Lantern Tours

Last night, boyfriend and I went on a "Lantern Tour."  Going into it, the only thing we knew was from a flyer that I saw that said you would "Meet the characters from Penn State's past and present during a stroll through campus by Lantern Light" and "Free refreshments."  I like lanterns, Penn State, history, and free food, so I convinced boy that this would be fun to do (he was less convinced, but he humored my enthusiasm).  

Oh man.  It.  Was.  Awesome.  It was a beautiful night in Happy Valley, approximately 65° and clear skies.  We showed up at Old Main at about 7:30, and signed up for a tour.  We had to wait about half an hour, but in the meantime we ate some of those free refreshments, watched some people juggle light-up balls, and listened to an A Capella group sing pretty songs.  Then we got called for our tour.  Our group was lead by two students, one of which was wearing a fake mustache.  We then started the walk around campus.  Intermittently, there were characters dressed in elaborate costumes who told us about things from the past.  We met George Atherton, one of the first presidents of the University, and his wife who was a ghost.  We met some military-dressed "students" from the past and learned about the beginnings of the ROTC.  We met Ben and Jerry.  We met a young Sue Paterno, who, in an effort to encourage school spirit in the 1970's, lead a group of other coaches' wives to paint the Lion Shrine ORANGE (so the students would think the opponents did it and rally behind their team, or something), accidentally using latex-based paint instead of water-based paint.  And we went to the top of the Old Main bell tower and gazed upon campus at night (which was TOTALLY unexpected!).  I also got to see my friend Maria who was in our tour group, another unexpected surprise.  

Afterwards they didn't really herd us out of Old Main very quickly, so we dawdled and took some pictures with all the pretty things in the main lobby.  

We were THIS CLOSE to the clock!

Picking the lamb's nose

Giving Pugh a wet willie

Being thoughtful in Old Main

Office of the President

Playing with the Lion

 
So.  I got to eat ice cream, drink cider, walk around campus on a beautiful night, learn about Penn State's history, and go to the top of the bell tower.  :-)

Grad School Fodder

It's Saturday.  I shouldn't be working.  But I am.  And I will be tomorrow. I CANNOT WAIT to graduate.  With any luck, I'll be done within the month.  But probably not, the way this is going.  I want my weekends baaaaack.  It's fall, I should be drinking apple cider and playing in the leaves and watching football.   
I don't have this feeling often.  The feeling where I think I will just never be good enough.  Seriously, I spent the better part of 3 weeks pruning my data, inspecting it, learning from it, and then writing [what I thought was] the best thesis chapter in the world.  My figures were colorful and beautiful.  My words were concise and technical.

But.  It's still not good enough.  I need to write it again.  My adviser thinks my figures are sloppy and inconsistent (I disagree...it's true that my contour plot has a different range of data than my scatter plot, but guess what?  THEY ARE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PLOTS, SHOWING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT DATA!!!), and my writing was not precise enough (my focus was wrong?  for the entire chapter?  perfect.).  So again, I write.  The same chapter over again.  This time with better plots and more precise word choice.  Not to mention the fact that I need to write an entire paper in the next 2 weeks on top of this thesis thing. 

Seriously, most of my friends who graduated wrote their entire thesis in like, a month, and their adviser skimmed it once...maybe twice.  I mean, come on.  Can I have that?  I've been fine up to this point, working longer hours than many of my grad school friends didn't really matter to me because I liked what I did and I (surprisingly) was able to keep up with expectations.  And for the most part I stayed away from work on the weekends.  I was praised for what I did because I did it well.  But I am suddenly failing.  I can't write to her expectations.  I went from feeling like the Superstar! to Grad School is Hell in a matter of a few weeks. 

Which brings me to how surprised I am that I am so hurt by this.  Should my feelings depend on what other people think of me?  About whether or not I am living up to my adviser's expectations?  No.  They most certainly shouldn't.  But I was happy when she praised me and am now upset when she criticizes my figures (they were SO BEAUTIFUL!). 

The lesson to be learned is that my worth should not be put on any one person's perception of me.  My worth comes only from Christ.  Funny, that I remember telling a friend this when he was struggling with the same thing, with the same adviser, a little less than 2 years ago.  It pushed him far enough to quit.  I can't quit now.  And I won't.  But gosh darn it, I want to do something right!  Can we fast forward to December, when I will have a new job?  Or rewind to April, when I used to be good at what I did? 

Writer's block

Have you ever had writer's block?  If you're not a writer, then probably not.  I never really had either.  I mean, for awhile in high school, I would have to write something new every week or so, and it wasn't a huge deal to me.  Sure, I got stuck sometimes, but that was nothing that a trip to dance class and back couldn't cure. 

While I enjoyed writing in high school, I never gave my life over to it.  I decided to become an engineer.  That writing was too subjective of a subject to study.  I like concrete answers, for things to be black-and-white, for there to be a "true" answer to a problem or idea.  Plus, I didn't see any career in writing.  I mean, what do you do with a writing degree?  Just write more?  Teach other people how to write?  The job market seemed slim in that category.  And I didn't like writing THAT much.  I like math much better.

In undergrad I wrote a few things, lab reports, proposals, homework word problems, essay responses to Dr. Roth's material science exams, etc.  They were fairly cut and dry, and required little creativity.  I was fine with that.  If I wanted to get my creative juices flowing, I would go around campus and take some pictures, choreograph a dance, or write a blog post.  Even engineering required a certain amount of creativity, since there is more than one way to solve almost any problem.

And now, I have to write this thesis.  A master's thesis.  And I can't graduate until I do.  And I spend hours, days, looking at the screen trying to think of what to write.  Sad, huh?  I mean, I did all the research!  I can crank out technical drawings and figures in a matter of minutes.  But writing about those technical figures and drawings?  It's the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life.  Severe writer's block.  For like, the past month. 

So I figured, that maybe, by writing this blog post, I would get in the swing of writing again.  I have approximately a month left before that day where, if I'm not finished, I will have to wait another semester to get that degree.  And that's a problem.  You see, I have this job offer.  And this job offer is contingent on me receiving that degree.  And they already expected me to get that degree in August.  Now I have pushed it back to December.  They're flexible, but I don't really want to have to break it to them that I won't get a degree until May.  Plus, who wants to say they graduated in 2013??  Ick.  2012 is just so much better.

In other news, here are some pictures from last weekend.  We went on a boat, it was fun.  The lake we played on was a full hour drive from here, but it was totally worth it.