Physics in not Phun

...but it is funny. Today I had my double dose: lecture and lab. All the normal people are sitting there cringing on my behalf and my mom's thinking to herself, "Lucky!"

I am not lucky. Physics class is awful. I like my teacher, and I have a great TA. I know another sophomore in the lecture class with me, and overall the class doesn't seem too hard. The lab is going to be downright easy. No the problem I have with my physics class (and more specifically the lab) is what my problem usually is: There are just too many stupid people in the world.

Now I realize that I have an unusually low tolerance for people who ask dumb questions, but there was this girl in my lab today (who I'm assuming is a freshman and will hither to be known as 'Emily') who really just shocked me. I just didn't think it was possible.

'Emily' was that girl. The one that the is in books, and tv shows, and movies, and who is in all sorts of hypothetical examples, but who you didn't think actually existed. Like I really didn't think anyone ever actually asked the teacher if he was going to give them the answers. My teachers always say things such as, "Well, I'm never going to just give you the answer, but I'll help you work through the problem." So our TA goes and says something along these lines and she follows this up with, "But after that, you'll, like, tell us, the right answer, right?"

It was like that the whole class. And all we did was go over the syllabus.

It's going to be a long year.

No Such Thing as Surplus Cupcakes At College

So this morning I had my calc final (ehh) and then I had my theater final this afternoon. For those who are unaware I am one of nine lucky people in the most fabulously easy fine art/english credit classes at USC: From Page to Stage. My professor has a distinct dislike of grading things, and he really just gives everyone who participates an A anyway, so he decided it would be lovely to have a picnic for a final.

When we were all deciding who was going to bring what, I volunteered to provide cupcakes. I figured, it'll be easier to know how many to get, no one will need forks or anything, and everyone seemed in favor of the cupcakes. I will now admit a secret that I'm sure you will all hate me for: I don't actually like most cupcakes. Store bought icing tastes nasty to me (I really just can't eat it) and they get your fingers all sticky. I don't like store bought cake either, but you get the point. I knew I wasn't going to eat any of them.

As it turns out, almost everyone in the class feels the same way about cupcakes that I do. Only one cupcake got eaten at the picnic: the professor brought his wife and kids and Toby, the four-year-old son licked the icing off of one. So there I am with all these cupcakes to get rid of. I had given one to my advisor Dr. Morgan earlier in the day and one to my friend Amanda, because she had two finals today, and one to my roomie Sam. I had 14 cupcakes to get rid of, and I needed to do it soon because the blue icing was melting and the sprinkles weren't faring well either.

There is no such thing as surplus cupcakes in a college dorm during finals week. Two went to Shannon and some guy who was studying in her room (thanks!) and then I handed off three to Reggie who looked like he might hug me for giving them to him. Cameron, Ed, Morgan, and Andrea took another four off my hands. The last bunch went to a group of guys playing Halo in Stephen's room. Yes! I'm cupcake free! Sorry for anyone who didn't get one, they kinda flew out of my hands...

Time to take a nap at the desk of...

My mommy would be so proud of me!

So Sam got this cute new black top from I-don't-know-where, but the straps were too long. So it was a tad bit too revealing. Scandalous!

So she decided she could just shorten them a bit. She has a sewing kit; should be easy-peasy right? well not if your private school education deprived you of the fun life-experience of Home Ed class.

That's where I come in...whatever middle school I was attending in 7th grade (I know it was in IN, and I think it was called Carmel Clay Junior High) decided that as part of my public education I should be aware of how to cook and sew. *trumpet fanfare* Thank goodness for Sam that I once learned how to make a plushy platypus. (Sidenote: it was made out of plaid flannel so it was a Plaid-ypus. hahaha).

So to make a long story short, I was able to shorten the straps for her, with this ingenius idea of coiling the braided rope straps into little swirls on the back, so you can't even tell anything was done. Plus I did a really good job of hiding the silver thread she gave me to use. So Sam's shirt is perfectly non-scandalous, and I get to end the day on a happy note!

Cantwell Family Story

Apparently my family has some extremely funny stories, so I decided to share one of them with you. Some I actually remember, others have simply been told to me enough times that I know them by heart. This is the story of Jurassic Park, which falls under the latter category.

I was about three years old at the time. My parents had decided that they wanted to go to the drive-in movie theater. It was a double feature that night; the first movie was a mundane romatnic comedy that would be perfectly fine for a three-year-old to see. No problems there at all. Since the first movie started at about 7, they assumed that I would have long since fallen asleep by the start of the second movie, Jurassic Park. Once asleep I am quite a sound sleeper, and my parents used to joke that I could sleep through a bomb going off beneath my crib. My sister is the complete opposite, which is really funny because she tends to be a louder person in general. Anyway, my parents felt quite safe in taking me to see Jurassic Park, resting assured that I would sleep through it. Little did they know. I did not sleep through Jurassic Park. I did not doze off for even one minute. I also apparently enjoyed every minute of it, and contributed to the general amusement of several cars around us. You see, I was rooting for the dinosaurs. Throughout the latter half of the movie, at age three, I was yelling, "Get em' gators, get em'!" I suppose a velociraptor does look a bit like a swamp monster, if you squint. Needless to say my parents learned their lesson.

I never have been able to sleep through a movie.

No longer rooting for the gators from the desk of

Jackie

A Delightful Story of Success

For those of you who are not aware of my current class schedule, I am one of many victims of the Vector Calculus Massacre. They lure us all into a room with the promise of credit hours, and then kill us one by one. It's a simple mechanism really. They use "homework" and "quizzes" to distract us while they slowly suck out our souls.

During one such torture session today, our normal demon was out for the week, and we were greeted with that eerie friendliness common to graduate students, also known as "Phase II: the Victims become the Torturers". Our homework for chapter 12.6 having been especially difficult, many 0f us had come ready with questions, our only defense. While I struggled to stay awake through the first section of the class, 'Dan' walked us through every minutia of several excruciatingly easy problems. Finally we got to the grand daddy of them all, Number 23. Unable to reconcile our limited abilities to figure it out ourselves with his limited abilities to teach it to us, 'Dan' put the book's answer on the board. Reggie, one of my intellectual peers, and I puzzled over the book's methods until a beautiful light went off somewhere in my head.

Racing against some unknown clock, I worked with the frantic drive of a mad scientist who has found a secret formula. Finally, raising my head in triumph I could not stop myself from declaring, "I've got it!" There is simply no better feeling. I showed Reggie my work and he agreed; my answer matched that on the projection screen. I had won. Grinning from the desk of

Jackie