Enter that Lovely Maiden, Beauty

Hello Reader-Dearest!

The summer is now well underway.

I am now a competent Fortran-er and somewhat literate in the zeolite world.
Wait, now that I think of it, I don't think I ever mentioned what specifically I am researching this summer. Well... as specifically as it gets.

A model of  LTA, one of the zeolites
we shall be focusing on this summer. 

I am working on simulations of these lovely aluminosilicate minerals called zeolites. "Zeolite" is a fairly broad category. There are a number of different crystalline structures and zeolites can have different chemical compositions, but we're mostly dealing with silicon, oxygen, and aluminum. The cool thing is, their microporous nature makes them good molecular sieves. In particular, zeolites have been found to selectively adsorb carbon dioxide over nitrogen, hydrogen, methane, and other gases. This makes zeolites very promising materials for a number of processes, most notably carbon dioxide separation and sequestration. In the past, my professor and her students have studied pure silica zeolites (well, Si and O actually, but the key point is no aluminum) with varying structural properties, so as to examine the importance of pore structure to selective CO2 adsorption. This summer, we are going to start working on introducing aluminum into the mixture.

A structural model of MFI, another cool zeolite.

As for my own contribution... well, I only just received "the code" on Wednesday... and was immediately utterly lost in the dense network of files and the endless sea of Fortran lines contained therein. Yesterday I managed to calm some of that despair and anxiety so as to make fair progress in getting a better idea of how things fit together, but there is a very, very long way to go. However, I did submit my first few runs today! Yay! Look for more updates in the future!

I must say that, overall, I have been rather pleased with the path my summer has taken. I think I may say that I have successfully rekindled my devotion to the fair goddess, Beauty.

I cannot assure you of the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, benevolent God, but I can attest to the presence of this lovely maiden. I have caught glimpses of her darting swiftly between trees, and placing blossoms in flowing hair strewn over sun-kissed prairie grass; I have seen her floating serenely on the river and heard her joining in on birdsong whilst I make my way through the arboretum. I have heard her at turns laughing at me and soothing me with her song as I feebly attempt to coax music from the keys of a piano. I have seen her hand in gorgeous sunsets and clear blue skies, in giant dandelions, and in graceful, swooping little birds. I have yet to see it myself, but I have heard that she has even taken some of her beauty and placed it within tiny creatures, that they may bring light to the summer sky even when she has gone to her slumber or joined her sisters in distant lands for merrymaking.

Yes, piano adventures and arb runs have made it a lovely, beautiful summer indeed. The arb runs are unfailingly splendid- the piano, less so. But I think I have fallen in love with it nonetheless. I cringe whenever I play a false key, and I feel terribly embarrassed when I stumble over pieces like the too-familiar "Jingle Bells," but my soul begins to thrill when a piece which initially sent a series of winces shuddering through me comes together to resemble something which I may call music. Granted I can only play short and very simple pieces, but I am easily enraptured by the lovely sounds which that instrument is capable of producing when properly encouraged to do so. All in all, I am pleased with the progress I have made in two weeks of playing for about an hour a day, and I am very excited for the next seven weeks! I dare not strive for beauty, for something deep and soul-striking, but I do hope that by the end of it I can play something which may be rightly termed lovely. Nothing crazy or complicated, but still charming.

In addition to the beauty of piano and the natural wonders surrounding Carleton, I have found great pleasure in the social benefits of a Carleton summer. It is wonderful to be at Carleton, to be learning new things and challenging myself intellectually on a daily basis, and to still have time for casual hour-long chats with new acquaintances, for skype sessions with old friends, for cooking adventures, for Sayles slumber parties, for movie-watching, and for pioneering a summer social dance club. I have great hopes for this Summer Social Dance Club (hereafter to be referred to as SSDC), despite what appear to be administrative attempts to crush it. Well, not exactly. But it is very frustrating that the school insists on shutting down all of the buildings after work hours. Nonetheless, this week was very successful in bringing together new and old social dancers, and I now feel like I have dance children to teach and tend to and befriend this summer. It is very exciting! Hopefully logistics will not prove disastrous... but I have high hopes. I look forward to making friends with these new people and hopefully incorporating them into social dance culture!

In short, summer is lovely and sweet. I have been reminded that life has great potential for beauty, if I only toil faithfully to seek her out. She is a shy creature, and must be treated tenderly, but she is sweet and devoted if you patiently cultivate her friendship. I do hope that we may become fast friends.

Happy Summer, dear ones!   

Hailing the Summer

Greetings, fair Reader!

The summer adventures have begun.

 After a brief, happy sojourn home, I find myself back at school for exciting chemistry research adventures. I have finally more or less settled back into my room, with a new roommate and a new set of challenges to conquer. Exciting!

My research adventures started yesterday, and it rapidly became evident that I definitely have my work cut out for me in the next ten weeks...
I have already gotten a tiny bit deeper into Unix, discovered and explored Emacs, and am expected to gain working knowledge of Fortran by the end of the week, since that is the programming language I shall be working in. So in the last two days I have gone through about 160 pages of Fortran.... only 200ish to go! Woo!
Oh, and let's not forget the 100+ pages of reading that I copied for myself today....
It seems quite daunting, but I am rather excited, to be honest. A lot of work means a lot of learning... and I feel like the amount of learning I will be doing will be slightly ridiculous. In a good way.

But I do love that my nerdiness is increasing significantly. I think I may have to start gaming. Or go crazy and convert to Linux. Somehow or another I need to affirm my transition into this particular realm of nerdom.
In my mind, female computer sciencey nerds have a nice edge of badassery, and while skipping through my Fortran book, I like to think to myself- yeah... yeah, I could do that. I could be a cool nerd-girl. I could totally do that!
...But then I realize that my carefully penned notes, general tidiness and prim&proper-ness do seem to disqualify me from playing the role of badass nerd girl.
But hey, that doesn't have to stop me from feeling super cool about coding, does it?

I don't know why I am so enchanted by coding. Maybe because I have been woefully ignorant of how it all works. Computers and programming seem to be shrouded in some sort of magical veil. In some way, computers seem to grasp at the magic of life- quite literally.
Computers stand at the border between physical reality and the wonderful world of abstraction. They translate between the "real" world and the world of ideas. They partake in the mystery of Meaning.
Magic, I say!

I have set about reading I Am a Strange Loop, by Douglas Hofstadter. He is, quite simply, fantastic. The knowledge that he is at Indiana University seriously tempts me to delve into Cognitive Science and ambitiously strive to end up in his lab, because it could only be absolutely awesome. But I digress.
The book builds upon ideas Hofstadter introduced in Godel, Escher, Bach (GEB), but focuses on the concept of I, or the self. Consciousness. That slippery thing!

To my extreme delight, I Am a Strange Loop has succeeded in weaving together essential philosophical questions with cognitive science, basic neuroscience, logic/mathematics, and computer science. (It's amazing how he manages to meld together so many topics and questions I delight in!)
He plays with questions like: What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to be me?  What does it mean to know? What is consciousness? How might consciousness arise? How can something have meaning?

I think that, through GEB, Hofstadter really got me to appreciate the idea that structure is the key to meaning. Structure... ah, how magical!
I do not think I am yet ready to write out my thoughts on the subject... my thoughts are still hazy and unorganized, but the picture is slowly starting to come together. I just have unstructured words to throw at you.
Words like logic, and structure, and thinking, and meaning, and language, and binary, and beauty.
Wonderful, magical words!

But I should stop my incoherent rambling on Hofstadter's books for the time being.

The days seem to be virtually endless. There is an amazing fifteen-and-a-half hours between sunrise and sunset!
By 7am it is bright and sunny, and the world beckons me to be out of bed.
Thankfully, I obliged the world today. I went for a walk-jog in the arb, and it was a wonderful, wonderful decision. The morning light was gold-like and happy, the plant-life was gorgeous, and a little creek which I found along my path convinced me that I was part of an enchanted world. It was absolutely lovely.

I am not sure what exactly I want to achieve during these bright summer days, but I know that I want to partake in a curious mixture of gentle loveliness and nerd-girl awesomeness. I want to go for daily walk-runs, I want to improve my flexibility, I want to attempt a plunge into the world of music by making an acquaintance with the piano.... I think mostly I want to realize that I really do have a certain degree of control over my life. It is the sort of truth that lurks dangerously in the background. Dangerously, because it is so obvious it seems to evade belief.

I have spent a lot of time feeling small and incapable and boring... and done nothing about it.
But, ha! That is not how the game is played, World! Nice try, but I've finally caught on to your trickery.
The game is played by soaking in programming languages. By having the courage to try to learn piano. By having the discipline to wake up in the morning and greet a beautiful day. The game is played by realizing that you want to do something worthwhile... and then taking a step in that direction.
It's so terrifying, but so wonderful and liberating!

I may get lost in the arb, or fail miserably at piano, or cook the worst meals ever produced on the face of the earth, or feel utterly lost in the world of chemistry. The chances are pretty high that all of these things will happen within the next few weeks. But I have a suspicion that with a bit of time and a lot of work, it's going to be okay.

Maybe there's still hope for badassery. Hmm. Can I be both lovely and badass?
Well... I do love a good paradox.

On The Midpoint

Well, the second year has come to an end.

I remember old middle school days, when I felt safely sheltered from adulthood and "growing up" by the endless high school years before me... and now college is half-past.
It is a bit surreal.
The passing of time seems to have a very strange quality to it. The years seem to fly swiftly by on fairy's wings, and yet days and weeks can drag by in an impressive manner.

In the midst of this strange passing of time, I find it difficult to assess my growth. Surely I change in subtle ways between moments, days, weeks, months, years... But the gradualness of the process makes me incapable of detecting the difference.
I am reminded of when I first learned calculus. The concept of the integral made the tricky concept of life clearer to me: it is the accumulation of changes that occur on infinitesimal time scales. Decisions made from instant to instant appear so incredibly trivial and inconsequential, but the summation of the values of those instants make up a life. Magical.
It is fitting that the integral encapsulates the great, elusive concept of infinity. How do we ever reach the infinitesimal? How do we ever progress? When and where do we capture the fleeting Now? How is it that the minutes and days and years slip by?
The mysteries of life and metaphysics seem to me to be intertwined with the wonder of infinity. It is lovely.

Yet somehow the time does slip by. Somehow "life" does get accumulated between duration-less Nows. And somehow or another, I do make small bits of progress.

As the term approached its end, I came to realize that I have learned things during my time at Carleton. Shocking, right? It is the sort of thing one hopes will happen, but it is wonderful when you realize it is actually true.
There are the little things- like realizing that my knowledge of the Greek alphabet has expanded tremendously since my old high school days, where alpha and beta and pi and theta were funky things that you used in math every once in a while. By the end of Set Theory and Computational chemistry, Greek letters were being carelessly spattered all over my work. When did gamma and phi and psi and epsilon and sigma and lambda (etc etc) become a natural resource to tap into?

Additionally, I have come to realize that tossing myself into reckless situations can be a good thing.
(To clarify, "reckless" in this context refers purely to academic recklessness. Reckless, indeed...)
For the first time in my life, I had the experience of sitting in a classroom where the teacher could very well have been speaking another language, because I certainly was not understanding what she was saying. She was speaking other languages- the languages of quantum chemistry, kinetics, thermochemistry... Languages of which I only knew a few basic words. I was a tourist in a foreign country hoping to rely on words like "food" and "bathroom" for survival.
But I still remember the moment where I re-read a textbook excerpt that was being assigned for about the 4th time. And that time- I UNDERSTOOD what they were saying. Between re-readings and nearly impenetrable lectures and frustrated struggles with foreign words and concepts... the pieces eventually came together. It was a glorious realization- and it would not have been possible if I had not taken the risk of utter failure. And I shall admit, for a while there I was rather concerned.
But there is something wonderful about going in scared and mostly lost, with only a bedraggled roadmap for company, and to slowly gain your footing to ultimately emerge triumphant.
I can now tell you a story about quantum chemistry, I can model a baby protein for you, I can perform ab initio calculations and tell you a bit about a chemical system of interest- I can do quite a few things I simply could not have done ten weeks ago.

There is also the world of dance. Two years ago, I probably would have laughed and blushed with embarrassment if you were to suggest that I would find myself waltzing freely with others in a couple of months. "Ballroom dancing" was something magical, wonderful, and fundamentally unattainable to those not blessed with extraordinary grace. Admittedly, I have yet to achieve a satisfactory level of mastery, let alone claim beauty in my dancing (alas, I have not been suddenly gifted with heaps of gracefulness), but I have managed to learn a great deal during the last two years. Waltz, foxtrot, quickstep, east coast swing, west coast swing, tango, cha, rumba, samba... even some mambo and hustle and nightclub two-step... Two years ago I knew nothing, and in a few months I will have the privilege of introducing social dance to a new generation of future social dance lovers! It is terribly exciting.

I think that my understanding of things has also become more complex and subtle. Two years ago, I would probably have agreed with the somewhat vague statement that science is true. My understanding of models and scientific progress was limited. I was a naive empiricist.
I may still be a bit of an empiricist, but my appreciation for models has increased tremendously. I now value the utility of a good approximation and I understand the importance of knowing the limits within which a model can operate. I realize that there are ways in which our scientific knowledge is solidly grounded, and yet that there are more fundamental ways in which the scientific quest is deeply vulnerable to skeptic probing.

To focus on this spring, I think I can be proud of my accomplishments this term. Computational chemistry and set theory were both challenging and intimidating, but immensely rewarding. I did not expect computational chemistry to allow me to peer into the beauties of linear algebra. I remember the moment of wonder when I realized what my professor was explaining about vibrational modes- you want to understand how molecules move? Break down the motions in terms of an orthogonal basis set which will span the entire space of their motion, and now you can describe any movement your heart desires. Bam! Amazing.
I did not really expect myself to ever come to peace with quantum, but we managed to end on amicable terms. And set theory... ah, how to describe the beauty of realizing that you have built an entire world out of nothing? Or the beauty of the natural numbers, like infinite Russian dolls? Or the sheer wonder of successive limit ordinals, like dense black holes?

All in all, I am fairly proud of myself.
I do not think I have been able to say that in a very long time- I do not remember when. But I succeeded in achieving my goals for this term. No, I don't have a perfectly-filled goals chart- there are certainly a number of gaps. More importantly, I succeeded in fulfilling the aspirations underlying the carefully penned goals on my chart.

Three months ago, I was terrified: I really believed that this term was going to be painful, stressful, confidence-destroying, and unbearably lonely.
It has been painful. It has been stressful. I have been less-than-fully-confident at times. I have been lonely. These things are true. But they represent a small minority of my experiences.

I feared that I would have no great friendships during my time at Carleton, but I no longer have that fear. I have grown closer to a number of wonderful people, and planted seeds which I know shall flourish in the upcoming years.

I feared that I would sink into a pathetic fit of loneliness and moping. But I have realized that I am stronger than I believed. I do not have to fall apart when I am alone. Granted, on almost any occasion I would rather be joined by loved ones, but if I must stand alone, I can and I will.

Ironically, it has been one of my most enjoyable and fulfilling terms at Carleton.

I am still filled with fears and insecurities and doubts on a number of points. I still do not know what I shall "do" with my life. I do not know what exactly that mysterious thing called love has in store for me. I do not know what friendships shall blossom, what pains shall be suffered, what life lessons shall be gathered, nor if I shall ever attain beauty in my dancing.
But I am proud of what I have accomplished and excited for the adventures that are in store.

There is hope!
And for now, that's all I ask for.

Here's to the midpoint of my Carleton career. Huzzah!

A Portrait of the Artist- Of Sorts.

I am less than tall,
With dark, unruly curls,
Skin that burns not too easily
And eyes of mixed-color whorls.

I live in jeans-
Except when I move into dresses.
I love the golden hour:
Bare shoulders, wild tresses.

I like chocolate chip cookies
And pink lemonade.
My fingernails are long and squared-
They are not painted.

My ears are awkward.
My nose is strangely shaped.
My complexion does not conform
To the accepted topological range.

My favorite pain
Is that of a laughing stomach.
I have two tongues.
Most say I have one sister.
(They know only how to count in blood).

I am afraid of answering the phone.
I am afraid of scraping my knees.
I am afraid of spiders, beetles, bees-
Of far too many things.

I want to befriend a flower,
I want to scatter dandelion seeds.
I want to linger in a tree-
Someday.

I build castles in the air.
I get lost within my head.
My childhood is scattered
Among the books that I have read.

I am sentimental.
But I prize rationality.
I am romantic.
And I lack practicality.

I can tell you about
Ascending orders of infinity.
I can charm you with paradox,
I can enchant you with irony.

My friends are few.
They are beloved.

I read marriage

As souls intertwining.

My mind is filled with wherefores
And punctuated with question marks.

I think--

I love him.

I write long letters.
I do not tell great stories.
I want to be a good mother.
I hope to be lovely.

Reader, Meet My Letter Box

Greetings, dear Reader!

It is midterm break and I am being very foolish. The prudent thing to do right now would be to go to bed... but I shall be a rebel and stay up a while longer. Ah, the luxury of having a day off!

It has been a while since I wrote a nerdy blog post, and I suspect there may be something on the wonder of natural numbers coming up soon. (I do love the natural numbers. They are so very beautiful...!)

Yay! Spring Dreams!

But that is not why I am here now.
I am here because of a burst of inspiration to briefly share some personal treasures. I snapped a few pictures of some of my trinkets- my sparrow necklace, my letter box, my wall of love, my Latin shoes, my bookshelves, and my Spring Dreams chart- which is now at the halfway point!

It is interesting that I do not seem to have very many trinkets… not exactly. But my wall of love and my letter box hold a downright treasure trove. And I really enjoy my bookshelves. Old favorite books, academic books, my writing box, a cute teacup, my bow-bedecked pinecone, the Rubik’s cube… many little wonders fill its shelves :] 

But for now I shall focus on the letters and notes and tokens of love which most brighten my days, noting before I begin that a curious and courageous reader is encouraged to inquire further into the objects introduced here.

The "wall of love"

They may not look like much, but these little mementos mean a great deal to me, and I am rather proud of my small badges of love. I want people to “see” the people that I love- the cute and clever notes from Dylan, the sincere and whimsical letters from Brynna, handmade cards from my sea-star, short and sweet notes of appreciation from Tristan, cards which once accompanied Friday flowers, postcards from friendly travelers and well-wishing friends, dried flowers (a perfectly-tinted rose from Dylan and mini-roses for my sister), an eerily well-timed post-it note found in a bathroom stall, gorgeous drawings and happy notes from Becca… It is the best thing in the world to have a wall adorned with love, and mornings are made happy by glancing up at the beautiful wall by my side.

And then there are the wonderful items stored away in the letter box. Old love letters, sketches drawn on a whim with friends, wrinkled and torn sheets recording old memories, newspaper clippings detailing my epic room draw victory last year, the absolutely ridiculous product description from the back of a package of trail mix, programs from plays once performed in, pieces of paper filled with strange math things- including a particular sheet whose corner I almost ingested to prevent prying eyes from reaching it (however, that failed, and the very wrinkled corner in question was subsequently re-taped), and a host of other cherished tokens fill this box of wonders. Each note, letter, random sheet of paper, or miscellaneous object brings me back to a time and place of happiness, be it of the somber-and-serious or playful-and-ridiculous kind.

A peak into the letter box

Each object also makes a bit more tangible the connection I have to the people I love. I think that may be why I treasure these things so greatly- and why my letters and notes tend to be so infamously lengthy. I may not have very many friends, but the ones I do have I care greatly for, and the exchange of words allows me to let them know it. My hope is that, someday, when the ones I care for find themselves lonely or frightened or unsure of themselves, my notes may do the job they were intended to perform. I hope that my friends will be able to gather the words given to them with sincerity and affection, and to see that they are amazing, accomplished creatures deserving of (and in possession of) love. I know that their kind words and the records I have kept of old happy times spent in their company have certainly brightened my spirits on a number of occasions.

So, my dear Reader, know that your kindness, your smiles, and your words are remembered and cherished. Know that somewhere, someone who loves you carries those gifts you have given them in their own treasure chest.

Goodness, isn't that beautiful?

At any rate, I think so.

On Seeking Some Hippiness

I think I want to be a hippie.

I don’t mean the cliché scraggly hair, unwashed, perpetually-high kind. I don’t mean “at peace” because I’m not here, I mean at peace because I am present. Spiritual, mindful, grounded, flower loving and tree hugging… maybe someday even walking barefoot through lush, green grass. I’ve never been good at walking barefoot. I like the protection of socks and shoes.

Becca took me to her yoga/pilates class this morning, and now I am a curious mixture of calm and emotional. I feel as though tears could leak from my eyes- not violently, but like a cup filled to the top drop by drop which slowly overflows- and it would be perfectly fine.

Perhaps “hippie” is too laden with meanings and suggestions. And hippie, even as I envision it, doesn’t seem to capture the full gamut of what I hope for.

On one hand, I want the mindfulness and grounded spirituality which I associate with hippiness. I want to see beauty and happiness in my surroundings, I want to feel united in body and mind- I seek harmony.

There was a time in my life when part of me enjoyed tearing myself down.
I have trouble seeing myself in perspective, judging what qualities I possess or not, and oftentimes I’ve hated myself for being small and tightly wound—timid, closed in, and shamefully afraid of peeking out. In high school, I would not hesitate to remind myself of how weak and pathetic I was. No, far from it. I would put it in writing, I would pen myself into a ball of bitter tears, I would force myself to face the ugly and inevitable truths about myself (my cup has overflown, but the drops are no longer acrid and they will not sear me).
 Do you want to know what I fear most to be true about myself?
I fear that I am boring.
Uninteresting.
That I have nothing to offer or share of myself.

Writing my college application personal essay (or rather, figuring out what to write about), was something vaguely resembling a mild nightmare.

I love hearing other people’s stories. I love hearing their thoughts, I love hearing about their family and friends, I love listening to them talk about what they are passionate and excited about, I love seeing them, because inevitably I find something beautiful and wonderful and unexpected and thought-provoking.

And yet I cringe when someone asks me to tell them about myself, because while it seems that they have so many things to offer- well-polished thoughts, odd trinkets, family heirlooms, germinating ideas, and so much more!- when I peek into my cabinets, I seem to have nothing to bring out.

I suspect an analysis of my verb tense would be interesting to carry out. But I am pleased that I spoke of how weak and pathetic I was, and not that I am.

Because, to get back onto the original path which I was walking, at some point, after getting to college, I just grew tired of beating myself up. I guess that was a good start, but I must say, that’s not good enough for me anymore. No, because merely tolerating myself is not enough. To get back to what I want- I want to be healthy.

I don’t just mean healthy in an eat-your-fruits-and-vegetables kind of way (though I definitely need to work on that). I mean whole.
I speak of well-being. I speak, again, of harmony. I want to run, I want to stretch and strengthen my body (and mind). I want to become an embodied spirit- otherwise known as a healthy and mindful person.

I want to be at ease with myself, I want to frolic in pretty outside things, I want to walk with hands outstretched. I want to forgive myself for being tightly furled, and to give myself time to open up a bit. I want to laugh at myself as I pick myself up from having tried something new and failed at it- and then I want to try it again. I want to lose myself in thought, I want to solve puzzles, I want to ask difficult questions and accept only sound answers.

I want to listen to other people’s stories- to your story. I want to see a bit of your soul, because I know it is beautiful and wonderful and surprising and that you deserve a bit of love.

I also want to find my own story, and at some point I would like to show you a trinket or two.

A Spring Quest

Hello again dear Reader,

Spring has come to Carleton!
I intend to take a nice walk around campus and capture its loveliness on camera, but haven't quite gotten around to that yet. For those of you not fortunate enough to be here, I assure you there is much in the way of happy greenery and pretty flowers to delight the soul. I am especially happy that my tree friend by the concert hall has started to blossom. I have already been taken aback by her loveliness, and I am excited for the moment when she is fully bedecked with beautiful flowers. But really, there are many pretty things sprouting around campus. Spring is wonderful!

Spring also means the beginning of a new term, and the term is already on its way. First week has met its end, and week two is all ready to rush in. This term is going to be a crazy one for me... but currently I am very much in the idealistic phase of my voyage. For some reason winter term seemed to skip the idealistic phase altogether. Winter term started off in the midst of a whirlwind, I think, and I didn't even have time to formulate grandiose schemes.
But now! Ah, this time I have set sail with all sorts of wild hopes and dreams for grand achievement, and it doesn't help that I am already surrounded by a paradise of lush greenery to make my dreams seem all the more realistic!

As I said, the term is going to be a little crazy. Or a lot crazy. I am venturing into the upper levels of math and chemistry for the first time. Math-wise I am taking a seminar in set theory, which should be very cool but also seems a bit intimidating. We're basically building up Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory and shall be working on constructing the natural numbers, integers, and real numbers. There are a lot of very quick-thinking, intelligent math people who are fortunately very good-natured and fun, but I know I'll be working hard to stay on top of things. I'm a little scared, but mostly very excited.
As for chemistry, I am taking an introduction to computational chemistry, which is almost guaranteed to kill me (in a good way?). My professor (with whom I'll be doing computational chemistry research with this summer, coincidentally) is awesome... and (or but) she expects a great deal out of her students. She promises us that we will learn tons, and she also promises that we will be working HARD to get there. This class again finds me feeling a bit intimidated, as it's a class composed almost entirely of hardy, senior chemistry majors... but they also seem like a good batch of people. It should be a very rewarding class, but, again, it's going to be a ton of work. My last few days have been spent trying to make good enough sense of quantum chemistry, and we'll be reading a ton of literature... oh, so much learning to be done! Trying to piece together quantum has certainly made me want to learn quantum in a nice and thorough manner, as well as like... all of math. I need to do differential equations and more linear algebra and statistics and apparently abstract algebra is also used to describe quantum stuff... Oh goodness, there are so many cool things to learn!
My last class is intro psych, which is nothing compared to the other two, but should provide interesting things to muse on.
Finally, I am lab assisting for a chemistry course and grading for a physics course. This also translates to a lot of work.
So essentially, I have a lot to do in the next ten weeks. A lot.

Even with this realization- or partial realization- I am filled with ambition. My roommate and I decided it would be an excellent idea to put together goal charts to keep us motivated. Here is mine!

What could be more exciting than rewarding oneself with cute stickers for a job well done?
Realizing that you have made your dreams come true! 

While I do have these specific goals that I'm working toward, I think I have two main ambitions.
The first is to stay involved in dance stuff. Ballroom/social dancing is awesome! The people are great, the dancing is fun, and it gives me an opportunity to develop a somewhat unusual skill. Part of my plan is to start to learn how to lead (My respect for leads has increased considerably. It's so stressful to have to plan out and keep track of directionality, timing, posture, technique, floor craft... Oh goodness!), and the other part is to try to work on solidifying technique. I want to make sure that, on a regular basis, I go into Cowling and seek refuge from life-hecticness on the dance floor. It'll be a good mix of challenge, socialization, and relaxation.

Second, I am intent on maintaining a positive attitude. There are a lot of challenges ahead of me, academic as well as social and emotional in nature. I expect the term to be a difficult one, but, more importantly, I expect it to be an opportunity for wonderful growth. There are a lot of cool people in my classes (and on the dance team!) to get to know better, there is a lot of interesting material to be learned, and there is so much beauty around me to walk around and appreciate!

I think a challenging spring term is a good way to kick off this whole blooming adulthood thing.
What with best friends at different schools, people (including myself!) working over the summer, a boyfriend exploring the streets of Moscow, and my own hopes to study abroad, the next... eight to nine months have me largely estranged from those happy individuals who more or less make up "home."

So... I'm on my own little adventure now.
It's time to learn new things, to step away from sluggishness and step into my swan (or sparrow!) skin, to face challenges and defeat them, and to dance and go on pleasant strolls every now and again.

Happily, I now have the chance to gather stories to be exchanged with loved ones at a future time when our paths may converge, and thus bring me back home- if only for a time.