Well, I have this folder on my desktop full of pictures and half written blog entries that I completely lost the motivation to finish as soon as I graduated and went home to spend a wonderful summer outside in the sunshine. (To answer the questions from my previous entry: no, really, I graduated from MIT and immediately went back to my old summer job from high school as a lifeguard. I'm not kidding.) But then today I was struck with motivation, and I thought I should go ahead and post it, even if I should really just move on with my life already. I hope no one minds. =)

Okay, so ONE WHOLE YEAR AGO (man I am bad at this timeliness thing) I began the adventure known as 2.009. This is the famous capstone class for seniors in mechanical engineering, and the department spends 2 years grooming you to dread it. It's infamous for the inordinate amount of time that it requires of students, but the little known secret is that this class actually rocks.

The class is called The Product Development Process (or something like that, but who really cares? just call it 2.009 like a normal person) and all of the seniors in Mechanincal Engineering are split into teams, which are identified by color. (So there's Blue, Orange, Silver, Red, and of course, the best team ever, Yellow.) The teams are pretty big (something like 16-20 students each) and they are tasked with some pretty big assignments.

The class as a whole is given a theme (last year the theme was "The Home") and all of the students brainstorm potential products that fit within that theme. Early on in the process, the course staff gives each team an area to focus on within the larger theme (to assure that multiple teams don't start designing very similar products). Each team then chooses a few promising ideas and starts working frantically to get a model of the idea finished. Then there's a big, stressful, majorly important presentation day when the team's ideas thus far are presented, followed by feedback from classmates, professors, and outside observers invited by the course staff. The team then discusses their ideas, throws away the less promising ones, delves deeper into the ideas that are left, and then repeats this whole process two more times. Finally, they decide on their final product, and proceed to spend every waking hour of their lives (it seems) working on it, hoping to have the full, finished, working (!) prototype done by the end of this semester. This feverish work is interrupted several more times by big, stressful, majorly important presentations.

In case you didn't notice yet, the theme here is PRESENTATION. 2.009 is a CI-M (Communications Intensive course within your major), and it takes these presentations seriously. You know how in most classes you might have one or two big presentations per year? They're usually at the end of a unit or marking period or maybe even the end of the whole year. You do tons of work for it, you spend lots of time preparing, and it's like this super important culmination of the entire class, and it's a Big Deal. 2.009 has one of those about every 3 weeks.

The secondary theme is, oh yeah, you have to build a full working prototype of your product in the span of a couple of weeks.

My team, the Yellow Team, was assigned the topic of "constrained space." We kicked around different ideas for improved storage methods, but when we got down to our 2 final ideas they were a Lazy Susan refrigerator and a Moveable Wall. As a result, about 90% of the 2.009 junkpile came from our scraps

and ironically, the team working on "constrained space" had the biggest, bulkiest materials spilling out all over the place

In the end we developed the "ModuWall," a Do-It-Yourself portable wall that apartment dwellers can use to split a bedroom in two to save on rent.

My teammates Jeremy and Fiona are shown here, hard at work developing the "extension cap," a device which allows the structural posts of our wall to change in size.

I was my team's Information Officer, which meant I spent lots of my time taking meeting minutes (and sprinkling them with jokes when I got frustrated that no one read them), keeping our wiki up to date, and organizing the subteams:

Seriously, the irony of the "constrained space" team building a WALL was not lost on us when we had to start cutting 3' by 4' panels on this tiny bandsaw.

The course professor, affectionately referred to as "Doc Wallace," tried to inspire us in the last days before our final presentation with a countdown showing an egg developing into a beautiful chick, or to fried chicken, depending on how hard you worked.

There was one final milestone before our final presentation- the Tech Review, where professors and members of industry were invited into the lab to inspect our work and give us last-minute feedback.

In the frantic days before the Tech Review, we pulled together some awesome engineering on this store-bought bifold door. I know it doesn't look like it, but trust me, a lot of work went into that doorframe. Caitrin is justifiably proud.

We stuck labels on everything to describe some of our design features.

And when we finally got the whole thing set up in the lab, it looked pretty darn cool, if I may say so.

It was a crazy, stressful class, required tons of work, and sometimes made me HTFP, but in the end, I absolutely loved it. I built this crazy thing from nothing, learned a ton, and had an awesome time with my teammates. See, Yellow Team...well, we might have been a little less restrained than the other teams. We had a great group dyanmic and were not afraid to start cheering in lab when we got something to work. Obviously it wasn't always smooth sailing: there was one particularly tense lab meeting where a simple disagreement between the best way to proceed snowballed into a lot of repressed anger and frustration being released at each other. Inspired by my new favorite TV show, 30 rock, I suggested a "one minute dance party" to break up the tension. (During this one scene in 30 Rock, Tina Fey's character congratulates her staff on finishing half of their work, and suggests a one minute dance party as a reward. Of course they're so engrossed in their awkward dancing to rap music that they don't immediately notice when their big corporate boss walks into the room. Unfortunately I can't find a clip of it, but if you search YouTube you'll find a whole slew of people hilariously spoofing the scene.) After that, dance parties became a regular part of our team meetings, and we reguarly cranked the volume and had a dance party in the middle of lab if the situation warranted it. For example, when we finally got that door frame built.

This fun attitude is perhaps best exemplified by our dance party team photo, taken at the Technical Review. This is why I love the Yellow Team, and am glad that if I had to spend 40 hours a week in lab, at least I got to spend it with cool people.

So. I graduated. And took lots and lots of pictures for your enjoyment.

I woke up super early so I could stand around the track in the athletic center for several hours for no apparent reason. Hopefully my blurry photo does something to capture the huge number of people milling around in caps and gowns.

I originally thought that we needed to report extra early so that we could have the details of the day explained to us. No such luck. We checked in at a pre-determined station and then just stood around, chatting with friends for a few hours before starting the procession. Throughout the procession were people with clipboards who checked and re-checked that we had all stayed in the right order. Not a single thing was ever explained to us- people just directed us around and we went along with it. It all went perfectly smoothly, but it was pretty frustrating being left totally in the dark. It also seemed unnecessarily complicated- everyone was confused when station 17 left the gym first. I mean, why not just re-number station 17 as station 1, if they're going to be first? As I was wondering about this, and discussing the stupidity of it with my classmates, I realized why no one explained anything to us. It was exactly because we'd start having this conversation- organizing MIT students is nearly impossible, because no matter what you do, someone else thinks they can do it a more efficient way and tries to change it in the middle. (Trust me, I lived through a few painful examples.) As annoying as it was, I have to give props to whoever organizes the whole thing for the wise insight to not explain any more than was absolutely necessary to the graduates.

We walked out onto the astroturf, down Dorm Row, and towards Killian Court. I took a photo of my Brass Rat- it was the last time I'd be wearing it "beaver down."

Kelly '09 is giving an excited thumbs up. She's quite the character. I had to look at my photos carefully to make sure I didn't include any where she was making a rude gesture. =)

Then came an unbelievably cool moment that I think will stay with me for a really long time. We walked through the tent and out onto Killian Court and an awesome view of the Great Dome to the soundtrack of Pomp and Circumstance. It's not something to be described so much as experienced, but it was sort of the exact moment when you realize "Oh my God, I'm about to graduate from MIT. That's AWESOME." It's like the complementary bookmark to the equally memorable moment of opening your acceptance letter and realizing, "Oh my God, I'm about to go to MIT. That's AWESOME." (Believe it or not, back in the day, we used to get our decision letters in the mail. I'm a dinosaur, I know.)

We took our seats and waited for all 1500 of us to file into Killian.

Then Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts, made a speech. No offense, but it was pretty boring. (It was also almost exactly the same as every other graduation speech he's made in the past 2 years. It was leaked to us in a joke flyer that was handed out before the ceremony, advising us to look out for certain keywords and stories that were sure to make an appearance.) It's only been a couple of months, but I don't remember a single thing he said except, "I know none of you are going to remember anything I say today." Boring speaker or not, I guess that makes him pretty smart.

Then Susan Hockfield got up and made another speech. I don't even remember if it was boring or not. I hope none of this sounds too disrespectful, but really, most of us were too excited to really pay attention to anything. We were too busy talking to our friends and throwing beach balls around and waiting for the moment when...

...we got to turn our rings around. There's a tradition surrounding the Brass Rat (MIT's class ring). Students get their rings at the end of sophomore year, and wear them with the beaver facing towards them. Once they graduate and become alumni, they wear the ring the opposite way, with the beaver facing outwards. (There are also traditional colorful explanations about why the beaver "sits" on the student until graduation, but I leave that as an exercise for the reader.) Turning your brass rat around at commencement is a milestone everyone looks forward to, almost from the moment they first slip the ring on their finger.

And while it was pretty exciting, it was immediately followed by hundreds of exclamations of "it looks so weird that way!" After that it wasn't long before...

I shook hands with President Hockfield and claimed my diploma. This is really the moment I looked forward to. It was like a final, triumphant gesture saying, "Aha! MIT, you were a worthy adversary! But despite your sleepless nights and insanely hard problem sets, I have conquered you!" And then I put my fists on my hips in a superhero pose. But not really.

I was near the beginning of the ceremony (Degrees are awarded alphabetically by school, numerically by course, alphabetically by last name, and alternating graduate and undergraduate. Don't worry, it's nearly impossible to understand, even when you're standing there counting down the names until they call you.) so after getting my diploma I got to spend a lot of time sitting around while everyone else got their diplomas. I started reading the book I had snuck in with me.

Finally, the ceremony was over and we got to start the fun of taking a million pictures. I normally hate getting my picture taken (ask me about prom sometime, ugh) but this was actually kind of fun.

By the way, I know it may look as if I'm dressed nicely underneath my gown, but looks can be deceiving. I knew that to survive the hours-long ceremony I would need my cell phone, my camera, a book, and some snacks. I also knew they wouldn't allow us to carry bags into the ceremony, which left only one attire choice: cargo pants. So I found an appropriate black t-shirt that would blend in with the collar of my gown and my cargo pants with the biggest pockets. Then I rolled the pants up so they wouldn't show beneath the hem of my gown, and put on some nice but comfortable shoes (which I bought in Madrid for 6 euros- believe or not, those shoes are a huge fashion trend in Spain) and figured no one would know the difference.

Well, my mom made fun of me, but I think it just represents the MIT ingenuity that will serve me for years to come.

After the Conner 2 reunion, I ventured over to the first aid tent to say hi to the EMTs. This might have been the most fun part of my day. I haven't been involved in the organization for the past year, but I really love all the people in the group and missed them a lot, so it was great to see them on commencement day.

Like I said, there were a lot of pictures. My sister just wouldn't stop snapping her camera. There are actually quite a few photos of the back of my head walking in front of her, on the phone coordinating the Conner 2 reunion, and waving sarcastically to my sister as she took a picture of me talking with my friends.

But mostly, there are lots of pictures showing just how excited I was.

After all of that we headed back to the dorm for a few hours. Then Sarah, Adelaide and I went out to dinner with all our families. (It was a pretty enormous group for only 3 graduates.) The next day we packed my dad's pickup truck to the brim with all my stuff and headed back to New Jersey.

And now? Well, now I'm hanging out at home, searching for a job, and working at the awesome summer job I had before I ever left home for MIT. That's right, I graduated from MIT and promptly got a job as a lifeguard at a waterpark.

The sky's the limit when you're an MIT engineer. =)

If you're interested in watching Lulu, Kim and I graduate, you can watch the webcast online:

http://amps-web.mit.edu/public/comm2009/webcast.html

I was going to write some big reflective entry before today but seriously, it's all so overwhelming that I don't even know what to say. (Me, speechless. Let that sink in for a minute.)

All I know is that this morning, for the last time, I put my Brass Rat on facing up. In a couple of hours, I get to turn it around, and that's going to be awesome.

Maybe in a few days I'll have had enough time to process all of this, and write something deep and meaningful about it. Maybe.

This time, I haven't written for a week an a half, because I've been doing nothing at all and it's been utterly fantastic.

But like any good MIT student, 10 days of that has driven me absolutely insane, so it's back to productivitiy! Time to churn out the dozens of blog entries I planned but never wrote. Looking back in the archives, it seems that Mollie, the famously prolific, friendly, and helpful blogger, wrote entries right through the whole summer after her graduation, so according to her precedent I have some time yet.

Let's see if I can get you up to speed on what's been going on in my life lately.

The last you really heard from me, I had just turned in my thesis and was going to a meeting for a group project. I was none too happy about it, I might add.

I have barely slept, my brain is completely liquid, I haven't had a real meal in days (I pretty much made a dinner out of Sun Chips and pineapple soda the other night...), I feel like absolute crap, and this is absolutely the last thing I'd like to be doing right now. I'm actually pretty miserable at the moment.

Even down to the bitter end, MIT enjoys beating you down and destroying your soul. Right now, IHTFP is feeling pretty one-sided...

Well, the meeting was relatively painless- we finished most of the work, and all that was left to me was to rewrite the introductory paragraph to our paper to reflect our professors comments on our first draft, but even that was beyond my abilities at that point.

I came home, ordered in Thai food, watched a stupid, mindless movie:

and slept for 12 hours.

When I got up, I rewrote the paragraph I needed, and proceeded to have the most miserable two and a half days of my life.

IHTFP is a timeless motto of the Institute. People who don't understand the concept claim that it means different things to different people. This is false. The true nature of IHTFP is that it holds a dual meaning for all of us. Sometimes it means "I have truly found paradise. Other times it means I hate this f?$%!@# place." Sometimes it means both of these things at the same exact time.

Well, last week it meant the second one, and the second one only, and quite vehemently. I honestly don't think I've ever hating this effing place quite so much before in 4 full years. Tuesday morning and early afternoon I finished all of my work for 1.851 (Water and Sanitation in Developing Countries), which was pretty painless- just a few paragraphs on the readings, and a reflection on the semester. Two classes down, two to go.

Now, keep in mind that I was pretty worn out at this point. 12 hours of sleep was not enough to make up for the previous....well, 4 years in general, but more specifically the few weeks of frantic thesis-writing stress. I had barely slept in the previous week, hadn't eaten a real full meal in far longer than that, and was just absolutely miserable in general. So when my D-Lab team decided that our prototype needed a major overhaul on Tuesday night, I almost lost it. At about 6 in the morning, after staying up with one other group member putting together the final paper and finally deciding to go to sleep so we could be in lab within 3 hours to finish the prototype our teammates had left behind for us to complete, I did lose it. We won't go into details, but I basically screamed obscenities into my pillow for a few minutes before collapsing for a few short, miserable hours of sleep.

You see, after Sunday night's lack of sleep, the prospect of another all-nighter was absolutely sickening to me. So when I saw one looming on Tuesday night, it put me in a pretty foul mood. I honestly just thought I couldn't handle any more of it. You know that feeling, when you're like, "no really, I actually can't take anymore of this?" It was sort of like that. I lived through Tuesday night, spiraling into further misery knowing that despite how little tolerance I had left, I'd be doing it again on Wednesday night. And it's not like any of those miserable all-nighters actually taught me anything, or were at all instrumental in my education. I suppose they were made extra miserable because somewhere deep down I knew that I could just blow off the rest of my work and still at the very least pass everything, and as we learned a few weeks ago, D is for Diploma.

Wednesday morning was spent working on the D-Lab prototype, and then the rest of the day and long into the night was spent on my set design project. The good news was that I was actually really excited about my set design project, and even looking forward to finishing it. (I was eventually really proud of my final product.) I honestly don't even remember how little I slept that night- it's all just one sleepless blur. I got up early to make some print-outs and got to class with just enough time to pin up my images for our presentation. Our instructor had invited artists and designers and theater people from around the area to look at and comment on our designs, which was actually pretty cool. I'd shown off my work in engineering classes like that several times (most notably in 2.009), but this was different, and a little scary at the same time. Because I mean really, I'm not artistic.

I showed my Photoshop model (which will be discussed in a later post), and got some good feedback. From there I went off to my last shift at work, then to my tutoring job, then back home. The end was truly in sight- classes were over but I still owed my set design instructor all of my "supporting materials-" inspirational images, preliminary sketches, a discussion of my thought process, etc. This was a somewhat tedious but easy task- it took me several hours to finish all of the updates to my set design blog (don't read it too closely- the last half of the entries were never proofread at all!). That night a bunch of friends were going out to celebrate the 21st birthdays of Andrew '10 and Justine '10. Sarah '09 came by my room at 11, but I was still frantically writing. I really, really just wanted to finish. I told her I'd only be another half hour at the most, and that they should go ahead without me. I finally finished all my updates (at 11:13 PM, according to the timestamp- I can never figure out how to make those things be in the eastern time zone) and emailed my instructor to let her know I was done.

Then, I went out drinking. But responsibly! I mean, we were celebrating a couple of 21st birthdays, after all. We only stayed out for an hour or two, came back to the dorm, ate some nachos, and played some Halo.

Then, I got to do something that I honestly don't think I've really, truly done in 4 years: I went to sleep, and didn't get up until I felt like it.

It was absolute bliss.

Since then, I've spent the past week and a half doing pretty much nothing at all. On Friday and Saturday Sarah '09 and I played a lot of Zelda.

On Sunday I trekked over to the student center and bought a membership to the MIT Science Fiction Society, home of "the world's largest open-shelf collection of science fiction." I've know it was there for years, but knew that I'd never have time to read any of the books- until now, of course. I'm a little rusty, actually- I used to be able to plow through novels much faster than this, but I guess that's to be expected, considering how little leisure reading I've done lately. But I've made my way through a fair few books over the past week, and am looking forward to continuing that trend over the summer.

On last Tuesday night I went out to dinner with some friends who were visting Boston. Wednesday morning I made breakfast for all of Conner 2 (even though I don't even live there anymore), and then hopped right on a bus for NJ. I spent a couple of days visiting my grandparents and volunteering at my church's annual carnival. I came back here on Saturday afternoon, went to a party on Conner 3, did nothing but read on Sunday, and convinced Sarah and Adelaide to watch Dogma with me on Monday night. This inspired Sarah and I to watch more Matt Damon, because, seriously, who wouldn't want that? So yesterday I did pretty much nothing at all except watch the Bourne Identity and the Bourne Supremacy. (We finally got tired of sitting around watching movies after that, and decided to save the Bourne Ultimatum for today.)

By the way, somewhere in there MIT finally caught up with what I already knew, and figured out that I finished everything. It's pretty exciting to log into my student account and see this:

So, it's been fun, this week of doing mostly nothing. But it is getting a little boring. So, today I decided to get back to this blogging thing. In a few minutes I'll be heading to a meeting with the director of MISTI-Spain to see if I can figure out what to do with myself next year. (Yeah, while there is still no actual plan, the plan for finding a plan has changed a bit, mostly because I'm really indecisive.)

Then it's going to be a lot of blogging, packing, job searching, reading, and exercising (hopefully, I'm seriously out of shape). Friday kicks off Senior Week. My parents, sister, and grandma get here on Thursday, just in time for the Pops concert. And then I graduate!

Speaking of which, this is really exciting:

The graduation stage has been under construction in Killian Court for awhile now, and everytime I pass it I get more excited. It looks pretty complete by now.

And then, well, who the hell knows. Not me.

As of 11:27 PM, I have completed every requirement for graduation from MIT.

Excuse me while I go celebrate. =)

See, I'm hosed beyond all imagining, but as it's basically my LAST WEEK AT MIT (?#@^&*!!!), all kinds of awesome and interesting things are going on which will not be nearly as cool when blogged about after the fact. (By the way, I probably have a dozen blog entries that I've planned and never written, and about 3 weeks between the time I'm done with work and officially graduate and should probably stop blogging so...be prepared for that.)

So, I'll sell my soul a little and turn this entry into a what is basically a Twitter feed. I hope you appreciate the enormity of this sacrifice of dignity. I do it all for you, dear readers.

So, entry number 1!
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Friday May 1, 2009. 11:37 PM

I just created the following page according to these strict guidelines:

Yikes! This is crazy!

(See any typos? Please, tell me! =P)

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Saturday, May 2. 12:02 PM
I'm in D-Lab right now (it occurs to me that I should post some pictures of this place later...) and just ran into Jodie '09. Jodie and I go way back- we were almost temporary roommates. We found each other online and chatted a little before getting to MIT. By the time we actually got to campus, my rooming assignment had been switched (I was in a single, which actually really sucked for Orientation), so we never even ended up rooming together. When I got to campus I stopped by her room to say hi so we could finally meet in real life. We haven't even really hung out after that, but we sort of smile and wave when we see each other.

Anyway, Jodie is running around D-Lab stressing about her thesis, which is basically exactly what I'm doing, so we shared our misery for a few minutes. I can't help but think back to the first and only other real conversation we had- our first day on campus, trying to figure out where the laundry room in the dorm was.

Crazy how things come full circle, isn't it?

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Thursday, May 7. 7:52 PM
Hey look, it's me, on Youtube!!!

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Sunday, May 7. 5:38 PM

I can't believe the end is so close...I'm sitting in LMP (Lab for Manufacturing and Productivity) right now, trying to finish this thesis. Basically it's a MechE computer lab that has been functioning as Thesis HQ for the last few days. Adelaide and I have been here for hours and hours, maybe days, maybe weeks, I don't even know anymore. There have been quite a few other people hanging out too, and we all immediately knew that we were all there for the same reason.

I mean, if you didn't have a thesis to do in order to graduate, would you be in LMP at 3 AM on Sunday morning?

Adelaide is really cute when she's sleep-deprived and thesising (now a verb).

(The thing she's holding is the second prototype of the Braille Label Maker, her 2.009-turned-thesis project which has been owning at life lately and winning tons of awards...more about that when I can give it the attention it deserves...)

We've been bonding with the other Course 2 seniors, sharing junk food and caffeine, and repeating our new mottos:

"D is for diploma."

"Mystery Hunt - Fun = Thesis"

"I didn't pay for it, it's not my explosion." (Yeah, I don't know where that one came from either, we're all a little sleep-deprived over here...)

But I'm making good progress here! I just made the following prettyful diagram:

On to the editing...

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Monday, May 11. 5:33 PM

My thesis is done. It's printed on fancy special paper and turned into the undergraduate office.

I had about 3 seconds to enjoy the relief from that moment before I headed over to the Rotch library to meet with a partner to finish writing a final report that's due tomorrow.

I have barely slept, my brain is completely liquid, I haven't had a real meal in days (I pretty much made a dinner out of Sun Chips and pineapple soda the other night...), I feel like absolute crap, and this is absolutely the last thing I'd like to be doing right now. I'm actually pretty miserable at the moment.

Even down to the bitter end, MIT enjoys beating you down and destroying your soul. Right now, IHTFP is feeling pretty one-sided...

Rather than write a real blog entry, I instead urge you to consider the following:

An MIT surveyor came upon the gates of Hell,
He looked the devil in the eye and said, "You're looking well."
The devil looked right back at him and said, "Why visit me?
You've been through Hell already 'cuz you went to MIT."

That is all.

So, what's it like when 4 MIT students visit 2 MIT alums (including a former blogger) for a week on the west coast? Pretty much the same kind of nerdy conversations, only this time I have photographic documentation to jog my memory. So without further ado, I bring you the nerdy adventures of Laura, Rick, Adelaide and Mason....West Coast edition.

Thankfully, a lot of the more famous things about San Francisco lend themselves really nicely to outbursts of nerdiness. Exhibit A: the cable cars.

Do you know how cable cars work? One of the very first things we did on our trip was find out all about them at the Cable Car Museum. (Free admission! If you're ever looking for something to do in San Fran, look no further!)

Basically there are heavy steel cables which run underground all along the entire route of the cable car. To move forward, the cars actually latch on to the cables and get pulled along for the ride (kind of like the lift you use when you go snowtubing). To stop, they just let go of the cable, and stop moving. Well the cable car museum is actually located at the central location through which all of the cables are routed. Translation: lots of heavy machinery. Adelaide and I (who are both mechanical engineering majors) were practically drooling.

Another one of the very first things we did in San Fran was visit In-N-Out Burger.

This isn't exactly nerdy, but was nonetheless an important part of our west coast experience. The food was okay, but in all of our opinions a little overrated and not nearly as good as UBurger, the In-N-Out spinoff located near MIT's campus.

The In-N-Out place is on Fisherman's Wharf, which is basically the super-touristy area. There are some neat things though, like this cool museum of old-timey mechanical scenes. You know, the sort of thing where you put in a quarter (well, or a nickel at the time) and there are some figures that move around or something. By far the best thing about this museum was the following sign tacked to the back door of the place.

Throughout our travels around the city, we took a lot of public transportation. We noticed that the bus benches have this weird design- each bench is several individual seats which normally flip up unless you hold them down with your weight by sitting in them. (They're a lot like the seats in movie theaters, except without armrests in between them.) We couldn't figure out why this was. We discussed the possible rationale behind the design- maybe it used less material, or allowed them to stay relatively dry after rains because the water would slide off instead of pool in the middle. We finally decided that it was that it was made that way to discourage people from sleeping on them, but we couldn't see exactly how. I was skeptical that it would be that much more uncomfortable than sleeping on a regular bench (which isn't exactly comfy to begin with). Well, this was one of those things that can only be settled experimentally.

Conclusion: it was not comfortable. I know it might look like I'm smiling and enjoying myself in that picture, but really I'm laughing because I can't figure out how to get up without falling off. Maybe it operates as a deterrent- you try sleeping on the bench once, but only once...

Of course, no trip to San Francisco would be complete without a walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.

And no walk across the bridge would be complete without discussions of the design, the general concept of suspension bridges (you really can feel it move with the traffic), the importance of considering environmental factors (see: Tacoma Narrows), and the shape of the steel cables. (Did you know that uniform loading of a hyperbolic cosine stretches the curve into a simple parabola? This is one of those things I know, but do not understand, and could never explain.)

Then we hiked around the rocky shore (I'd never seen the Pacific Ocean before) around sunset.

Mason is really into breakdancing. Extreme breakdancing, apparently.

I'm not Yan, but I can take pretty pictures sometimes...

We spent one day in nearby Oakland, where Ruth '07 works. While there, I had to snap a photo of the following:

Again, not nerdy, but remember, I <3 Madrid. Sigh. Nostalgia.

We also visited UCBerkeley and checked out their mechanical engineering building which, by the way, was awesome. It just had all the personality of a building designed by architects and taken over by mechanical engineers who rearranged it in their own personal way. It's just an awesome building with...engineering spilling out all over the place. It was fantastic. Adelaide and I wandered around snapping pictures of the UCBerkeley equivalents of MIT classes.

"Hey look, there's a whiteboard filled with 2.003."

"Oh, that's the 2.002 room."

"Oh, check it out, 2.671!"

I even found their very own Formula SAE team.

(Once upon a time, I was on MIT's team.)

Walking to the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) stop, we saw something amazing across the street, and had to check it out.

"The Other Change of Hobbit: a science fiction and fantasy bookstore." Look at how excited we all are! We spent awhile browsing the shelves, discussing some of our favorites. Adelaide was looking for the V for Vendetta comic and didn't see it in their small graphic novel section, so she asked the clerk. "No, we don't have it. We've stopped stocking a lot of graphic novels now that comic book place opened up just next door." All of our ears pricked up. Comic book store? 20 feet away? How had we missed that? Well, now we had something to do for the next 30 minutes as well. Adelaide got her book, and I had to politely turn down a random customer who recommended something about elephants when I pondered aloud what to buy. (I ended up not buying anything. I've only recently started reading comics so I'm still not sure exactly what I like and don't like.) Well, wouldn't you know, two doors down from the comic book store was a Half-Price Books, where I was able to add a few new titles to my personal library- Eragon (which I've wanted to read since forever and was on clearance for only $1), The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia McKillip (an author I've been curious about for awhile), and Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. Yeah, it's a book for 13-year-olds. I adore young adult fiction, and am not ashamed to admit it. (Except for Twilight. Don't even get me started on that drivel.)

Later in the week we visited AT&T park, which is also not nerdy but ohmygodIlovebaseball so I have to share some pictures.

Look, it's me, and I'm STANDING ON A MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL FIELD. So cool. This might even be cooler than the cable car museum. It's hard to say, really.

Rick and Adelaide hang out in the dugout.

Nearly every single person on the tour stopped to take a photo of this sign, posted in the clubhouse.

On our last day in town, Sam '07 took us to the concrete slides, a hidden secret of the Castro district. It's sort of crazy, but there's this tiny park with nothing in it but these huge slides made of concrete, built into the naturally steep landscape. They're actually incredibly intimidating. (Not going to lie: I was legitimately scared the first time.) I don't know who designed these things for children, but they were crazy. You have to go down them on pieces of scrap cardboard that people leave around the park to keep yourself from ruining your jeans.

I'm moving so fast it's a blur. Or someone just took a lousy picture.

Rick always obliges by making ridiculous faces whenever I snap photos of him. (This one was probably involuntary, though.)

Adelaide and I enjoying our ride.

Whatever, I'm not an adult.

The thing we immediately noticed about the slides was that the left slide appeared to go much faster than the right. We pondered this for awhile until we realized that even two people of relatively equal weight going down at the same time was not a useful experiment- because they were using slightly different pieces of cardboard. We quickly designed a series of tests to determine the true culprit behind the difference, taking into consideration the slides, the riders, and their cardboard. We tentatively concluded that the left slide was in fact slightly faster, but that varying the cardboard used had a greater effect on speed than switching slides. Of course, these were very rough experiments completed without real tools. We discussed how we could improve upon our experimental design, and concluded that we would need to blindfold the riders so they wouldn't alter their behavior based on which slide they were on and use simple light sensors to determine when a single "ride" started on stopped, to ensure that all trails included the same physical length by eliminating human error, reflex time, and bias. The conversation concluded with me saying the sentence, "And that's how you design a double-blind research study." Then we brushed our hands together and went for some drinks at a nearby bar. (Actually. Those last 2 sentences were 100% true.)

In other nerdy exploits, my friend Sarah '09 (who is majoring in CMS and looking to get a job in the gaming industry next year) has introduced me to the wonders of XBox Live. I've always said I had a gamer somewhere inside, and I was just glad she hadn't come out yet because I knew once I started playing games I'd never stop. I was totally right. Thankfully I still don't own any consoles more recent than N64 (which is at home, anyway) so I have to rely on Sarah for my gaming fix. But I've still played way more hours of Halo in the past 3 weeks than could possibly be healthy. I'm not all that great yet (it takes practice, ok?) but I'm no longer an utter embarrassment. But I'll totally admit, my favorite part of playing online (where you can match up with gamers from all over the place to play larger games) is the reactions Sarah and I get when people realize that we're female. As soon as any of us says something, we get, "Hey wait, are you a girl?" (followed by half a dozen friend requests). My usual response to this is something along the lines of, "What? Girls don't play Halo. I mean, is that even be allowed?"

This gaming has led to an even further increase in nerdiness. Sometimes I can't resist doing something stupid, then saying "I did it for the lulz," and whenever and someone informs the team, "There's a guy in our base," I really can't stop myself from saying "Is he killing all our dudes?"

On that note, this video is a year old, but I have to share. For an utterly epic YouTube experience, check out the utterly awesome Sauza '11 singing at the annual Conner 2 talent show. (Video courtesy of Snively. If you don't get all the jokes, don't worry, there are a handful of C2 inside jokes scattered around.) Enjoy.

... WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 9 PM THIS EVENING TO 5 PM EST MONDAY...

TODAYS SNOW AND FLURRIES IN SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND IS JUST A TEASE FOR WHATS COMING TONIGHT.

SIX TO 12 INCHES IS FORECAST FOR SOUTH CENTRAL NEW HAMPSHIRE WITH 5 TO 10 INCHES IN THE CONNECTICUT RIVER VALLEY.

THE JACKPOT... 10 TO 15 INCHES... WILL PILE UP IN THE HEAVILY POPULATED BOSTON PROVIDENCE INTERSTATE 95 CORRIDOR... WESTWARD INTO NORTHEAST CONNECTICUT AND NORTHWARD THROUGH WORCESTER COUNTY INTO THE MERRIMACK VALLEY OF NORTHEAST MASSACHUSETTS.

SNOW... WILL BE HEAVY AT TIMES BETWEEN 10 PM TONIGHT AND 10 AM MONDAY CAUSING NUMEROUS DELAYS OR CANCELLATIONS IN ALL SORTS OF TRANSPORTATION DEPENDENT BUSINESS.

SNOWFALL RATES OF 2 TO 3 INCHES PER HOUR ARE EXPECTED FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS NEAR OR JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT IN MASSACHUSETTS... CONNECTICUT AND RHODE ISLAND. THUNDER MAY ALSO BE HEARD.

SNOW WILL TAPER TO LIGHT ADDITIONAL ACCUMULATIONS LATE MONDAY MORNING OR AFTERNOON.

THE MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE WILL BE QUITE SLOW AND HAZARDOUS DUE TO A COMBINATION OF STILL HEAVY SNOW... RESULTING IN POOR VISIBILITY AND RAPID ACCUMULATION ON ROADS. TEMPERATURES WILL BE IN THE TEENS TO LOWER 20S WITH GUSTY NORTHERLY WINDS CAUSING BLOWING AND DRIFTING OF THE SNOW AND WIND CHILLS IN THE 5 TO 15 DEGREE RANGE.

------------------------

My thoughts?

1. The National Weather Service has apparently never heard of netiquette.

2. Isn't winter over yet? *grumble*

Thesis
Do a lot of work and write a paper. Details to come, so stay tuned.

21M.733: Design for the Theater: Scenery
The final component of my theater arts concentration. This is actually pretty cool, because we're learning and practicing a bunch of art techniques, like different types of sketching and stuff. Also, I get to keep a blog. No joke. Part of the requirements are to write reflective essays about each of the projects we do. Instead of this, we can also keep a journal about our work. When I found out this journal could be in the form of a blog, I thought, "well how can I not?"

1.851: Water and Sanitation Infrastructure for Developing Countries
Lots of reading and discussion about water and sanitation interventions in the developing world on their effects on public health. Plus every week we learn about a different "watsan" (water/sanitation) technology, which keeps me plenty interested. I've even managed to get myself tangled up in potential plans involving possible redesign and experimentation with the most recently showcased technology, fog harvesting.

2.722: D-Lab
Hydropowered lantern. 'Nuff said.

So then, after all that, hopefully (knock on wood), I'm going to graduate.

And then I have to be an adult.

I'm not sure you can fully appreciate how utterly terrifying this is.

June 5 is Commencement. June 6 is moving day. I was on the phone with my mom the other day and she asked me when I had to leave me dorm. I realized I didn't even know, so I looked up that little fact and wrote it in my planner. June 6th, at noon. I'll pack up my belongings and move away from Boston forever.

This is so unbelievably weird to think about, because I never really thought of Boston as my home exactly. I mean, it has just sort of become the place I've lived for several years- there was no conscious thought process that went along with it. Also, I've never moved away from anywhere before. I've lived on the same street in suburban New Jersey for my entire life. When I was four, my family moved from our house to the house next door. I'm not kidding. Two of my earliest memories are of carrying boxes of my toys across the backyard, and playing tic tac toe with my mom on the wall as we painted what would become my new room. Sure, technically I left home to come here, but NJ was still home in my mind. I knew I'd be going back there every few months to visit. That will still be true, no matter where I end up next year. But this is different.

In a few years I'll be able to say things like, "Oh yeah, I used to live in Boston." That's SO WEIRD. You don't get to say things like that unless you're an adult who has led an interesting and fulfilling life and have LIVED long enough to spend a few years living in whatever random city before moving to the next one. Ok, so this is clearly biased by the fact that, as previously mentioned, I lived on the same street my whole life. Also, almost my entire extended family lives within a half hour drive of my house. But it's still weird, okay?

So. On June 6, I move away from Boston.

June 7 is a black hole.

It's kind of like hundreds of years ago, when people thought the world was flat and that you could get to the end and just drop off. June 6th is that edge of the flat, flat world. Or if you're looking for a more contemporary example, it's kind of like when you stretch your brain to try to figure out what's at the edge of the universe. Is there a plexiglass wall? Is there another universe? Where does that one end? Try as you might, you just cannot see past a certain point. That point is June 6.

The only things I know about June 7 is that I will presumably be on this earth, that I will no longer be a student, that I will hopefully be employed somewhere, that I will need to find a place to live and pay rent that is not managed through a student loan system and of which no portion goes into a social budget, that I will have to start filing tax forms....tax forms! I mean, right now I technically pay taxes and all, but then I just go like, "Hey IRS, I'm a student and make like 4 grand a year" and then they're like "alright you don't really count yet" and give most of it back. But next year I will have to actually file tax forms. This boggles the mind.

I will also presumably have a job. But who knows.

The job search, FYI, is not going well. I feel like I've scoured the farthest reaches of the internet and have subsequently discovered every single development organization that exists.

The problem is that there is no obvious solution. If I were Course 6, I'd just be like, "Okay, I'll just go apply to Microsoft, and then go to a career fair, where 90% of the companies will recruit me." But instead, I've got to search pretty hard. Most places aren't really hiring, at least not college grads, so I've got to whip out that whole "cover letter" routine and hope for the best while trying not to sound too desperate (which I am). Also, I hate cover letters with an intense, fiery passion.

It's just slow going, in general. I spent something like 8 hours last weekend searching for a job. I eventually had to force myself to stop, just to get some homework done. It's like wasting time on YouTube, but less entertaining, or on Wikipedia, but less informative.

Let's just hope the Peace Corps takes me. Just keep your fingers crossed for me, okay?

EDIT: Here's a piece of good news I'm bursting to share: Teach for America just invited me to the first round of interviews. Woo!