Caltech

Final goodbyes

Well, I graduated almost two weeks ago.  It has been a time full of travel and relaxation...Disneyland, Mission Viejo, movies, malls, and many many episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm.  My dog has been having a good time relaxing with me, I better get her used to me leaving the apartment to teach once I start working!

Today is my BIRTHDAYYY so I'm on my way to hang out with some friends, go out to lunch, take the doggie for a walk, and then go out for a late dinner and dessert tonight.  Very excited to be 22 years old now!!  My diploma is up on the mantle, and my grandma and mom already have been asking for copies.  Once I get back around campus, I'll still give some tours this summer, and continue cleaning up my place because it is a very calming activity.  All my drawers now have labels and are incredibly organized, it's wonderful.  Graduation was a really great time, and it will be fun to reflect on, but it's really fun to not be in school.  Although, now I will begin to understand that weekends are incredibly valuable, especially once I begin working Monday through Friday at the school :)

It has been a great time blogging about my senior year, and if anyone ever has any questions then let me know!!  I hope all of you have a great experience at Caltech like I did, and I look forward to alumni events where I can go back and visit and see many of my old friends.  Thanks for paying attention to me!  Have a great summer everyone, and keep checking the blogs, we have some exciting new people involved!

Love, Alex

Post-Graduation activities

A good thing about being a senior graduating is that all of your family and friends think it's a huge deal.  I suppose it is...but it's nice to have other people get excited on your behalf.  My friend Sam from Westpoint Military Academy flew out here and we went to Disneyland with my parents, sister, Lea (another Caltech grad) and aunt, which was a lot of fun!  Obviously only one of us has Disney spirit...

Then, I adopted a new puppy!! I can stay home with her all summer and train her and everything, so it's the perfect time!  Hopefully I can teach her to wave and bark and everything, it took her a couple of days to learn "sit" but I think she's got it down.  Her name is Mochi and she is 10 months old!  Here she is:

I can still give tours until August, so I will keep working with Admissions on that...I highly recommend exploring the Admissions office, and if you want to, apply to be a tour guide!  They are amazing people and are a lot of fun to be involved with, I know I'll be back to visit very often.  Next up for me: training the dog, seeing some friends because I have all day to do nothing until I start working in August, and cleaning up the apartment.  As usual!  But without the homework hanging over my head, I am going to read a lot of books I have wanted to read for a long time now.  Caltech was great about getting student loans set up to be paid in the future, and getting us ready to leave the school.  It's sad, but we're all moving on, and they do everything they can to make it a smooth transition out of there. On to the job market now!  Toodles! 

Graduation is done!!

Well - it's over!  Here are some pictures from graduation, with some family and friends.  First, the dessert: this is the "tri-chocolate cake" which had a sparkling candle in it - very cute!  The dinner was spectacular, I sat with two of my geology friends and their families and we had some wonderful and funny conversations.  At the end of the dinner, Dean Hall made a speech with some cool statistics about our incoming class - like the percentages of women, percentages of students graduating in each major and with honors, and more.  I was so caught up in the moment that I don't remember any of the specifics haha, but oh well.

That was at the senior banquet the night before graduation.  Then came the big morning!  Steven Chu's speech was great, he made it really funny while still talking about some agricultural and scientific approaches to renewable energy.  He said the word "nerd" a lot, but it was funny.  I got to sit between two of my very good friends, purely by chance, because we sat alphabetically and their last names are Kunesh and Kramer.  So it was really fun!  And the weather was great, it sprinkled a little bit but it was cloudy and cool.  I was SO scared it would be hot, like it has been the last few years, but it was perfect.

This is me with the Caltech Y staff!!  I will miss them so much, but I will definitely be coming back very often, I just went today to show my parents around Caltech before they go home to Washington tomorrow.

Me with the boyfriend!

Page House Picture!  Missing a few people though.  And there were only 5 girls in my class!  So not too many cute shoes showing...

Some friends :)

Graduation...sigh.  All done!  Now I can update you on all the fun activities I do after Caltech is all over.  More to come!  But never again any reports, theses, essays, problem sets, or Caltech work...YAYYYYY!!

Graduation - take 1

I am going to graduate in THREE HOURS.  Well, that's when it starts.

Last night we had the senior banquet, and it was delicious - and very formal and nice.  President Jean-Lou Chameau spoke, as well as a humanities/social sciences professor and Dean John Hall.  They gave us some interesting statistics about ourselves...like how we have something like 58 women and 156 men in the graduating class.  Caltech has come a long way since then, up to like 40% women admitted last year alone.  Then they told us about half are going on to grad school while the other half are getting jobs, and they even mentioned me when they said four people were pursuing teaching!  That was nice.  This whole week has been difficult, but rewarding, and the big diplomas are coming out today.  I'm really excited to shake Jean-Lou's hand and GRADUATE!!! 

I am so tired right now that I am not even tired.  I have a lot of family coming over, I think an entire table at the Athenaeum for lunch is coming to see me graduate, along with my boyfriend, another close friend who graduated two years ago, and my boyfriend's parents.  It will be crowded, but I don't care! 

I'm giving my parents a camera to take pictures with, and then I'm bringing my own camera to also take pictures with, although I have no idea where on my dress, cap, gown, or fancy shoes I will be able to hide it away.  The weather is a bit gloomy - very overcast, and it looks a little rainy right now but that might just be morning.  I love it, because it is not hot, and I was afraid it would be too hot.  California is on my side for once, my family brought down the Washington weather. 

I have to do my hair, paint my nails, and uh-oh I forgot to do my toenails.  Shoot I better get on that immediately.  I CAN'T WAIT!!!  Stay tuned for part 2.

DONE

I'm done with all my work!!!

Well, I do have some grading to do for Ge1.  That's only going to take a couple of hours though...and I don't have ANY OTHER WORK to rush home to do.  I guess no excuses to leave the grading room anymore...darn?

Friday was so great.  I turned in my thesis to my advisor Professor Cindy Weinstein at 2:55pm, then went to a Blogger bakery session which was really delicious!  Chocolate cake and cookies, for blogger appreciation :)  I hope you all liked us, it was the first time we all got together at Admissions, and we talked about the program - definitely let us know if you all have any suggestions!  Then I went to my house (Page) at 5pm for a class picture and Sparkling Apple Cider celebration for the end of term, yay!  Tom Mannion's dinner was at 6:30 and boy were we hungry...that menu I posted proved to be just as delicious as I thought it would be.  Pictures of the food are below, look at that extremely classy (and totally edible, even the ink!!) dessert!

Saturday was just so relaxing and fun.  My boyfriend took me to the mall and I bought myself a graduation present - all 6 seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm.  I finally have time to put them all on and just watch!  Without worrying about registration for next year, my summer reading, some essay I got an extension on...nothing.  Just how my graduation cap and gown will look, and whether I will go get my hair done before the ceremony.  :)

These are some pictures of the dinner and the fun we had on Friday:

My last "final" was actually today, for cooking!  It was nice for me being a senior because we spent 7 hours cooking, and I'm glad I didn't have other finals and last minute sets to worry about finishing.  I was just worried about having our bacon-wrapped shrimp done in time for the judging!  I don't think it has hit me yet how I'm done with Caltech...but maybe it won't fully, I'll probably start having the nightmares soon about whether I've finished a really hard set in time for class, or not studying for a super difficult final.  Either way, I don't have to do that anymore, wooooo!!! 

Graduation is Friday, more events to come before then!! Yay!!  I have two degrees and diploma is coming!

So Close!!!

I am so close to being done!!  I have to finish my thesis, but I have finished all my other essays and finals.  Putting some finishing touches on the 22 pages I have right now, and then I have to work on my Works Cited page.  I have slept...not as many hours as I would have liked to this last week, but that's ok, a lot of it is just excitement to be done.

Tom Mannion is hosting a Senior Dinner tomorrow (today?) and he emailed everyone the menu...if you are hungry right now then do not read on.  I have pasted it below:

Appetizers

Station one
Old country cheese board
Fruit platters

Station two
Bruschetta trio, traditional tomato, roasted eggplant and red bell pepper, and Roma tomato fresh
Mozzarella and basil with balsamic glaze with assorted crustini

First Course
Mix green salad with bib lettuce, tear drop tomatoes, candied pecans, maytag blue cheese, and champagne vinaigrette

Second Course
Tom's herbed crusted tenderloin with gorgonzola mashed potato, haricot vert and red wine demi

Vegetarian
Green chili Mac with Colorado corn sauce

Third Course
TBA ….something chocolate with Caltech logo

That is tomorrow at 6:30pm, with all the seniors.  It will be so fun!! Tom's dinners are so delicious.  I guess I technically have one more final, because the Cooking class final is on Sunday.  We have to make 5 courses; there is one mystery ingredient, which I have heard in the past is some kind of weird meat, which we have to use in at least one dish.  We get 30 minutes to plan what we will make, then we cook from 12 - 3pm.  The judging starts at 3 and I hear it goes until at least 4:30 or so, there are at least 20 judges.  It will be a fun way to spend Sunday, and then I think I am going to go see the fireworks show (it's new!!) at Disneyland.

Next week there are SO MANY SENIOR EVENTS.  Tuesday is the Senior Trip to Six Flags Magic Mountain, and we are all going to go together.  Thursday is the Senior Banquet, and that is also going to be delicious, with not only the seniors together but also some of their families joining.  It is a little expensive if you ask me, but the seniors get dinner for free.  Friday is GRADUATIONNNN, and between now and then, I'm going to just be happy and clean my apartment and maybe get a new pet doggie!!

But first - my thesis needs to be finished.  So I will do that now, and speak to you after it is done!!

Graduation Coming Soon!!

Hello all!!

I tried on my graduation robe today - it looks soooo weird.  I can't believe we are going to be wearing these - even PhD students!!  They look so ridiculous on us!  But I bet since we will all be wearing the same things, it will look great.  I also bought a tassel (orange, for Caltech).  I am debating on buying the blue stole...because I would love to wear blue for Page House color, but I don't think that blue and orange match very well.  Any votes?  Without the stole, I think I'll have to wear something nice or at least something that matches with orange because you can see the collar area under the robe.  Also, the hats are ridiculous too.  Square?  Wide and flat?  I suppose I will enjoy it because it represents my graduation from Caltech...but...wow.  Stay tuned for pictures...maybe. :p

The big Mashup Massive party which I am sure you have all read about on other blogs was last Saturday, and what a way to end Senior year.  Of all the parties they've had my four years here, this was definitely the biggest!  I've never seen so many alumni and grad students, as well as my friends.  It was SUCH a blast!!  And DJ Earworm was there!! Look him up!  Pretty much the most amazing DJ EVERRR, he came down from San Francisco and - I quote - "wrote the book on DJing."  Definitely check him out online.

We are still cleaning up Ditch Day activities!!  Somehow, about 500 colorful plastic balls mysteriously disappeared...still tracking those down, as well as some giant blue exercise balls we left on the North Fields.  Being a senior isn't ALL fun and games - our houses get compensated $300 if we get Ditch Day cleaned up within ten days.  So I still have 6 days left...we're fine, right?  Except for that concrete wall that is still not chopped down.  If anyone wants to hack away with our sledgehammer, please, be my guest.  Upstairs Page House, across from the kitchen.  I'm sure someone will bake you cookies or something.

I have a thesis, an English paper, and an art final left to do before I am DONE!!  Plus...a little bit of Ge1 grading (for the class I TA).  That will take more time, because their finals aren't due until June 10th, which is a bummer.  But at least graduation isn't until two days later.  I better get to work on that thesis.  More to come!

Ditch Day Successful!!

Hi everyone,

Ditch Day was great!...for the underclassmen!  My first look into Ditch Day as a senior was...hectic.  But a TON of fun to plan.  There were three stacks in Page House - Mario, Zelda, and Training Day, and they all had really awesome activities planned.  I worked on Training Day with six of my friends, and we had a lot of fun things for our group to do.  There were two teams - Denzel Washington (dirty cops) and Ethan Hawke (clean cops), and after we fed them breakfast they headed over to the North Fields for some exercise-ball activity.  There was a ring and four giant bouncy exercise balls, and the idea was to bump each other out of the ring. 

As far as I know, there was no injury incurred during this process - success!  Then we bought four water balloon launchers and filled up 700 water balloons (which took FOREVER, my fingers are still sore from tying those little guys), and had them shoot water balloons long range at each other.  That was great, and I have freshmen, sophomores and juniors proudly displaying their epic bruises from that one.  They all went to the pool after this, where we had scattered 500 playpen plastic colorful balls, and they had to collect all of this "money" and find the ones with letters written on them, then solve an anagram which spelled out "Chicken Fight then Mannions," after which they all ate lunch at Tom Mannion's house.

FINALLY, we had a "brute force" stack, which means the next activity was to break down a doorway into a senior's room, a traditional part of Ditch Day.  That is really why the events are called "stacks" - so we cemented up the doorway, and when we took off the wood border the night before we (the seniors) were all really worried because the top layer was very crumbly and easily came off.  We thought it would be too easy to break into.  However, the group was unable to knock it down the day of Ditch Day, and 48 hours later (today) it is only broken down enough for one person to crawl into the room!  Which...is probably a problem.  We'll see how that goes taking the rest of it down.  Altogether, everyone had a TON of fun, and even the seniors who stayed up all night working on it had a great time - we went to an apartment afterward, had some orange juice, went out to breakfast at a nice restaurant together, and promptly fell asleep.

Our senior trip is scheduled for Tuesday June 9th, we're all going to Six Flags and Hurricane Harbor, wooo!!  Hopefully they will provide giant busses for all of us, so we can be together and run down the hallways and everything.  Tom Mannion is hosting a Senior dinner the Friday before that on June 5th, and I just bought my graduation cap and gown!!  And Caltech-flavored (orange) tassle!  So I'm almost there.  Personally though, I need to finish my thesis in exactly seven days and two hours, so I'm not quite "almost" there in work-time.  But I am in physical time.  Excellent.

We also had a fun farewell-senior-tour-guides Tour Guide Barbecue a few hours ago, and that was really fun also.  I will miss being a senior tour guide and doing odd jobs for the Admissions office (like blogging about being a senior!) but I'll come back to visit of course.

More to come!

~Love, Alex

Fun Class Events

My senior schedule consists of British Art, 19th Century Women's Fiction, Philosophy of Neuroscience, my English Thesis, Badminton, and Cooking class, in addition to TAing Ge1, being a tour guide and working at the Caltech Y.  This means that I get to do a lot of random fun activities.

As part of my art history class, we get free admission to the Huntington library and galleries for the whole term!  So I went with a friend yesterday to look at some of the paintings we need to analyze for our final paper.  It was nice to be able to walk around and see in real life the paintings my professor shows us in class every Monday and Wednesday night.  Not an opportunity afforded to many, I'm sure.

Ge1, as I have already described, gets me to the Grand Canyon!  And teaches me how to take care of the logistics of setting up a class - complete with projector, camera and computer.

My English thesis class really helps me to figure out everything I want to write about Edgar Allan Poe.  I have spoken with several professors outside of my thesis adviser, and I am able to have very competent conversations with others about this type of narrative fiction and literature.  My 19th century women's fiction class isn't exactly the horror and bloody crimes of Poe, but it gets me an insight into sentimental fiction of the period. 

Do I miss science classes?  Well, there is really science in everything...and we take a lot of science classes here at Caltech...so I pick up a plant science book every now and then, and I plan on working in a lab on DNA extraction this summer, but I would say it's a nice "humanities" break.

Cooking and badminton balance each other out nicely...I have badminton on Tuesday at 2pm, and Cooking on Tuesday at 6:30pm.  If you get a good workout in, you can eat dessert!! Wooohoo!!

This weekend I am moving!  Everything I own is in boxes, and part of me wants to keep it that way because it's just sooooo much simpler.  But eventually I suppose I will need real furniture.  If anyone has a coffee table, I'll take it off your hands...

Geology Field Trips!!...as a TA

Hi everyone,

As a freshman, sophomore, and junior major in Geobiology, I had to take several classes which required field trips.  As a result of my being in the department, I have been able to travel (free of charge!) to Croatia, Venice, Australia, Hawaii, Baja Mexico, the Ridge Basin, and just recently the Grand Canyon.  The difference was, for this last weekend, I was a TA, because I'm TA'ing an "Introduction to Geology" course called Ge1.  Their field trip is to the Grand Canyon, and the TAs got to go along to help maintain order among the frosh (mostly, we carried the gear from place to place...but it wasn't too much, only some posterboards and a cooler!!).

The Grand Canyon was BEAUTIFUL.  Here are some of the pictures we were able to take, and Professor Brian Wernicke lectured about the geology of each regional stop.  The bus was comfortable, the air conditioning stayed on (mostly), and on one night we even got to stay in a hotel.  Here are some pictures:
We had so much fun.  So as a senior, I was able to TA multiple classes, meaning I could go on these field trips, not pay for any of them, and get paid to hold coolers.  Pretty cool job.

This was the last big trip I will take as a senior though, for free at the expense of Caltech Geology Department at least...let's hope they like alumni coming back to visit :)