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!