What's Going On Here? and, In 'N' Out 16: Tujunga

Hmmm... Good question.

In biology, we're learning immunology, and how pregnancy tests work. (Apparently, pregnancy isn't binary. I find this HILARIOUS!) Oh yeah, and the difference between comprise and compose: Which is correct?

a.) The United States of America comprises the fifty states or

b.) The 50 states compose the United States of America.

It's a trick question, but I learned the correct usage for my biology set! See, they do teach us practical information here!

In math, I scored a 68/80 on the midterm, above the class average! There was probably a grading mistake. Either that, or divine intervention. It's so rare that I do anything above average here!

What about physics? We're building a high voltage power supply, it's enough to ionize a small air gap we've set up and can measure with a clothespin micrometer.

I'm getting ready to hear back from the two schools I had time to apply to for fall 2007 transfer admission... It's not looking good. Stanford didn't accept me the first time around, and probably won't now. Or maybe they just love mediocre-to-poor-academic-performance Caltech students.

Vassar sent me an email recently saying, "We have a very competitive transfer pool, and not having a GPA is detrimental to your application. Do you have informal grades you can send us?" So I groaned, and sent in my shadow grades. See, Caltech is pass/fail for the first two terms, so my transcript only shows P's, and E*'s. My shadow grades, however, are C's, D's, and E's with comments like "this student puts in a lot of effort, but just doesn't get it." I'm paraphrasing, of course.

So next year, maybe I'll apply to University of Minnesota, or University of Chicago, or University of Nebraska Lincoln, somewhere that might take me, and where I could have a good time.

But other things are going on as well, I've started writing for the school newspaper, and taking pictures. I'm going to be working at JPL this summer for Bill Patzert, the oceanographer credited with predicting the big El Niño of a few years back. I'll most likely learn to use MATLAB and analyze climate data of the American southwest. Bill's research is centered around how ocean activity affects weather across the globe, particularly through looking at Pacific Ocean levels. (Hopefully I don't make any incorrect assumptions or statements). :)

In 'N' Out #16 saw the return of the KTTO on the weekend of April 30. I didn't realize it was all uphill. Oops... Coasting back to Caltech was nice.

/rskjr