Hi all my Journal readers! Just to let you know, it’s okay to email me and ask questions about whatever you’d like. I got my first email response from a reader who was concerned about my physical fitness after the whole kickboxing incident. It was great! It’s nice to know someone’s reading, other than my friends and mom. lol
These past two weeks have been great! …. and then not so great. I’ve had my share of tests and quizzes but got to see the coolest thing ever! On the 10th, there was a rocket launch and we got to see it….from the engineering building! How cool is that? Actually being able to see the rocket launch from campus! It started out as this tiny speck of orange light in the distance that blended in with the lamposts and turns into this quickly rising blob of orange light that you could see for almost 5 minutes. It was amazing, I’ve never been that close to a rocket launch. On the 23rd (tomorrow!) space shuttle Discovery is set to launch at 11:38AM and I’m going to be there!! A bunch of us are heading down there because it works out so well between classes to have just enough time. I’m so excited. I’ll be sure to take pictures so everyone can see!
The night of the rocket launch, there was a show put on by Mike Super, an illusionist. He was so cool; it was great. He made a girl levitate, a guy be affected by voodoo magic and did some cool card tricks too. I’ve taken pictures and posted them on my site. As engineers, we couldn’t accept levitation and “magic” as reality and throughout the show, we kept pointing out the quirks in his tricks that made them work and we figured out a majority of them too, just by being attentive. That too was a lot of fun.
Every week here passes fairly quickly, every test and quiz springs up on you if you’re not ready, so when you get here, start working day one, or it’ll be much harder to catch up. In some ways, college is easier for me than high school and in some ways, it’s much harder. Here, especially being away from home, causes so many more distractions. We could go out to lunch at the buffet downstairs and take two hours just eating and talking. I’ve learned to control that over the past two weeks and make sure I stay a max of 45 minutes, less if I have to get work done. It’s also not a wise idea to cram before a test because a lot more material is covered in one test. For example, in my physics course last year, we spent at least a month on Newton’s Laws and forces. Here, we’re done with the section in about two weeks and keep moving because the test doesn’t span just one chapter, it spans four. College, I’ve learned, is all about balancing your social life with your academics, while keeping in mind that you’re not here for the social as much as you are for the academics, especially at Embry-Riddle, a school with a far from partying atmosphere. I’m not saying we don’t have fun, there are people who like to party, play board games all night and those who like to watch movies late at night.
Last weekend, my dad came to visit! He was in North Carolina for business and flew in to Daytona before going back home to Jersey! It was great seeing a really familiar face again, because there’s no one more familiar than your parents. When he came last Friday night he took a bunch of my friends and me out to dinner. Nine of us crammed into a five-person sedan and piled out at an Italian restaurant, it was a sight to see. Dad was pretty impressed by my friends, yay. After dinner, I went back to my dorm to sleep so Dad and I could go shopping in the morning. We basically spent the day from 9-4 shopping, eating lunch and fixing some things in my dorm. We bought another full-size mirror (the first one broke :x) and dad fixed it in a way that it would be impossible for it to tip over, which is definitely a good thing. He left Saturday evening after a trip to Starbucks! I bought a new watch that weekend, because my old one was so rusted on the inside from the terrible rain a few weeks ago, that the battery practically exploded, it was gross.
This past week went by really quickly too. We were assigned a new project in my Intro to Engineering class and this one is to design a launch system mount. We learned about orbital heights and velocity first, then designed a satellite, are now designing the mounting system and rocket to put it in orbit and then going to design the plane that will transport the satellite in the near future. Exciting stuff isn’t it?
This weekend is Biketoberfest! Oh my, it’s scary outside. You can hear the bikers “vroom”-ing their bikes and there’s so many of them, too! They’re everywhere, making a lot of noise. I heard bike-week in March is ten times worse than this and I’m not looking forward to that, I’m scared already. Speaking of scared, Halloween is coming up soon and I’m not excited. I don’t like Halloween, especially now because we can’t go trick or treating and eat a lot of candy.
My opposite door neighbor and a few of his friends were going to a Garba in Tampa on Saturday and tried so hard to convince me to go too. But…not only did I not have Indian clothes with me, but Tampa is two hours away and we wouldn’t be back before 5 in the morning. For those of you that don’t know, Garba is an Indian dance that comes around this time of the year and lasts a few weeks. It’s usually a lot of fun, but the ones back home are only 5 minutes away. That night I got some work done and watched a movie with some friends, it’s was low-key, I’d say.
Alex and I rearranged our room like crazy to make a big open space in the middle. I put pictures on my website. There’s plans to buy a mini trampoline ($15 on e-bay), to put in the open space, so we can workout and jump on it to let out frustration and have fun. I’ll let you know how that works out.
My plans for today include studying for my physics exam next week, writing a paper and completing my part in that Launch mount system project I mentioned earlier. Sounds like it’s going to be a long night.
P.S – I’ve added new pic’s on my website. Some of the rocket launch, the Mike Super show, our newly rearranged room and, when I get them, pictures of the shuttle launch.
Until next time!
Spree!
