Year in Review (Reeeally long post)

Yeah, so with the end of the quasi-infamous (at least among fizzers) 12-month stretch, I figured I might jot down a few notes for myself on happenings this year with regards to my pursuits on campus. I think I'll be kind of free-form in terms of structure and everything in this post, so I might be rambling, incoherent, boring, stark raving mad, who knows -- but here it is, my Year in Review! - The summer has been relegated to the stuff of memories, and, for some stories, possibly the stuff of legend. The high hopes our team had in the beginning of the term were quickly shelved in favor of desperation to get the robot done on time, then finally despair as the morning of the competition dawned and JENGA didn't work. Luck works in weird ways though -- mysteriously, the robot suddenly did what it was supposed to do for the first round, so we were the first team that built a structure on the competition surface. Of course it didn't work later on, but hey, it was pretty cool. - Coursework is getting different these days. A little more interesting, yet also a little more boring as well. I think I enjoyed courses the most when they were difficult, but not because the prof sucked. I really liked PHYS 350 (Lagrangian Mechanics) for example, and MATH 318 (Probability) also -- these are prime examples of what I'm talking about; some of the concepts are a little tricky but they were explained well enough so that we could take something away from lectures and try to apply it to problems. I'm pretty sure I would have found PHYS 454 (E&M) interesting too, but I'm not too sure...the way the class was taught, I didn't get much out of it. Such cool phenomena that can be explained within the electromagnetism framework though. ...hmm, here's a thought that just occured to me -- I was going to write another little bullet point about how this year I started to really appreciate the aesthetic beauty of some physical concepts, inasmuch as their elegance, brevity, cleverness, symmetry, and a whole bunch of other things. Maybe I am attracted to that kind of course matter, because I was thinking about some of the courses that I enjoyed less (some of the engineering courses, actually...) and a lot of the times thoses classes were more about narrowly looking at several cases and learning how to deal with the cases that one might encounter. It works to teach people engineering, but it's also missing out a little bit on the fundamental beauty of a lot of the results that are simply used as tools in design and analysis. - Had a good set of roommates in dorm this term too (shout out to the S5B crew). It probably helped that 5/6 of us are engineers; we got some pretty out-there converstaions once in a while, and it was always fun to even just hang around the quad and chat about anything. It's the kind of group you want for roomies every time you move into rez. - One thing that really stood out in my mind this year is the gradual integration of my year of fizzers into the fabric of Fizz in general. I remember the year before, when the Penthouse was really kinda foreign territory and I kept to my own little group of people I knew and no more. But with involvement of our year in a whole bunch of different stuff (exec, Ball Model, etc.) I think it's really cool that it's all kinda coming together. - Speaking of the ball model, that was quite the experience. We took the idea from just that, an idea, and just went for it, and we built the auto-tracking sentry gun we said we would. Way cool. - It's stuff like the Ball Model, and WEC, that really set the year apart for me. With a newfound bounty of time, I threw my hat in on stuff like I really haven't before, and it is lots of fun. I've always been of the opinion that school and learning goes way beyond the classroom, and this is just another way for me to apply that concept. WEC (and the subsequent foray to CEC) was definitely an experience to remember, and to repeat next year. - I've probably missed out on a half-ton of stuff to talk about, but the above are some of the things that really stand out in my mind right now. Next up -- Germany! Stay tuned on this blog...stories, photos, more random writing will appear on this blog -- from the other side of the pond!