I'm drowning in physics

I came to this fine institute and I said to myself, hey, Charles Wu, you like physics, don't you? And so I strolled into the beginner physics for masochists class, or rather into the doom of my nights and weekends. I never knew physics could be so emotional; I feel the euphoria of a neat derivation, I have spasms of delight when variables cancel, and I fall into a deep and disturbed funk when nothing works out (which is usually). I'm in love, I hate bitterly, it's really quite a trip. And then comes a test next week. Goodbye sleep for good. Sheesh.

On a related note, MIT frats are regulated to within an inch of their lives (ruther like the oil industry), for the same reason that the public thinks they're evil. So frat parties mostly involve dancing and smuggled-in liquor. Not really my cup of tea, but I can say I've gone to one now. I come back at 2-3AM and find a good 3 liters of liquor drained between my hallmates. Moral of the story? MIT can sue fraternities, but it can't sue itself. Also, Lego Star Wars II: http://www.lucasarts.com/games/legostarwarsii/ is an unbelieveable game. If you have time to waste, waste it with this game.

That is all. Post on, good friends, post on.

PS: Dylan and I went sailing last weekend. He's a much better sailor that I, who is still mostly a landlubber who doesn't like tippy boats.

shit!

so, somehow on my laptop I bookmarked the blog to the page just after I posted my last post and therefore haven't seen any of the subsequent posts in the mulitple times I've checked the blog since then. I seriously thought that you all had completely abondonded our secret-not-so-secret nunnian shrine until I logged on in the computer forest and discovered what I had been missing. So, all I can say is SHIT! I missed you guys! And now I will do a much better job of reading about your lives and telling you about mine. Nestor: hell yeah West Africa! Isaac: you're amazing and so are Dillard and Lamotte! Bern: *turns green* Ridley: my ride to your side of the state broke up with his girlfriend, so I might be a bit longer in visiting you, but be prepared because I'll be coming around the moutain soon! Everyone else: I love you, I miss you, I will talk to you soon. Thanks for the birthday greetings!

And now I have to dash off to advanced conversation. See you!
Emma (still Emma and not Emily, never fear Bern)

HAPPY

BIRTHDAY

EMMA!!!

Also among the living

Hey y'all,

So I haven't posted much lately either. Please don't shoot me. Also, I'm basically stealing Meredith's format for encapsulating the college experience.

Orientation week is drawing to a close here on the Farm. Stanford is, of course, wonderful. As is the weather. So far I have been fountain-hopping twice, including one time where we all walked through Meyer Library dripping wet afterwards. My dorm, which has a lot of upperclassmen, is pretty small and quiet and my roommate goes to bed before 11 *cough cough* Bern *cough cough*, but frankly I'm happy about that; at the all-freshman dorms across campus, Monday seems to be the new Friday.

Stanford is big on ethnic diversity, too. I listed myself as "Hispanic" on some form in light of my Portuguese-American ancestors, and now El Centro Chicano has sent me several emails inviting me to join their peer mentoring program. So before to long, I may also be enjoying the ministrations of an ethnic counselor.

My classes so far are computer science, linear algebra (yes, I'm a techie), and finally Introduction to Humanities: The Human and the Machine, which seems vaguely TASPish in its interdisciplinarity and maverick reading list (Plato, Philip K. Dick, a Japanese anime film, etc.). Classes start tomorrow, so I can't yet comment on whether they're actually good or not; for now all is sweet anticipation. Similarly, my other activities have yet to solidify, although they will likely include playing with a jazz combo and possibly some type of sport, whether intercollegiate badminton or intramural football/Ultimate. Plus I'm getting a job, either teaching math to elementary schoolers or doing computer work in a biology lab. I'm pretty psyched about both options. Also, I met up with the Mormon student community when they banged on my door at 7 AM yesterday.

Seems like a lot of people here are from Texas and California - hardly anyone from the East Coast. In fact, some profess a strong distaste for the East Coast and its institutions of learning. My MIT/Caltech T-shirt has been a source of some controversy. But the atmosphere in general is very relaxed and devoid of arrogance. People keep on saying "I have no idea how I got into Stanford, but . . ." and then we discover they won state science fairs or wrote novels or created smokeless grass-burning machines or something.

I am going to bed now so I will be fresh-faced and wide-eyed for my 11 AM math lecture tomorrow.

Groetjes,
Sam

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMMA!!!!!

Who will forever be Emma--Emily is someone else.

and I believe I actually beat Jason.

I'm alive!

I know there was a time when I was a pretty diligent poster. That time is not now.

So, to sum up things, Yale is SWEET. I've been here for three weeks, and I'm loving it. Gorgeous, tons of people, awesome suitemates. There are ten of us sharing this apartment-type thing, and so far it's worked out pretty well. A couple of the girls are partiers, though, and one hosted "Margarita Happy Hour" last Thursday. That's an important thing I learned here: Thursday is the new Friday. Most people don' t have classes on Friday, so partying starts a night earlier.

Camp Yale, the week before classes started, was craziness. I went to my first frat party, which was Animal House incarnate.

I've run into Emily a couple of times. We have the same "ethnic counselor." What is an ethnic counselor? you might ask. I don't know, either, but apparently I need one. Anyway, there's a posse of support people...freshman counselor, res. college dean and master, academic counselor, big sib, ethnic counselor, etc. Craziness.

I'm taking some sweet classes; Introduction to Cognitive Science, Intro to Physical Anthropology (How Humans Evolved), Japanese and Reading and Writing the Modern Essay. Aside from academics, I'm a proud member of the YALE! PRECISION! MARCHING! BAND! To clarify, there are no bucket hats with tassels. We go to most of the football games in the fall and basketball games in the winter. It means we get a front row seat for The Game, too. Students arrange pop tunes and the band sets up halftime shows around them. The half-time show last Saturday was about Pluto's demotion from planetary status and the fallout from the subsequent discovery that Pluto is in fact full of OIL. Bush tries to move Pluto closer to Earth, and chaos ensues. We have to wear pants, which I of course in the rehearsal before the game. The flutes were quicker at assembling our planet, Uranus, so we decided to play Duck Duck Goose on the slippery field. I was the first casualty. Muddy-kneed and proud, baby.

I'm also turning into one of those monkeys with a typewriter, churning out words. I'm writing for The Yale Record (the monthly humor magazine), gunslinger (indie music magazine), and The Yale Daily News Arts & Living section, doing music and movie reviews. I'm not sure quite how it happened, but there it is. The Daily News seems to suck out people's souls, taking up time like a real job on top of school, only it's one you don't get paid to do.

Finally, I'm doing intramural sports. Co-ed volleyball on a field, anyone? I'm also greatly looking forward to inner-tube water polo in the winter. All twelve of the residential colleges battle to the death during intramurals for The Tyng Cup, a cup that has absolutely no significance, but we all lust after. Certain sports get points towards the cup, etc, etc. My college is currently in second place, and we plan to to usurp the one seat.

So, in conclusion, I approve of the nocturnal nature of college and the crazy numbers of people and things going on at all times. I just watched a dude bike down a main drag on one of those primitive bicycles with the gigantic wheel in the front and tiny wheel in the back. Watching him mount the thing without falling five feet to the ground was heart-stopping. College...fuck yeah!

Lovelovelove,
Meredith, no longer a delinquent poster....Over and out!

Northbrook

Wow.
It's been far too long since I posted. I'm happily ensconced here in Minnesota and loving college. I had a disapointment in that I didn't get into the orchestra or a few other things I was hoping for, but in reality it might have been a good thing becuase I have a lot of spare time that I didn't plan on and becuase I haven't been spending my life in the music building I got out and made some friends. Hmmm... that's the longest sentence I think i have ever created.

St Olaf is pretty awesome. As stated earlier, the food is actually palatable and is varied enough that it doesn't get old. I also have free access to a massive new athletic center which includes a 60 ft. natural rock wall. I have been getting much better at my climbing. We also have a brand new wind turbine on campus that provides 1/3 of our power. On the minus side, a week before I got here a massive hail storm swept the town blowing out every windshield within a 5 mile radius with softball sized hail. So... there are some really sad houses with massive holes in their roofs that are covered with tarps.

It is frickin COLD here. All those who are going down to cali or similar places know that I am freezing my butt off in september for hells sake. I want to just be like WTF? I feel like I am back in alaska.

Anyway, I am going to go now

miss you all

-bern

HEY!!! This is Matt, stealing Isaac's username and password. Really excited to read about everybody, hope everyone is wonderful and joyful and having a great time and learning oodles. Also excited to hear that Dylan is taking the alternative rout, just like me! I'm in Ghana right now, volunteering at a newspaper. I got my first article published today, about Natural Gas, exciting stuff. I have a blog where I detail my exciting adventures, ghanado.blogspot,
so sometime when your brain is finished rotting from all that facebook, come on over, come on over baby. Here they don't call me Nestor, they call me
DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN

Idyllwild

So I'm finally a Post-Graduate here, out on this wonderful mountain which west coasters call a "hill" full of sky blue-tailed lizards and grey squirrels and mountain climbers. Plus, many celebrities. Cheech Marin's daughter is one of the students here, I saw him walking around in our cafeteria. Based on what I know about the rules here, Cheech Marin would be expelled as soon as they caught on to his marijuana habits. Apparently, about 50 students got expelled last year for drug/alcohol use, which is about 1/4 the student body. I guess the student population and the year have a more drastic inverse relationship than most high schools.

But don't get me wrong, the school is not all about beer and blunts. There are some amazingly talented kids here. Last night they had this opening performance where returning students of each major gave us all an idea of what Idyllwild is all about (the majority of the students are first years). I saw some other wordly tap dancing reminiscent of Bamboozled, a violinist from Bulgaria who dropped my nerves off in my spine, and many other performers of advanced caliber (all younger than me by the way, it's quite humbling to be a post-grad).

But anyway, classes haven't started yet. But it looks like I'll be taking Kung Fu, Music Theory, Yoga, Hiking, Aesthetics, Creative Writing, Citical Thought, Jazz Improvisation, Spanish 4, Enviromental Science, Poetry, Mythology, and a History class that intermingles (or interdisciplinarianates) Art. It sounds like an impossible class load, but most of the classes are really laid back. The academic schedule follows the high school norm, where one takes the same classes every day. The arts classes however (which are during the second half of the day) follow the college type, where each class is spread out through the week (I'll have Yoga only one day a week).

So goes life, I can't wait to start. Oh, by the way ya'll. Look up Isaac Miller on Google Video, and you'll see some insipring, top notch slam poetry. I didn't think it was possible, but my respect for you Isaac has raised to a new level. This stuff is off the wall, congrats man.

Henrik

jsn might appreciate this.

just about the only reliably good food in the dining hall at Calvin is Sun Chips. Anyone else have this problem? Anyone with really good food? Oh wait, breakfast is pretty good here too; we have waffle makers that make really great waffles that say "Calvin" on them. Otherwise, though, the food here is to die from.

link.

we totally need a link to the wiki on our blog. Unless we already have one; then I'll just feel stupid. But please, kindly point me to where it is.

Happy

Birthday

Jason and Isaac!