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May 07, 2006
First Year's Over!
My first year of grad school is officially in the books! After spending a good deal of time studying on Wednesday I was actually semi-prepared for the Mesoscale final, or at least far more prepared than I was for the midterm in that class a couple months ago, that's for sure (who would've thunk it that a few more hours of studying could help so significantly?). I haven't gotten it back yet, but I'm pretty confident I at least got a respectable grade on the final and the paper to rescue my grade. It feels so good to be done, especially after how stressful the last three weeks or so have been. I think it's only now starting to sink in that the semester's actually done, and that we don't have any other papers, assignments or tests lurking on the horizon.
After Daniel & I played a little Chinese football in the TA office to unwind (I forget how many years it'd been since I last played that...), I went to pick up some stuff for the evening's BBQ over at Dave's house, and I was thrilled to find out that Nittany Beverage right next door actually carries some Leinenkugel's (like the Honey Weiss that Jacob's holding at right). It's not every day that you can actually find good Wisconsin beer (i.e., not Miller fill-in-the-blank) in a totally different part of the country. I know that my friend Betsy down at UNC-Chapel Hill is jealous that they don't yet have Leinie's south of the Mason-Dixon line. Someone's really gotta work on that, that's a travesty in my book. 
At any rate the picnic was a blast, a whole bunch of people were there. Even though the majority of the Meteo grads were done on Tuesday after the Dynamics final, those of us in Mesoscale were finally able to relax and have fun for a change, which was very welcome. There were some great games of telephone, twilight frisbee and Dave got out his awesome homemade telescope to take a look at Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon, it was great. Afterward Daniel, Jacob, Chris & Caren came over to my place to play some Apples to Apples, which was entertaining as always, though not quite as entertaining as Chris's run-in with a curb on the way over. :-)
I tried somewhat unsuccessfully to sleep in a bit on Friday, but I figured I may as well get up anyway. I had a meeting mid-afternoon with my advisor Joel, where he started introducing me to some of the stuff I'll be doing research on, and trying to familiarize me at least a little bit with what's going on. Needless to say my head's still spinning from trying to absorb all that info, but basically my assignment for next week is just to read the manual for SCIPUFF, a computer program I'll be working with quite a bit, and maybe try to pick up a little bit of FORTRAN 90. That manual's not gonna be fun, especially after Joel billed it is an incredibly dense, terse book. I'll give it a go though. I think research will be a nice break from the daily grind and pressure of classes and assignments.
Trivia made its triumphant return to the Sports Cafe on Cinco de Mayo after a three-week absence (boo Flyers!). Several of us went down there a bit early in hopes of getting a table outside, but that wasn't to be. It'll be nice after PSU has graduation and everything, because then we grad students will truly rule the town, and there won't be undergrads everywhere as far as the eye can see filling up our favourite establishments. ;-) Trivia actually went really well, we nabbed first place on an almost-perfect game, as we only missed one two-point question along the way. At least we won't have to pay for our food next week, that was getting rather tiresome. Though on Friday night I really should've listened to my own advice about not ever getting any food from the Sports Cafe other than wings (and maybe fries). I ordered a meatball sub, but because they were out of sub rolls they gave me this tiny little sandwich but no money back. Highly lame.
Yesterday was the spring picnic for Penn State Christian Grads down at Sunset Park, so I went down there for awhile. It was nice to toss around a frisbee for awhile again, trying to thread the needle through patches of trees and having Ed show us his massive ups in leaping for all those frisbees. ;-) I got home in time to catch the Kentucky Derby, and then it was time to head over to Ben's place for a Mel Brooks movie night, along with Daniel, Jacob, Chris, Kerrie & Mario. On the docket for the evening was "Blazing Saddles," "Robin Hood: Men in Tights," and "Spaceballs." "Spaceballs" was the only one I'd ever seen before, though it was so long ago I'd forgotten almost all of it. While I'm not ready to put any of those among my all-time favourite movies, I did enjoy them. And somehow I don't think anyone could make a film quite like "Blazing Saddles" nowadays. So offensive but so funny. :-)
As for today, Daniel & I went to church in the morning as usual. And then earlier this afternoon I went out with Chris, Vic, Steve, Mario, Walter & Petters for a little bit of disc golf. It was the first time I'd ever played frisbee golf, and since the discs are different than the ones used for ultimate frisbee, my throws weren't all that great. I'll probably go disc golfing again, but I really miss ultimate frisbee, I much prefer that, there's a lot more excitement and exercise to it. The downside is that hardly anyone out here in PA plays ultimate, that's one of the things I really miss from going to college in the Midwest, where everyone played ultimate.
I fell in the Sweet 16 of the WxChallenge forecasting tournament, bummer. I lost to another grad student from the University of Oklahoma by just three-tenths of a point, meaning if I'd actually forecasted .01" of rain (instead of nothing), one knot lower on my wind speed, one degree lower on my high temp or one degree higher on my low temp -- if I'd done any one of those things I would've advanced. Oh well. At least I gave it a good run.
I suppose I'll get around to going for a run or cleaning my room later today. Sean & I worked a bit on starting to clean up the apartment yesterday, it desperately needed it and there's still a fair bit of work to be done. I do appear to have caught the spring cleaning bug, at least temporarily. Now that I have time I can actually think about doing some cleaning, it's nice. Perhaps I'll also get some work in on getting more photo albums made and put on my website. Or read a book. Or play some Civ III. Or go on a run so I can try to get back in shape. Ahhhh, free time, how I've missed thee!
Posted by Jared at May 7, 2006 04:23 PM
Comments
Only LOSERS go to grad school. Real cool people go teach mindless rug rats how to say 'Herro' all day long.
Now thats real ultimate power. Being a leech on a foreign government.
Posted by: Joshua at May 10, 2006 12:13 AM
I suppose that's better than being a leech on my own government, which is what I am now, since I'm getting a stipend from a public university that ultimately gets its money from taxpayers like me. Wow, I'm paying myself. What a thought. Somehow I doubt that makes me self-employed, however...
Posted by: Jared at May 10, 2006 12:52 AM