home... And the sheer volume of work is already ridiculous, which is bad because school hasn't even started yet. This should be a fun year.
Also, I seriously have ridiculous homework. Physics... How the heck should I know how much a pickup truck weighs? Seriously? And because it's technically a college book it wants me to say how much information in one of the tables can be verified using equipment found in a dorm room. Of course, I'm in high school and living at home... And the sheer volume of work is already ridiculous, which is bad because school hasn't even started yet. This should be a fun year.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Saying nothing about those who know it
So... After returning from vacation (which I"ll probably talk about later) I had a bunch of college letters, as expected. One which particularly amused me was the pamphlet from Emerson University which has a paragraph titled "A Commitment to Sustainability" saying "In addition to having beautiful, tree-lined campuses, Emory's commitment to the environment is evident in our sustainability program. It includes such long-term efforts as alternative transportation, campuswide recycling, and the designation of half of campus as green space. Emory is a nationwide leader in the number of certified 'green' buildings on our campus."
This sounds great, right? I'm all for environmental sustainability (and social responsibility! um sorry.. precepts of my middle school...). However, this would sound a lot better if it hadn't come in a plastic, NON-RECYCLABLE bag... COme one people. Think. It isn't that hard to figure this out.
This sounds great, right? I'm all for environmental sustainability (and social responsibility! um sorry.. precepts of my middle school...). However, this would sound a lot better if it hadn't come in a plastic, NON-RECYCLABLE bag... COme one people. Think. It isn't that hard to figure this out.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Saying something. But it still took lots of words!
So I was totally going to write a long post today about America, and what I think about it, etc. But instead I spent the day cleaning and the night watching fireworks, and have now taken something to help me sleep since I haven't been doing that so much... So I'm going to write something short.
While I was watching my town's fireworks, which were awesome, as I said about a hundred times int the last hour, I could see three or four other shows going at separate times. Partly I loved this because more fireworks=more awesome. But my mom and I started trying to figure out the team names of the schools in the town where the other show we could see were (if you know us, then you know that it's a miracle that we know what OUR teams are called, let alone anyone else's). And as we discussed this I started thinking about how stuff like that doesn't matter on the Fourth of July, because the only thing that matters is the fireworks and America, the ideal that we all share. And we can share it, because the ideals don't have to have details. Our ideal is just this perfect glowing image, and at dusk on Independence Day (let's remember what this is really about) for once it isn't about politics, policies, wars, issues. It's about the crazy people who did essentially what I explained to my history class when we covered the Declaration of independence. I said that we could declare ourselve the soverign nation of room 321, but that did not make us a country. All those years ago, a bunch of people got together, essentially did just that, and then backed themselves up. And as the fireworks go up, and the skies above America glow tonight, as they will, our dreams all share the same essentials:
Freedom,
Happiness,
Peace,
Safety.
We might not agree on how to get there or who should get there or how much help they should have from those who are already there, but at least here, in America, we get to vote, express our opinions. Here, we share our perfect visions. On the fourth, there aren't really any party lines. There are, for a few, brief moments, AMERICANS.
While I was watching my town's fireworks, which were awesome, as I said about a hundred times int the last hour, I could see three or four other shows going at separate times. Partly I loved this because more fireworks=more awesome. But my mom and I started trying to figure out the team names of the schools in the town where the other show we could see were (if you know us, then you know that it's a miracle that we know what OUR teams are called, let alone anyone else's). And as we discussed this I started thinking about how stuff like that doesn't matter on the Fourth of July, because the only thing that matters is the fireworks and America, the ideal that we all share. And we can share it, because the ideals don't have to have details. Our ideal is just this perfect glowing image, and at dusk on Independence Day (let's remember what this is really about) for once it isn't about politics, policies, wars, issues. It's about the crazy people who did essentially what I explained to my history class when we covered the Declaration of independence. I said that we could declare ourselve the soverign nation of room 321, but that did not make us a country. All those years ago, a bunch of people got together, essentially did just that, and then backed themselves up. And as the fireworks go up, and the skies above America glow tonight, as they will, our dreams all share the same essentials:
Freedom,
Happiness,
Peace,
Safety.
We might not agree on how to get there or who should get there or how much help they should have from those who are already there, but at least here, in America, we get to vote, express our opinions. Here, we share our perfect visions. On the fourth, there aren't really any party lines. There are, for a few, brief moments, AMERICANS.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Odds and Ends
So I've now done data sets for two bats (I'm updating you, because the world NEEDS TO KNOW about bat hair counting). It's been a lot of fun. Seriously, I love my job. I sit in a small room for hours at a time, staring at dead bats through a microscope... And the pathetic thing? This is seriously y dream job right now... But it's really fascinating. There are starting to really be visible patterns, like neat rows of hairs along muscles and bones.
On an unrelated topic, my brother's Bar Mitzvah is coming up, like saturday after this one. I'm supposed to do a torah reading, and I sort of know it. Kind of. As of ten minutes ago. Heavy on the kind of. Yeah...
To continue the trend of random topics, I am going to be going to a college fair next week, at Brown (where I've been working). I'm very curious to see what it's like. Should be fun.
Since I have now talked about THREE nothings it is time to stop. Feel free to be impressed by my nothing-talking abilities.
On an unrelated topic, my brother's Bar Mitzvah is coming up, like saturday after this one. I'm supposed to do a torah reading, and I sort of know it. Kind of. As of ten minutes ago. Heavy on the kind of. Yeah...
To continue the trend of random topics, I am going to be going to a college fair next week, at Brown (where I've been working). I'm very curious to see what it's like. Should be fun.
Since I have now talked about THREE nothings it is time to stop. Feel free to be impressed by my nothing-talking abilities.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Am I more boring, or more weird?
I spent most of today looking at dead bats, which was a lot of fun. Of course, now I sound really creepy, but, you know, such is life. Today was just learning the basics, and I didn't do any actual official hair counting (which is what I'm going to spend most of my time doing). The guy who showed me what to do was really funny. He seemed really worried that I would have an issue with the dead animals, which I guess is understandable, except, well... as I told him, my mom does this for a living. She used to teach anatomy, so I spent a fair bit of time when I was little in rooms full of dead human bodies. So bats? Like the ones that occasionally end up in the freezer at home? Not a problem.
I had a ridiculous amount of fun looking at these bats through a microscope today. It's actually fascinating, these hairs that we're counting are on the wings, and they are tiny. At the moment it isn't clear what their purpose is, but the people working on it think that the hairs are probably used to monitor the difference in air pressure on the ventral (front) and dorsal (back) sides of the wings. There are different amounts of hair on different parts of the wings, so we're counting a bunch of different areas.
And I'm even more excited about tomorrow, when I will not only begin collecting data, but will also get to go over to engineering and drill holes in a metal plate so that it can be used as a stencil for painting grids onto bat wings. Which is awesome mostly because it means that I get to work in engineering.
Wow, this is sort of insanely boring and technical and stupid...
And now I'm hallucinating. I would swear that something just ran off of my bedside table, and across the bed directly behind my computer. But there's nothing there... This is probably a sign that I should stop saying nothing.
I had a ridiculous amount of fun looking at these bats through a microscope today. It's actually fascinating, these hairs that we're counting are on the wings, and they are tiny. At the moment it isn't clear what their purpose is, but the people working on it think that the hairs are probably used to monitor the difference in air pressure on the ventral (front) and dorsal (back) sides of the wings. There are different amounts of hair on different parts of the wings, so we're counting a bunch of different areas.
And I'm even more excited about tomorrow, when I will not only begin collecting data, but will also get to go over to engineering and drill holes in a metal plate so that it can be used as a stencil for painting grids onto bat wings. Which is awesome mostly because it means that I get to work in engineering.
Wow, this is sort of insanely boring and technical and stupid...
And now I'm hallucinating. I would swear that something just ran off of my bedside table, and across the bed directly behind my computer. But there's nothing there... This is probably a sign that I should stop saying nothing.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
The reason I should not type things late at night
Um, so. yes. I feel like a copycat, but I'm bored, so why not? I really have nothing say, but that will never stop me. INSERT EVIL LAUGHTER HERE.
Blogs are supposed to be about what you're doing/thinking about at any given time, right? SO: the bones in the arm/hand!
They're analagous to those in bat wings, so I had a random lesson on them in the car today! From the person who was driving the car. In this order: humerus, radius, carpals, metacarpals, proximal phalanges, distal phalanges. Actually, humans have another set of phalanges on all fingers except the thumb, but most bats don't so... (The first elipsis! YAY!)
Um, so. Yes. Very, very excited about working in my mom's lab, I"m going to be doing stuff on a project they have going right now about these tiny hairs on bat wings, which appear to be used to sense the differences in pressure on either side of the wing. It's ridiculously cool, and I got to read several papers about and one about phylogenetic trees on friday, which was a great deal of fun.
That's really all that I don't have to say.
Blogs are supposed to be about what you're doing/thinking about at any given time, right? SO: the bones in the arm/hand!
They're analagous to those in bat wings, so I had a random lesson on them in the car today! From the person who was driving the car. In this order: humerus, radius, carpals, metacarpals, proximal phalanges, distal phalanges. Actually, humans have another set of phalanges on all fingers except the thumb, but most bats don't so... (The first elipsis! YAY!)
Um, so. Yes. Very, very excited about working in my mom's lab, I"m going to be doing stuff on a project they have going right now about these tiny hairs on bat wings, which appear to be used to sense the differences in pressure on either side of the wing. It's ridiculously cool, and I got to read several papers about and one about phylogenetic trees on friday, which was a great deal of fun.
That's really all that I don't have to say.
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