A good thing about being a senior graduating is that all of your family and friends think it’s a huge deal. I suppose it is…but it’s nice to have other people get excited on your behalf. My friend Sam from Westpoint Military Academy flew out here and we went to Disneyland with my parents, sister, Lea (another Caltech grad) and aunt, which was a lot of fun! Obviously only one of us has Disney spirit…
That was at the senior banquet the night before graduation. Then came the big morning! Steven Chu’s speech was great, he made it really funny while still talking about some agricultural and scientific approaches to renewable energy. He said the word “nerd” a lot, but it was funny. I got to sit between two of my very good friends, purely by chance, because we sat alphabetically and their last names are Kunesh and Kramer. So it was really fun! And the weather was great, it sprinkled a little bit but it was cloudy and cool. I was SO scared it would be hot, like it has been the last few years, but it was perfect.
I’m done with all my work!!! Well, I do have some grading to do for Ge1. That’s only going to take a couple of hours though…and I don’t have ANY OTHER WORK to rush home to do. I guess no excuses to leave the grading room anymore…darn? Friday was so great. I turned in my thesis to my advisor Professor Cindy Weinstein at 2:55pm, then went to a Blogger bakery session which was really delicious! Chocolate cake and cookies, for blogger appreciation :) I hope you all liked us, it was the first time we all got together at Admissions, and we talked about the program - definitely let us know if you all have any suggestions! Then I went to my house (Page) at 5pm for a class picture and Sparkling Apple Cider celebration for the end of term, yay! Tom Mannion’s dinner was at 6:30 and boy were we hungry…that menu I posted proved to be just as delicious as I thought it would be. Pictures of the food are below, look at that extremely classy (and totally edible, even the ink!!) dessert!
Hi everyone, Ditch Day was great!…for the underclassmen! My first look into Ditch Day as a senior was…hectic. But a TON of fun to plan. There were three stacks in Page House - Mario, Zelda, and Training Day, and they all had really awesome activities planned. I worked on Training Day with six of my friends, and we had a lot of fun things for our group to do. There were two teams - Denzel Washington (dirty cops) and Ethan Hawke (clean cops), and after we fed them breakfast they headed over to the North Fields for some exercise-ball activity. There was a ring and four giant bouncy exercise balls, and the idea was to bump each other out of the ring. As far as I know, there was no injury incurred during this process - success! Then we bought four water balloon launchers and filled up 700 water balloons (which took FOREVER, my fingers are still sore from tying those little guys), and had them shoot water balloons long range at each other. That was great, and I have freshmen, sophomores and juniors proudly displaying their epic bruises from that one. They all went to the pool after this, where we had scattered 500 playpen plastic colorful balls, and they had to collect all of this “money” and find the ones with letters written on them, then solve an anagram which spelled out “Chicken Fight then Mannions,” after which they all ate lunch at Tom Mannion’s house.
Hi everyone, As a freshman, sophomore, and junior major in Geobiology, I had to take several classes which required field trips. As a result of my being in the department, I have been able to travel (free of charge!) to Croatia, Venice, Australia, Hawaii, Baja Mexico, the Ridge Basin, and just recently the Grand Canyon. The difference was, for this last weekend, I was a TA, because I’m TA’ing an “Introduction to Geology” course called Ge1. Their field trip is to the Grand Canyon, and the TAs got to go along to help maintain order among the frosh (mostly, we carried the gear from place to place…but it wasn’t too much, only some posterboards and a cooler!!).
Hello everyone, Blacker Interhouse was amazing - they built a huge ship that had gigantic oars, two stories of dance floors, and the whole courtyard was filled with water. As soon as I get picture uploaded, I’ll try to post one - there were a lot of people dressed up as gods.