Today, I experienced the Wellesley tradition of "primal scream." It's where, at midnight the night before exams start, all girls step outside (or fling their windows open) and let loose a scream of earth-shattering proportions. Even as I type this, there are still the occasional stray screams coming through my (tightly shut) window. I had a paper due today at midnight, so I turned it in just in approximately 3 minutes early and stepped outside just in time to experience the waves of piercing banshee noises.
...and there goes another stray wave, 10 minutes later! It's quite interesting standing outside during midnight. You can hear each wave of screams from distant places on campus. Unfortunately I did not contribute because I've forgotten how to scream!
Monday, December 13, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Rules of Life/Apples, Turkeys, and Whatever Else
Rule #1 in life: Whatever name you come up with for your blog, someone else will have thought of and claimed the url already.
I tried a ridiculous number of names before coming up with this one. Average ones, such as "Another Average Day" or "Average Life," and names so average that they make any self-respecting titler of anything want to puke at their average-ness. But hey, I've never been good with titles.
After I got tired of those average titles, the weirder titles were taken too. Weird ones, such as "Cracked Apple" (what can I say, there was a cracked apple on my desk and I was desperate for ideas). I thought, and I thought, and I thought, and finally I stumbled upon an unused title: "My Apple Is Dead."
Great! An unused name! But as I let my mouse hover over the button that would create "My Apple Is Dead," the smart half of my brain came to the rescue. I couldn't name my blog "My Apple Is Dead," or every last visitor would wonder, what apple? How did it die? And when they don't see anything about apples, or death, or dead apples, they will surely lose interest.
And then, I saw the glasses I'd etched a few days ago during one of the student activities-sponsored study breaks. Glass etching was much different than I'd expected it to be--I thought we'd just be given a fine pointy knife or needle or something and some pieces of pretty colored/shaped glass. Turns out we got plastic knives, and glass cups or wineglasses to work on. We were given stencils with white designs on blue backgrounds to tape onto the cups, and then we rubbed them onto the glass with the plastic knife. When that was done, the next step was to peel off the tape and plastic and then apply a healthy glopping of white painty stuff over the white areas of the stencil. It could be as messy as you pleased, just as long as the paint didn't go past the edges of the blue. Then wait 60 seconds to dry, wash the gloppy white stuff and the excess blue stuff off, and voila, you have an etched cup!
But anyway, I digress. The etched designs were reflected by the other side of the glass, which made me remember learning about partial reflection in quantum. But "Partial Reflection" was taken as a title, of course. So now my blog has the misfortune to be named "Parted Reflection." Because what are my ramblings, but reflections parted from me? Certainly not as cool as why you'll be able to see both your reflection and what's outside when you look through a window, but still.
And that brings me to rule #2 in life: Always look through the window.
That way, you will be able to spot wild turkeys. I'm sure you can spot wild turkeys without looking through a window too, but if you happen to be inside, I find that looking through the window helps greatly. I've spotted wild turkey(s) thrice this way--twice on consecutive days during orientation week while heading down the stairs to dinner, and once when I decided to look at the pretty sunset through my room's window and saw a big moving black thing in the parking lot downstairs.
Wild turkeys are pretty cool! Approximately 25% of females have beards, even though it's a feature that's usually used to identify the men of the flock. But don't worry, there's always their poop to go by! That's right, you can tell the gender of a turkey by its poop. And all the statements in this paragraph may or may not be factually accurate, because I'm too lazy to go and check. I have an excuse, though--it's 1:30 am and I still haven't gotten around to finishing editing my paper due tomorrow for my Writing 125 class. Because honestly, I don't know how much I can get out of Shakespeare's Henry V. And that leads me to the third and final rule of life:
Rule #3 of life: The later it gets, the more appealing procrastinating gets.
Paradoxical, huh? But so true, unless you're one of those super responsible people who actually do things well before they're due (re: a freak). Just kidding, I'm only teasing because I'm jealous of you. But who hasn't suddenly found that writing ridiculously long blog posts suddenly becomes much more appealing than sleep late at night? Or that the adoptables site you just found has lots less competition for eggs this late at night?...only me?...okay, fair enough.
But you know, as awesome as procrastination is, sleep are a pretty cool guy too. Did you know your heart just stops if you don't get enough sleep? Out of pure exhaustion? The claims I just made are completely true, just like the claims I made about turkeys. I'd say that means each claim has the same chance of being true if you're a frequentist, but that's just not true at all--if one of the statements is false and another is true, then they have completely different chances of being true--0% and 100%, respectively.
Anyway, I'm starting to ramble more than I already was, so looks like 'tis time for me to attempt to get some sleep tonight.
Catch a Turkey,
Diana Jing
I tried a ridiculous number of names before coming up with this one. Average ones, such as "Another Average Day" or "Average Life," and names so average that they make any self-respecting titler of anything want to puke at their average-ness. But hey, I've never been good with titles.
After I got tired of those average titles, the weirder titles were taken too. Weird ones, such as "Cracked Apple" (what can I say, there was a cracked apple on my desk and I was desperate for ideas). I thought, and I thought, and I thought, and finally I stumbled upon an unused title: "My Apple Is Dead."
Great! An unused name! But as I let my mouse hover over the button that would create "My Apple Is Dead," the smart half of my brain came to the rescue. I couldn't name my blog "My Apple Is Dead," or every last visitor would wonder, what apple? How did it die? And when they don't see anything about apples, or death, or dead apples, they will surely lose interest.
And then, I saw the glasses I'd etched a few days ago during one of the student activities-sponsored study breaks. Glass etching was much different than I'd expected it to be--I thought we'd just be given a fine pointy knife or needle or something and some pieces of pretty colored/shaped glass. Turns out we got plastic knives, and glass cups or wineglasses to work on. We were given stencils with white designs on blue backgrounds to tape onto the cups, and then we rubbed them onto the glass with the plastic knife. When that was done, the next step was to peel off the tape and plastic and then apply a healthy glopping of white painty stuff over the white areas of the stencil. It could be as messy as you pleased, just as long as the paint didn't go past the edges of the blue. Then wait 60 seconds to dry, wash the gloppy white stuff and the excess blue stuff off, and voila, you have an etched cup!
But anyway, I digress. The etched designs were reflected by the other side of the glass, which made me remember learning about partial reflection in quantum. But "Partial Reflection" was taken as a title, of course. So now my blog has the misfortune to be named "Parted Reflection." Because what are my ramblings, but reflections parted from me? Certainly not as cool as why you'll be able to see both your reflection and what's outside when you look through a window, but still.
And that brings me to rule #2 in life: Always look through the window.
That way, you will be able to spot wild turkeys. I'm sure you can spot wild turkeys without looking through a window too, but if you happen to be inside, I find that looking through the window helps greatly. I've spotted wild turkey(s) thrice this way--twice on consecutive days during orientation week while heading down the stairs to dinner, and once when I decided to look at the pretty sunset through my room's window and saw a big moving black thing in the parking lot downstairs.
Wild turkeys are pretty cool! Approximately 25% of females have beards, even though it's a feature that's usually used to identify the men of the flock. But don't worry, there's always their poop to go by! That's right, you can tell the gender of a turkey by its poop. And all the statements in this paragraph may or may not be factually accurate, because I'm too lazy to go and check. I have an excuse, though--it's 1:30 am and I still haven't gotten around to finishing editing my paper due tomorrow for my Writing 125 class. Because honestly, I don't know how much I can get out of Shakespeare's Henry V. And that leads me to the third and final rule of life:
Rule #3 of life: The later it gets, the more appealing procrastinating gets.
Paradoxical, huh? But so true, unless you're one of those super responsible people who actually do things well before they're due (re: a freak). Just kidding, I'm only teasing because I'm jealous of you. But who hasn't suddenly found that writing ridiculously long blog posts suddenly becomes much more appealing than sleep late at night? Or that the adoptables site you just found has lots less competition for eggs this late at night?...only me?...okay, fair enough.
But you know, as awesome as procrastination is, sleep are a pretty cool guy too. Did you know your heart just stops if you don't get enough sleep? Out of pure exhaustion? The claims I just made are completely true, just like the claims I made about turkeys. I'd say that means each claim has the same chance of being true if you're a frequentist, but that's just not true at all--if one of the statements is false and another is true, then they have completely different chances of being true--0% and 100%, respectively.
Anyway, I'm starting to ramble more than I already was, so looks like 'tis time for me to attempt to get some sleep tonight.
Catch a Turkey,
Diana Jing
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