why my life is great

I'm not going to lie, this week has been pretty fantastic, albeit not that great for the tests which I have next week...

My writing paper has been turned in! I think I worked more for that paper than for any other (except maybe a research paper), so I fully expect that my professor will post it as a sample paper with my sister's next semester. The bad news: this paper is being expanded. So, I will have to put up with this paper a bit longer. But alas.

This morning when I left to go to campus, I saw a hot air balloon! It was quite awesome. Unfortunately it wasn't close enough to take a good picture though.

When I was going back from campus this evening, I saw a car with a New Jersey license plate! I don't know who owns that car, but he or she is my best friend I tell you.

Best friends. Seriously.

In my organ class we have to pick a repertoire piece (i.e. not a hymn) to learn by ourselves, and I went crazy and chose Bach's Fugue in G. It has a pretty difficult pedal piece, and combined with the other left and right hand... well it's a mess right now. But it's upbeat and fairly repetitive so hopefully it won't be unmanageable. I'm really excited to learn it though.

That's right. Playing three parts at once. 

As part of the honors program they're starting something new: honors societies, each one focused on different great work experiences such as science, service, art, literature, etc. They had a meeting for it on Wednesday, and there weren't a lot of people there so I'm kinda like a leader person now! But I have many, many ideas for this club. Like, my group could potentially fire me for over zealousness. I couldn't understand that though, because how can you not be excited about science? Hopefully now I will have people to attend lectures with, or verify that the Fibonacci numbers are real with.

Speaking of lectures, I went to one yesterday that was really, really interesting. It was on origami, and because of it I can now fully appreciate that which I used to only enjoy. Origami is useful: you can solve up to quartic equations just with two folds, as incredible as that sounds. And, you can trisect an angle! While you may not find that so, I think that that's astounding. I took a class at governor's school the summer before last which focused on rulers and compasses. And by the end of the course I had accepted that it was impossible to trisect an angle--or create a 7-gon. Yet, you can do both of those without too much trouble with origami. The amount of math that goes into something like the piece below is simply incredible, and makes me appreciate origami that much more because I now understand how complex it is.

Made out of one piece of paper. For more see langorigami.com

wonderful weekend

This weekend has been really short. But wonderful, all the same.

First, let me explain my research position. I work in a wildlands fire research lab, and up to this point I have mainly been analyzing IR data which certainly has given me new experience with spreadsheets and so forth, but not terribly exciting. This Friday, I finally did something. The main purpose of the lab is to burn stuff to create models to hopefully be able to better model fire movement for firefighters. So, on Friday we were doing a burn, and I got to help. First, we had to do all the grunt work: massing the samples, measuring length, width and thickness of leaves, counting how many leaves each sample had, taking pictures, obtaining a moisture content figure, and so forth. And then we got to burn them! It was really fun being able to to help out with the burn, and watching all of the clumps (small branches of leaves) burn was really, really enjoyable. If you're interested, you can find a video with a brief overview of the lab here. 

For those of you who have not been involved in scientific research before, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. There are a lot of aspects of research which are really tedious and less enjoyable, and only moments, such as during the burn, when the air is literally crackling with excitement. Walter Lewin talked about in his book how his team would prepare for a year or so before a balloon launch just so that they could get everything right (looking at x-ray astronomy where data can only be obtained from high in the atmosphere). But it's worth it, because when everything clicks, it's that much more rewarding. 

Not to change the subject, but I have an exciting announcement. I bought new shoes! 

Quality shoes here: no arch support, no treads left,
and places that will be holes soon enough...

Quality shoes here (not sarcastic now...)

Ever since I got to college I have been walking a lot. Since I don't have a bike or a bus pass, I've been walking too and from campus everyday, and from class to class. And, I kinda like it too. It gives me plenty of time to think everything over (and then over think things...) and allows me to (somewhat) plan my day out in my head. Also, I'm participating in a women's step study, so I have to reach a certain number of steps everyday (1500), and I get reimbursed about $100 at the end of it. I don't know how accurate the pedometer is, but it says that I walk 7-9 miles a day, and that's just how much I walk in the normal course of things. So that means that in the five or so weeks I've worn my old shoes here, they've gone at least 175 miles with me, not accounting for weekends, etc. That's kinda crazy. I guess I don't have to be too worried about a freshman fifteen...

Also, general conference was this weekend! As you may or may not know, I'm a Mormon, and our church holds a general meeting (which you can watch via broadcast. You can also access sessions or specific talks here) every six months. They announced this meeting that they changed the minimum age for which young women and young men can serve a mission: now guys can go at 18 while girls can go at 19. I've never really seriously thought about going on a mission, but now since it would be right in between my freshman and sophomore years of college (so much more convenient than after graduating), I'm considering going. So we'll see, perhaps that's what I need to do at this point in my life.

I made all of the origami things you see below during conference... As you can see, some of them didn't work out (aka all the ones to the left). And I was going to make some kind of analogy about how you have to try things even though everything doesn't always end up the way you want it (or sometimes you're not ready to handle certain situations yet), but I think... I'll save that spiel for another day. If you want links to learn how to make anything pictured below, let me know. 

I wish I had pretty origami paper... although perhaps
that would be bad, because then I would
definitely make origami stuff ALL. THE. TIME. 

this is what happens to my Saturdays...

So... last night I stayed up until 2 a.m. watching How I Met Your Mother. They really need to make the episodes longer, because right now it's wayyy too easy to justify watching another 22 minute episode... six times in a row. But it was okay, because I slept in until past ten. The problem is though, I haven't done anything productive since then. I showered, and then started making origami and that's really all I've done with my day, despite the fact that I really do need to do homework, practice organ/piano, go on campus to work on research because I haven't reached my five hours for the week... 

I love making them, but I hate keeping them. Any takers?

I'm currently waiting for my sister (aka her fiance) to pick me up to go shopping. My cupboard (never realized it was spelled like that...) is pretty bare, as you can see, and I don't have much more in the fridge/freezer. Come, my sister. I am beckoning you.

Yes, there is a Great Value theme going on...

okay, so I'm a leeetle bit obsessed

I may have mentioned this before, but I kinda have this thing for physics going for me right now (despite the fact that my physics class is super boring right now because it's all, direction vectors! and oh hey, acceleration! blegh). But I started to read this book by Walter Lewin, who is physics professor at MIT, and can I say that I really wish I was taking his class right now? You can tell that he absolutely loves what he's studying, and it's all so very interesting! I don't know about you, but I know how rainbows work, and why you're slightly shorter when you're standing up, or why the scale goes berserk when you stand on your tiptoes when you're weighing yourself. Also, light travels slower in water, but speed travels faster. Interesting. He has all of his lectures online here for his physics II class (electricity and magnetism) if you're interested; hopefully I'll have the time to eventually watch those because I probably won't get to take an actual class on it in college (and besides, how can I resist?).

I really, really, really want to have the same kind of passion for learning that he has

   
Somewhat more related to my life, but I finally learned about my research! I got paired with a professor in the chemical engineering department who does a lot of research on combustion. I'm not sure which project I'll get to work on yet, but I am super excited, although I can sense that I'm going to have to do some proving of myself as to be a help, not a burden, to the group. So excited!

Just so you know that I actually do have life outside of nerdy science/math/engineering stuff, here's proof:

See?

I made this instead of doing homework (if you want to make one, you can learn how here), and I also watched Little Rascals which is really funny/cute and ate brownies with my FHE (family home evening) group. AND, my procrastination skills are top-notch (case-in-point), as demonstrated by the fact that I'm writing this blog post...