Another Semester in the Books

It still doesn’t really feel like I’m done with my fourth semester of graduate school (wow…). The last day of classes for me was on Thursday, and the best part of this semester being done is that I don’t have to sit through another lecture in my Numerical PDEs class ever again, woohoo! There’s a final project due for that class, but as per the discussion I had with Dr Du shortly after spring break, I’m not doing it because I don’t have the necessary time to devote to it. So that means the only thing I have left to do this semester is a final exam for Atmospheric Dispersion on Tuesday morning. I’m not terribly worried about it, but I’ll still do some studying tomorrow.
In my previous post I was complaining about the lottery system that Penn State had announced it was switching to for the distribution of football student season tickets. I had also mentioned that the new lottery plan had caused quite an uproar amongst the student body. Well, apparently the uproar was loud enough that on Wednesday morning the university announced that they were reversing their decision, and going back to the old system of first-come, first-served. That made all of us very happy, because now most of us who want tickets will in fact be able to get them. You can bet I’ll be online and ready to buy tickets when they become available over the internet at 9am on June 7th! (Unless that’s the time slot in which I’m defending my thesis, that is!)
Progress report on my thesis: First draft of Chapter 3 (methods & procedures) done, as of Friday afternoon. Only results & conclusions left to go! Well, first I have quite a few results left to get, but you get my drift.
Friday afternoon was the time set for the annual Hussey Lecture for the Department of Meteorology. The lecture’s a big deal for the department, but we usually dread it because the speakers invariably talk for an hour about “integrated, innovative global business solutions” or some such nonsense, and yet manage to say absolutely nothing of substance. So, following on the heels of the Seminar Bingo cards that appeared recently in PhD Comics, we made our own Hussey Bingo cards. Several people contributed to the list of 40 or so phrases or events that we figured would likely happen, and Jacob wrote a script that randomly chose and arranged 25 of them on a sheet (click here a couple times to get a sample!). And true to form, this was another talk during which absolutely nothing was said, but at least we were all able to stay awake (mostly) and pay attention by playing bingo. I got pretty close to having at least a couple of bingos, but I think Amber was the only one to win.
In honor of the Hussey Lecture, our team name at trivia this week was “Integrated, Innovative Global Business Solutions with Gravitas” (that last part was added to our name by Trivia Steve). We were in first place most of the night due to a really good team effort, but wound up in second, oh well. Stephanie came along to trivia, too, and after that she & I met up with John, Ruth, Tracy & Daniel from PSCG to go see “Spider-Man 3.” The theater right next door to G-Man was sold out, so instead we went over to the new College 9 theater that just recently opened up over by Lowe’s (it’s really nice too, very comfy seats that even recline!). I know the movie has gotten some poor reviews, but I thought it was pretty good. Sure, it may have been cheesy, as superhero movies are wont to be, but I rather enjoyed it. It’s definitely worth a view, I recommend it. And I haven’t even seen “Spider-Man 2” yet, but I didn’t feel like I was missing out on key elements of the story. But that was a nice send-off for Stephanie, as she got on a plane back to South Africa today. We’ll definitely miss having her around, but again, hopefully she comes back to Penn State for some Ph.D. work!
Yesterday was far too nice to sit inside doing whatever, so I decided to join Walter, Petters, Frame, Amber & Chris on their trip to Williamsport to go disc-golfing. It was the first time I’d been to a real disc-golf course (the 3-hole joke of a course here in State College at Circleville Park doesn’t count), and it was pretty fun, even though I only beat Frame with my 33 over par (Chris won with 13-over). I still prefer ultimate frisbee though, and I think I might join in a weekly Friday afternoon game on the HUB lawn with some grad students from the English department one of these weeks. Or maybe I could get a game going sometime with some of the other college students from church.
Speaking of games and church, the season opener for church softball league is tomorrow! Can’t wait!