If there happen to be any (I mysteriously seem to be receiving a lot of hits from sites about drugs… @.@).
from xkcd.com
Have fun with that version of Tetris. Even worse than when you only have seven pieces layered on top of each other but can still move…
Well, maybe not.
Four weeks ago today, forty young girls from all over the country arrived at one McCormick Hall on MIT campus. We were unprepared for the weeks to come, and we were unprepared for the friendships we would make. The only thing we really were prepared for was to learn. And in that process of learning new concepts, foreign and hazy, we learned about each other. Things we laugh at, and things we mope about.
Classes always introduced something new and exciting to implement in that night’s PSet. From digital logic gates to difference equations to classes and objects. The world of possibilities never ends! I am eternally grateful for being able to go to Women’s Technology Program. I’ve learned so much more in four weeks than I ever have in the course of a semester in high school. I was surrounded by high achieving, learning-driven, excited young women, and that was, perhaps, the most incredible thing I have ever experienced.
Even though PSets usually took hours upon hours to complete, we somehow still had time to get to know each other. Late night hang-out sessions were unofficially organized in select seventh floor rooms (I actually don’t really know too much about the happenings on the sixth floor despite the fact that I lived there). We’d be up until two or three, depending on how late we finished the PSet. Sometimes PSetting didn’t end until one. It’s not too bad though, because it isn’t busy work, it’s work work. The weirdest thing is finishing at seven. We had no idea what to do with ourselves. Maybe that’s a bad thing, you can take it either way.
One last thing I want to say: I had so much fun hanging out with all the other girls at WTP – EECS and the staff members. If not for them, McCormick could never have seemed like a home away from home.
I’d like to take the time, once again, to thank the staff of WTP for making these past four weeks the best and most rewarding four weeks of my life: Cynthia Skier, Michelle Sander, Sabrina Neuman, Oshani Seneviratne, Martyna Jozwiak, Jovana Knezevic, Kat Kononov, Hilary Monaco, Emily Pitts, Rebecca Rich, Kimberly Santos, Sara Sheehan, Jing Wang, Carin King, Jess Li, and Tatiana Mamaliga. You are all amazing people who have shaped who I will become!
One last thing: What the Program?!
We have no more classes and no more homework. They’re done. They’re over. And these classes are possibly the best classes I’ve ever been in. For the most part, the people wanted to be there and they were excited about learning. The teachers were enthusiastic and the tutors were incredible. I’ll definitely miss going to these classes. Especially when I get back to the good, solid public school system. I’ve learned more than I’ve ever learned in a full semester of six courses in high school. And I’m being completely honest. It’s not the shallow learning that school is either; it’s actually real learning and I’ve never been more thrilled about it.
Contrary to my first opinion of MIT, this seems like a place where I could enjoy myself, spending my time in the company of other people who want to learn. The feeling here is one of collaboration, not competition. Everyone here knows that there is someone else who knows more about one thing than he/she does. I love it. Love it. It’s the perfect environment for fostering growth. Thanks to WTP, I am really considering MIT now. If I got in, I think I would not refuse… but then again, there is the attractive offer of completing my bachelor’s degree in three years at the university in my city, and not really having to pay.
And I’ve found that EE is more than just circuits. It’s in everything, just like CS. It also happens to be my favorite class. The best one of the day. The one that I look forward to and do not mind putting in the extra time.
Anyways, as a celebration, I’d like to say a few things:
Christina and I have officially finished our Tetris program! It runs beautifully in black and white. And it took us an inordinately long amount of time just to get a new shape to appear at the top of the screen. But we are done. Done! DONE!
Yesterday, I finished my last circuit for EE: an AM Radio. I can build it at home again, because I have a 300 in 1 kit.
Math project went really well, especially after we figured out how to do our problem properly that night.
Thanks so much to Michele, Rebecca, Kat, and Jing of the EE class; Sabrina, Sara, Martyna, and Kimberly of the Discrete Math class; and Oshani, Hilary, Jovana, and Emily of the CS class! Without your help, I would still be lost on Day 1′s work.
Still, I’ve got another week here. I already sound so melancholy. Jeez. I’m going to miss this place a lot.
I was reading for AP US History earlier today, when I came across this clever little comic strip about former President Reagan and his SDI program (that is ridiculous and freakishly expensive even if one does come across the ability to throw up anti-nuclear weapon shields around cities). It was great, the punch line was “Beam me up, Scotty!”
The only problem is that “Beam me up, Scotty!” is not from what Mr. Englehart was referring to. My question is, do you know?
P.S. I really want you to restore my faith in humanity.
I stayed up past midnight to check my email. I woke up in a flurry to check my email. I tuned out of the last five minutes of US to check my email.
Why the obsessiveness? Well, see, there’s this really überly hot guy that’s supposed to email me about his heart’s true desire: me.
Haha, no.
Today is April 5th. Sure, that means hardly anything to the common layman, just another day… Actually it means hardly anything to pretty much everyone who didn’t apply to Women’s Technology Program (aka WTP). I mailed in my forms early January.
Today, I opened my email at 1:00pm and found an email.
A very, very good email.
“Congratulations!” it said. Well, it said more than that, but that was all that really mattered.
So, this summer, I’m packing my bags to go back to Massachusetts to spend another fantastic four weeks where people know how to exist. I’m going where it’s beautiful and green. I am perfectly psyched out of my mind right now. It’s this incredible feeling of accomplishment; they accepted 40 out of 300 applicants.
Back to the state that I fell in love with last summer.
I didn’t really hear the music part of the video because the video is so freaking awesome. It blew my mind away!
“This Too Shall Pass” by OK Go
The minute I say “Academic Decathlon,” I’m almost positive that you will shun me and make fun of my nerdiness. Honestly, I don’t care. All I have to say is that this was probably the best decision I could have ever made in my life. Sure I didn’t place for a medal. Still, it was totally worth studying and hanging out with eight incredible people.
I never knew that Sierra Vista could be fun. Last time I was there was during Regionals Orchestra, and it sucked. I was sick, and it was friggin’ cold. Except this time, it was beyond incredible. Cops and Robbers from 9:30p to 11:00p was such a thrill. There are so many great stories to tell because of it. Yes, nerds do have fun.
Our team placed 6th overall. We had three medalists, and a pretty good total score. I’m so proud of what we did there. It was our first year, and we were completely underprepared for the type of testing. Despite all that, I’m incredibly proud that we did so well.
I had more fun than I have in ages. It was really good to take my mind off of everything else that has been going on. I’m so pumped now to be study-efficient (she says as she contemplates watching a Bones episode tonight).
I hope you’ve had a wonderful weekend too.
So maybe I’m not the best nerd in the world, seeing as I didn’t go out to see Star Trek the minute it premiered, but still. I watched part of it yesterday, and would have finished it had been past ten at night when we started watching it. But the first hour is incredible!!! So epic! Aside from the corny “coincidences” of the previous crew of the Enterprise from the original Star Trek meeting each other. Seriously, why would they all want to live in Iowa is my question.
Anywho. I’m so pumped for the next hour and a half!! Sure the new Spock is nowhere near as epic as Ambassador Spock. And James C. Kirk is such a ladies’ man, it’s not even funny. It bothers me a little bit. But still, the action sequences have been beyond the beyond the beyond this world. (haha, bad pun)
I’m excited.
I’ve been stalking the RSI and WTP websites ever since I got home from SSEP. I was high off of the Massachusetts charm and off of the amazing weather (the morning temperatures there sometimes got as low as winter highs here, it was amazing; and it rained).
RSI boasted that their 2010 application would be out mid-October, I visited the site every single day from October 10th until yesterday. They lied to me about the date at which the application would be out, but that’s alright. They weren’t as fun as the WTP people who actually changed their prospective application date from late October to early November on their website. Maybe that just goes to show how mildly obsessed I am about these camps, that I’d actually know that they changed the quip below “How to Apply” section… But that’s okay. I hope that my excitement is tangible enough for them to feel through my application.
I just have two other lesser priority camps to wait on: KEYS and YSP. I’m not as psyched about them as I am about WTP and RSI, but the chances of getting into KEYS and YSP are far greater than that of the former two.
I’m looking forward so much to April when I get to find out results!
I feel like such a nerd, but who wouldn’t want to spend a summer at MIT? It may not be the most attractive private institution there is, but no one can deny its brilliance.
Lately, I’ve been spending a ridiculous amount of time cruising around CNET, indulging my inner nerd… okay, well maybe not inner. Anyways, there’s some fantastic stuff engineers are coming up with, like this ChemBot from iRobot. It’s wild, crazy, and, quite frankly, succeeds in the department of scaring the living daylights out of me. The whole science behind it is really cool, but it looks so disgusting! Here:
iRobot's Chembot, courtesy of CNET.com and Leslie Katz of CNET for the screenshot
How creepy! But how it moves is incredible, its oscillating-between liquid and solid states of it is absolutely baffling.
And these cute little robots created by Nissan that can navigate around each other and other objects successfully without crashing into a mess of wires and metal. I want to buy a herd of them and just set them loose in my house so I can observe with wild amusement their movements. Oh the magic of technology!
The Eporo, courtesy of CNET.com and Nissan
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The other day, there was this parent-teacher conference, and my history teacher said that the best way I can improve in his class is to keep up to date with current events. Like political events. I told my mom that the only current events I keep up with are news in the Tech world. It amuses me much more than reading about Nancy Pelosi and the public health insurance reform.
So, what compelled me, this morning, to flip on my computer and actually read that article on the Comcast homepage? So much reading to do, and not enough time to do it all!
