Well, I'm going to now, because someone asked me if I thought DEAPS would be fun. Would it be fun or would it be a waste of time/money? they ask. As someone who they'd heard had participated in a pre-orientation program they thought I'd be able to help. Instead, I wrote back, dude hang on I'm totally going to blog about this, and didn't for a few days.

That's because I actually got busy with my UROP. Blah blah blah motor trouble turns one way but not the other why me don't leave me alone with this oh for god's sake watch out for the 1000 dollar star plate. It was all resolved and put back together, at least all the screws appear to be in their right holes, in a 10 hour marathon lab day, which was today, and that's why I sit down and write this. The motor is turning. I've destroyed nothing. That's a good day.

3 years ago at this time, life couldn't have been moving faster. Who was I? I was a recent graduate of Hamden High School, #6 in my class, good grades fine scores, decent essays, and for some unknown cosmic reason, MIT bound. And from then on, bound to MIT. I say this cause I don't think anyone ever escapes the tether of this place, there's something about these walls, something homely and subtle that just so gently enough creeps its way under your skin, without notice over the course of years, fuses with your bones, phases through the walls of your veins, until at some point you don't know any more where you end and this place begins. Sometimes it's so quiet here, or nothing is moving, or everything is moving, or the rush of people you wouldn't believe. I haven't decided which of these MITs feels most like home to me.

I didn't know all this then. My perception of MIT was all fire and lights. (I was temp'ed in EC during CPW) How much is the real MIT like that? Maybe 5%. And it's a good thing, I think. Because, really, you will find your niche. Freshman year I considered an EAPS major (course 12), DEAPS was going to Yellowstone and I was going with them. If you're taking a trip with an Freshman Pre-Orientation Program this year, several factors will probably combine to make this one of the more exhilarating, memorable experiences of your life.

I. Everything was a new thing and it lasted forever. 16 kids or so went to yellow stone with me and several professors and graduate students. I was amazed by the most mundane exchanges because they were with MIT students. They were elite company, they were just like me, and I was sure each one of them was smarter than I was. 9 days and 8 nights was the itinerary, if I recall correctly. We would camp in the park, at an altitude of about 8000 feet, near Yellowstone Lake, days would be dry and sweaty, nights would be near freezing. We brought gear. On the first day we flew into bozeman montana felt small against the wide flat terrain and packed into several white vans (to be later christened with various yellowstone-related names, "Bison Without A Cause" is the one I always tried to ride in) and drove toward the distant mountains. On the way there a flat tire.

II. I shared a tent with Tamara and Danielle. It was something like a 6 person tent occupied by 3 people which sounded great at sundown when we were pitching but turned on us right quick as soon as the temperatures plunged and boy did it ever. We coped by huddling in one corner of the tent and leaving the rest empty and cold and air. Some nights I woke up miserable. One night I had to pee and oh how I tried to fall back to sleep and hold it til morning, grappled terribly with the decision and finally moving as little as possible, switched on the flashlight by my pillow and watched my breath in the air for a while working up the nerve. Another night I was sure my head was on fire and I sat up in my sleeping bag and scratched and scratched and I could swear 1000 bugs couldn't have made it itch so bad. A few nights it rained and after the first I never laid out my clothes to dry on the ground outside again.

III. Our first full day at the park we walked through a marsh. We were headed to Sylvan Springs, an off-the-map site at Yellowstone gained access to only with a research license (which was pretty awesome for a prefrosh). Getting there sucked. Taking their advice I'd dressed in layers. The early morning hours (6am wakeup time) called for sweatpants, 2 sweatshirts and a jacket. Under that I skeptically slipped in a pair of shorts and a black tanktop. We left before 8am. I brought my backpack, which before we even parked our vans (at around 10am), became home to the jacket and both sweatshirts. We were an impressive sight, a 4-van caravan everywhere we went. We were told to keep on our long pants for walking through tall grass. The way there was hours of hiking. Here I'll post a couple pictures I took during the hike.

Sylvan Springs had been a lush green tourist mecca. A geological change a few decades ago caused the water in the hot springs to turn into sulfuric acid. Ever since it's been oozing down the sides of the hills, killing all the vegetation in its way. Sylvan Springs as we saw it was a whitewashed ghost of its former self.

That's me in the black tanktop.

It was still beautiful, as only a sight like that could be. We took some measurements, which even then I saw as symbolic but still made you feel like a bit of a budding scientist.

My shoes were soaked, the kids with boots that day were the clear winners, and my pants up to my knee. That's why I laid them out that night. To dry. I found them in the morning about 20 feet down hill in a wet, muddy, pile. I threw them in the dumpster. My shoes were never rescuable either. They started stinking unbelievably that next night and just only got danker and more horrible as time went on.

We cooked at night, vegetarian meal because of the vegetarian in the group. Pasta and corn and all kinds. Lit a fire to keep warm. Bed time was whenever the fire went out.

IV. One night it was a clear lovely night and a group of us drove down in a van to the widest open space we could find in the dark (which was, funny enough, a parking lot down by the lake) and looked up. I was seeing the milky way the cross-section of our own galaxy like a broad stroke of a paint brush across the sky and I couldn't believe it. There were more stars than I could take in at once. I stared and stared. It made me dizzy so I laid down on the ground and I kept on staring. It's weird thinking back. Maybe it was then that I developed the love for telescopes, that I decided I could be an astrophysicist.

V. We drove by the lake on our way anywhere, every evening it was a dark void and every morning it was brilliant light.

V.(a) Sometimes buffalo crossings stopped traffic for hours.

VI. I was petrified on the slopes of the petrified forest. We climbed a vertical 1000 feet, some of the way on our hands and knees on loose rocks. The slope was enough to give you vertigo. I was sure I was going to die. I found a fossil.

Below us were wide valleys carved out by glaciers during the ice age. They left huge rocks scattered around like dust on the valley floor.

On our way up we saw far below us a black bear roaming the clearings. On the way back down after our picnic lunch I got separated from the group and as I passed through the region of the sighting I made as much noise as possible and fashioned a weapon out of sticks.

Some time later I slipped on a loose rock on my way down and slid some 20 feet on my butt down the mountain. That night I spent a couple of minutes being really thankful for being alive.

VI. Wednesday halfway through the week we each took a $2 shower. The girls got to wash their hair, back in the vans everyone looked beautiful. Smelled great. Laughed a lot.

VII. Day trip to the Grand Tetons.

A lift took us from 6000 to elevation 10,000 ft. The temperature dropped from 65 to 27 degrees in the broad day. Hiking around up there was tough. A bit of ill-advised running knocked me straight to the ground, I took way longer than I thought possible recovering.

The view was unreal.

VIII. We climbed to the top of a hill to look down on Grand Prismatic Spring. Later, we found ourselves on another hill facing a beautiful, snaking river. We learned about the microbes that give the hot spring color and mark it out in isothermals, the flood pattern of rivers, the migration of waterfalls, rhyolite rocks and flows, volcanic breccia, kinematic shock patterns... by the time we headed back it was starting to look like rain.

Sliding down a fault:

IX. I snapped pictures here and there. Sometimes it was all I could do to just take it in. The age of the place was written plainly on everything we could see and touch. The gravity of it all was overwhelming. If you stayed really still you could almost feel the earth shift and the mountains turn.

Here's something truly impressive. I love this picture: you can see the two layers of deposits one on top of the other put there by 2 giant eruptions, the first of which formed the yellowstone caldera and the yellowstone lake. The bottom layer is 2.1 million years old, the top 650,000. Like a huge, slowly morphing, rocky birthday cake.

X. You know, memories are all we have to remind us that we've lived. You don't need to find it in an FPOP, of course. But I always advise freshmen to sign up for them anyhow. Because sometimes it's putting MIT in context, sometimes it's that feeling of getting out there, sometimes it's just what you need for your beginnings on the world stage. And because it is probably just so much better than whatever else you could have planned for the week before orientation. Because, what if it does change your life?

I'm so excited for you. Now is the best time to be alive. As I said the trip was 9 hot days and 8 cold cold nights. It had begun with a 4 van procession on the wide open roads of the high plains and so that's where it ended. We were so tired we were napping on the floor of the airport. We were so dirty, too. But coming back to Boston to my penguin patterned temp room in EC and showers and beds and classes and changes, I kinda knew instinctively that I'd never be the same for it. And I haven't. I truly haven't.

I went back up to my cubicle very sad that day but, of course, I never did do what I was told. You see, because, data, can be backed up, but 3 years worth of rare and pirated software? Not easy to part with. A chainsaw couldn't sever these ties that bind.

So in the end, life went on. I lived in constant fear. It was as if my computer had been diagnosed with some rare and serious heart ailment. And this meant, low cholesterol diet, regular, moderate exercise, and most importantly, no MATLAB.

A year goes by without incidence. For the summer I learned to use Octave. Then I finish a whole year of junior lab data analysis on Athena computers. Including 3 separate instances in which I was booted for violation of some security or sanity feature that prohibited more than 9 1/2 hours of straight access. And then it came time that I part ways with Tiny Dell. In his place is now a brand new 14 inch widescreen Thinkpad T Series. Built like a tank with the computing power of 100 Tiny Dells, maybe even 1000, all black and all business. A beautiful, invincible modern marvel of sorts.

Of course I guess what they say about all good things and idolatry and so on and so forth, well, this morning I decided that, yes, it was time, and yes, I would give this MATLAB thing another shot. After all, new beginnings, right?

"Oh will you look at that, I don't think I've ever seen THIS error before."
Please please please, I was thinking, fix this. Fix this and I'll do anything.

What was supposed to be a 20 minute grab-and-go kind of job before work turned into a 4 hour swirling abyss of uncertainty and despair when the the little blue bar marking the progress of the MATLAB self-extraction process snapped to completion and what popped up was not the MATLAB installer but a gentle little stylishly transparent dialog box with a not-so-friendly message. So that's how I met Jacob. I had run the setup a dozen times under at least as many different conditions, all with the same result. I was sick with worry making breakfast at 4pm, working myself into a bit of a situation not only with this Vista business but also with the pancakes having accidentally followed the direction for making 14 pancakes instead of 4.

But it was a beautiful day and things work out for good people on beautiful days, maybe. So it did with me on this day, because someone recommended I give IS&T a call before they closed up for the day. Together we played with different installers and services settings and in a stroke of mad genius Jacob suggested searching for the unzipped MATLAB installer in my Temp folders. Well, I found 15 of them, one for each time I'd tried installing the software, and lo and behold they worked with a simple click. And the problem? Who knows what it was, probably some kind of linking issue or other.

What now? And what's next? Well, I'm back to where I started the day, sitting on my bed next to the window with the sun coming in, idolizing my new computer.

I guess at the end of the day what to take away from this is just the usual lesson about using your resources, that and the sweet skills of my man Jacob working his magic on my laptop problem here and really just putting the smack down on Error 0: Running Command MATLAB~1.EXE and making the world a better place for our children.

That's awesome though because they then got the best seats in the house. Right up close, next to the center aisle, next to the graduates and the stage.

As I start writing this, every restaurant in Boston/Cambridge is likely just overflowing with graduates and their celebrating families, but at that time, they'd only begun gathering in Johnson for the procession. And their parents filing in were greeted by red vests and boxes of special, MIT Commencement commemorative ponchos-- clear plastic bags w/ a hood and MIT printed across the back packed up in a little snap pouch. Around 9, we were caught off-guard by the weather getting steadily worse and the rain getting progressively heavier and the rush of last minute parents such that by about 9:30, we'd run out of ponchos entirely. Kind of embarrassing since these things are so cheap and easy to order in bulk. I reckon there were a total of close to 10,000, and considering the forecast that was probably projected to be more than enough. Nevertheless, around 9:30 I look out across the court: a sea of plastic.

I only have pre-commencement pictures. I'm hoping someone else who was in the audience in the day or had a camera on them throughout the ceremony would post some pictures of the procession and the handing out of the degrees. Otherwise, check the commencement web page for those.

Pre-commencement, the theme was definitely chairs. 16,000 chairs.

The sitting statue looked so relaxed in the middle of all those chairs,

16,000 water bottles on 16,000 chairs.

The theme of the day was definitely water. But not bottled water. Sorry, bottled water.
Heat strokes weren't a problem today. Neither was dehydration.

Picture of the front of the stage:

Picture of the back of the stage, omg looks so different

Commencement staff headquarters was the prime real estate right smack middle of porta-potty land, the land of many porta-potties:

Some of these porta-potties were special:

And the security tent out front:

And then it was all over before the time I would normally wake up in a day. I had a lot of friends in this graduating class. It was weird. So weird. They asked me if I'd work commencement next year. Oh, I'll probably be there, I said.

And yet, I found myself at a Lysosomal Diseases and the Brain Conference in Sacramento this last weekend and got introduced as a senior at MIT. Yikes. Of course, all the actual seniors are graduating come Friday. And I don't even remember when i signed up to be a commencement volunteer but here I am attending the training today and all looking forward to waking up at 6:30am on friday. I'm stationed left of the stage, and I'll be looking snazzy and likely disheveled in my red commencement vest. I've got no complaints, I have like a microscopic view of a bunch of my friends graduating, I get to take care of your heat strokes and I'm fed free breakfast and lunch. My favorite part of any commencement is always the 50th year reunion class in their adorable red anniversary jackets marching in w/ the graduates, and just brimming and so so proud. So, yeah, kinda, I can't wait. I simply can't be cynical about a thing like this that brings so many people together with so much happiness.

I love my room, I get to come back to it finally after the summer is over and the asbestos is gone:

Times Report on the Earthquake

When I describe Sichuan to people I always mention the food, and the mountains, the humidity sometimes, and I always explain that Sichuan translates literally into the four rivers that cut through it. The people there speak with a flattened dialect, like this, I say. And I say I'll take them one day to this place.

If you feel compelled to help, I've been looking around. Here are some relief organizations that have already begun their operations:

American Red Cross International Relief Fund

World Vision

**or you can donate directly to the China Relief Fund, here.

I hope everything is alright with your family, your friends, you, out in this beautiful region of the world.

@ AXO Lip Sync this year: (I dunno, this was like a week and a half ago)
I'M IN IT FIND ME (you won't be able to, so here, I'll just tell you: I'm in the second group stunt and the partner stunt and the top of the pyramid at the end)

Last year at Lip Sync: (you may have seen this from Molly)

Yeah our squad is smaller this year. Anyways, end of term, hey!

Pictures and backlogged entries are piling up like crazy over here. But so is work on my 8.06 term paper and analysis for the 3rd 8.14 lab (Zeeman effect in Hg). My oral presentation is friday for this lab, but with the 8.06 deadlines this week I'm not sure I'll make it. I'm writing my paper on the dynamical (SO(4) rotational group) symmetries of the hydrogen atom, using just symmetry and algebra of groups to derive the energy eigenvalues for a hydrogenic atom. Pretty kickass, right? Well, I'm not doing this fabulous topic justice in the least. I brought Schiff's solemn-as-hell-looking Quantum Mechanics book to the Virgin Islands with me during spring break. Opened it on the beach a few times and during long walks down winding island roads. Succeeded in reading but not quite understanding two section, getting it crinkly from salt water (too close to the waves that time) and sand all between its pages.

Aside from that I read about 100 pages in my Roman History text book, not quite caught up but happy about my progress. But went on to forget entirely about a 10-page term paper on Julius Caesar due this past Monday (the sort of Sunday-night realization you dont want). I was clearly expected to get a lot more done over spring break in all my classes. Consequently, I handed in the drop form for Rome this morning. Now on 42 units, though not light, is definitely by far the fewest number of units I've stood to complete in any semester. Taking a break from work at MIT has its angry side, but losing spring break productivity to vacation in the Virgin Islands isn't really losing at all, is it?

At least that's how I think of it.

I have pictures from my vacation for a future entry. For now, I have more pictures from Junior Lab. The telescope pictures that I promised so many moons ago are here. I meant to post them before spring break but I had a midterm, go figure.

Let me just start off by saying MIT roofs are a pretty cool place to hang out. Especially in february.

What you're seeing here is the Small Radio Telescope developed by MIT's Haystack Observatories used in the 21-cm Astrophysics experiment in Junior lab (8.14). This was definitely my favorite experiment all year. I guess the ultimate objective was to use the doppler shift of the ultra-sharp 21cm hydrogen line emitted by gases in distant parts of the galaxy to derive a rotation curve for the Milky Way, and use that information to map out some of its spiral arms.

The control room is in this little hut on the roof.

check out the little hole:

Lifeline:

VideoLink to the outside world in the telescope vicinity (walkie talkies if you wanna chat):

A little bit of asbestos (at least they warn you):

And a reminder of what you're after:

But yeah what really makes this lab is not the walkie-talkies, not even the asbestos. It's not anywhere in that nasty control room. It's out here:

Doing this lab forces you to be up on the roof all hours of the day and night (sorry, science doesn't care about your sleeping habits), so you see a lot of this:

and this:

this:

and even this:

Watch out for the edge, though:

This lab took us through February and into March. Unfortunately, I hear the telescope is having some trouble with its preamp, so it won't be open for business for the last experiment, for those guys who would really be rocking out up there with the nice weather it's no go. In case you're wondering what the experiment is actually about here's my paper with our results.

I also have some gnarly optical spectroscopy pictures from the Zeeman experiment but that's for next time.

Man, you really don't realize how huge a role some things play in your life until it's time to blog and all you can write about is physics.

Every class day (which is Mondays and Wednesdays- that's today), we read a new poem and write a short essay response, which we read aloud in a class discussion. It usually takes me about 20 minutes to digest the poem, and between 45 min and an hour to write the response, usually, in writing out my thoughts on the poem, I'm able to make connections that I couldn't make just in my head, and I find the poem unusually compelling. Well, I just read and responded to my favorite poem this semester so far. Just about 20 minutes ago, so I thought I'd share it. It's by Robert Creeley. I keep calling him John Creeley because of "I Know a Man".

A Wicker Basket

Comes the time when it's later
and onto your table the headwaiter
puts the bill, and very soon after
rings out the sound of lively laughter--

Picking up change, hands like a walrus,
and a face like a barndoor's,
and a head without any apparent size,
nothing but two eyes--

So that's you, man,
or me. I make it as I can,
I pick up, I go
faster than they know--

Out the door, the street like a night,
any night, and no one in sight,
but then, well, there she is,
old friend Liz--

And she opens the door of her cadillac,
I step in back,
and we're gone.
She turns me on--

There are very huge stars, man, in the sky,
and from somewhere very far off someone hands me a slice of apple pie,
with a gob of white, white ice cream on top of it,
and I eat it--

Slowly. And while certainly
they are laughing at me, and all around me is racket
of these cats not making it, I make it

in my wicker basket.

- Robert Creeley

We've also read, so far, Alan Ginsberg, and James Schuyler. Here's my response:

Perhaps it is the message of the poem. That, there will come a time, yes, when it's later, and when the game is up, and all your distractions, perhaps your youth, is gone; when the streets outside are dark like night yet you must walk them. But even as you do, while the world is mocking you for your clumsiness, you will retain your dignity, as he does, and you will be safe, as he is.

Anyways, I like poems. I'm going on vacation. I promise pictures of the telescope. Later.

What luck! My many questions were all answered.

THANKS, CONAN!

-luvlulu

Hang on.