Friday, July 24, 2015

Saying My Goodbyes

It's officially the last day today. I can't believe it, but the program has finally ended today. I can't say that I enjoyed every singly aspect of it, but for the most part, I loved every day I spent here. I honestly will miss the friends that I have made here, but I'm glad I got to meet them. For my final day here, I started it off with breakfast at the Commons with Jun, Joanne, Elexis, Chiamaka, and Audrey. I was actually sort of glad that today was the last day of eating at the Commons. The food wasn't terrible, but it could've been better. Anyways, we finished eating at around 8:40 AM, and Audrey and I waited for Ruchi outside.

It wasn't until 8:50 AM that Audrey realized that Ruchi had to go to class early for her presentation/experiment. We ended up power walking to class, but even then, we were still a minute early. Class started today with a presentation from one of the groups for Hershey Park because they were unable to go on Wednesday. Afterwards, we all went outside to see an entire inflatable pool filled with Oobleck, a Non-Newtonian fluid made of cornstarch and water. Everyone in the class was  given the chance to run around in it and just play with it for about half an hour. I ended up just running through it all and jumping on top of it. What's special about Oobleck is that if you apply a force to it, it acts as a solid, but if you just stand still or let it fall from your hands it acts as a liquid. It was really fun playing with it, which was a great way to start the day.

Once we were all energized, we ended up going back to the classroom to begin our presentations from our interest groups. My group was actually the first to go, and I can honestly say that I think we did pretty well. I was satisfied with how our presentation went, considering how we had 12 people in our group. The other groups presented afterwards, and there were topics such as Cloud Chambers, Quantum Mechanics, and Radio Telescopes.

After the presentations were over, I headed over to the Houston Market with Sema and Audrey, and I decided that I was going to try to spend all of the money I had left on my ID card. That was actually more difficult than I had thought because there wasn't really much that I wanted to buy. I ended up buying a random organic snack, an organic drink, and an entire pint of ice cream. Even after all of that, I still had around $10 left. It was around 1:20 PM when I got the ice cream, and I definitely couldn't finish it by myself, so I just shared with with some people. but Poorvi and I were mostly the ones that ate it all.










We all met up in the classroom next door, and there were so many contraptions laid out in front of us. There was also a lot of food that was laid out in the table in the back. Half of it was basically food from the Houston Market because everyone just tried to spend the rest of their money. When we were all settled, Bill began doing  various demonstrations that were wilder and crazier than usual. They looked so fascinating and I actually really did learn a lot from these demonstrations. I think my favorite one of all time was when Bill made bubbles float in midair, because I had never seen that experiment before.

When he finished all of his crazy demonstrations, Peter let us play with the "Vortex," which basically a giant handmade air cannon. After we all finished, Bill then began giving each of us an "award" for measuring the speed of light. Since my group ended up getting the most accurate results for this experiment, we received a star with a bigger "c" on it compared with the other awards. It was really nice of them to give us these things, and now I have a small memento to remember this class with. We all sat back down, and Mary began talking to us about our other souvenir, which was a USB filled with basically everything we did this entire summer. Unfortunately, uploading on the USB took way too long, so they said that they were just going to mail it out to us. It was really thoughtful of all of the professors to do this for all of us, and I honestly can not thank them enough.The professors, Bill, Mary, Peter, and Craig, as well as  the lab assistants, James and Jim made this summer truly memorable. 

We all said our goodbyes to everyone, and I hugged all of the professors and the lab assistants, and I was definitely going to miss coming to class. I was actually starting to get emotional at this time, but not to the point of crying. Sema, on the other hands, was tearing up, and I just can't help but feel so sad because we wouldn't be able to see each other anymore. Anyways, when we finished with our goodbyes, Sema and I just went back to the dorms to start packing our things. I was originally supposed to go to the movies with my cohort, but since my class ended at around the time the movie started, I just stayed in my room and took care of a few things.

When it was around 6:30 PM, Rudy called me and told me to meet up with at the bookstore because our cohort was receiving our sweatshirts today. It took us almost an hour and a half to choose, but along with the sweater, I bought both of my parents a souvenir. Since it was still early, our cohort went to dinner with Mr. Hillyer at the White Dog Cafe, and it was a great way to commemorate our last day here. 












We got back to the Quad at around 10 PM, but we were confronted by a few RCs at the gate. Apparently, we had to be back at the Quad by 9 PM, but none of us knew at all. We ended up getting scolded by one of the RCs, yet when we went to sign in, there was barely anyone that had signed in. What I didn't understand was that we had to be in the Quad by 9, and we couldn't leave, but our curfew wasn't until 12 AM today. It's understandable that they were mad, but I just wish I knew their reasoning behind all of this madness.

I just went to my room after we got back and took a quick shower. Then, I just did my laundry, and I began to continue packing. Joanne came by a little bit later, and she just stayed until it was room time. Packing is actually a lot more time consuming than it seems, but I think I'll be fine. I'm definitely going to try to wake up early tomorrow so I can just say goodbye to all of my friends.

1 comment:

  1. Wait a minute--let me be sure I understand this: you did your laundry the night before you're heading home? Isn't this the kind of thing you do once you get home? You definitely did not get what it means to go to college, Justeen.

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