7-21-12

    So I’m going to write about my week. I feel like this is going to be a long post, so let’s get started shall we? I left off with glow golf last week. We went there after supper (everyone minus das Germans and Ant, Sco, and Da.). It has awesome 80’s music, as I mentioned, and had a haunted/monster theme going. I was in a group with St. C and Jus. I hadn’t really talked to Jus since the night before the really hard test, but it was fun. I came in last, but I got a free game out of the deal (all losers did), but I didn’t have a chance to use it. Oh, well. It’s a good marketing idea. So our professor this week was pretty cool. He was in pretty good shape for his age, but he had an earring in one ear, which I’m not a fan of. He had kids. I think if you’re that old, you need to drop the earring. They just don’t look good. He just kinda covered whatever material he wanted since there wasn’t any test for what we covered this week. He really went hard trying to recruit people to his school for graduate school (most of the kids here are going to be seniors and are thinking about such things). He took a bunch of people out for lunch and went to the beach with people. I didn’t go, but people said it was fun. I didn’t get to the beach at all this week, so I’ve only been to the ocean twice. Oh, well. I’ll get to it again someday. Maybe the Pacific next time. Thursday we had presentations to give over the same topics as our term papers. I didn’t put my powerpoint together until the night before, but it went alright. Dr. P even complimented my presentation at the end. I tend to just have very few words on my slide and rely mostly on talking to get the information across. He said it was a good way to keep the attention on me. He also complimented my slides, since I did a very sensible background and easy to read font. He did this in front of the entire class, so I felt pretty good. He also said something about not having rising intonation/inflection, which I really hope I didn’t. I’m going to try and watch out for it next time I give a speech just to be sure. It was kind of boring sitting through 15 (including mine) presentations. We went from 8:30 to a little after 2, but we got breakfast and lunch, so it wasn’t terrible.

 Dr. P also asked me if I would be interested in being a TA next year for this program. They usually bring back some kids from the previous year. He’s asked a couple kids, but most can’t or aren’t interested. It would look wonderful on grad school applications if I decide to go, and I get paid, so I said I would. So we’ll see if he contacts me. The evening after the presentations (Thursday) there was a dinner thing. It was Jus, Jam, Jul, Sar, Am, St. T, and me around a table. St. T was a little drunk from drinking Petron with Sco beforehand, so he left. This really awesome lady stopped by our table for a bit (she was a lecturer a couple weeks ago), and St. C joined us. Then the professor from this week came and we all talked for a while. The professor had really weird eyes: an insanely light blue with a dark ring around the outside. Afterwards, the four girls went to the beach, and us guys went to the dorm. It ended up being St. T, St. C, Jus, and me talking in the hallway for a couple hours. It was really pretty fun. The TA’s invited people to come over and get drunk, but we had fun just talking. Today we had to sit through a bunch of presentations showing possible jobs in the field of science we studied for the six weeks of this program. Some were pretty boring. The Asian guy from NIST was slightly crazy, so his was fun, and this Russian lady had awesome stories to go with hers. She was with environmental protection, so she had pictures of her in a Hazmat suit, and told us about a pet cemetery contaminating water, and about a random bag of blood samples contaminated with AIDS and Hep B that someone dumped along a road somewhere. Just fun stories. Plus I loved her accent. Tonight, we had a final dinner as a group, and we all met back at the dorm to drink a little and socialize before we left. Ant, Ann, Car, and Da were off on their own (probably doing it) since they formed their little couples and got really close over the course. I don’t know what they’ll do after tomorrow. We ended up playing Cards Against Humanity, which is just a horrible version of Apples to Apples. You can find it on the internet for free, and I highly recommend looking it up. You just might not want to play with parents or respected colleagues. It’s hilarious though. St. T got the drunkest (he’s a mega lightweight). Best quote: (he goes to a Catholic college even though he’s not religious) “I just say I believe in Jesus and pray for an A”. He also is a very suggestive/horny drunk, which doesn’t fit with his extreme innocence. I was the first to go to bed. We all said goodbye, and it was actually really sad. I didn’t come here expecting to like the people and make friends. I was expecting a bunch of irritating nerds, and I got a bunch of pretty cool people. We’re all going to miss each other. For a couple days at least :P Oh, well, it’s human nature to move on. The program seemed to drag along so slowly while it was going on, but now that it’s at the end, it seems like it flew by. I’m kinda sad about leaving and being done with it. It wasn’t as much work for me as everyone else was saying it was. I’m beginning to suspect no one here was actually smarter than me. Scary. Some I’m were were pretty much my equal, but they didn’t blow me away. I’m sorry if this post is a little all over the place. I did get slightly tipsy tonight. Hopefully not enough to interfere with getting up tomorrow.

                Today they also gave us our grades and announced the top student (they get a trip to a conference somewhere). Jus got the top student award. He really deserved it I thought. It was a little disappointing, since I was in the lead after the second test, but the test with quantum mechanics fucked me over since I had never had quantum before. Oh, well. I got A’s so I can’t complain at all, especially since I was in the top 1/3 of the class and worked less than pretty much everyone else. I need to see if the credits will transfer so I can get out in four years now. I’ll have to actually talk to my advisor about my classes this fall, a first. One question I never did get answered this summer was whether or not Ale was gay. Sco and them would say something about it once in a while, but I have no idea if they were joking or not. I really don’t care if he was, but it’s just something you want to know about someone if they are. St. T is trying to go to grad school in NYC so he can never leave the city. He doesn’t even want to think about living anywhere else. It’s where he grew up. I still think he should get out and try somewhere different for grad school, and return here if it really is where he likes best. He loves being surrounded by concrete and how insanely busy everything is. He can’t imagine another way of life. I’m sick of all the trees out here outside the cities. I miss fields and the quietness of back home. I’m looking forward to having four weeks to relax before classes start. It does irritate me that everyone thinks NYC is such a great place, a cultural center. To me it seemed dirty, ugly, and pretentious. I think I can scratch it off of possible places to live when I graduate. Guess what New Yorkers? There’s other places besides NYC, ya dicks.

                So just saying, I really respected Dr. P during this whole thing. He is a very practical man, has a sense of humor very similar to mine, and despises bureaucracy/inefficiency. He also doesn’t pull any punches or sugar coat. If he thinks something (a policy or whatever) is stupid, he’ll let you know. Fun guy. I really would like to come work for him as a TA next summer. I think it’d be an awesome opportunity. We’ll see what happens with that. I’m going to have to get up early tomorrow to pack. My first flight is at noon. I’m not going to land for my final flight until after ten their time tomorrow, and it’s over an hour drive back home. Oh, well. That’s a problem for future me. Also, one quick question to anybody who can answer it: A lot of the blogs I’ve thought looked interesting lately haven’t shown up, saying they don’t exist. Is it the stupid internet here, did the people delete their own blogs, did they get deleted because they hadn’t been posted in for a while, or were they probably removed for inappropriateness? Do I have to watch out for something on my blog? It’s sad because many of them looked interesting. Some of my readers might have a guess what type of blog I’m talking about (I know secrecy on an anonymous blog is stupid, but give me time). Oh, well. I hope everyone has a wonderful week. Since I’m going back home, I have no idea how much I’ll be able to post. It’ll just depend how much I’m around the computer by myself. I might write something tomorrow while I have a long layover. We’ll see. Again, I’m sorry for the much more disorganized thoughts than normal. Or maybe you people like the shorter, more scattered narrative. If you have a super strong opinion let me know. Not that I have any known regular readers. There’s a couple blogs I really want to check out once I’m back home and I’m away from this bloody monitored internet. I didn’t dare go onto any blog with an adult content warning while I was here. Anyway. Till next time.