May 24th-June 7th, 2011

Wow...I really do fail at updating this thing....

The past few weeks haven't been extremely eventful outside of hanging out with friends, doing some homework, and finishing up some minor projects at Axion.

Even though I've been working and taking two (albeit two really easy classes, health and history), I still find myself ending up with tons of free time. Its really nice actually as I have the opportunity to earn some cash and at the same time relax the summer as much as possible!

Work has been pretty hectic though. We had a big order of multiwell MEAs to ship out and I was in charge of making sure they were plated and basically ready to ship. Plating the electrodes and the grounds with platinum is crucial because it helps to reduce the noise on the electrodes which means that whoever is using the device can get a better idea of what the cells are actually doing. Plating isn't exactly hard, but just time consuming for the plating process has to run for long a time. I finished up the last of the MWs today and boy I am glad to be finally done for awhile!

I've been thinking about high school a lot lately, I don't know why, but its just been on my mind recently. Many of us started using Facebook our sophomore or junior year and as I approach my junior of college (eek), I find it fascinating to see how myself and my friends have grown up and changed over the course of a few years. Back then, college was just a vague, distant thought that occasionally popped up as we started getting those letters in the mail asking us to visit some college in a far off state (college spam as I used to call it). Of course that all changed by the time our senior year rolled around as basically all our free time was spent on college applications and trying to figure out what we want to do with the rest of our lives. Suddenly transitioning from an almost carefree life of not having to worry about the future to applying to some institution that will consume the next 4+ years of my life was shocking to me. Luckily by the time I headed down to GT, I decided to embrace it and I'm so glad I did, but that's another story.

Though high school wasn't the most idyllic time in my life, I certainly do miss some aspects of it. I miss being able to see my friends that I've known for most of my life daily. I miss playing varsity tennis with my team mates after school. I miss the field trips our IT class would take to different competitions. I just miss the community of friends that I had around me nearly wherever I went. Don't get me wrong, I have some great friends in college who I wouldn't trade for anything, I just miss the bond that I had with my friends that I had known at that point for four or more years.

Luckily, I've still kept in contact with most of my good friends back home in Ohio. Heck I would even go so far to say that our friendship has grown. I usually skype, play Starcraft, our just talk to my high school friends on an almost daily basis and I am so grateful for that. I'm just terrified of losing my friends to the passage of time as we grow older and go our separate ways. I know its probably going to happen sometime or later, but I DON'T want it happen and I'll be trying my best to try to prevent it.

Same thing with my college friends, I would love if we all went to the same grad school after college but I know that probably not going to happen. I've gotten to know some fantastic people at Tech, and I definitely do not want to lose contact with them ever.

And now for something completely different:

I was pretty shy in high school (outside of my friends/team mates). I vowed to change that when I came to Tech and its turned to be one of the best choices in my life. But I've always had trouble asking out a girl that I like. Its not exactly the rejection that I fear, I'm just afraid (aka paranoid I guess) of the gossip it might generate plus anything else that might follow it. I know it might be juvenile to think like that, but social rejection has always been one of largest fears. I was picked on a lot when I was younger and it has stuck with me to certain extent. I've have this really awesome (not really, its hard to indicate sarcasm over teh intartubes) ability to read into things too much and sometimes misjudge people's true intentions and feeling. There have been times that I have kicked myself for it, but I continue to struggle with it. Half the time I'm like "Go for it! You got it!" and the other half of my mind is like "I would stay back, you don't know if she likes you or no, better play it safe".

Sigh....well I got plenty of life ahead of me, might as well take a few risks.

May 15th-23rd, 2011

So much for the whole "updating as often as possible" promise I made a few weeks ago. I have this really awesome ability to completely forget about little things like that...

In any case, my first week of summer classes went quite well. My summer schedule is super easy, basically I'm just taking Health, History of the Vietnam War, and working. The only bad thing is that I usually do not get done until like 6 every night so it pretty much just kills my day. The good news is that since I'm working, my bank account is getting nice and full. I just can't wait to spend it all on loans and textbooks come fall :D.

Yea loans! Its like money, but you pay for it!

I've always been interested in history, as the past can teach us how to prevent the same pitfalls our ancestors encountered.

Such as why Napoleon riding a dinosaur was totally awesome

Learning how societies rise and fall with the passage of time is quite amazing as most go through the typical cycle of birth through rebellion or nationalism which is followed by pride, hubris, and decadence which leads to a death spiral from which the nation can not recover. Though some might dismiss history as a boring subject, the implications of ignoring it are devastating.

On a lighter note, I'm really glad my a good chunk of my friends have stayed at Tech this summer. One of my fears was that I would be incredibly lonely and only have work and classes to entertain me. Taking a light class load has been fantastic as I've been able to hang out with some of my friends that I did not see often last semester. I really do love getting off of work or class and just going back and chilling. Sometimes its so relaxing just to be able to sit back, talk, and enjoy life!

May 12th-May 14th

The past couple of days have been quite nice :).

Very good day sir!

A few days ago I found out that I managed to keep my 4.0! I was quite surprised actually, after suffering through all my classes I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to keep it, especially after bombing one of my physics tests and not doing so well on an econ test.

Physics and microecon in a nutshell

But in the end it all worked out well! I do have to thank God for everything though, He has really has helped me through a lot since I got college.

The last couple of days have been quite relaxing. Work has gone by smoothly and I've had some good resulting plating the electrodes on the MEAs I work with (Here's some more info about the company I work with, we're a small biotech startup on Tech's campus: http://www.axionbiosystems.com/ ). Working at Axion has been absolutely fantastic. The company has about a total of 16 people and the small size is great because I get to know everyone. Also since the company is small, I'm able to do tons of stuff which is great because I thrive in a fast paced environment.

I ran into a pair of homeless guys two days ago. I was walking back from work along North Ave when these two men came up to me and starting talking. I introduced my self and kept walking with them down toward North Ave apartments. eventually one of them mentioned that he needed money. Now this part is always hard to handle. I want to help these people out, but giving money away isn't usually the best option because they could always use for ulterior purposes plus there are a lot of organizations around Atlanta (especially near Tech) that can help them out more than what I can monetarily. What I usually try to do is buy them a meal somewhere. Since the Varsity was close, I offered to get whatever they wanted. One of the men kept pushing for me to give him cash and even wanted me to go to an ATM to withdraw money. The more he pushed, the more I became wary and I held my position about just offering to buy them a meal and directing them to a church/group that would be able to assist them more. Eventually the one man stop asking me and went off while his friend stayed with me and told me that he wouldn't mind something to eat.

We walked up to the Varsity together and I went inside and got some stuff for him and his friend. While I was walking back with him, we began talking about how food is useful, it doesn't really help in the long term. I completely agreed with him as I believe the best way to get out of poverty is not through just money and food, but through education and training (the good old "Teach a man to fish" saying". Money can help in the short term, but education can truly help lift someone up.

In the end I thanked the man for his time and went back to my apartment a little more grateful than I had been the other day. Sometimes we all forget how truly blessed we all are. I've worked with homeless people before and they are just like you and me except they have fallen on hard times. So the next time you see someone out on the streets, offer to buy them meal or take them to a shelter, because all even though we might feel safe and impervious in our current lifestyle, we could all potentially end up on the streets one day at the mercy of a stranger.

Rest of Finals Week and May 8th-11th

Like I said here is the rest my finals week, enjoy!

My finals week was kinda intense. I had organic II on Monday, with Physics II and Microeconomics on Wednesday back to back, with my last psychology test on Friday.

I had a somewhat late night on Sunday, due to the fact that Osama died and orgo just being annoying like its usual self. Luckily the exam wasn't until 11 so I had time to sleep in. Its always a surreal feeling walking to an exam, like basically the entire semester is will be decided within the next 3 hours or so.

The orgo exam was interesting...It started off ok then became pretty hard. The multiple choice wasn't too bad, but my professor decided to toss on some pretty tricky mechanisms. Usually I enjoy mechanisms because they are like puzzles. What I don't enjoy is having no idea how do said mechanism. I seriously stared at that problem for a good 30 minutes. Sometimes when I am stuck I try working backwards from a point that I know is part of the solution. Luckily it worked :D. I spent most of the three hours on that exam, but I think I solved most of it.

Physics came on Wednesday at 8 AM. Seriously...who the heck thought having a final, let alone a physics final at 8 AM was a good idea. The professors knew that we were going to be up studying for the final. I bet their response to that would have simply been this:

What made it even better was the fact that we also had our last physics test right before the final! Yay! I was absolutely dreading that because physics tests have a nice way of screwing you out of a lot points for the simplest of mistakes (see my rants about it in the previous posts). I don't know whether my professor decided to be nice or if he simply forgot to make the test hard, but the test was not too bad at all! He also tossed in 8 extra credit points! I was pretty ecstatic after that and the final was surprisingly not hard at either!

Microecon on the other hand...

I don't hate econ, trust me, I actually find it interesting, especially how everything interacts on a global and national level. But I simply did not find the class good at all. My professor would simply read from the slides which were taken straight from the book. The book wasn't even that great all. I never had my interest in a class completely drained, but boy did it come close. The exam was more annoying than anything else. The questions were straight forward, but just so tedious to solve out. Like some questions had these huge tables that required you to solve all the rows to answer just one multiple choice question. Its fine if its only once or twice but there were 50 MC and 25 T/F. Ugh.

Well, psychology was just that, psychology lol. The test reminded me of high school, 50 MC and the scantron was even the same style we used in high school! Yay memories!

My parents came down Friday night and we enjoyed a great meal at Antico's. Antico's is perhaps the best pizza in Atlanta hands down. Its a bit on the expensive side, but other than that, it is absolutely amazing.

The rest of the weekend was spent moving all my stuff from one end of the campus to the other via a small little Hyundai. Nothing like spending a few hours moving all the junk you collected over the past semester.

I finally got moved in Sunday and wished my parents goodbye. It was really great seeing them down here and I even got to place tennis with my dad which was fantastic. (Protip: Not playing tennis for a few months can have dire consequences on your game).

Monday was a pretty lazy day, slept in until 2 (12 hours of sleep ftw!) plus I got some chores done as well which is always nice.

Well thats the past week summed up in a nutshell! Good night and good luck!

April 28th-May 7th

You know how I said I swear I would update this more often? Yea that did NOT include finals week.

Hate to say it but during finals week my life basically consists of smashing my face into whatever book seems to be more daunting at the time, which was basically a rotating series of orgo, physics II and microecon.

Yea! Go college life! Pro tip: Studying works best by osmosis as seen here

The weird thing was, it just did not feel like the finals weeks I've experienced in the past. I remember my first year at Tech and I was absolutely freaking out about my finals, like that was the most stressed out I have ever been in my life. I stayed about until 2-3 AM every night trying to get as much work done as possible and then waking up at 9 AM to make sure I got a head start on the day. Absolutely. Miserable.

But like I said, this dead week just did not have that impending doom feel about it. Not that I miss it but, I just seemed to lack the whole "Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap" feeling demostated in Figure 1:

Figure 1: Realizing that you have 50 chapters to cover in two days

Its not like I lacked the ability to care, I just seemed to finally have calmed down about finals, and boy did that help. I have learned to approach finals as just another round of tests to take care of (thought ones worth 20-35% of my grade which I try not to think about). Though sometimes one has no other option to simply cram, I found that by taking breaks from one subject and work on another one was pretty effective. First of all, it gives your mind a mental break from whatever you happen to be studying at the time. Secondly, it helps you study more effectively. Say you go from studying orgo to working on physics. If you come back to orgo and find that you still remember most of the stuff, you should be good because the info is now starting to go in to your long term memory.

Fast forward to Sunday night and I just get back to my place to work cook my friends some pancakes and waffles for a midnight breakfast. My room mate Zach comes in and tells me that apparently Osama Bin Laden was killed. Now my first reaction was basically along the lines of "What?". He keeps telling me that Obama is going to make an announcement soon. I was in total disbelief. Could the man who killed 3,000 of our citizens 10 years ago truly be dead? Could the man that defined my generation be gone? My mind was racing while I flipped some pancakes. "How did this happen?", "Is it true?", "Whats going to happen next?". If I did not have my organic II final the next day, I would have gone outside and joined the celebration. Seriously, this thing was momentous. Our generation's villain had finally been killed. All around campus people were going around chanting USA! USA!, and it just wasn't GT's campus. My friends from all around the US sent me texts saying that their campus was in an uproar. This was not just an isolated phenomenon, the entire nation was celebrating the demise of someone who had plagued our collective conscience for an entire decade.

Lets just say that studying orgo for the rest of the night wasn't that bad at all :D

Right now its 1 AM on May 8th and I'm getting tired, I'll sum up the rest of the week tomorrow. Simply too much epicness for one post.

But I'll still leave you guys with another one of my favorite songs!

April 25th-27th, 2011

Yay Dead Week! The time when all of Georgia Tech shifts from its typical pattern of studying, tests and pain to even more studying and pain! Though professors are typically forbidden to give tests or large projects during this week, they are can be quite creative. "Oh that massive paper isn't exactly a project, just homework, by the way, you also have an exam in my class as well. Good luck!"

Typical Georgia Tech Dead Week, minus the zombies

Monday was an excellent day, class ended by two PM (no physics lab! Yay!). I was actually productive as well! I got through a chapter of orgo and did a bit of physics. My main goal for this week is to stagger everything out and try my best not to die, which may prove easier said than done. I did manage to beast out a psychology paper in class though, so I'm pretty proud of that. I also ended up getting a 102 on my last orgo test so that really helped kick off my week to a good start :D.

Yea random meaningless business poster about productivity!

There is something nice about not having class on Tuesday (or Thursday for that matter), aka not having to worry about having to wake up at some terrible hour in the morning (sadly I'll will not have that pleasure in the fall).

Fall Schedule, click in enlarge

I did manage to meet with my Organic I professor though and the meeting went pretty well. Basically I'm looking to TA for orgo I/II and/or work in a lab part time because I'll only be working at Axion part time during the summer. My orgo I prof was super nice and basically he went with me to talk to the guy who hires TAs and he (hopefully) hooked me up with a TA job. I just have to wait to hear from the other guy! It was definitely a nice boost to an already fantastic week!

Today hasn't been to out of the ordinary, just more studying but with some tornadoes thrown in for the heck of it. Tornadoes have always freaked me out a bit because when I used to live in Illinois, we would get hit with them all the time. Combine that with the fact I was like 8 at the time and you get something that stays with you. We got hit with a lot of severe weather today. The entire south was hit by either storms or tornadoes and sadly there were a lot of deaths :\. I was in the library studying with some friends today and some storms were blowing though. There was a tornado warning for some cities south of us, but nothing too big. Then when I was watching the storm with some friends, the library announced that a tornado was spotted in metro Atlanta and we had to get to the basement ASAP. Well, cue the usual "CRAP CRAP CRAP" moment. We hurried back to our table, grabbed our stuff then made our way downstairs as fast as possible to see a huge crowd of students trying to go down a flight of stairs. All of sudden they start heading back up....

Turns out it was a false alarm. Apparently some guy at the GTPD misread the watch as a warning....Yea....

Eventually my friends and I made our way over to Whittaker where I just finished studying some Physics II. Its 3 AM right now and I'm exhausted. Good night and good luck!

April 19th-24th, 2011

Crap! I keep forgetting to update this thing...I swear I'll get better!

In any case, last week wasn't too bad. Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty ordinary days. Sleep, wake up, classes, eat, Starcraft, repeat. It was really nice not having to worry about synth lab this week. Speaking of that, I still do not have my final grade yet. I swear the TA for that class is just trying to prolong our suffering as much as possible...

Work wasn't that bad at all, I had to inspect more die so that production increase. This job is definitely the best I've ever had. Working for a small start up is so much better than a big corporation. Less annoying bureaucratic nonsense and you actually get to know people. Plus with a start up, everything is going so fast that there is always something new to take care of. Considering I've worked in placing ranging from a computer store to a grocery store, this job is amazing.

I had my last Organic II test on Friday, which I'm actually kind of sad about :(. I've absolutely loved organic chemistry (which makes me weird I guess). In fact I'm going to go talk to my orgo I professor tomorrow to see if I could possibly TA. Man, that would great if I actually got that. I used to tutor students in chemistry last summer and it was absolutely fantastic and I loved every moment of it.

Have you ever thought how your life would be different if you made a different decision? Yea, happened to me on Thursday. Its kinda funny actually, because during my senior year, I was dead set on RPI, my dad's alma mater. I went to visit it during the summer and other than the 12 hour car drive, I fell in love with the college almost instantly. The beautiful, old brick buildings covered in ivy made me feel like I jumped back 200 years to Ye Olde England. At that time, GT wasn't even on my radar. My Dad mentioned it a few times during applications and I only applied because he basically forced me to. Now fast forward about 3 months and I'm sitting in my room trying to decide where I'll spend the next 4 years of my life at. RPI had a great campus and culture to boot, but for some reason I was drawn to GT. Tech was also way less expensive than RPI ($35k vs $52k) and I guess that influenced my choice, but I still wonder how my life would be different if I did decide to head further up north to a far away land called New York.

For one thing I seriously doubt I would be a biochemistry major right now. I used to (and still do) love game design and RPI had one of the best game design programs in the country. When I went to visit, I brought my portfolio and showed it to a few professors and they loved it. I probably would have my same personality, though I bet I would be slightly more reserved (due to the fact that at GT everybody is bit eccentric). The more I think about it doubt I would have as many friends as I do down here. RPI is a more traditional college than GT (in terms of majors and culture) and my geeky personality would most likely have a harder time fitting in. Overall while I might have enjoyed my life up at RPI (especially being close to my friend Michael), I would still pick GT because while hard, I still love the geeky culture and general southern hospitality.

I'll do one of these every time I post now, there has been tons of events in my life that have always had a "what-if" component to it haha.

Also, today was Easter! Many people see Easter as the time when a bunny goes around and gives people chocolate goodies to make them fat. However to Christians, the day has a much larger significance. Easter is the day that Jesus was resurrected after dying on the cross. The past couple of days basically build up to Easter. The Thursday before Easter is called Maudy Thursday and it is the day when Jesus was betrayed by Judas. The following day, Good Friday was when Jesus was actually crucified. The reason why Easter is so important to Christians is because it is when Jesus defeated sin. Basically in Christian theology, Jesus died so that we could enter Heaven. He took on all the evil (sin) in the world so that we as people may get to know Him. Thats why many Christian songs contain phrases like "He is my Redeemer" because Jesus paid for our sins in full. Easter services are usually pretty joyous because of how important the day is to us, but they can be somber as well as we also remember the suffering that Jesus went through for us (getting whipped and nailed to cross isn't exactly a pleasant experience).

In any case, I've got finals in a week (organic II on Monday, Physics II and econ back to back on Wednesday and a hopefully easy Psychology test on Friday). Wish me luck!