A Day in the Life by Melis A. '08
A play-by-play of my day, along with some pictures.
Given that it’s the day before Campus Preview Weekend and I have two papers to write and a problem set to start, it’s clearly the perfect opportunity to blog! I’ve wanted to write a “Day in the Life” entry for quite a while and today I finally remembered to pack my camera. I’ll preface this entry by saying that I don’t normally do this much networking or eat this much free food, but the opportunities exist (if I only had the time and could be in three places at once!)
7:45 AM: Woke up and immediately checked my email.
8:30 AM-9:10 AM: Walked to McCormick to meet my former pre-frosh and now (sorority) little sister, Minh ’10. The weather was gorgeous and we went to Sunny’s Diner (just up Mass Ave) for a good ole’ artery-clogging breakfast. Yum.
9:15 AM: Grabbed a cup of tea with Minh from the Lobby 7 coffee shop and ran into Ben and Amy. Even though they were running around, trying to get everything ready for you guys, they had time to stop and pose for (several) pictures. By the way, in their free time they model for AT&T.
9:30-11 AM: Dynamics and Controls II Lecture. We reviewed a control theory called root locus. Doesn’t that sound exotic?
11 AM-11:05 AM: Stood in Killian Court and played with my camera’s panoramic setting, the result is below.
11:05 AM-11:55 AM: Finished my homework (which was due in two hours…) and checked my email about every five minutes.
12:00 PM-1:00 PM: Ate lunch with Dr. Ray Winquist, the Vice President of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and a few other students. The lunch was organized by a biomedical mentoring program called BioMatrix, which I have been a part of since freshman year. Dr. Winquist talked about his experiences in industry and answered some of our questions about his career.
1:00 PM- 4:30 PM: Experimental Biology recitation and lab. For eight hours a week, about a hundred of us manipulate E. coli DNA, sequence genes, and purify proteins as part of this lab class (which is a requirement for biology majors and pre-meds.) The class also has a scientific writing component.
4:40 PM- 5:00 PM: Met with the writing tutor for my Ancient Rome class. She taught Introduction to Fiction when I took it last Fall, so we have known each other for a while and consequently, we mostly talked about Campus Preview Weekend (since she’s the housemaster of East Campus) =)
5:05 PM- 6:00 PM: Went to my UROP. I work in the BioInstrumentation Lab and I’m trying to write up the results of my research. I made some decent progress on the Discussion section of my paper… maybe the writers block is finally wearing off?
6:00 PM- 7:15 PM: Ate dinner with MIT alums and students at the Society for Women Engineer’s Meet the Professionals dinner. This semiannual event gives us the opportunity to meet alumni who have established careers in a variety of fields. At my table were about six students and an alum who now works at TransForm Pharmaceuticals.
7:25(ish) PM: Ran into Matt, who was just finally heading home, only to return tomorrow morning at 8 AM! CPW doesn’t run itself…and unfortunately I forgot to take his picture!
8:00 PM – 1:00AM(ish): Did a combination of things, including checking my email compulsively, psetting, and playing with Photoshop. This will probably continue for the rest of the night… hopefully closing Gmail will boost my productivity.
Questions about life? CPW? Root locus? My sweet camera that takes panoramic pictures? Ask away.
FIRST POST! Bli, bli, bli. Awesome post, very interesting. Hope I can get the oppotunity to go to CPW next year. lol “playing with Photoshop” Sounds like how my day ended. As for questions, I would like to know what kind of camera you have. Mine had an “accident” and I’m looking for a new one.
very nice. I love the panoramic pic! hopefully I’ll see all of you guys at Meet The Bloggers ; )
Melis, if you want to be less compulsive about checking your Gmail account, you can download an application from Google called ‘Gmail Notifier.’ It’s free on their website, and it resides on the bottom right hand of your ‘Start’ button. It checks your email account every minute, so it’s less work for you! =)
What’s a root locus?
FYI-In your second picture it’s Ben and Amy…not Ben and Marisa. Oppsy!
De Petagama Saru: I have a Nikon Coolpix P4
Bon: Yes! We’re looking forward to seeing you!
GK: Unfortunately, I have Gmail Notifier, and it makes my life even worse because every time I hear the chime, I drop what I’m doing and check my Inbox…Thanks for the suggestion, though.
MH: So, let’s say you have a system (e.g. a little wheel that’s turned by a motor) and you want to control it so that’s it’s stable (e.g. it doesn’t spin out of control.) Root locus gives you a pretty graph that helps you figure out the parameters so that you can make your system stable (and you don’t need to do any complicated math, either!)
Oh. I see.
(That just kind of went over my head.)
=)
M
My appologies to Amy!!!! I’ll change it as soon as I get back to my laptop…
Dhaval: Feel free to ask your questions. You can post them as a comment on this blog or just email me.
The teacher’s handwrite is so small isn’t it?
Hi!! i’ve a big question for you guys. i’m an admit for the class of 2011 and since i live in mauritius (very far away) i wont be able to come to CPW. i emailed the physics dept, the mechanical eng. dept and CPW contacts but none of them replied – i know you may be kinda busy but i really need some answers to decide! HELP!!
That’s an awesome panorama. Mine only has this weird thing where you have to stitch it together on the computer. Curse the point-and-shoot……
where are you sittingin the class? and i like your photographs.takecare…….