UW Update Thursday 4/2/15 (Day 4)

1.     UW Update Thursday 4/2/15 (Day 4)

a.     Woke, realized I hadn’t done the tutorial pretest. (Usually there’s an email reminder). Filled it out, abandoning my plans for a sedentary breakfast, then ate oatmeal on the road to tutorial. Joined a table with all people I didn’t know, but there turned out to be some neat people there. Spent much of tutorial not doing the tutorial but getting to know a CS/Math guy, Jin.

b.     Sat outside writing an essay for an Honors scholarship. Felt a little weird because the essay parameters left no room for honesty about the drawbacks to Honors classes and the way the Honors program tries to build community—I feel more like students find ways to network around the classes and events, not through them.

c.      Went back to the dorm, picked up some packages. Among them was the book for my 1-credit honors class, Homo Mysterious. The class is run by a prof who basically wants to discuss his own book (Homo Mysterious) about unsolved mysteries in evolutionary biology. Read the first chapter, then headed to the section.

d.     I really like the prof, David Barash. And I’m looking forward to being able to discuss in a non-evaluated context (no papers, homework, everyone gets credit). My current models indicate the conversation will be 72% more lively than in graded Honors seminars.

e.     Stood outside Mary Gates and wrote, first the paragraph to contextualize my crash course videos, then an email to Dr. Barash with a few thoughts I hadn’t been able to squeeze in in-class. Tried to go to my CS section, but turns out it was canceled.

f.      Went to the “free agent meeting” for teamless players in the IMA leagues. It went far better than expected—instead of being forced to attempt to fit onto an existing team, there were enough soccer free agents to put us all on a team. This is better socially as well as logistically—I’m joining a blank slate rather than an established community. First game next Wednesday!

g.     Glee club was cancelled, but the traditional Glee club meeting at Schultzy’s was not. Took my sweet (it truly is! Love the beginning of the quarter and having a light/predictable workload in general) time meandering to Schultzy’s. Walked into Fluke Hall, where, apparently, there’s a new makerspace. Have to check that out further at some point. I found that Fluke had basically been commandeered by the engineering department for engineering startups and commercialization of student projects. There were BioE labs hosting genetics startups, signs on the wall saying “PLEASE don’t leave empty chemical containers in the hallway”, and all manner of awesome stuff.

h.     Checked out some posters in the HUB, then finally joined the Glee Clubbers at Schultzy’s. Chatted for a long time with several physics and ACMS majors in the club, Q and Wesley, along with Paul.

i.       Went from there to a talk Garcia had pointed the Physics123Bers to, on “the future of small”. Apparently this is part of a new Physics Dept. series. It was interesting. We went through the basics of nanotech, ending with the idea being pioneered in the speaker’s Cornell research lab. Essentially, the challenge is to borrow techniques from biology to build mechanical/electrical devices in miniature. But biology’s default methods are a) not amenable to building electrical devices and b) almost incomprehensible. What, I have to come up with a string of amino acids that folds into exactly the right shape?? But humans can understand how planes fold, and recent work has built all sorts of neat electrical devices on two-dimensional sheets of graphene. To make 3-D machines, all you have to do (in theory) is fold the graphene! Graphene origami. Very cool. Apparently the idea came from a grad student whose soul was being destroyed by boring work and wanted a project amenable to her artistic interests, hence graphene origami.

j.       Hurried over to Film Club and watched this really compelling, somewhat dark movie called Whiplash. Highly recommended.

k.     Returned to dorm, read physics. Walked around campus talking to Mom and Dad for a while on my headphones (super convenient! Hands free.) Then wrote this log and retired for the evening.