Weekend

I had the best weekend ever.

On Friday night I attended a retreat that a few of my Mercyhurst friends were putting on. One of my favorite Behrend students went as well. It's really funny, actually, how this came to be. One of my really good friends from high school went to Mercyhurst. Towards the middle of junior year, I became really good friends with another engineering student. He ALSO has a really good friend from high school that went to Mercyhurst. And my really good friend and his really good friend?? They were practically best friends at Mercyhurst by the time we figured all of this out. I like it. They're both part of the campus ministry down there, which is doing a lot to further God's kingdom on campus there. Which means we both were invited, separately, to this retreat, and both came. I can't lie, though. Finding out that he had been invited had a bit of an impact about the fact that I agreed to go. :-)

It was a spectacular retreat. Friday night was some AWESOME worship, which I had been lacking in my life since the dissolving of the IVCF worship team. It really helped me to connect back with what I had been missing so deeply for the past few months. After worship was sledding. The sledding hill was really huge, and took approximately 10 minutes to walk to the top. It wasn't really steep though, so sliding down it was kind of like a water slide (still lots of fun!). I only went down once, though, before I decided that it wasn't worth it to walk back up the hill again. So I hung out at the top. There, my other Behrend colleague decided to start a snow-war of sorts, which involved shoving snow down my back and tackling me to the ground in an attempt to make me slide down the hill. Mercyhurst/high-school friend decided to join in this war. Before long, it evolved to include the entire top-of-the-hill crew in a full-blown snowball battle, boys vs. girls. At the end, the boys hopped on sleds and tried to escape down the hill, but I couldn't let that happen. Taking hold of the saucer-shaped sled I had been using as a shield, I took a running leap down the hill after them. I expected other girls to follow me, but they didn't. I thought this was okay until I felt a large weight of a 150-lb man jumping on top of me. My Mercyhurst friend had lost his sled, and decided that I was the next best thing. Great. Without the other girls to help me, I was helpless, sliding at an increasing speed down this hill with a stow-away on my back. My Behrend friend's reaction to this was hilarious. He said he was surprised to see the sled my friend was using move once he got off. We laughed about it, I cleaned off my face (which had been shoved into the snow on initial impact and was absolutely covered), and we drank some hot chocolate before bed.

Saturday was dedicated to a bit more worship, team-building activities, snowman building, and horse-back riding. My horse's name was Loreto. Then we went back to campus and I showered and ate dinner.

Two of my absolutely best friends from freshman/sophomore year had decided to visit this weekend. As soon as I got back from the retreat, they had decided to gather up the old gang and play some soccer. So that is what we did. I am terrible at soccer, but it was great to play with my old friends again. I had missed them oh so much. My least favorite part of college has been watching friends transfer to University Park. There have been too many.

After soccer was bowling. We were all kind of tired and didn't really want to go, but one of my friends practically insisted. We played two games, which ended up being pretty fun. Then we came back to Behrend and went to sleep. Saturday involved a lot of physical activity for me. Needless to say, when I woke up on Sunday morning, I was incredibly sore.

Sunday morning was church. One of my U-Park friends came to church with us, and we filled Aeriale's van! I also enjoyed church because I saw some of my Mercyhurst people that I had become good friends with at the retreat. I love making new friends, I think it's one of my favorite things. After church we went to Steel City, which sells sandwhiches that are made to give you a heart attack. Aeriale and Ayron almost ate half of theirs, Jason ate an entire half of his, and the rest of us ordered small ones. It was still delicious.

Nap time.

The old crew that I had played soccer with the night before then went to dinner together. After dinner we hung out in the apartment like old times and played catch phrase and watched movies. It was like we were freshmen again.

Monday morning was an early morning gorge hike. This involved walking in the gorge through the snow, and at one point sliding down the hill (using the packed-down snow as a waterslide). I got stuck at the top of the hill holding onto a tree branch by my fingertips. If I had let go, I would immediately be sliding down the "waterslide," but I wasn't ready to yet. Dan tried to help me and ended up falling down the waterslide. After he went down, he realized that there was a huge log in the way and suggested that I find another location to slide down. Perfect, since I was stuck. Dave tried to help me, and really only ended up replacing the branch I was holding onto with his foot. Brad finally climbed up the hill, came in from the side, grabbed me, and swung me over to where he was. He wins. I then could get myself to the second waterslide that we had formed, and slide down that one. It was fun! Although walking back up wasn't that exciting. I had to spiderman-crawl the whole way up.

After gorge-hiking I went to work at dobbins, and it turned into a boring-regular weekend after that. It still kind of is the weekend, since I have no classes today. But I will be going to work at GE today, which should be exciting. Then it's back to class tomorrow. I should really start putting some effort into senior design at some point...

This may be the longest post I've ever written. I think it's more for me to remember this weekend than for you to read. Anyway, it was great. Leave me comments and let me know if you made it all the way to the end!!

Graduation. Official.

Today, I did this:








Yes, I pressed that little button (that is too small to read...sorry) that says "I intend to graduate this semester." Now the school officially knows that I want to graduate. It was absolutely thrilling. And incredibly SCARY.

And I just checked my degree audit. For the first time, I saw this sentence:

ALL REQUIREMENTS HAVE BEEN MET OR ARE IN PROGRESS 

... which means I am officially CLEARED to graduate! Provided I pass my classes this semester. Which I will. Unless something terrible happens.

I wonder what my life will look like on May 16, 2010.

Whatever it is, it will be a new adventure. Bring. It. On. But first I'm going to be afraid. That's okay, I was afraid before college, too, and that turned out pretty nicely :-)

Syllabus day - the last installment

My last first day of class (at least as an undergrad) was today. Weird. This semester isn't even typical, since I have most of my engineering requirements finished, and am trying to fill in the gaps with electives. I also have the lowest number of credits I've ever had.

Here are my 12 credits:

3 credits - Psych 244 - human factors in engineering. I convinced 4 of my other classmates to take this class with me! Our professor is a lady who is very excited about her job and thinks out loud. She totally reminds me of me a lot (at least she did today while going over the class requirements). Our first assignment is to find a product that we think is designed improperly. I think I'm going to like this class.

3 credits - Math 482 - operations research in mathematics. Should be interesting. Clearly, this class is taken predominately by math majors. 2 of my classmates and I got our schedules messed up (because of a misunderstanding with the physics department), so we were permitted to take this class instead without having taken the math pre-requisites (although there's an ME pre-requisite that is almost the same that we have taken). Dr. Rutter, however, seems very enthusiastic and tells corny jokes all the time. I think I'm going to like this class too. Although I'm a little bit concerned about the fact that homework is worth 45% of the grade (FOURTY FIVE PERCENT!!!!!!!).

3 credits - ME 428 - computational fluid dynamics. Unlike the others, I pretty much knew what to expect in this class. I've had Dr. Lasher for 2 classes already, so I know how his classes go. Which means we started actually learning something today in class. I'm excited about learning to solve these types of problems. And by solving, I mean approximating a solution, because it's impossible to actually solve most of these things exactly. It shouldn't be too hard, but the project at the end is probably going to be a pain.

3 credits - ME 449 - senior design part the second. Finishing our project. I think we will actually show up for class about 3 times in the semester, the rest will be making sure this thing gets done.

On top of that small spattering of classes, I will be working at GE about 12 hours a week and at dobbins about 3 hours a week. Even with 2 jobs, I think I am going to have more unscheduled time than I ever have had in a semester!!!

I'm currently ignoring the small detail that all of that unscheduled time will be dedicated to senior design...

Love.

Oh, and on Friday I'm going on a retreat overnight. I'm excited. A lot. :-)

Grad school final strides

Earlier this week I found out I had missed the deadline for applying to Penn State grad school. Today I discovered that the Case Western application that I send in a month ago actually did require an essay (sent via snail mail). I spent about 20 minutes searching for the Virginia Tech mechanical engineering department address and another half an hour searching for Case's. I'm still not sure tat I have the Case address correct, and the instructions are vague about where I should be sending my transcripts. I haven't even glanced at the Notre Dame one in a few days, but surprises are sure to crop up.

As of now, I have sent 2 copies of my transcript to Virginia Tech, 1 copy to Case Western, and GRE scores to both schools. Virginia Tech application is 100% complete and submitted at this point. Case Western still requires an essay. Notre Dame still requires an essay, 2 transcripts, and GRE scores. And I have no idea if I'm even going to apply to University of Michigan anymore. They require 2 essays.

Were college applications easier than this?? Maybe it seems like it because I was a slacker and didn't actually spend more than half an hour total on my college application. Yes, my single college application. Good thing I got into Behrend ;-).

No matter what happens, on January 15 I am DONE with applying. Then I wait. And maybe visit. And figure out if I'm going to do research over the summer.

School starts on Monday!

On another completely random note, I will be working at GE part time next semester. I'm excited to go back to the job I had this summer!!! It was the best. And with only 12 credits next semester, it should be quite easy to manage my time.

Jobss!

I totally got an email from Cummins today asking me to apply online for a job (I saw them at the career fair I went to two months ago...kind of a delayed reaction, but whatever). One of the jobs was a Combustion/Performance/Emissions intern (I am going to grad school, so internships are good). The description of the job pretty much laid out everything I've ever wanted in a job. Playing with diesel engines, combustion, test equipment, and it's 10 weeks long. Haha. :-) I think I'm going to apply, we'll see what happens next!!!

Epic

Last night was epic. My 7 teammates (4 engineers, 3 finance majors) and I presented (wearing suits) our newly formed manufacturing company, Re-Mark Inc. to a panel of our professors and classmates. And we completely destroyed all of the questions that Dr. Roth and Dr. Filbeck threw at us. It was good. We totally might have gotten an A. :-)

Afterwards was team bonding at the Plymouth. I like the Plymouth because they have free popcorn, the rest of my group likes Plymouth because it was 25 cent draft night. Either way, we were happy. As 5 of us crammed around a teeny table, another group who had also presented that night came to meet us. Of course, the boy who I've had a crush on for almost a year sat right next to me, which is either a sign that he likes me or that it was just the only seat available. I always flirt with him, and after 2.5 tiny beers in the course of 2 hours (you don't get very much for 25 cents) I was much more flirty with him than normal (my alcohol tolerance = zero ... I also decided to stop drinking at that point so as not to regret any decisions that night). Something else also changed. Either he got more flirty with me, or I perceived him to get more flirty with me because of my almost-but-not-quite-intoxicated state. Not sure which ... but I'm pretty sure when I put my hand next to his on the table and reached out ever-so-slightly for his fingers, he reached back. He also seemed to feel it was necessary to get my attention by bumping his leg into mine rather than simply calling my name. One of the other boys at the table remarked that this boy should take a shot because I was taking one (but I wasn't...did he notice that this boy was taking an interest in me and would do it because he thought I would...or was it a simple lame form of peer pressure?). When I put my head on his shoulder to talk to him (he's much taller than me so this was very easy, and it was loud in there so almost necessary), he leaned in towards me to listen.

Of course once I left I dreamed about him, which is what ALWAYS happens, and woke up disappointed that he wasn't mine. I miss him. I won't get to see him again until...Tomorrow in class, or maybe tonight doing homework. Haha, how pathetic.

Why am I so chicken???

Matters of the heart

One of my senior design group members has had heart problems for awhile, and that's really all the rest of us knew. He missed a meeting or a class about once a month to go see the cardiologist ... no big deal, right? Well I just found out from his sister that he was rushed to the ICU yesterday morning, and needs a heart transplant or he's not going to survive. Right now there aren't any hearts, but hopefully one comes up soon. Currently he's having surgery to hook him up to a mechanical heart that will hopefully keep him around for awhile until he can get a new heart. It's scary ... he's my friend ...

Please keep him in your prayers.

Thanks everyone <3