Quips Heard at Mines, Pt. II

This is a lot belated, but I know everyone can't go without their famous Mines Quotes! (Click here for last year's edition). T'was a year! A year of flannel Fridays, late nights in Brown, late nights at the Stoop, late nights in the Linux Lab, late nights in the Java classroom, and late nights everywhere else. When it gets late, we say funny stuff. Or stuff that seemed funny to me at the time. So here goes, and thanks friends, classmates, and even professors for a terribly great year.

"If you don't know what you're doing, just cite the Invertible Matrix Theorem." ~ Ethan

"Why are you bored? Do homework, there's no reason to be bored." ~ Me, to Carolyn

"I'm learning so much researching this atmo cloud seeding data!!!!" ~ No one ever (In GP EPICS II)

"I could hear your lollygagging from down the hall!" ~ Nate, on Ben's lollygagging

Rebecca: "I think I just felt a nerd on my arm."
Ethan: "Sorry."

"Wow. We know all the math we want to know...." ~ Marilyn

"This is why you don't be friends with men, only me." ~ Carolyn

John: "Hey let me do that crazy integral for you!"
Me: "Said no one ever."

"My physics notebook brings the boys to the yard." ~ Me

"Guys I know how we can stop the wave- destructive interference!!" ~ us at Urbana

Nick: "Am I a hipster by by not being a hipster?" 
Quentin: "Or is that the 2nd derivative of being a hipster..." 

"Notecards for tests are the new Pokemon cards. You treat them all delicately and some are better than others." ~ Natalie

Carolyn: "ChemEs make me sad. They're studying all the time."
Me: "ChemEs make me feel happy because they're sad all the time."

"This is like the biggest curve in the history of history." ~ John, on the Physics II exam curve

"They call it Dead Week because after everyone gets through this week they're all dead." ~ Matt

"I thought about going into Mining. But I'm too tall" ~ Brandon

David: "Is this...? This is all Pokemon music!!"
Colton: "Yes it is." (on our way to Urbana in St. Louis)

Me (on our EPICS earthquake data): "What does NPH stand for?"
Rosie: "Neil Patrick Harris?"

"I guess one class of Thermo isn't so bad compared to a whole major of it". ~ Nathaniel

"If I had a job where I could get green boxes all day, I'd totally do that!" ~ John

"I want to be Terry when I grow up." ~ Austin, on our awesome department head

"Uniformity is for squares" ~ Me

Alejandra: "Put it into that wolf thing."
John: "Wolfram Alpha?"

"16pi....the answer to everything!" ~ Brandon

"Mark Goldie was the savior of Phys II." ~ The kid sitting behind Mark in class (also students everywhere)

"You're killin' me, Bigs!" ~ Tim

Professor quotes:
"Don't do drugs, people.....DO PHYSICS!!!" ~ Chuck Stone

"We don't call the Coulomb the Cool, but we call the Ampere the Amp." ~ Chuck Stone

"There are no infinite cakes in life. This is a bit of a disappointment." ~ Roel

"You can't escape Gauss!!" ~ Roel

"Why think when I can run code?" ~ Dave Hale

"If you try to graph its equation of motion, it looks like a spring on Spring Break. Springs gone wild!" ~ Rod Switzer
(There are many more Switzer quotes transcribed in my Calc III and DiffEq notes...unfortunately they're in a box 60 miles from me right now. So this one will have to do.)

"Maybe there's aliens with refrigerators on the other side of the moon...? I dunno!" ~ Humphrey
"It's not rocket science, it's rock science!" ~ Humphrey

The man, the myth, the legend: Shane Johnson quotes:

Me: "I wish I'll get 100 on the exam and beat Shane."
Shane: "You'll need 101 to beat me."

"So that's what the DiffEq book looks like..."

Shane: "Series are the reason I almost failed Calc."
Me: "You almost failed Calc?"
Shane: "Well, almost got a B, I mean."

"He just seems like he would be the nicest grandpa...and then he goes and hands out B+'s!!"

"Doesn't matter- all I need is a 76....I mean, I can get 19 questions right on that. "

"Geez, I just don't miss problems!"

"I never distiguish."

"I wish we had LESS time to study physics. I wish we could take the test now."

"Just know that you can get it done. Always. "

"That's why I don't cheat off of anything because I'm like, 'I'm probably right'."

Michelle: "If I could get a B in Java, I'd be ecstatic."
Shane: "Ec-static fields?"

"I just can't wait until it's summer so I can watch the Discovery Channel."

"I don't hyperventilate. Hyperventilating is bad. I focus. I get it done."

P.S. I miss you guys. 

Dear Younger Self: What Really Matters

Dear Younger Self,

It was dead week, and Brandon and I were in the library after a long year. “I’ve got acne, weight loss, sleep deprivation..., all symptoms of stress,” Brandon said.

“Yeah,” I replied, “I’ve got the same, except weight gain, and I heard those were symptoms of depression.”

“Probably both.” We were only slightly joking.

Sophomore year was hard. You might have expected that since you knew at least Fall semester held 18 credit hours.

It was more than the academics, though. I was hung over from what I thought would be the best year of my college days, and spent the first part of sophomore year reminiscing about the epicness of freshman year and moaning how it would never be the same again. Living with 7 girls in a house was a culture shock, and I quickly grew tired of sharing a room. As unappetizing as the cafeteria was, living on frozen dinners and the occasional macaroni and cheese was worse. Spending time with friends had to be scheduled, as they quickly grew busy too. I had involved myself in way too many stuff, as meetings filled every hour in the day not occupied by class. I frequently stayed up past 3AM, as there was physically no time to get all my homework done (which I started neglecting). And at the end of the day, I was incredibly lonely.

At the end of the year, all my motivation was gone as I wrote here. I desperately needed school to end. Grades didn't matter.

I tried to salvage the last few weeks for making memories in what I thought was an empty year of torture. But the whole year really wasn't that empty. I’ll remember doing Linear Algebra at Starbucks with Ethan and then meeting people at Woody’s for College Night, late nights at The Stoop doing homework due the next day, the road trip to Urbana conference, playing peanuts with my housemates and Marie getting super into it, Lon-Capa aliases, the snowy spring break trip, epic shenanigans, and green boxes. And the such like.

I came back from school and cleaned off my shelves, throwing away old binders from high school and shoving my trophies on one shelf. As much as I threw away, much of stuff remained, and they seemed so useless there, unable to be thrown away, defeating their purpose if I put them in a box. When you’re in high school, or even younger, every accomplishment or activity seems like a stepping stone to college, the ultimate step. The geography bee gives out scholarships. Various activities can be put on scholarship and college applications. My high school letter and its pins are so I would get into a good school. And grades mattered a lot to me.

Dusty on the shelf, they all seemed so useless. They only mattered to get me here.

Now that I was here, I realized what really matters. It’s not grades. It’s not the number of people you can meet. It’s not how much money you can make writing, editing, or selling tickets. It’s not even getting a job or into grad school at the end of it all. What really matters are those moments you’ll remember, those people you’ll remember, and the positive impact your short, God-given time here can have.

So, incoming sophomore, remember as you embark on another year that it’s those moments that will make the torture worth it. And they’re also the reason you came to be here. 

Sophomoritis, or The End v2.0

The lack of motivation that saturated the last month of sophomore year still numbs me now. In fact, as I write this, I'm eating the cereal I never ate during the school year because I'm too lazy to make any other meal. (Well I'm always too lazy to make a meal, but I usually hide behind the excuse of being too busy). I've been putting off writing this post for days (or a month, you could say, as my last post chronicled my E-Days adventures). The crash and lethargicness of the summer has hit me after eight months of the frantic rhythm of 18 to 18.5 credit hours. Now the only reason to get off the couch is because the leather has gotten warm and sticky in the heat of May. My room is a mess, full of boxes and clothes I've brought back from Golden. I've allowed my curly hair to roam free like always (because I'm too busy to tame it doing school anyway), but my mom has noticed and insisted I attempt to do something with it on occasion, comparing my locks to that of my sister's, whose owner has time to wake up at 7AM. But for me, waking up at 7AM has always been a sin-- even for 8AM classes I've woken up at 7:40-- and any sort of effort to do anything cannot be mustered.

I'm just trying to recover from this semester while being in awe of how quickly half of my undergraduate days have flown by.

***

"I wanted to kill myself," Michelle said of the last day of EPICS presentations and the last day of school. I doodled the earth's magnetic field and volcanoes and tornadoes on my team evaluation sheet. I hope my professor liked it. I don't think any of us had caffeine that morning. All six classes of mine were tiring, and most of them were review sessions. I looked at the clock in Static Fields more times than Shane, passed notes to Rosie, and made faces on my fingers. "What's up with you guys today?" my advisor/professor had asked. "We have Sophomoritis," I solemnly replied, "like Senioritis, but for sophomores."

Unfortunately true, that's pretty much how the semester went. Constant business and motion capped off by more intense business struggling to get done. I had the benefit of being certain to pass all of my classes and the attitude of being perfectly content to do mediocre. This time freshman year, I was going insane trying to ace tests and get a higher grade...what happened to my motivation?

I had forgotten how to study, anyway. All semester, homework and a slight review had been sufficient to get me through the midterms (not to brag-- and I DO NOT recommend this style of "studying"). So here I was, the Thursday before finals started Saturday, staring at the list of Linear Algebra theorems in Arthur Lakes Library, and starting to silently freak out that I wasn't prepared for this. Additionally, I feared I wouldn't have time to become prepared, for I was going to go see the Iron Man III premier that night. Friday, or Dead Day, was devoted to Differential Equations, though I really didn't need to study for it.

Finals Week actually flew by pretty quickly, though sometimes it seemed to drag. 5 more days, 4, 3, 2. I had been keeping track since Shane began asking me in January. The 100-plus days had dragged by in some moments, yet flew by all together. As I took one of my finals, the heading of "MAY 5, 2013" took me by surprise for a second. The year really was flying by, and sophomore year really was almost over. It took all my strength to muster up just enough motivation to get through the final five days though. So many times I wanted to give up and go to bed.

I finally got to go to bed May 8. After nearly nine months.