Hey guys! After blogging for you guys for two terms, it's time for a break. Sorry I've been so spotty this past term, but I hope some of the stuff I've written about has been helpful anyways. As I said in my last post, I'm SURFing at MIT this term. Part of what makes the SURF (summer undergraduate research fellowship) program so amazing is that for Caltech students, you can do research anywhere. I have friends in Korea, at Stanford, at MIT, and other places around the world. It also makes you realize how well prepared Caltech students are; we can go anywhere and fit in easily. That being said, so far my SURF has been really awesome. I have been doing a lot of cloning to make the protein sequences I will be using for the rest of my project. I'm actually doing my first protein expression today and I'm really excited (and nervous to see if all my hard work over the past two weeks will work out).
Other than that, life is very normal and by that I mean boring. The one downside of doing SURF at home is that I'm not around techers all the time, though they do still have a strong presence in my life. There's another Caltech undergrad in my lab, named Cece, who's also a sophomore chemical engineering major. In addition, two of the grad students in my lab did their undergrad education at Caltech, so we talk about the different houses, people we know in common, and a bunch of other stuff. And of course, I have made friends here at MIT (really, they don't bite :P ). In fact, I found out that the freshman in our lab is in the same sorority as two of my best high school friends and is moving into one of my friends' room next year. Strange coincidences. Also, one of my great friends and treasurer of Page House is also doing research at MIT (in the same building as me, incidentally). So we've met for dinner a couple times and talked a bunch... it's really nice to have a friendly face around.
So other than all that, life is pretty chill. Except it's sad that I won't be blogging for you guys anymore. I remember reading these blogs as a prefrosh and even before applying and it was part of what made me realize what I wanted in a college and what Caltech had to offer and how much those two had in common. I can only hope that maybe even one of my posts has given someone a good feel of what Caltech really is and what it offers to different people. After two years at Caltech, I find more things to enjoy and people to meet; part of what's amazing about Caltech is that there is a small enough population that it's very easy to meet a lot of people. For those of you guys coming to campus in the next year (or maybe two years...?), I look forward to meeting you. Thanks so much for reading my blogs over the past six months. I had a lot of fun writing them :D.
Caltech core is a set of classes everyone, regardless of major, takes. We have five terms of math, five terms of physics, two terms of chemistry, one term of biology and twelve terms of humanities and social sciences.
*Because we are on a trimester system, five terms is the equivalent of one and two-thirds of a year.*
Twelve terms of humanities and social sciences sounds like a TON for those of us who were really looking forward to taking only science classes and no more history or English. [Statistically, though, most Techers end up taking more than 12 hum and social sci classes :)]. And I'm sure most of you can imagine what our science classes are like, but during pre-frosh weekend, a lot of people wanted to know abour our hums too. I took An 22 last term, intro to socio-cultural anthropology. The two terms before, I took an advanced French class, a Middle-Ages history class, and Right and Wrong. But, since An 22 is so fresh in my mind (and because I really enjoyed it!), that's what I'm going to write about. And I highly recommend for all of you planning on coming to Tech that you take it too!
The class is taught by Professor Ensminger. Her field site is with the Orma in Kenya. She began her graduate work there and has been studying there for ~30 years now. Her research is so interesting! She's currently working on corruption, and you should all (regardless of whether or not you come to Tech) check out her new book when it comes out (I'm not sure what the title is :(). Her other most recent research was a HUGE effort with a bunch of anthropologists / economists comparing trust and punishment in their respective field sites through economic games.
The paper with their results is: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5972/1480.abstract
But, I'll try to give a short summary here. [The paper isn't nearly as interesting as the lecture was! That's the awesome thing about Caltech - there are so many people doing really awesome research, and it's exciting already, but when you hear it from them, it's even more exciting!! So even if you read this, I promise that the class won't be any less interesting:)]
The games they used for these studies were the dictator, ultimatum, and trust games. Basically, in one game, they gave a person X amount of money (equivalent to one day's earnings in that area - figuring this out was really hard, Professor Ensminger said, because even some of the games were less "indicative" of what they were trying to measure in some societies than in others and the group of anthropologists had to work hard to find methodology that worked everywhere) and that person could decide to keep it all or give a part away. In the other game, the person could give some or keep it all, and what they gave, the second person could all keep or give back to the first person at double value. In the third game, the second person could reject the money given by the first, meaning that no one got anything.
What the group figured out was that market size and punishment do correlate! If you are in a more complex market, you are more likely to "punish" the first person if they don't fairly split the money [on that note, fairly was usually not 50 percent - though the threshold rose as market size grew, even the US and other countries like us in terms of market integration were just under it!]. Further, gender and social class didn't "account for" the differences. Being part of a world religion was the only thing that did. This stuff might seem really obvious, but it's super significant - it means punishment evolved. It isn't something that humans are naturally "programmed" to do at any certain, human threshold but something that depends on our social context and background. I think that's pretty awesome!
We also talked about a lot of other topics (it was an intro class, after all:)). These included kinship, language, religion, the environment and sustainability [I strongly recommed the paper Evolutionary Ecology and Resource Conservation by Alvard if anyone is interested in this!], the mafia [plural cultures], and reciprocity.
Caltech also has this lunch-with-a-professor thing where we can take a prof out to eat and our student government pays for it. A bunch of other people from my class and I went out to eat with Professor Ensminger. She told us a lot more about her research, and that was definitely a great way to end the class! [I think she went to lunch quite a bit with An22ers :)].
So, this is my scatter-brained blog about hums here -- there are tons targeted at future scientists, and a bunch for those of you just plain interested in the humanities!!! I'm already super-excited to take another anthro class!
I am starting this post with an aside. If you want to skip it, just scroll past the
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June 25, 2011: Daily slice of my life
Google Definition for "spam":
1. A canned meat product made mainly from ham
2. Irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients
Both types of "spam" are bad, but if you had to take your pick of artery-clogging canned meat or unwanted messages, you will probably pick the meat because once you eat it you'll have to go to the store to buy more but even if you delete spam, you'll constantly receive it, nonstop.
After a recent embarrassing experience, I definitely know I'd pick spam meat over spam messages.
On Saturday, I had to deal with an unexpected and potentially costly event related to spam. No, I didn't go to the store to buy a week's supply of spam or did I fall for those scams that end up in the spam folder. On the contrary, I inadvertently was the spammer, or rather the texting spammer.
Pictured above: my new phone, beautiful but deadly.
Last Tuesday, I talked about receiving a brand new HTC Inspire cellphone from my family. It is a gorgeous phone with too many features than I would have cared to have. The only downside is that the large LCD screen drained life from the battery like a vampire, meaning I have to charge the phone everyday.
When you first set up the phone, it allows you to transfer your contacts, calendar, and old text messages from your old phone. I thought this was quite a nifty feature since I wouldn't have bothered adding every single contact from my old phone to my new one. It simply would have taken too long and would have been too boring. So, I didn't think twice and made the transfer.
So, at first it was pretty good
But then, I suddently received random texts from people like the following:
"Wait, what?" and "You're sending me a lot of spam" and "I'm receiving all of the texts you sent me from 2 years ago until now!"
...At that point I started thinking what I possibly could have done.
...I thought some, and finally it dawned on me that the problem probably came from transferring all the old data from my old phone to my new phone. I shouldn't have transferred the old SMS texts. That was a bad idea, and now I'm going to tell you that if you happen to be or ever are in this situation, don't transfer old text messages!
So, what happened next? Well, I went to work and fixed the problem and I got to say everything went better than expected!
I posted my dilenma on facebook so my friends who received texts would know what was going on since there wasn't an option on the phone to forward a text message to everyone.
Can you believe 6 people actually liked the fact I was spamming others? I hope they were being sarcastic. I am so glad that I have unlimited texting; otherwise, it really would have been a problem! So far I haven't had to pay for other people's texting costs. I hope it stays that way.
Moral of story? Think twice before you make a decision!
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A Little Bit About My Research Over The Summer 2011
There's a scientific discipline called biogeochemistry, and I am doing a summer that falls within that field. I'm working in Professor Alex Session's lab in North Mudd building. Professor Sessions has a wide variety of interests. Taken from his website: "I [Professor Sessions] study organic materials in both modern and ancient environments, using their molecular structure and stable-isotopic composition to understand where they come from, what processes have affected them, and what environmental conditions they record. This can be variously described as organic geochemistry, geobiology, and isotopic biogeochemistry."
What you'll find out when working in a research lab at Caltech if you haven't already is that in most cases you will be working with the professor's postdocs or grad students rather than with the boss himself. This is because the professor (commonly known as the PI or principal investigator) is too busy to babysit undergrads. Yep, we start at the bottom of the food chain, but it is quite possible to make significant accomplishments provided you spend enough time thinking about the science and working in the lab. For instance, I have a friend whom we'll call M who has already published a paper as a second author and another friend N who is hoping to be second or third author in two papers that should be coming out later this year.
I met a guy from another guy part of the Amgen program from another university who worked so hard that he has his name on 9 publications. Wowza! Of course, the vast majority of summer students like me have not published yet, but the possibility of publishing before graduating is defintely possible, given enough time spent in lab on the project and some luck.
My mentor is Xinning Zhang, who did some work investigating how the deuterium-to-hydrogen-ratio variations in bacterial lipids relate to the main type of metabolic pathway used in certain types of bacteria. The abstract is here. What I'm currently working on is an extension of the project, so that we can learn more about the relation of hydrogen isotopes and metabolism in bacteria. A reviewer wrote a easy-to-read review (here) of what the past project has shown. It summarizes what kind of research I am doing pretty well.
Currently, I am getting through a set of experiments seeing how changing the substrate on which E. coli is grown affects the D/H ratios. The substrates I'm growing E. coli on are glucose and galactose, and the E. coli used include strains with knockouts of different metabolic pathways including glycolysis and the TCA cycle, also known as the Kreb's and citric acid cycle. I'll keep you posted on the results when I get them.
Opinions on summer research programs available at Caltech|Amgen, SURF, & MURF
SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship) - The vast majority of Caltech students, who stay on campus over the summer apply for a SURF. According to the SURF website: The SURF program introduces students to research under the guidance of seasoned research mentors at Caltech and JPL. Students experience the process of research as a creative intellectual activity. Basically, for any type of research, you will have to approach a professor on campus and then ask if you can work in his or her lab over the summer. Of course, you should know what the lab does in some detail and what kind of project you are specifically interested in taking part in. A CV or resume may also be required for some mentors, who receive too many SURF students than they can accept, but generally it is easy to find research due to Caltech's small student body size of 1000 students and a 3:1 student to faculty ratio!
Amgen - If you are interested in doing a biology-related project and may possibly want to pursue an MD-PhD (although certainly not required to do so), then it may be better to apply for an Amgen in addition to a SURF (you can submit applications to both)! You can learn more about the program here! The Amgen program at Caltech provides slightly more income than the SURF program and definitely more social activities as well as mandatory weekly seminars that introduce you to the other types of research of the professors that your peers are working for over the summer. This means that the professors themselves will do the presentations! It's like taking part in a mini-science conference every week without having to leave campus! Super cool!
I believe the program accepts around 25 (give or take one to two) total students, half of whom are from Caltech and the other half not from Caltech. These are actually pretty good odds considering 1) freshmen and seniors cannot apply (that's about half the student body) and 2) not everyone is interested in biology, so if you're interested, defintely apply.
MURF (Minority Undergraduate Research Fellowship) - This is basically a SURF or Amgen for minority students. There are more social activities for smaller groups much like there are activities for Amgen. More information can be found here.
As with any type of research at Caltech, it can take a long time to get results and it can be hard. However, lab is not boring to say the least. For instance, the apricots shown above were grown from one of the lab members, who kindly brought them in to share with everyone else. Om nom nom!
Some of the fun activities over the summer include karaoking. Here are a group of students singing at the UFB (upper fishbowl - yes, rooms and alleys have names based on their uses and in this case, how they look) in Avery House. There was also free pizza! More om nom nom! <3
This is my lab bench at work. I get to do a lot of mixing solutions as you can see with the bottles lying around and also use a little bit of knowledge I learned in organic chemistry earlier this year such as working with acetyl chloride for fatty acid derivatization. =)
It's Friday Friday, gotta get down on Friday! Here is a fun picture of seven people trying to get themselves jammed in an old-fashioned telephone booth we found around town.
Hey! I see you!
Contrary to what most people like to think on Friday, I was not looking forward to the weekend because it was not so much fun fun fun fun but more work work sleep deprivation work. Since my project involves sleep growing bacteria, I have to harvest them at certain times. I got to work all of Saturday starting at 9am in the morning. It turned out that I couldn't harvest one culture until 4am Sunday morning, which meant I didn't get out of lab until 4:30am the next day!
However, realize that most research don't end up like this. This was just a special circumstance that required me to get the experiment done soon because I wouldn't have access to some equipment that following week.
And the fun doesn't end! Sunday morning at around 6am or 7am, I was awakened by steam pipes busting open in the mechanical room of the house, which promptly set off the fire alarms. I guess students around me can sleep through about anything or didn't want to be the one to fix the problem, so the alarms kept going on and on for half an hour until I decided this is it and called security to come check the problem out and fix it.
Part of Memoirs of a Geisha was filmed at the Huntington (above) in the small city of Pasadena at a location that is less than 5 miles from Caltech! Wowza!
I also experimented around with the camcorder feature on my new phone, so here are some videos of Huntington art gallery. There will be shaking because I find it hard to keep absolutely still. You have been warned!
The first video is actually of bonzai in the Japanese gardens at Huntington.
I always thought New Hampshire, my home state, was really cool for having mountains, beaches, and Canada within day-trip distance. There's only one problem: CA does too. In fact, I'm pretty sure the mountains and ocean are closer to each othere here than in NH. I made it a weekend trip: on Saturday, I hiked Mount Wilson with a bunch of other Techers and summer students (here for SURF or Caltech's JPL programs) and on Sunday, my roommate and I took the metro to Santa Monica.
*Fun fact: NH remains the only state where you can visit all these places on a motorcycle not wearing a helmet*
The hike began at Eaton Canyon, headed up to the Henniger Flats for three miles, and then continued on for six miles to the peak. The trial is an old dirt road, but it definitely isn't all too car-safe anymore -- at some point over Henniger Flats [I think there are some people who drive up to there -- it is a campground], there were a bunch of boulders covering the road. My favorite part of the hike was right after the Henniger Flats -- we were actually walking through a forest!! Like lots of trees! There were tons of wildflowers, including, I think, some forget-me-nots, those little pink frily ones [I'm sorry, this probably describes a plethora of flowers, but try to think mountain :)], and tons of yellow ones.
*So many butterflies!*
At some point past the rockslide, it got really buggy. Like swarms of bugs around you. And these were the nasty kind that bite and leave marks the size of bee-stings. Not fun. We met some locals who had been turned around by the bugs, and that began a train of ideas in our group. In the end, only a few people who would be able to come back in August decided to escape the bugs and hike to a lower waterfall instead; the rest of us continued. It was really buggy though, so another hiker and I got way ahead of the group. Mysteriously, we didn't find them on our way down either -- there was one intersection where two paths led to the top, and this is probably where we lost them :( It was still awesome though, because I had to be back on campus at 5:30.
*There was fog (not smog) for most of the way up, but then it cleared for the afternoon.*
I've written about the Caltech Y a bunch, but in short, the Y does everything from outdoors to community service to exploring the area. On the third Saturday of each month, we take a group of Techers to Union Station, a homeless shelter in Pasadena, to cook for the residents. That's why I had to be on campus by 5:30 :) This month, we made mashed potatoes with string beans, lemon-marinated chicken and gravy. We had ice cream for dessert. It was soooo good and all the residents kept telling us [I've been there before, and they'll thank you every time, but they won't tell you the food is great if it isn't]. I attribute it to the cooking skills of this group: one of the grad students on the trip made those beans into something amazing, and a postdoc had a really good mashed potato recipie. We also had a lot of ideas for future meals; we were thinking about lasagne, Indian food (American-style mild :)) and a Mexican Night. The trips are always really fun - after cooking for a few hours, we eat with the residents. Many of them have a pretty interesting (by that, I mean not very represented / noticeable at Caltech :)) outlook on their situation. We're looking into working with them not just by cooking but also in helping them return to supporting themselves. For those of you coming to Caltech this fall, I really suggust looking at what the Y does and finding something you're interested in! Or finding something at the clubfair -- there really are a ton of awesome groups on Caltech, and many of them are a great complement to the classes / offer a good chance to follow your non-academic interests :)
On Sunday, Garms and I took the metro to Santa Monica.
*I didn't get a good picture, but the rain you see here is actually a Hollywood rain machine!! [What a waste of water!] They were filming some movie with a red car being chased by a Taxi and making really quick dangerous turns I wouldn't do in the rain! -- if you see something like this come out soon, let me know!*
We explored the pier, had lunch / a nap on the beach, and went window shopping. Santa Monica is definitely a tourist town - the beach is beautiful, the shopping district is modern and crowded (it was father's day :)) and the pier has an amusement park on top.
*We had fun looking at the waves under the pier: they break really cool-y (I don't think that's a real word :)) when they hit all the different posts. They also start going different speeds depending on whether they are under the concrete, doubled-up posts (holding up the rollar coaster) or under the wood (holding up people). The ocean is so awesome! Too bad that there was a plastic bag = pollution swimming in it :( We need to take better care of our land!*
It was a pretty awesome weekend, and on Monday, I'll get to spend the entire day playing with colors again! [Inorganic chemistry changes from red to orange or purple or blue very fast :)].
Now... Time to write about the start of my SURF and tour guide training!
SURF
As I've mentioned before, I'm working in Professor Julia Greer's lab. While she's not actually in the chemical engineering department, she is in a materials lab in the Engineering and Applied Science department... and I'm in the materials track of chemE! Her research is centered on the strength of nanostructures. My project specifically is on the mechanical properties and deformation mechanisms of nanopillars. You can read more about it here: http://www.jrgreer.caltech.edu/research.php#nanoscale_deformation.
This first week has primarily been devoted to the electroplating of nanopillar samples and training on various machines. I've been making nanopillars that have diameters ranging from 50 nm to 500 nm, via electroplating. This is a process where I have a larger dummy chip and the chip that I want to create pillars on, an anode and cathode placed in a solution of iron, and then a current, which plates the iron onto the chip. The chip itself is 1 cm by 1 cm, and it's made up of a thin gold layer, on top of a titanium layer that coats a silicon wafer. The gold layer is covered by a template which gives us the pillar structure, and it's washed off after electroplating using acetone and isopropyl alcohol. Anyways... This tiny chip holds around 60,000 pillars at the center of it!
Here's a picture of the setup:
The light-green bath on the far left of the picture is for iron, made up of ammonium ferrous sulfate. This is where the anode and cathode are. As for the other solutions, the blue is copper, the small beaker next to that holds the dark green nickel bath. The two bottles in the back hold the dead yellow-colored iron baths that don't work anymore, because the Fe(II) oxidized to Fe(III).
Once the pillars are created, we take them down to the clean room to use the SEMentor, which is a scanning electron microscope combined with a nanoindentor. This allows us to see the pillars and also conduct a number of tests on them. There's also another machine, the G200, that we use to gather compression test data.
We have to wear lots of ridiculous clean room gear when we use the SEMentor, like the people in this random photo I found:
And look! Here's a picture of the super cute nanopillars that Jarvis, another SURF student, made! This is of 100 nm nickel nanopillars, magnified at 40x. Normally, 100 nm is too small to see easily, but these pillars were overplated. [I'd show you a picture of mine, but my project currently isn't working... My mentor and I are working to figure out why.]
Oh, and here's a picture of some of my iron nanopillars, taken by the SEMentor:
And here's a close-up of one:
Anyways, this has only been the past two weeks of my SURF project. There's a lot more stuff to come.
Tour Guide
Now that my stint as an admissions blogger is reaching an end, I found myself a new job to do! I'd wanted to be a tour guide ever since I became a Techer. After all, my choice to come here was thanks to a tour here, where I fell in love with the beautiful campus, unique culture, and academic challenge of Caltech. Soo... I wanted to share my love with others! :D
There were a ton of tour guide applicants. If I remember right, there were at least 50 applicants, but only room for about 20. To apply, we filled out a form and went through two interviews. From there, those of us who were chosen had to undergo training, which involved shadowing two tours and attending an information session. Anyways, I went to those... and now I'm a fully trained tour guide! I'll probably start giving tours in July, after I come back from my two week vacation with family. I still have a lot to prepare before that happens though: I need to plan out a route and also figure out what I want to say to people... Also, I need to figure out how to walk backwards while talking to a large group without falling over. Now that is going to be the key challenge... xP.
And with that... Goodbye! This is my last post. D: Thanks for reading my blogs this past year; I had a lot of fun writing for you guys!
You guys should come to Caltech and catch one of my tours! ;D
There is a special time around the year for every father. This special day for them is the third Sunday of June. Of course, I am talking about Father’s Day. Every year around this time, children, young and old, show their appreciation for their fathers by giving them gifts, inviting them to dinner, or participating in family activities.
On this Sunday, I got quite curious about the origin and the story behind Father’s Day. Thus, I turned to a good friend of mine, the Internet, for an answer to my curiosity. Once again, the Internet came up with an answer.
As it turned out, the origin behind Father’s Day in the US was actually quite interesting. Apparently, two women from almost around the same time period, Grace Clayton and Sonora Dodd, cam up with the idea of celebrating fathers as a complement to Mother’s Day. Clayton inspired by the death of 210 fathers in a mining accident and Dodd inspired by her single father. You would think that Father’s Day should easily become a national holiday. As it turned out, it was first proposed in the 1910s but was made a national holiday by President Richard Nixon in 1972.
After learning about the story behind this special day, I had a whole day with my family. As it turned out, I did not have money to buy my father a gift. But since I know my father well, I knew he would not really want a new watch or a new toolbox. He would probably want something more worthwhile. I figured that if I shared with him my research on the Internet, he would know that I really cared about Father’s Day and that I had curiosity and willingness to discover. As it turned out, my speculation was true. Dad was quite happy about hearing my report on the origin of Father’s Day and I dodged a bullet for not buying a materialistic gift for him.
For the rest of the day, my family drove to Santa Barbara to stroll and relax on its famous beaches. It was a sunny day and everything seemed to pass slowly and gracefully. The birds in the air sang the praises to fathers around the world. The waves performed dances for the people on the beach in celebration of Father’s Day. This was a great day!
Hi everyone. My name is Carly Bond, and I am a rising junior studying chemical engineering at Caltech. I have been in Gwanju, South Korea for a little over a week. My first impression was that it is very bright. I arrived in Gwanju around midnight, and as we drove to the Gwanju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), I noticed that a lot of the buildings had big neon signs in many colors.
The majority of the streets around GIST are at least this bright. When I took this photo, the grad student I was with asked me why, because to her this was perfectly normal. I grew up in Alaska, so this was very different for me. Even in Pasadena, I have not seen lights like this. When I look at the skyline from my office, I feel like i'm in Las Vegas or Hollywood.
Eventually I made it to my dorm room. These new dorms were built just last year, and they are AMAZING. I get a double to myself, and I have my own balcony and bathroom. They even gave me bedding for the summer!
The sliding doors in the back lead to my balcony, and the door on the right leads to the bathroom. I even have wallpaper.
The floor just in front of the door to the hallway is recessed a few inches below the rest of the floor is used as a place to leave shoes.
They also have raised floors at some restaurants near here. You leave your shoes at the entrance and sit cross-legged on a mat in front of a low table instead of in a chair.
I met my lab group the next day. Professor Tae, my mentor here, is very kind and told me to ask him about anything I wanted help with. There are about 18 graduate students and researchers associated with his lab and they are really fun. Not all of them speak English well, but they are all really friendly.
On my second day here, one of the girls in my lab was awarded her master’s degree, so she took all 18 of the us out to celebrate. First we went to a gogi-gui (Korean barbeque) where we cooked pork strips on a little grill set into the table and then wrapped the meat in a leaf with various sauces, spices, and onions. There were also a lot of side dishes, but I still am not sure what many of them were. One was kimchi, and another was some kind of pickled radish. All the Koreans in my group liked to make the peace sign in photos, the same way you smile in the US.
The staff provided us a water pitcher instead of refilling individual glasses, but here you hardly ever pour your own glass. One of the students would fill everyone else’s glasses and then pass the pitcher to someone else so that their own glass could be filled.
After our meal we went to an arcade for a bit. There was a game where you shot at targets with an airsoft rifle-like gun. The boys were all pretty good at this because they had already served their mandatory two years in the military.
Just when I thought we would be heading back to campus, Wonil, my graduate student mentor (pictured above in the green shirt) announced that it was time for “second party” and we went to another restaurant, where we ate more food, drank more beverages, and played games. My favorite thing that we ate there was called honeybread. I think it was made from torn pieces of sweet bread mixed with berry honey butter.
You might think that two parties is enough for one night, but you would be wrong. After we left the second restaurant, we went to the supermarket and bought more drinks and snacks which we ate on a raised wooden platform in the park near campus. The park was pretty crowded, and a lot of young children were playing, even though it was 10pm. I found out later from first-hand experience that this is because it is too hot during the day to go to the park.
I think this is a little long, especially for my first post, so I will leave off here. Next time I will include more about my research here. Tell you more later!
One last photo…
These are the other three Caltech students who are also at GIST this summer, chilling in the park with our bikes. GIST has a campus about three times the size of Caltech’s, so GIST provides bicycles for all of their undergraduates to use while they are here.
From left to right: Marino Di Franco, Sylvia Sullivan, and Kelly Guan
Google Definition: The solstice that marks the onset of summer, at the time of the longest day, about June 21 in the northern hemisphere and December 22 in the southern hemisphere.
June 21, 2011 marks the beginning of summer, and it also marks the start of a journey! Read on ahead to find out more!
Your Guide
<-- He is awesome!
My name is Yang Hu and I am a junior undergrad at Caltech. I am majoring in biology, and my aspiration is to make it to medical school. My goal in this blog is to give you firsthand experience of what a summer at Caltech can be. Whether you are a high school student, prefrosh, or anyone else, I hope you find this blog useful. Now, enough about me. Let's go visit some places!
What to Expect
<-- Venues include Caltech, Pasadena/LA area, and Yosemite over 107 days!
You will find our in this blog about my summer research at Caltech, activities I will pursue over the summer, and more about me. I will also talk a little bit about Caltech academics, especially toward the beginning as well as clubs and other opportunities available at Caltech. I have written this blog with prospective students in mind in addition to random readers, who may stumble upon this page. Be sure to read everything to get a full sense of my experience! Now, let's get started!
FIRST STOP: END OF FINALS
The first day of summer for me was spent grading one question on the Bi1 final, which made up about a quarter of the grade for the freshmen nonbiology major core biology course. It was a class I had the lucky opportunity to TA (That's right! Undergrads can TA other undergrads at Caltech and get paid for doing so!) It became a pretty late night even though I didn't have to grade all the finals, but it was quite interesting reading the student responses. Some of the nonbiology majors had real potential in biology! The hard part is convincing them to switch majors. =P
Opinions on some biology classes|Courses Taken 3rd Term (39 Units)
Advanced Genetics taught by P. Sternberg -- This was a very low stress class. The entire grade was comprised of four problem sets worth 25% each. An A is any grade at or above 90%. Even though there is no extra credit offered, rumor has it that A+'s were given to students with the top grades in the class. Yes, Caltech does give A+'s and they count for 4.33 GPA!
Genetics Laboratory (from 2nd term) taught by B. Hay and J. Mendel -- This lab class literally lasted forever! The entire class was given an extension 2nd term and apparently this was done the previous year as well, so the class lasted from 2nd term to 3rd term. The course had 2 portions, one part focused on doing genetic screens on a newly discovered species of Caenorhabditis elegans nematodes and the other part had to do with creating a P-element deletion in the SUMO gene of Drosophila melanogaster! How cool is that?!? Super COOL!
Organic Chemistry Part 3 taught by B. Stoltz -- A very difficult course indeed, I'd say even at other colleges. The third term was absolutely brutal with an emphasis on sythesis and covering the previous two terms worth of organic chemistry. The class is no joke and required consistent studying throughout the year and especially during this term. The course had quizzes almost each week, an in-class midterm, and a final!
Elementary Chinese Native Speaker's Track taught by F. Ming -- I'd say this class was one that left behind quite a few memories. This course had a lot of busy work that is usually associated with language classes, but it is busy work that cannot be put off without major consequences. Some had to ask for extensions to finish the coursework even after the course was finished and these are brilliant people too! My class decided to make a video at the end of the term to commemorate the time we spent together. It is in Chinese but you should still get the gist even if you don't understand what is being said. Here it is below:
Monday Night Jazz Band taught by W. Bing -- This was an awesome, awesome class! Imagine being able to play some jazz with others who share a similar interest in that genre of music after a day of lecture and homework! Making music with fellow musicians is an awesome way to destress! With the added benefit of the talented and chill band director, Bill, it was definitely an awesome and fun experience I had during third term! Want to check out some of our music? Below I've posted part of our 2nd annual Latin Jazz Festival concert from this past year. Enjoy!
Health Advocates taught by M. Stapf -- What's not to like about learning about first aid and practicing it in the class? Health advocates was definitely one of the more enjoyable classes I have taken so far. Even though it was 3 straight hours on a Wednesday night, we got to sit in comfy sofas and have snacks halfway between! Plus, I got to be in the company of a lot of awesome friends and participate in the final practicum which included the use of a lot fake blodd!!! =)
(TA'd Bi1 -- As a job, TA positions do not count for credit. This was definitely a class worth taking as TAs are required to take the course in addition to TAing and holding recitation sections and office hours. The professor P. Bjorkman applied concepts in biology to HIV viruses. If given the option to TA, I would most likely do it again.)
The next day was much better. I got to catch up with some friends at Blacker that I didn't get to visit much due to a busy third term. We went to Noodle World, which features a lot of... you guessed it... NOODLES! Nom nom nom ... a full Techer is a happy Techer! Since the campus is small enough to walk by foot, some (like me) opt not to get a car, so traveling off campus is a tadbit more difficult, which is why it's good to know a few friends with cars. =P
This summer I am lucky to do research as an Amgen scholar. Amgen is basically a research program for those interested in pursuing an MD/PhD or does something remotely related to biology. It is a great program that provides many little perks including bonding time with the group of Amgen scholars. One of the first activities was a scavenger hunt across the Caltech campus. Of course, being a Caltech student made the scavenger hunt a little easier than intended, but the fun part was meeting new people. In the picture above, 3 of the students are not from Caltech.
I also got to go to lab today, but more on that in the next post!
The next day was a filled with fun as well. There was a kick-off summer BBQ for all summer research students (SURF, Amgen, and MURF) featuring mediterraneanfood catered by Burger Continental (which gives you a $2 Caltech special of a burger with fries on the side! That's cheaper than McDonalds! xP) After that I had to pack for my 3-day trip to Yosemite sponsored by the Caltech Y, which is our campus volunteer organization, which I will go into detail in future posts!
SECOND STOP: YOSEMITE
Hiking can be fun, especially if you happen to chance upon some members of your own house randomly in the middle of a trail. Pictured above are me, Marshall (alum), and Rebecca. It was a totally unexpected meeting. It's a small world after all! Full album of pictures for this trip are located here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150280685039515.377920.564879514&l=31b037b94c
It looks like I'm ready to jump off a 500+ waterfall for a little swim in ice cold water! This shot was taken at the end of the Mist Trail, which runs to the top of Vernal Falls (the water fall pictured). The trail was slippery and wet. Many sections didn't even have railings, and rumor has it that some ill-fated tourist fell off the trail into the ice cold river below a couple weeks before I hiked up the trail. Luckily there were no casualties on this particular trip. It was pretty exhilarating, and the views were absolutely breathtaking. You've got to go see it for yourself.
The next day, the group got to visit a giant sequioa forest. Apparently Caltech owns some property up here. There are even 5 giant sequoias named after famous Caltech people like Milikan. It was a whole different type of hike that involved trying not to get yourself stabbed by a tree branch sticking out at you from the ground or a fallen-over tree. Feet-eye coordination I gained from taking DDR (dance dance revolution) classes at Caltech proved very helpful here.
THIRD STOP: BACK TO TECH
The next day, I spent some time filming the House Video intro for rotation, and I also got to go to the annual "Pasadena Make Music and Sidewalk Chalk Festival." There were a lot of beautiful sidewalk chalk artwork as well as some interesting bands I've never heard of. Overall, it was awesome, and I also got to hangout with some Amgen buddies pictured above.
Since I've come to Caltech, I've become more sedentary. I used to do sports like cross-country and track in high school, but kind of dropped the ball at Caltech. This summer, I'm hoping to workout more to get back in shape. That's the goal. Now let's see if I get past planning xP
I got a care package from my family today! Awesome family =D
The package came with an HTC Inspire, which will replace my Blackberry Curve 8310. Now, I have to figure out how to use all of these new features, which the Curve didn't have. Whoot! More things to keep me busy over the summer.
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NEXT TIME: Learn about what I am actually researching over the summer and see what Caltech students can cook up (hopefully something edible)! =O
Oops, my last post was over a month ago, and that was when I was planning on writing a series of posts... >_<'' That failed miserably. I'm really sorry about my flakiness this term, but now you guys have a whole host of new bloggers to follow!
Anyways, a lot has happened since then. Most important among these were Ditch Day, finals/the end of the school year, the start of my SURF, and the start of my life as a tour guide. I'll give a recap of them in these next two posts:
Ditch Day:
For those of you who don't know, Caltech's Ditch Day was originally very similar to the ditch day of high school: seniors would skip their classes and leave campus for the day. However, the underclassmen would prank the seniors' rooms in retaliation. This soon evolved into the seniors barricading their doors with stacks of objects to hinder the underclassmen's progress. Then, this somehow evolved into the modern day Caltech Ditch Day: a super awesome day where assignments are postponed and classes are canceled. Seniors spend a ton of time (and money) planning and executing their stacks, which are best described as a series of puzzles, games, and obstacles based around a center theme and targeted for the underclassmen to participate in. It's a ton of fun.
Now, the stack that I joined was based on Calvin and Hobbes! The two seniors (Nadia and Jenny) actually sewed together an adorable stuffed Hobbes. But first, we made newspaper hats, put together a toy wagon, and then we had to catch Hobbes by throwing cans of tuna into a bucket for Hobbes to eat xP. From there, we made water balloons that we filled with iodine and threw them at a poster of Suzy to reveal a hidden puzzle... This led us to our next destination, Nadia's apartment! The seniors then took us out to lunch and drove us to the Getty Villa to do a scavenger hunt. The Getty Villa is a gorgeous museum in Malibu that showcases Roman art and architecture. If you guys are ever in the area, visit it! After that, we were taken to the beach Point Dume. This was followed by a nice dinner and then we finally got back to Tech at 10 pm. All in all, the day was super fun, albeit exhausting.
Here's a picture taken by Bob Paz of our group. You can see me holding Hobbes! My hat kept falling off, unfortunately.
If you guys want to see more Ditch Day pictures, you can find them here: http://www.bobpaz.com/. Some other themes include: Star Wars and Inception, as well as another Calvin and Hobbes stack.
Finals/End of School
My finals all went pretty well, and it definitely helped to be off core: I only had three finals, consisting of Ec 11, ChE 63b, and Ch 41c, and I had all week to take them, so I was able to space them out. Granted, I also had a lab report that was due the week before finals, and also a ten page paper for Artworlds. Grades were due almost a week ago, but for whatever reason, I'm still waiting on my thermo (63b) grade... Grr... But yeah! Despite the fact that the orgo exam was terribly hard, I somehow managed to do decently overall. AND NOW I NEVER HAVE TO TAKE ORGO EVER AGAIN! Yay! That class was definitely my hardest class this year.
Unfortunately, I couldn't attend graduation, because that was when I was busy slaving away at the orgo final... However, I did get to attend Ricketts' Pool Party, which was held on the last day of classes. This only happens every other year, and basically, it's like Ruddock's Hot Tub Room (which happens during PFW), but wayyy bigger--the Skurves transform their entire courtyard into a pool!
Here are some pictures I mooched off of Sam, aka Pixie:
There's the completed frame for the pool:
The plastic-covered frame:
Pool!!! This picture's from the afternoon, with just the Skurves hanging out. The actual party didn't start until nighttime:
Aight, SURF and tour guide stuff will be in my next (and very possibly final) blog.
Wow, I can't believe I just finished frosh year! I can't wait for the next three years! I really wish I could get one of those Hermione time-turner things! Still, my summer is filled with AWESOMENESS! And you'll get to hear all about it!! I'll be SURFing [as I already wrote a blog about:)], working, travelling to India, and running on the Caltech XC team.
*About the awesomeness: I am working as a House Assistant this summer, and we are officially called Team Awesome. If anyone reading this is checking into Caltech housing during regular business hours this summer (so officially-sounding) we'll be the ones bringing you to your room. Awesome! [I really wish I could write that with our team-accent:)]*
So - class of 2015 - the sport teams here are awesome! Coaches respect your balance between classes and sports, and it's a really great way to make friends and have fun! Fall sports - like my XC team :) - have something called pre-season. Basically, we (the athletes) come to campus four or five weeks before classes start. In this time, we practice and have meets and bond. If you incoming frosh are at all interested in the fall sports (or even the winter / spring sports) you should email the coaches and let them know as soon as you have a chance -- they'll send you all the info you need. The cross country head coach is Scott and you can email him at [email protected] if you want to run! The other coaches' contact info is at http://www.gocaltech.com/landing/index. Preseason is a really good way to get to know campus! And it's fun! The teams have a large variety of abilities, but everyone really enjoys it - even the people who come the first day of practice never having played before! [I still recommend, XCers, doing your summer running :)].
I'm very enthusiastic about my SURF, so that's already had it's own post. But, I figured I would write a little about what else I am doing this summer and how I made these plans. During pre-frosh weekend, a lot of people asked me if it was really that easy to get a SURF. No professor is going to show up at your dorm room, knock, and ask you if you want a SURF. Not every professor you email and ask for a SURF is going to say yes, either. But, if you really care about a particular project, chances are, you will get it. If you don't really know what you want to do, but want to do something, there are a lot of people who can help you find a SURF that matches your interests. The frosh advisors are really good resources, as are the lunches with professors (these are hosted by one of our student groups, ARC, or occur each week in some classes, like Chem1a with Nate Lewis, or you can get funding to take a professor out to lunch). Pizza classes are also a great way to learn about what is even going on at Tech. These frosh classes meet once a week, are division specific, and feature a professor who talks about their research while we eat pizza (and in chem's case, salad). A lot of the SURF proposals tend to come together very last minute, but with a Caltech-student SURF acceptence rate of around 90 percent, you've got good chances :) All in all, about 75 percent of Caltech students do SURFs.
Besides SURF, the thing I am most excited about is the trip to India with Ken Pickar's class, ME 105: Product Design for the Developing World. The goal of this class is to develop a product targeted at improving the lives of people living on less than two dollars a day - and, of course, to learn about product design and entreprenurship while we're at it. We'll have our next class meeting in a few weeks, so I'll write more about the class and trip after that.
And, finally, during pre-season, I'll also be working! Work-study jobs on campus are very student-suited. They're set up to work for someone taking a Caltech course load, and every employer is quick to say that problem sets come before work; some jobs have email lists for substitutes, and in others, it's okay just not to come one day. Though frosh don't have work study until second term, and then only if the Dean approves it (unless you're failing some classes, you will probably get approved, but freshmen do have a maximum hours/week), I definitely encourage those of you who have work-study to begin working then. There are a few jobs during which you can do your work (for example, the library) and a few others where you'll be pretty busy (you can work in a lab, for anyone on campus, or even community service). I'm going to be possibly finishing up my SURF, working in the Environmental Analysis Center, and working with the community service group, the Caltech Y. For students without work study, there are a lot of other options as well - you can become a house waitor, work at the Ath, or be an usher to the many great events on campus.
I really don't like writting blogs without pictures, but the website is being grouchy and won't upload my pics right now. So, kudos to all of you who read all the way to down here! I hope you learned something about Caltech, and feel free to leave a comment if you have questions, as always :)
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