Scholarship Day

Man, I’m doing a lousy job of posting to my blog more often than just every five days. Oh well, I’ve had stuff going on the last few days. Back on Friday evening, after some fun games of walleyball with the physics club and followed by a little bit of Gaming Society (woot! I managed to understand the instructions in Italian for the game we were playing, and I don’t even know Italian!), I had to update the PowerPoint presentation for the Gustavus Wind Energy Project for Scholarship Day, which was Saturday.
This was the first year that Gustavus has held a Scholarship Day for prospective students, and basically it’s for admitted students who are also applying for the Presidential Scholarship (which is replacing the Partners Scholarship). So basically all these high school seniors have to come here to have a half-hour interview with a couple faculty members, and take a half-hour essay test, and the Admissions Office also has half-hour information sessions (on things such as J-term, study abroad, Curriculum II, etc) periodically throughout the day, in addition to current Gustavus students’ research presentations, to give the prospies and their parents a feel for what sorts of things they could likewise pursue here at Gustavus. (There was an additional Scholarship Day the previous Saturday, when I was on the CII retreat, with not only Presidential Scholarship applicants, but also Bjorling (music) and Anderson (theatre/dance) finalists, it was a bit crazy on campus that day, especially for the prospies that were finalists for more than one of the scholarships.) At any rate, all Admissions employees were required to work Scholarship Day, so I got scheduled for 10:30-4. I had a couple of presentations for CII plus the wind power thing that I was planning on doing, so I figured I’d probably be giving short tours periodically, or be on “mingling duty” or whatnot. But instead I got added to the J-term panel at the last second (they were one student short). After that it was time for my (planned) Curriculum II session, and then when that was done I decided at the last minute to help out with the Study Abroad presentation, since Amber was the only one doing it and said she could use some help. Then I gave the research presentation on the Gustavus Wind Energy Project by myself (Carl couldn’t make it Saturday, normally we’d do the wind talk together). The wind talk went really really well, and there were about 20-25 people who showed up to listen to it. They were all asking great questions afterwards, and were visibly impressed by the work we’ve done so far, and what we’re accomplishing — we just found out recently that at least one wind turbine is gonna be put up near campus sometime either this summer or next school year for sure! That’s huge news that we’re all jazzed about, particularly Chuck (our cool physics prof, my academic advisor), Carl, Seth & I, since we’re the ones who’ve been working on the project the most for the last year or two (or in Chuck’s case, the last four years, he’s really the driving force behind this whole thing). It feels so good to be a part of something that really is gonna make a difference for the college, not just now, but even 30 years from now, when it’ll still be saving the college hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in energy costs. At any rate, after the wind talk and some lunch, I jumped in on the afternoon Study Abroad session, since Melissa was the only one doing that talk and also said she could use some help, and then I did the afternoon Curriculum II talk as well. So when it was all said and done, I never technically did anything for Admissions, like giving tours or whatever, during my entire shift. But I figure that doing six presentations and answering lots of people’s questions about all sorts of topics was an acceptable substitute. 🙂 It was fun, but once I was done I was a bit drained of energy, from being so alert, “up” and outgoing for 5-6 hours. Seriously, it was a lot of work to do that.
Right after I was done with Scholarship Day stuff I drove up to Aaron & Eve’s house in the Cities for a combined birthday party for my niece Gabriella (who recently turned 4), and my nephew Mathias (who recently turned 2). Mathias in particular was happy that he got “big boy cake” this time, since last year for his first birthday he cried when he saw he was only getting a cupcake, lol. It was good seeing people from Eve’s family again too, it’d been awhile. My parents were there too, and Jake even showed up. I needed to see my parents sometime so that they could make the handoff of my tax stuff so that I could sign and pay my taxes (only $1 for federal, $7 for state taxes, woot!), and since I won’t be going home for spring break, I have no idea when I’d see them next. They stayed overnight at Aaron & Eve’s because they were flying out Sunday morning for a week-long vacation in Arizona (seeing relatives and sights like the Grand Canyon). When I got back to GAC around 12:30am I was dead tired, so I didn’t make the trek over to College View for Carl’s 22nd birthday party (sorry Carl), and instead just went almost straight to bed.
Erin was down this weekend visiting Gustavus, so Sunday morning I went to church with her and Javen, and had lunch afterwards with them and a bunch of other people, which was fun. It was such a beautiful and warm day (63 degrees!) that I couldn’t bring myself to do homework, so instead I tried to narrow down a bit which photo I was going to submit for the International Photo Contest here on campus later this month. Josh had bought some 8″x10″ photo paper, so we each printed off (after a little trial and error with various settings) four or five of our best photos, of which now we have to choose only one to submit. I really wish I could submit these five photos, it’d make my life so much easier. There is a photo that I’m leaning towards submitting, but which one of the five photos at left would you vote for in a photo contest? Leave me some comments with your votes. 🙂 Eventually on Sunday I did decide to do a little bit of homework, and then after dark it was somehow clear enough to theoretically do some observing for Astrophysics lab. The downside is that the wind picked up shortly after we got the telescopes set up, which shook the scopes a bit, meaning that it was even harder than usual to use the CCD cameras due to the shaky images. We were getting very frustrated with the CCD camera, first just being able to locate the Orion Nebula, and then in trying in vain to get it focused properly. Eventually we settled for a crappy picture, but we’ll have to go back and get a better one when it’s less windy. Either that or just turn in the lab with a crap picture, but at least Chuck’s okay with that if the weather doesn’t get better in the next few days. Sigh.
Monday was a bit of a long day, particularly since I got only a little over four hours of sleep Sunday night (silly me playing cards till after 2:30am). But I actually got a little bit of hw accomplished around watching “24” and going to another good MCF, so that’s a plus. As for today (Tuesday), I can’t really say that I’ve gotten very much accomplished, apart from going to Proclaim (Neo was a guest singer tonight, he’s awesome!). I guess I’m just really looking forward to my upcoming visit to the University of Colorado-Boulder. 🙂 John’s driving me up to the airport tomorrow afternoon, and then I’ll be living it up in Boulder until Saturday midday, when I fly back to the Cities. A free vacation is always a welcome thing, especially when it’s checking out where you might be living and working for the next few years. And especially when it’s gonna be in the 60s there, while it’s only in the low 30s here, mwuhahaha! And today I also checked out a book to have as some reading material this weekend, particularly in the airport and on the plane, “Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America” by Mark Levin. I believe it’s #3 on the NYT best-seller list, and from all accounts I’ve heard it’s supposed to be a fabulous book, so I’m really looking forward to reading it.
At any rate, I suppose I should get packing so I can go to bed. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to post while I’m visiting Colorado, but if not, I’ll for sure let you all know this weekend how Boulder was!