Caltech

Finals Week (in DC!!!!)

I know in the past we’ve talked about my poor life choices and so it only makes sense that I’d one up all of those by spending finals week in Washington, DC. Actually, more properly I spent it in Edgewater, MD with my ex-roommate’s parents (who by the way are the best and opened their home to a practically complete stranger) and then drove in to DC (they also lent me my ex-roommate’s car? Seriously the kindest people). What was... Read more →

A Geology Meme a Day…

Keeps your bad grades away! (hopefully – just took the final, did not go well). Hello from Maryland! As you can probably tell, I’m a couple days behind with my blog posts. I’m currently staying with the parents of my roommate from last year while I’m at the American Geophysical Union conference in Washingotn, DC. But more on that later (they’re my new favorite people!). This is a bit of a reflection on a class and how I’ve spent this... Read more →

Building a PCR

For the Medical Engineering class I am taking (BE189a), our final project involved building a PCR from scratch. If you are unfamiliar with PCRs, it stands for polymerase chain reaction and its used to make many copies of a specific DNA segment. I have only used commercial PCRs with fancy interfaces before in biology labs, so I found the project slightly daunting. Fortunately, we were not tasked with building a commercial device, instead a bare-bones system that gets the job... Read more →

Making an LED from Scratch

One of the coolest things I got to do this term was to build a LED from scratch. I never thought much about how lengthy of a process it is to fabricate a single LED, but after going through it in APh109 Microfabrication, I can really appreciate the technology. To be fair, the experimental procedures we used for class are antiquated because they are not efficient. However, at some point in time, this process was considered revolutionary. We started out... Read more →

Huntington Trip #2!

I’m beginning to get the suspicion that every Caltech humanities class tries to find some excuse to go visit the Huntington. I’m not complaining though. I love the gardens. It gives me an excuse to get off campus and be surrounded by lush foliage like I was living in a different world. Even if only for a moment. This Huntington trip was a bit different, and sponsored by English 128, the contemporary Irish literature course I’m taking taught by Dean... Read more →

Crow-bar None (Ge 11a Part 2)

Ok now for the FUN! Geology post. And the post where I talk a bit about the logistics of going on a 3.5-day Caltech GPS trip. The trip started on a Thursday night. I spent most of the 4-ish hour car ride working on my CS midterm. We ate in Barstow. 3/5 for the Barstow burger place, it was kinda funky. My friend Molly and I actually packed most of our food for the trip besides the planned dinners out.... Read more →

Making Medical Devices

As a junior, I haven't actually taken that many lab classes since most of my frosh and smore years were spent taking core. Of the lab classes I have taken, all of them were EE except chem 3a which is required, and I felt ambivalent towards every single one of them. Before, I simply completed the assignments and felt proud of the final products if they worked and felt frustrated if they did not. I was never really excited about... Read more →

School Rocks!

Just kidding. Aha, actually I love school, but it’s been a long week. Work at Tech is often something that comes in waves and when it’s high tide it’s all too easy to become washed away. My math homework took an absurd amount of time last week and more or less ruined my entire sleep schedule, but we complained to the professor, he’s making the sets more reasonably difficult – which basically means that he isn’t going to throttle us... Read more →

Retail Therapy (!!!)

Yep. Rough week three here at Caltech too. Started off with the career fair at 10 AM. Which seems totally reasonable until you realize I’d been up until 7 AM the night before. But hey, I’m loving every minute of it. Honestly. I’ve been working coffeehouse, developing the tea menu, fencing, and living my best life. This week was only really rough because of the career fair, job interviews, and a fencing tournament. All stacked together in one tidy little... Read more →

First PE Class Since High School

It's true, I have not taking a PE class since 10th grade. That being said, I have not been a couch potato for the past four years. In 11th and 12th grade, I did dragon boating and out rigger canoeing. Since coming to Caltech, I've been going to the gym pretty routinely. However, I have not gotten around to taking the 3 PE classes necessary for graduation until this term. I didn't want to put it off until the end... Read more →