maggied’s blag

I managed to survive my week of four tests. My impression of the exams was that they all went reasonably well, particularly given the amount of time I actually had to study for each individual exam.

After the week ended, I decided I was getting cranky with the status of my inbox and completely reworked everything using The Trusted Trio (don’t hate on Lifehacker, folks). With additional hosage comes poorer organization, so I also took time to step back and make Remember the Milk happy again. In the process of browsing software I found Joe’s Goals, which a neat online app that lets you keep track of if you’ve been good or bad.  It’s useful for keeping track of habits and running logs. I’m using it to keep track of when I get to sleep…Positive and negative reinforcement for the win.

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Four tests this week. Ugh. We start off with the easier tests first, which is nice. 9.00 on Tuesday, 6.041 on Wednesday, and 6.012 followed by 6.003 on Thursday. Fortunately, I don’t have many obligations this week other than an EPIC UA Senate meeting tomorrow night. Tests mean no p-sets, so hopefully I’ll have plenty of time to study for the exams.

After the week is over, I’m going home for Friday and Saturday night, and will come back Sunday evening. Capen will be driving me down to Stamford on Friday, which is much more awesome than paying to take a train and sit alone for 3 hours. I’ll take Amtrak back on Sunday afternoon/evening.

Here’s to not dieing.

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…has kind of sucked. Two virtual all-nighters in a week makes this probably my crappiest week academically. Not necessarily the most stressful, by any means, but an extremely erratic up sleep schedule is never good. Many readers will probably scoff at these statements and think about how hardcore they are, but I don’t really care. Not sleeping sucks no matter who you are.

Now for just a little bit more complaining (there isn’t much more, I promise):

I seriously get the impression that the 6.003 staff takes problems that everyone is going to have a bitch of a time solving, and throws n+1 of them on the p-set, where n is a reasonable number of problems. Once you think about it for a while, the problems make sense, but it’s just so ass. The p-sets take longer than my other two p-set classes combined, and to top it all off there are Matlab questions at the end that involving dicking around with .m files until you get something that looks sinusoidal. The only good thing I have to say about these p-sets is the fact that they are now due on Fridays, rather than Wednesdays.

On a happier note: Rachel and I went on Vinayak and Drew’s radio show. Despite the fact that Drew was in Providence, his presence was still felt there in the studio. It was a lot of fun, with a little bit of nostalgia, a little bit of rocking out, a little bit of bumping, and a little bit of cool reflection packed into one hour. I also can’t forget Vinayak’s priceless “rolling his eyes at the girlies, again” kind of face the dominated a lot of the time in the studio, interwoven with statements of serious business. Alas, that’s how Auditory Stimuli seems to roll.

Things to look forward to: Fifth East party tonight! They always throw great parties, so I’m looking forward to unwinding for a bit. Saturday I’m hanging out with Sarah J. (whom I haven’t seen in months!). We’re going for Indian food and catching up on the times.

Pandora update: The station I made has panned out really well. With just the three original seeds, it’s playing Iron Maiden, Metallica, System of a Down, Testament, DragonForce, Black Sabbath, and AC/DC. I’m really satisfied.

It’s a little before 8am now. Late enough that, for me, it’s highly likely that if I go to sleep now, I won’t wake up in time to turn in the p-set I stayed up all night working on (oops). I’ve already battled with Useful for a few minutes, and decided that printing on hall is a useless endeavor. Building 66 seems so far away right now…

I think sleep wins out here.

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I’ve wanted to post, but haven’t been able to think of much to write about. This has led to a nagging feeling in the back of my brain that I should put something down on paper (figuratively speaking), but I never managed to bring myself to do it. I’m sitting here in the 66 cluster, considering that escaping briefly from Second East will allow me to clear my head. Capen’s sitting to my left browsing the internet, and the printer spools are whirling softly behind me. I’m printing out a bunch of lecture notes and assignments from what I missed this week. Tired, I went to classes all day Monday and Wednesday, but punted Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Oops.

My weariness is hardly due to a lack of enthusiasm about classes; rather, it seems as if the body is often stronger than the mind at times that prove to be inconvenient. This is something people around here hate to admit, but seems to creep up behind us when we least expect it.

Now I’m somewhat inspired. Things to write about: Term, movies, books. Term is going well so far for the one and a half weeks that it’s lasted. My classes are each enjoyable, although all the p-sets I have are due on Wednesdays. This doesn’t bode well for my weekends, but it is kind of nice to be “done” with work in the middle of the week.

Charles and I went to see Persepolis over IAP, and I never got a chance to talk about it. It’s based on a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, and was a movie that brought me to tears both by laughter and by sorrow. I highly recommend it. Yesterday, we watched Paris, je t’aime, which is a series of 18 vignettes about each of the sections of Paris. Some of the pieces were very artsy and really neat. Others were sad, and still others made no sense at all and were over seemingly before they started.

I just finished reading Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, and I understand now how countless people have fallen in love with his writing style. Wikipedia even tells me he gave a lecture at MIT in 2005! Although I never got to spend as much time reading it as I would have liked, Norwegian Wood captivated me as much as if I had sucked it up all in one sitting. Depressing, yet elegant, the book left me reflective and even more appreciative for those little things in life.

There are a few things to look forward to in the upcoming weeks: Gigantour (the concert I blogged about earlier) has moved to Friday night as part of a three day New England Metal Festival. Rock on. The MIT Concert Band’s annual tour is in April, and we’re going to Canada. Diss it as you might, I’ve never been to Canada so it should be fun. Spring break also isn’t far away, and hopefully I’ll do something much less lame than I did last year.

But to bring things back from the future, a bunch of us are going to stuff ourselves full of arguably delicious, cheap Chinese food at 7pm, followed by Across the Universe at 10pm. This will be my third time seeing the movie, but I think I will still enjoy it just as much as when I first heard “Girl” playing on Vinayak’s laptop speakers.

Now Capen is impatient. “Why is this revolving around Revolver?” he asks, and we leave the cluster.

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Before I say anything else, yay new skin! I like blue and black, so this one seems to fit nicely. I might tweak it if I have time, but for now it will stay this way.

I’m sitting in the Media Lab setting up a configuration file for the new Mobile Dexterous Social Robot that they are developing here. It’s interesting so far, but I haven’t done much yet.

This term is probably going to be the most exciting yet most challenging term yet. I’m sticking to four classes, but I’ve got a lot of extra-curricular activities on my plate. The classes I’m taking are: 6.003 (Signals and Systems), 6.012 (Microelectronic Devices & Circuits), 6.041 ( Probabilistic Systems Analysis) and 9.00 (Introduction to Psychology). The UA will pick up again this evening, and my term for that continues until the end of the year. Inauguration for the new East Campus exec is this Wednesday (I’ll be serving as EC VP/Room Assignment Chair). Then I’ve got the UROP I’m working on and (hopefully, if I have time), Concert Band again. I have no idea how crazy it will be, but we’ll see.

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Term is rapidly coming to an end. This term has been great at times, horrible at times, and meh a lot of the time. All the more support for the “term is a sinusoidal function” theory. It’s probably the busiest I’ve ever been, but also the most rewarding. I’ve made many more friends, and I might have lost some, but hopefully all of that will work itself out in the end. I’ve learned a lot, and am excited about pursuing more EE stuff over the next few years. Overall, I’d give this term two thumbs up for character building.

Classes haven’t taken up that much time this term, but I’ve been plenty busy working on my UROP, UA business, Hall Chair stuff, and other miscellaneous activities. Time management is key, I keep telling myself, and as we enter the final week in which assignments are due, I’m going to need as much of it as I can get. My schedule’s gotten erratic, as it tends to as time goes on, but maintaining some degree of organization is something I am proud of.

Some exciting snippets from throughout the course of the term:

• Our frosh are integrating really well with hall. We really had no idea how things would turn out, but it seems to be going even better than I could have asked for.

• Second East had it’s term party in early November. The theme this time around was “British Dystopia”, and the party was a great success. There’s been a lot of “British Dystopia” floating around. The UA senate was hacked on Guy Fawke’s night, I saw “A Clockwork Orange” for the first time, and I’m reading “1984″.

• I went home twice, and hung out with my friends there. Sarah J. also visited me from Harvard on Saturday! Home was a nice break away from the fast paced way of doing things here, which I really like in small chunks.

• Jess, David, Hargobind, and I will be competing in MASLAB this IAP! I’m really excited!

• My term as UA senator has gone okay. Yes, there is a lot of wanking, but ultimately I do feel like I am sort of making a difference, or at least keeping people from doing things that are stupid.

• I decided to run for EC VP. Elections are tomorrow; they should be interesting. I am really just looking forward to the whole process being over. Less than 24 hours to go!

I’m sure there are things I haven’t listed here, but I suppose it is time to face the fact that I will be a slave to work until Friday evening. Sigh.

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Things are going. I like this. Rush was crazy, emotionally charged, and I’m glad it’s over. With rush came a vigorous and somewhat unpleasant trip through the past along with thorough analysis of the present, but in the end, it helped me decide where I want to go with my future. Although things certainly aren’t completely peachy, I feel that I’ve worked out the kinks that I was struggling with, and have a fresh perspective. Overall, I’d call it a win.

Now I can finally settle into a regular routine, and get myself back on track. Term gives me a sense of purpose and drive that I was struggling with over the summer. I have class at 9am or 9:30am every morning. This sucks. However, I’m trying to make the best of it; getting to bed relatively early (at least compared to previous terms), going to all my lectures, and waking up early enough before classes that I can actually function by the time I get to them. I have convenient breaks for lunch, which is really nice. I have hour (and up to 3 hour) breaks over the course of the day that I have managed to remain productive during, so I’m already comfortably ahead on my assignments.

I’m taking 4 classes this term, along with a UROP, my hall chair duties, and hopefully I’ll be getting back into the concert band. Classes are: 6.002 (Circuits and Electronics), 6.02 (Introduction to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science II), 8.01 (Physics I), and 24.900 (Introduction to Linguistics). The UROP I’m working on is the same as I had over the summer. The course load seems pretty manageable so far, which hopefully means I’ll have lots of hours to put into my UROP.

Of the few punty activities I’ve been up to, I’ve spent time watching Firefly with hall, and reading High Fidelity, a book that Charles recommend I read. Admittedly, there has also been a fair amount of napping.

I believe that is it for now; I should be fairly free the upcoming days so maybe I will blag about something exciting.

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Things were pretty crazy this past week. Lots of rush stuff happened (in fact, it’s over now). Eric Schmiedl put up photos from the earlier days of construction that can be found here.  I had a nice time during rush, although I have to say things have certainly been “emotionally charged”. It’s an understatement, but that’s cool.

Frosh have arrived on hall and everything in that department seems to be going well. I can hardly believe that classes are starting soon; my current plans include scheduling a damn appointment with my adviser, and getting my school supplies together for term.

Despite the fact that lots has happened, I don’t have that much more to say. I’ll try to post another time before classes, at least.

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Well, I was alone in lab until about 9:20. I mention it mainly because I’m typically the last person to arrive in lab during the day, and therefore the last person to leave. This week, though, the trend will probably be reversed.

I was originally going to take this week off to focus solely on rush stuff, but since I missed about 3 weeks worth of work over the course of the summer, I decided to work 20 hours this week. My plan is to work from 9am-1pm, which is convenient because we have a few scans in the morning this week. Once I get out of work, I’ll be able to go home, have lunch, and then everyone else will be getting out of bed to start building. Forcing myself to wake up at 8:15am every morning was something that I tried to do during the summer, but failed miserably. Now that term is around the corner, and I know I have morning classes, it is time to start getting used to waking up early again.

Hopefully my grand plan will not be thrown off as rush stuff really gets started, although according to a few upperclassmen, it probably will be. I’m not one to miss sleep though, no matter the cost, so I guess we will see.

Speaking of rush stuff, progress is already being made. We moved all the wood on Saturday, which proved to be a bit more of a bitch than expected. Home Depot brought a forklift to help move the lumber, but couldn’t comfortably get it into the courtyard, and refused to move the rest of the order anywhere near. So we got out whatever we could and hauled/drove the rest of the wood over near Talbot.

Yesterday, the tour guide cage was built, and Vlad made a pogo stick again. Raphael, Vinayak, Anthony and I set up the speakers and the courtyard got its supply of AC/DC, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Queen, Cake, and Dropkick Murphys. Hopefully we’ll get some Flogging Molly going later today. Two bigger projects also started building. For the Hamster wheel vehicle (James O.’s baby), both wheels are finished, and preliminary testing of the differential drive system have been conducted. Moving the two wheels together proved really difficult, but playing around with them individually was actually really fun. Olga’s rotating seesaw project also made a reasonable amount of progress. There was a significant bottleneck due to the fact that she needed to dig a 3-foot deep hole in rocky soil with nothing but two mediocre shovels and a crowbar. After that was done, the supports for the seesaw were installed, and there was lots of dancing and photos taken on top of the main beam.

It’s almost time for scanning, but I’ll post more in the upcoming days about rush including links to pictures if there are any. People probably won’t post any pictures until the end of rush, though. Vinayak and I are going to Ozzfest later today (lolz), so I will comment on that, too.

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I felt pretty tired Monday and Tuesday of this week, but things picked up today when the lab took a trip to Professor Corkin’s sister-in-law’s summer house on Canobie Lake. The house was beautiful, and because it was older and then renovated, it was right on the water. Current zoning restrictions would prevent newer homes from being built that close to the lake.

We left the lab at around 9:15am (I actually woke up at 8am, I’m proud of myself), and arrived at the lake around 10. There were lots of munchies to eat, so I snacked on tortilla chips and chatted with the other UROPs that had come along. A whopping 4 UROPs were in attendance this time, so it wasn’t really awkward. Around noon we decided to sit in the sun outside the house, because the wind coming off the lake was pretty chilly. I found a really comfy lounge chair and fell asleep in it for a little over an hour. Unfortunately, I rolled over on my side while I was napping, and I was lying there just long enough for half of my face to get sun burned. It looks pretty silly.

About a half hour after I woke up, David (a grad student in the lab), was finished grilling and we had a very nice lunch. Navine (a UROP in the lab) made cake for Bettiann (the lab admin) because it was her birthday. The cake was pretty awesome; Navine made it from scratch. I ducked out from the party around 4:45pm with David because I was pretty tired from the whole ordeal.

When I came home, a bunch of us went out to play soccer. I hadn’t played in a while; although we only had a handful of people, we still passed the ball around and it was a good time. I think I got a little bit more burned, so it’s starting to balance out the whole “two-face” thing I had going on earlier.

Overall, things seem to be getting better than they have been over the course of the past month; it’s just too bad that the Summer is almost over.

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