The flight attendants are wearing Santa-Hats.

That's what C told me when she got on the plane in Frankfurt this morning. She's been flying for almost all the time that I've been awake today (baking, cleaning, visiting with friends, dancing to music in the kitchen) and will be landing in about two hours in New York. She has to wait there a while and get through customs, but then I'll be seeing her in Pittsburgh at about 9:45 p.m. Seven hours from now?  I've waited since August. I can't believe it!

Sudden Snow in the 'Ville!

I have finished up my work for the week at the bookstore and will start working there again after C leaves in January. Grandparents on my father's side have arrived (a day before they planned to but for good reason - namely a huge sudden snowfall!) as has my sister.

Now, I just have to twiddle my thumbs and drink tea with various members of my family until Monday night, when I'll hop into the car and drive to Pittsburgh.  But until then, take a look at this!

Abby the Abominable Snow-Dog. :)

Should anything else of note happen, I will be sure to let you know. Now, as might have guessed, I need to go out and shovel!

So... it's over?

That semester was intense.

And now, I'm sitting on the little couch in my room at my dad's house, the dog asleep on the floor next to me. Meadville is all around me, just like I never left, like it's just been waiting here. And I made it through my finals - every last one of them.

I'm sorry I disappeared for those few days. There was more Algebra than I had brain space for, plus packing and saying goodbye to friends, stressing out about Christmas presents, and trying to organize where I'm going to live next semester. (sidenote: I got the official email - I'm moving OUT of the dorm and INTO an apartment on campus with friends and a KITCHEN! No more dining hall... I can't tell you how happy I am to cook again!!) But I survived. I turned in every last final paper, every piece of homework, attended each exam and wrote until I thought my hand would fall off (remember, I had my 3 hour Algebra exam, a one hour break for dinner, and then a 3 hour film exam -- after which there were celebratory chicken nuggets with other friends who had taken the finals), and still managed to feel like I wasn't getting enough done. But I did.

I'm watching Abby, my dog, dream right now. I can see her nose moving back and forth and her paws twitching, even her ears cocking to this side or the other. Her life makes me put mine in perspective sometimes.

And I made it back to PA, obviously. Tomorrow, I'm starting back at the Allegheny Bookstore - a job of helping students find books, stacking textbooks on shelves, and occasionally selling Allegheny paraphernalia to eager parents of students. My sister comes home on Thursday, and C one week from today. Actually, one week and about one hour- then she'll be landing at the Pittsburgh airport on Christmas Eve.

And now, as a jet-lagged, semester-worn student, I will go to bed. :)

Revelations (not to be confused with the book in the Bible)

You know, sometimes I can be so fantastically, hand-wringingly, head-shakingingly stupid. Have you ever had a revelation, something that makes other parts of your life much clearer than they were before (whether it be in an area of academics or even in interpersonal relations) and when you look back on that "revelation", it was something that should have been completely obvious all along?

Let me explain. I got up this morning at around 6:30, went to the computer lab in my building to print old homework solutions, wrote a blog entry, got back to my room about an hour later, breakfasted and then made a cup of coffee and sat down to study. I studied until about 10:30 or 11, took a break, then got my things together to head to Berkeley with a few friends to continue studying at a café. We were there from 12:45-3, and then I came back, went to the gym and went to dinner, and came back to my room.

And that's when the trouble started. One person is to blame for my extreme non-studying since dinner (really, throughout the day in snippets) and I couldn't be more grateful to him - Stephen Fry. I've blabbered about him before, but I'll do it once more via this lovely film about him (including Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, the Prince of Wales, Kenneth Branagh, and J.K. Rowling, just to name a few, all talking about how fantastic he is) and via this documentary that he made about bipolar disorder (quite eye-opening). So, since dinner, I have been maddeningly unable to do anything but play freecell on my laptop while watching these videos. And I do mean maddening. About once a minute, I'd pause the video, tell myself I needed to get up and study more, and then invariably freeze and go back to what I was doing before.

I found this quite upsetting and after having a rough time with this, I went outside the dorm to a nearby bench with a pen and a small notebook to write down all of the things I thought I should do (and the things I really do need to do, which are not the same) before my exams tomorrow. And in that quiet moment, I planned out what I need to do - in which order, tomorrow morning. And I know that my alarm is set for 6:40 and by 6:45 I'll be in the shower without trouble, and that at around 7:10 I'll have coffee, music, and be at my desk. Not a problem.

And I heard my thoughts clearly in my head: "I know we'll be fine in the morning, working then isn't a problem." Bombshell. Big, obvious, why-didn't-I-just-realize-this-before truth: I am a morning person. And certain people (C in particular) have known this and told me this for years, but I just thought that meant that I was unusually cheery in the mornings - but never, not in the 21 years that I have known myself, did I think that maybe that meant that I work better in the mornings, and should therefore give it my all then, but perhaps not bother trying after about 7:30 at night.

True, during college you don't always have that luxury of budgeting your time as you would wish to, but during the days leading up to finals, you happen to have exactly that.

But just to zoom back for a minute, in 22 hours, it'll all be over anyway. Both tests out of the way, semester over. Huzzah!!

I have absolutely no idea whether you have found any of this interesting or not, but I hope so, at least a little bit. Have a lovely December 14th, everyone.

Midnight Breakfast

So, at the end of the semester most colleges in the States have a "Reading Week" where classes have ended but final exams haven't started, so the students can get the chance to review for their exams. Mills is a bit different- we have "Reading Days" instead, and we have two of them, instead of a week.

However, it is during these Reading Days that the one tradition takes place on campus that I actually feel any connection to: Midnight Breakfast. Starting at 10 at night on the second Reading Day (so, a few short hours before the first finals start the next day at 9 a.m.), our cafe on campus is transformed into a gigantic breakfast buffet with eggs, potatoes, waffles, coffee, tea, bacon AND - anyone who is a true Mills student understands that the best part of the breakfast is---- the vegetarian sausage patties. Why are they so delicious? NO ONE KNOWS. But they are what I line up for!

I remember going Freshman year and hanging out with a few people, shifting from foot to foot in line as we waited for the doors to open and for the tons of people who had lined up in front of us to get food. Last night, I was hanging out with friends (all seniors) and we decided to walk down so we'd be at the cafe at about 9:30 - and we were the first ones there. During the first fifteen minutes of waiting, a trickle of students came to the plaza outside the cafe and the line grew longer - and all of the people at the front of the line were seniors. We know how this goes by now. :)

By 10 I couldn't even see the end of the line since it had turned a corner around the side of a  building. We sauntered in to get our food (veggie patties!!) and sat down to enjoy it. Forty-five minutes later as we were heading back to the dorm, they were still letting people in through the door!

It was kind of fun to be a cynical senior last night, to look around at the other people who were dancing and singing along to the music was playing and to think, as my friend Carly put it, "Man, why are they all so happy?" Several people at the table I was sitting at have their theses due on Friday, Carly and I have an Abstract Algebra exam, and in general we feel we are ready to move on from this place --- but then again, I'm sure I will also think as I sit down with my cup of coffee at my desk in a half hour or so to study that it is just incredible that I get to be a student here - to have the sole objective be the expansion of my own knowledge. That's pretty fantastic.

In any case, sentimental or no, I have to go and try to expand my brain a bit around some Sylow P-Subgroups and things, and also try not to forget that my algebra exam is from 2-5 on Friday afternoon (yikes! which is tomorrow!) but that also, from 6-9, I have a film exam. So, I'll trade off between the two as I study. Wish me luck.

Last Day of Classes

 

Last day of classes, December 10th. It's 18 degrees celsius, so 64 fahrenheit - I could be in a t-shirt if I wanted to be. One more algebra class and then optional kickboxing, and I am DONE. Well, okay, two finals on Friday, but other than that-- 7/8 done with my Mills career.  ?!?!?

It's a stunning day. I was in my room this morning and on Skype with C as she did some work for her classes and I worked on my review sheet for Algebra. We talked about some things we wanted to do when, in TWO WEEKS, we see each other again. I have my flight booked for Sunday, the 16th, and will be working at the Allegheny College bookstore for a few days before C gets there, and spending some time with my family. A few more program applications (I've gotten my first rejections, by the way - right of passage, right? Happens to everyone? I hope so.) and a great deal of tea, sitting by the fire, and hoping that we'll get at least a little snow.

In other news, I went Christmas shopping in Rockridge with Erin a few days ago and had a blast (found bacon chocolate bars, a coffee mixture called Obama ((due to the origins of the coffee beans - oh, California...)), one of the most beautiful notebooks I have ever seen ((Erin did her duty as a good friend and dragged me away, knowing my addiction to office supplies and my limited finances)), and sticky notes that said "Oy Vey" at the top with a checkbox for "Oh, Shalom." at the bottom, and so many other fun things) - I hope to go back either tomorrow or Wednesday and wander around, though I really don't need to get any more presents for anyone. A student is coming to meet me for tutoring soon, so I should go, but I hope that everyone else is having just as lovely a day as I am.

Sneaky Academic Desire

So, my Abstract Algebra final is a week from yesterday. Actually, a week from today, I will be done with EVERYTHING for this semester. A week from tomorrow, I will be flying back to Pennsylvania. I'm not quite sure why it is that each year, time seems to go faster, but by the time I'm fifty, I can't imagine how it will seem.

So, today, I was starting to think about studying for Abstract and for this final, we're allowed to bring in one piece of  paper (front and back) with notes or other things written on it (this is a first for me at Mills, though it was rather commonplace last year in Germany). So, feeling nostalgic, I picked up the piece of paper tucked in a fancy folder in my bottom drawer where I had written all of my notes for the Stochastics exam last year. Remember when I was in that class? So, my notes looked like this:

 And I was reading over some of them, and as usually happens when I look at old work that I've done in math, I think: "Man.... remember when I could do that? It was so long ago!"And then I start to feel sad, but then - and this is a new thing that has just begun to happen -  I look at the things in those notes that I didn't understand at the time. And they start to look more familiar. And I think - wait. At that time, I just wrote down 'homomorphismus' when they told me to, now I know what a homomorphism is. And - I know what this is, and what that is - I now know what I was probably supposed to know as background for that class, and all that I've forgotten is actually the Stochastics part of it. But this desire comes up that I have felt pretty much every day for the last two months: the desire to take all of the math classes I've ever taken over again, because I would understand them so completely now. Understanding - is a tricky thing. It doesn't always mean the same thing when you talk to two different people. But I know exactly what it feels like when I actually understand something in math. This beautiful clarity, this almost three-dimensional feel of the idea in my head - and I know I didn't have that in many classes that I've taken before. Often, you don't get it until after the class is over. Maybe while you study for the final, you get that clarity for the concepts you did in the first few weeks. But with my mathematical maturity now, why can I go back and take Linear Algebra I, II, Real Analysis, Complex Analysis, Differential Equations, Lie Theory and P-adic Analysis all over again? You have no idea how much I really want to.

On a different note, take a look at this:

How beautiful is that?

It's fifty and sunny in CA (so about 10 for you Celsius folks), and in PA it's raining. And in Mainz? That beautiful snow over the trains. I can see the Mainz Hbf sign in the background. I miss it like a hole in my heart. Honestly. I'm so glad I get to spend Christmas with my family this year, but - I really did leave part of me in at Pankratiusstr. 28.

Morocco-Night!

Mills by night, before we left.

An outfit worthy of a sneaky foto, I thought.

Christmas lights in San Francisco!

Beautiful room where we ate our dinner... Dinner not pictured. We ate it too quickly!

A glass of a beer called Casablanca, just to add to the ambiance. ;)

My darling friend Carly - fellow math major and fantastic person.

Left to right: Myself, Carly, Shelby, Karis, Erin (the last three commiserating as they all have to turn in their theses next week, all in the same major - International Relations). Also, notice the crumbs on the table. All that is left of our meal!

 

There was also a belly dancer, but since it was so dark, I don't have very many good pictures of her. But there was food, drink, dancing (oh yes, we got up and danced with the belly dancer) and all in all, a lovely evening. :) Anyone who comes to visit me out here, we may be going back!

Music

Yesterday was a Metallica day - so I had 'Enter Sandman' while writing a paper for Women's Studies.
And today? Die Ärzte and The Fundamental Theorem of Finitely Generated Abelian Groups. :)

:)

So, it's December 5th - how did that happen? I swear I was just starting my senior year, I swear I just left Germany a few days ago - somehow, here we are. Four more days of classes, a few tests, and then Christmas break!  I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to the non-stress of those days. Yes, I'm trading response papers and Algebra homework for writing Christmas cards, but I think I'll make out pretty well on that trade.

In the meantime, we're spicing up the end of the semester here. There's a holiday party at a friend's place on Friday night, and that should be good fun. But first, tonight, I believe there will be an excursion to Berkeley - hopefully to Café Milano where we can *sigh* work and study, but at least do so in a slightly new environment. There's not too much we can do to change the workload of the end of the semester, but my friends and I are doing our best to make it fun.

On Thursday, I'm giving a talk on my experience at the Carleton Summer Math Program along with another girl who did a different REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates). I'm going to meet with her in a few minutes to organize our presentation, and that should be good fun! I like talking in front of people, so I'm looking forward to it. :)

But the best part of this week is what will happen after that presentation: heading to San Francisco with a bunch of friends to go eat Moroccan food!  (Since Erin is writing her thesis on Morocco and it's due quite soon, we're convincing her to go by saying that it qualifies as "research") Yes, I have things due Friday, I have class then, there's always work to do -- but relaxing and having fun is so important! And as I've mentioned here before, active relaxation is so important - I can sit here in my comfy green chair and "veg" for two hours and still not feel like I've actually relaxed. But going out? This kind of thing is good for the soul. :) I will take pictures!

What I do at my office hours when no one comes to see me:

In other news...

A water main broke on campus, so about eight buildings (including my dorm, of course) are without water. They say they hope to have it fixed by 6 tomorrow morning, but it actually could be out until tomorrow evening. In an email warning everyone about this, they said they had some extra water available at the front gate if anyone wanted it ("emergency water").

So, not quite wanting to go to bed yet, I bundled up in my wool coat, a hat, and a scarf (it's upper 40s, low 50s here and rainy and wet - around 10 degrees, for you Celsius folks - cold for CA!) and trudged down to the main gate. It's maybe a ten minute walk from my dorm - up to the top of the hill on whose side I live and then all the way down the hill on the other side. The air was nice and cool and I passed the group of trucks and men in thick coats, digging a hole to get to the pipe that was the problem. They'll be working through the night on it. And that's really, really good of them. I'm quite thankful for it.

I got the water - it looked like they had enough to spare, so I didn't feel bad for taking "emergency" water when my only "emergency" would be brushing my teeth and maybe having a cup of coffee in the morning. But it was lovely to walk. Maybe I should see campus by night more often! Perhaps with company next time.

But now, I'm back and bed and warm and will soon be asleep. Cheers, everyone. Happy December 2!

Visual reflections on the day.

Cue Sheet notes for our studio time today. It went so well!! I look forward to sharing the finished clip with all of you.

Waterfall down the stairs behind the music building.

Amazing recording equipment in the studio.

A Few Things to Share

1. It's Sunday, Dec. 2nd and today is the day I go to the recording studio with the folks in my Film Music class to score our clip! We're scheduled for about five hours in a professional studio in Oakland with a guy who has done music for big name folks, including MGM. And we get this studio time for free - I mean, yes, we pay to go to this college, but this much studio time is pretty incredible! I'm the studio manager, so today I get to be the bad guy and tell people to stay on track and not waste time. Lovely! I think I'll enjoy that. ;) Actually, I don't think we'll have a problem with people slacking off or taking too long - my group has worked really well together so far. I hope I get a copy somehow of the final clip with the music so I can show it to people. I'm so excited about it - and today, really, to see how it comes together! Right now, I know how the clip looks with my guitar piece because we've synched those files together, but the rest of the "music" (sounds, really) we've come up with haven't been synched yet - that's what we get to do today. And we get to figure out if it only sounded good in our heads or if it was actually a good idea! I'm psyched. :)

2. Yes, there are flash flood warnings for this area of California - and we have to drive today to get to the studio, and I'm sure the roads aren't in good condition. Yes, we will be careful. No, they probably won't cancel class tomorrow. Unfortunately. Also, the campus is soaking wet but I live on top of a hill, so it's not quite as bad. Still, rainboots would be nice. I'll get by without 'em! The rain is the perfect excuse to stay in and read and drink tea.

3.  Guess what? This blog now has over 200 posts and over 7000 views. I didn't expect that when I started it last year! Also, every time I check and see what exactly my "audience " is (a neat feature of this website), a large portion of my views are technically coming from France. Does anyone know who in France is reading this? If you do, let me know!

4. Six more days of classes!!!!!

5. A song I can't get out of my head these days and and can't get enough of -- So Many Nights by The Cat Empire. Look it up and dance!