Returning to MIT after a pleasant Thanksgiving weekend is a swift uppercut to the jaw. Literally.
At basketball practice yesterday evening I got elbowed and now it hurts to chew. I'm not trying to appear sympathetic, I just want you all to appreciate the literary appropriateness of the way my physical body so quickly jumped in front of an incoming highspeed elbow, just so it could reflect my internal mood.
That being said, I had a very excellent Thanksgiving and post-Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll write more about all of the festivities later.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Tuesday morning trauma
Disclaimer: Yesterday began with a revelation; this morning began with an excretion (not my own). If you don’t enjoy gross things as much as I do, you may want to instead look at this link instead of reading further.
Waking from 3 hours of sleep, I stumbled into the shower and had mustered a meager dowsing (college dorms are not known for their high-flow shower heads) when I noticed that something didn’t smell right. In fact, something smelled downright unsanitary. Squinting down at the drain, I leaned closer in an attempt to counteract my myopia (and pre-contact lenses grogginess) and…wait, is that? No…
Yes.
Poop.
Feces.
Excrement.
Dung.
Guano.
Shit.
Whatever you want to call it, I sprinted as fast as I could out of there, nearly dropping my towel as I left a dripping getaway trail connecting one co-ed restroom to another.
I enjoy scatological humor just as much as the average person…Er, ok I enjoy scatological humor significantly more than the average person. But there is a fine line between shouting, “Poop!” in a crowded party to ease the social tension and shitting in the shower. No wait, it’s not a fine line, it’s a fucking eight-lane super-highway.
When I was a freshman I thought it was so rad that most students at MIT live in the same dorm for four years. But seriously, if I thought a 400-pound cement octagon oscillating overhead was a stiff price to pay for “community”, I have now been pushed over the edge. It’s the small brown lump festering in the wrong plumbing installment that breaks the camel’s back.
I can’t wait until I can get out of this place and finally realize my calling as a mountain woman, marathoner, and lover of literature. But until then…pass the PBR, please.
Waking from 3 hours of sleep, I stumbled into the shower and had mustered a meager dowsing (college dorms are not known for their high-flow shower heads) when I noticed that something didn’t smell right. In fact, something smelled downright unsanitary. Squinting down at the drain, I leaned closer in an attempt to counteract my myopia (and pre-contact lenses grogginess) and…wait, is that? No…
Yes.
Poop.
Feces.
Excrement.
Dung.
Guano.
Shit.
Whatever you want to call it, I sprinted as fast as I could out of there, nearly dropping my towel as I left a dripping getaway trail connecting one co-ed restroom to another.
I enjoy scatological humor just as much as the average person…Er, ok I enjoy scatological humor significantly more than the average person. But there is a fine line between shouting, “Poop!” in a crowded party to ease the social tension and shitting in the shower. No wait, it’s not a fine line, it’s a fucking eight-lane super-highway.
When I was a freshman I thought it was so rad that most students at MIT live in the same dorm for four years. But seriously, if I thought a 400-pound cement octagon oscillating overhead was a stiff price to pay for “community”, I have now been pushed over the edge. It’s the small brown lump festering in the wrong plumbing installment that breaks the camel’s back.
I can’t wait until I can get out of this place and finally realize my calling as a mountain woman, marathoner, and lover of literature. But until then…pass the PBR, please.
Hair jackets trump hair shirts in my book
My favorite high school teacher, Sean McEnroe told our Senior History Seminar class that, being the well-bred prep school kids we were, we would without fail exit college with some sort of addiction. Whether that addiction would be cigarettes, caffeine, alcohol, hard drugs, gambling, pornography, or browsing the free section on Craig's List only time would tell.
(Sean McEnroe is also the only person I've ever met who owned a jacket made out of human hair. Don't scoff...I think it ony adds to his credibility.)
Right now (as I've regaled a few of your already during recent procrastination binges) I have fantasies of moving into a house or apartment (where? It doesn't really matter; anyway I have no idea where I will be in six months) that I stuff full of free items from Craig's List. Only free items from Craig's List.
Some recent free posts I've found that may be useful:
-a pool table
-hand built bookshelves
-a "cow colored" microwave (it's just what it sounds like)
-male and female New Zealand rabbits
Some recent free posts I've found that may not be useful:
-piles of brick and mortar
-a tree that fell on someone's house
-miscellaneous unconsolidated lawn "debris"
Since when did Craig's List turn into a compost heap? That's ok...this has actually bumped Craig's List up the totem pole to my fourth favorite way to waste time. (I don't know what one two and three are, so don't ask.) I like to justify it to myself by claiming I'm doing an informal sociological study on junk, value, and insanity.
(Sean McEnroe is also the only person I've ever met who owned a jacket made out of human hair. Don't scoff...I think it ony adds to his credibility.)
Right now (as I've regaled a few of your already during recent procrastination binges) I have fantasies of moving into a house or apartment (where? It doesn't really matter; anyway I have no idea where I will be in six months) that I stuff full of free items from Craig's List. Only free items from Craig's List.
Some recent free posts I've found that may be useful:
-a pool table
-hand built bookshelves
-a "cow colored" microwave (it's just what it sounds like)
-male and female New Zealand rabbits
Some recent free posts I've found that may not be useful:
-piles of brick and mortar
-a tree that fell on someone's house
-miscellaneous unconsolidated lawn "debris"
Since when did Craig's List turn into a compost heap? That's ok...this has actually bumped Craig's List up the totem pole to my fourth favorite way to waste time. (I don't know what one two and three are, so don't ask.) I like to justify it to myself by claiming I'm doing an informal sociological study on junk, value, and insanity.
Monday, November 21, 2005
Quick Fix
If you are feeling bogged down by work, the weather, the suffocating cold industrialized landscape in which you live, or life in general, one consumeristic solution is to buy new socks.
This is especially effective if you buy wool socks, soft socks, or striped socks. And if you buy a week's supply, then you'll start your day off on a positive note and at least one good thing will happen every day for a week.
Socks are great.
This is especially effective if you buy wool socks, soft socks, or striped socks. And if you buy a week's supply, then you'll start your day off on a positive note and at least one good thing will happen every day for a week.
Socks are great.
DAMN it feels good to be a gansta
…a literature gansta, that is.
This has been quite possibly the best Monday morning I have ever had. Or…at least the best in recent history, and definitely in the top 5.
Why? Exactly two reasons:
1) Coffee (sad, I know…but I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ve become a coffee drinker in the past two weeks…and I’m not ashamed!)
2) After an entire weekend of researching, brain-picking, library browsing, photo-copy machine wrangling, ceiling-staring, thumb-twiddling and reading (and more reading, and more and more and more reading), my two literature term-projects have finally fallen into place (or are at least well on their merry ways).
This morning (after going to bed at around 3:30) I woke up at 8 to head to the library to grab some more articles. After that I got some coffee (I know), did some more photocopying, then grudgingly decided to go to my aero/astro class (Structural Mechanic…engaging, I know). It’s a good thing I went to class because a) I found out our professor cancelled class on Wednesday for Thanksgiving, and b) while reading articles on renaissance medicine instead of listening to the lecture about beams and buckling, the pieces of my paper on medicine and gender in renaissance drama fell into place. It’s going to be about midwifery and pregnancy and surgeons and physicians and internal- and external-ity and oh man I’m so excited.
(I got very excited last night reading a 17th century guidebook on midwifery. There was so much talk about “yards” and “the matrix” and “spongy flesh” it was fantastic.)
Right, so great Monday morning continues as I’m walking back from my unexpectedly stimulating lecture I stop by my “Shakespeare and his Contemporaries” professor’s office and talk to him about my project…and he’s just as excited as I am. And he said don’t worry about getting the annotated bibliography to him today because he knows that I’m thinking about my term paper and making progress. That means I’ll have to work on it over Thanksgiving but…I think things will turn out all right.
(Oh yes, for those that would be interested—Mom, Dad—for Thanksgiving Saideep, my personal therapist, is coming to Boston and we are going over to his friend’s house—a.k.a. a stranger’s house from my perspective. I’m excited that it will be a home cooked meal and a house not a dorm. Then on Friday I’m going to New York for some festivaling or something similar.)
So, the fact that the payoff that I recieved (or even the suggestion of payoff) after hours and days of literature reasearch has brought me so much elation leads me to the conclusion that I think I want to be a literature professor. I know two weeks ago I wanted to be a volcanologist but…can’t I be both? I hate the “choose one path and stick to it” philosophy of life. Me being a literature professor makes so much sense why didn’t anyone suggest it to me before? I love books and I love to read, I love teaching, I love libraries, and (now) I love drinking coffee. It sounds like I have all the pieces, now I just have to make it a reality (which will actually be quite hard…).
Ok, I had such a great Monday morning that I ran right down to the laundry room and picked up my laundry (which had been sitting in the dryer since Friday afternoon). I hope my meeting with the professors for my aero/astro thesis class doesn’t ruin my day.
Oh yeah…for my photo archive project I chose to do logging photos from the early 20th century in the Pacific Northwest. I’ll post some of the most interesting ones up here soon.
Wow, today has been so great I’m even going to go to my probability lecture!
This has been quite possibly the best Monday morning I have ever had. Or…at least the best in recent history, and definitely in the top 5.
Why? Exactly two reasons:
1) Coffee (sad, I know…but I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ve become a coffee drinker in the past two weeks…and I’m not ashamed!)
2) After an entire weekend of researching, brain-picking, library browsing, photo-copy machine wrangling, ceiling-staring, thumb-twiddling and reading (and more reading, and more and more and more reading), my two literature term-projects have finally fallen into place (or are at least well on their merry ways).
This morning (after going to bed at around 3:30) I woke up at 8 to head to the library to grab some more articles. After that I got some coffee (I know), did some more photocopying, then grudgingly decided to go to my aero/astro class (Structural Mechanic…engaging, I know). It’s a good thing I went to class because a) I found out our professor cancelled class on Wednesday for Thanksgiving, and b) while reading articles on renaissance medicine instead of listening to the lecture about beams and buckling, the pieces of my paper on medicine and gender in renaissance drama fell into place. It’s going to be about midwifery and pregnancy and surgeons and physicians and internal- and external-ity and oh man I’m so excited.
(I got very excited last night reading a 17th century guidebook on midwifery. There was so much talk about “yards” and “the matrix” and “spongy flesh” it was fantastic.)
Right, so great Monday morning continues as I’m walking back from my unexpectedly stimulating lecture I stop by my “Shakespeare and his Contemporaries” professor’s office and talk to him about my project…and he’s just as excited as I am. And he said don’t worry about getting the annotated bibliography to him today because he knows that I’m thinking about my term paper and making progress. That means I’ll have to work on it over Thanksgiving but…I think things will turn out all right.
(Oh yes, for those that would be interested—Mom, Dad—for Thanksgiving Saideep, my personal therapist, is coming to Boston and we are going over to his friend’s house—a.k.a. a stranger’s house from my perspective. I’m excited that it will be a home cooked meal and a house not a dorm. Then on Friday I’m going to New York for some festivaling or something similar.)
So, the fact that the payoff that I recieved (or even the suggestion of payoff) after hours and days of literature reasearch has brought me so much elation leads me to the conclusion that I think I want to be a literature professor. I know two weeks ago I wanted to be a volcanologist but…can’t I be both? I hate the “choose one path and stick to it” philosophy of life. Me being a literature professor makes so much sense why didn’t anyone suggest it to me before? I love books and I love to read, I love teaching, I love libraries, and (now) I love drinking coffee. It sounds like I have all the pieces, now I just have to make it a reality (which will actually be quite hard…).
Ok, I had such a great Monday morning that I ran right down to the laundry room and picked up my laundry (which had been sitting in the dryer since Friday afternoon). I hope my meeting with the professors for my aero/astro thesis class doesn’t ruin my day.
Oh yeah…for my photo archive project I chose to do logging photos from the early 20th century in the Pacific Northwest. I’ll post some of the most interesting ones up here soon.
Wow, today has been so great I’m even going to go to my probability lecture!
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Wow. Flurry of updates. My mind must be spinning in circles...probably because I started drinking coffee (bad! I know!).
But:
Five minutes ago, a stranger at the library asked me if I have any relatives in Portsmouth, NH, because apparently I look like some people he knows there. Huh.
I'm currently reading The Grapes of Wrath (though not quickly enough...), and today I noticed that in the front of the book there's a tiny pig with wings under the inscription Ad Astra Per Alia Porci. The flying pig is "Pigasus," Steinbeck's personal mascot, and the Latin motto means "To the stars on the wings of a pig."
But:
Five minutes ago, a stranger at the library asked me if I have any relatives in Portsmouth, NH, because apparently I look like some people he knows there. Huh.
I'm currently reading The Grapes of Wrath (though not quickly enough...), and today I noticed that in the front of the book there's a tiny pig with wings under the inscription Ad Astra Per Alia Porci. The flying pig is "Pigasus," Steinbeck's personal mascot, and the Latin motto means "To the stars on the wings of a pig."
Also along the lines of relativity...
I had dim sum today for only the second time in my life (shocking, yes).
Instant gratification. Amazing.
Instant gratification. Amazing.
Ontology recapitulates phylogeny
I usually scrunch my face when confronted with an analogy the compares an individual to a system as complex and dynamic as the Earth (or the Universe), but lately I’ve found myself understanding my own life in geologic terms. Most dynamic processes on the Earth are slow; the tectonic plates and your fingernails would have a very tight race. Orogeny (an erotic sounding term for mountain building) takes hundreds of millions of years, as does evolution. However, some geologic events are catastrophic; volcanoes (my personal favorite) can completely change the face of a landscape in a matter of hours, altering the atmospheric composition and global temperature for years to come. Meteor impacts, obviously, have similar sudden and long-lasting affects.
So…
My life is like the Earth. Most of the time my tectonic plates slide along, building up tension, elastically deforming along their boundaries, and creating new oceanic crust along mid-ocean ridges. But every now and then the mounting tension is released in a massive earthquake that shakes me and reverberates me like a gong (not to mention the tidal waves).
Those slow processes are always happening, though their rates can change, and the prediction mechanism for sudden natural disasters, while improving, are still far from accurate.
Maybe I should be a geologist. Or maybe I need to get out more…or stay in more…
At least I’m not comparing myself to Hamlet or The Duchess of Malfi.
So…
My life is like the Earth. Most of the time my tectonic plates slide along, building up tension, elastically deforming along their boundaries, and creating new oceanic crust along mid-ocean ridges. But every now and then the mounting tension is released in a massive earthquake that shakes me and reverberates me like a gong (not to mention the tidal waves).
Those slow processes are always happening, though their rates can change, and the prediction mechanism for sudden natural disasters, while improving, are still far from accurate.
Maybe I should be a geologist. Or maybe I need to get out more…or stay in more…
At least I’m not comparing myself to Hamlet or The Duchess of Malfi.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
My dad sent me a surprisingly insightful email today
Jordan,
Is this an accurate characterization of your life??
Allen
Yes. The answer is unconditionally yes.
Is this an accurate characterization of your life??
Allen
Yes. The answer is unconditionally yes.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
EXCITING! NEW! CUTTING EDGE!
All right...I'm not exactly living up to my title...but I did realize that my latest three posts have been mere sentences. How embarrassing! (I once knew someone who referred to nearly every abrasive interpersonal situation as embarrasing. I do not do so. Most embarrassing situations include me and...myself...) I will attempt to rectify this by writing about my thesis project (as if I haven't gotten to do enough of that recently):
The goal: study methods of extracting power from ocean tidal currents in order to ultimately improve efficiency of turbine design.
Sounds easy enough, right? Ha...while I was trying my darndest to turn my despised aerospace engineering major into something that I care about (volcanoes and literature weren't quite so feasible as sustainable energy, in this case), I inadvertendly stumbled onto one hell of a complex and interesting problem.
Harnessing power from tidal currents in the ocean using turbines is exactly like harnessing power from wind using windmills...only underwater. My illustrious (ok, so that's probably not the most accurate adjective) partner and I are focussing on buoyed tethered turbines. They float but are anchored to the bottom of the ocean via a leash so that they can pivot according to the changing direction of tidal flows. We are studying whether it is more efficient, in terms of extracting power from a flow, to position the rotors (blades that spin round and round...I know not all of you are engineers) upstream or downstream of the buoy (which contains all the electronic and mechanical equipment to convert the spinning axis of the rotor into electrical power). Yes, I know a picture would help immensely. I wish I could doodle diagrams for you in this blog. If any of you are truly interested I can send you a link to my intermediate proposal (which has crude hand-drawn visual aids...yes!).
We are testing this in one of MIT's water flow tanks. That means we have to actually design and build some buoyed water turbines. What did I get myself into? Despite three and a half years of engineering training, I don't feel like I could build anything! I'm more than a little overwhelmed, and the nature of the class has been forcing me to focus on communicative aspects of the project (like the oral presentation I have to give on Thursday) rather than the nitty-gritty nuts and bolts (and generators, and gear boxes, and propellors, and buoyant materials) of the experimental design.
But I should just trust in the system, right? It will all fall together in the end, right?
I hope so. I'll keep you updated. But until then, here is an interesting link on tidal power: http://www.bwea.com/marine/index.html
Sorry this post hasn't been that enthusiastic. It's not because I'm not enthusiastic about my project (you should have seen the first draft of the introduction I wrote...I blabbed on and on about how important sustainable energy is, and how cool tidal power is, and the writing instructor told me "Wow, you've written very eloquently and your passion for the topic shines through...now delete it!"), it's just that it's 2:21 am and I told my friend I would meet her at 8 am to go running. What was I thinking?
My life is about to be consumed by a bouquet of research projects. Luckily I'm excited about each and every one of them (though some more than others...).
The goal: study methods of extracting power from ocean tidal currents in order to ultimately improve efficiency of turbine design.
Sounds easy enough, right? Ha...while I was trying my darndest to turn my despised aerospace engineering major into something that I care about (volcanoes and literature weren't quite so feasible as sustainable energy, in this case), I inadvertendly stumbled onto one hell of a complex and interesting problem.
Harnessing power from tidal currents in the ocean using turbines is exactly like harnessing power from wind using windmills...only underwater. My illustrious (ok, so that's probably not the most accurate adjective) partner and I are focussing on buoyed tethered turbines. They float but are anchored to the bottom of the ocean via a leash so that they can pivot according to the changing direction of tidal flows. We are studying whether it is more efficient, in terms of extracting power from a flow, to position the rotors (blades that spin round and round...I know not all of you are engineers) upstream or downstream of the buoy (which contains all the electronic and mechanical equipment to convert the spinning axis of the rotor into electrical power). Yes, I know a picture would help immensely. I wish I could doodle diagrams for you in this blog. If any of you are truly interested I can send you a link to my intermediate proposal (which has crude hand-drawn visual aids...yes!).
We are testing this in one of MIT's water flow tanks. That means we have to actually design and build some buoyed water turbines. What did I get myself into? Despite three and a half years of engineering training, I don't feel like I could build anything! I'm more than a little overwhelmed, and the nature of the class has been forcing me to focus on communicative aspects of the project (like the oral presentation I have to give on Thursday) rather than the nitty-gritty nuts and bolts (and generators, and gear boxes, and propellors, and buoyant materials) of the experimental design.
But I should just trust in the system, right? It will all fall together in the end, right?
I hope so. I'll keep you updated. But until then, here is an interesting link on tidal power: http://www.bwea.com/marine/index.html
Sorry this post hasn't been that enthusiastic. It's not because I'm not enthusiastic about my project (you should have seen the first draft of the introduction I wrote...I blabbed on and on about how important sustainable energy is, and how cool tidal power is, and the writing instructor told me "Wow, you've written very eloquently and your passion for the topic shines through...now delete it!"), it's just that it's 2:21 am and I told my friend I would meet her at 8 am to go running. What was I thinking?
My life is about to be consumed by a bouquet of research projects. Luckily I'm excited about each and every one of them (though some more than others...).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)