Hey Hawkeyes!

I hope life is going well for everyone. This is the first week in about a month that I haven’t had a test. This is also the first week all semester that I haven’t had a Wednesday afternoon class. Since we had our final lab last week, we don’t have case study either. So instead of being in class, I’ve caught up on homework, started working ahead, and even caught up on sleep.

I’ve also been enjoying the gorgeous weather we’ve been having. In fact, I just so happen to have the most awesome Calculus TA ever. Why you ask? Because she let us have class outside.

Outdoor class on the Pentacrest 🙂

It was such a nice day and was such an awesome change from being in the same old room. The wind made things a little difficult but it was nothing we couldn’t deal with. It was also awesome to see the jealousy as other students passed us on the way to their boring old classrooms.

OnIowa! Update: Teal’s the real deal, just so you all know. All the leaders are divided into squads that are given a color. I’m in teal squad and very loyal to the Teal. Each squad is given the mission of winning their squad points by doing different activities. One such activity is a scavenger hunt where we’re given clues and we have to find the object/place and take a picture with it. The catch? We have to have at least 6 squad members in the picture. Do you know how hard it is to coordinate 6 people’s schedules when it’s two weeks before finals? Well, we finally got it figured out and a group went out to take pictures. Here’s just a few of them 🙂

Pyramid at the Pentacrest

In a lecture hall

In front of the climbing wall

It was definitely a great squad-bonding opportunity and it was a lot of fun.

Have a great rest of the week and weekend!

Hey Hawkeyes!

I hope everyone is having an awesome week. Four weeks left! Three weeks of class and one week of finals! Everything is getting pretty busy now. I had a Psych test last week, Calculus test and Psych paper this week, Chemistry test next week, and photography final project the next week. Basically, I’ve been doing a lot of homework all the time. During one of our study breaks, my friends and I were called to our floor lounge for this:

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Another awesome break was Daum Prom. A few of my friends live in Daum so we got a group together, dressed up, and danced. It was a lot of fun and they had some great snacks (chocolate fountain). I’m so glad I have a group of friends that loves dressing up and dancing as much as I do! The girls all came over to my room so we could get ready together. We did each other’s nails and hair while listening to music. I had different pictures of the girls, but one of the girls on my floor volunteered to take this one of all of us together. I’m so glad she was walking down the hallway just then!

The girls all ready for Daum Prom. We met up with the boys later.

As another study break, one of my friends with an apartment and car came and picked me up. We ate out and went to Petland to hold puppies for a while. It was probably the most relaxing thing I’ve done. The socialization is great for the puppies and it gives them some time out of their pens. They were all so cute!

The husky puppy that we played with until she fell asleep.

That was about it for the nice weather activities when everyone wanted to get outside and do stuff around town. Well, I guess some people were fine with the rain too. This past Wednesday, the weather decided the ground was too dry and that we obviously needed a flood. I didn’t get any pictures of deep water on the streets or the mudslide at Mayflower, but I did get some pictures of this:

Yep, that’s a Slip n’ Slide

Some of the guys from my dorm hall were waiting for a rainy day to get out the Slip n’ Slide tarp. The decided that Wednesday would be a perfect day to put on shorts and t-shirts and slide down the hill. It was about 45˚ out and you could see their breath fog when they talked. But that didn’t stop them from laying the tarp down the hill(sliding down the wet grass in the process) and squeezing dish soap down it. The guys were very careful about it though. They wanted to make sure they weren’t going to cause any damage, so they surveyed the landing area before going down the Slip n’ Slide. They determined that the landing area was all mud from the rain anyway, so they didn’t have to worry about killing the grass.

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It was really cold and my raincoat was soaked through and I didn’t even go down the hill. The guys had a ton of fun and hopefully stay healthy after standing in the cold rain for an hour.

A few of the Sliders right before they hit the showers.

When they came in they left beautiful, muddy footprints all across the floor. But again, the guys were thoughtful and responsible. After their showers, they came back down and cleaned the floor all the way from the main entrance to their hallway. It just goes to show you can still have fun without destroying anything and making more work for other people.

All of these things are great ways to have some fun, get away from the homework, and de-stress before exams. There will probably be more in the weeks to come, stay tuned 🙂

Hey Hawkeyes!

I hope everyone had a fantastic week! I really have to get better at this posting during the week, don’t I? I’ll work on that for this week. It’s been a crazy week, which I’m guessing since we only have 4 weeks of class left, every week will be crazy. This past week was my psychology test, this coming week is my calculus test, and the next week is my chemistry test. My plan is to take each test as it comes. Devote the whole week to that subject (hopefully not at the expense of the other subjects).

Last weekend kicked off the busy week with Society of Women Engineers (SWE)’s High School Conference. Basically, SWE hosts an event where high school girls can come learn about engineering and about what University of Iowa offers to engineering students. They sign-in Friday afternoon in the engineering building, followed by ice breakers to get to know everybody.

Sign In: every girl gets a bag with a schedule, campus map, engineering information, and a small notebook

The Get-To-Know-You ball. It had questions written all over it, so when you bounced it across the circle to someone they would catch it, say their name and answer the question under their right index finger.

When the group got really big, they split it into two circles where they continued to play games like Ninja(demonstrated in the picture), Hey, Me Too!, and the typical name games.

After sign-in and ice breakers, the girls were taken to one of the classrooms to learn more about Society of Women Engineers(SWE) and Women in Science and Engineering(WiSE).

Pretty full classroom, as you can tell.

Then we had breakout sessions where the girls picked a type of engineering to learn more about. After a 20 minute info session, they switched to another one. In the info sessions, the high school girls could ask questions about anything involving the major, engineering, or college in general. The SWE girls leading the session talked about classes and focus areas.

Biomedical info session

Civil Engineering

Chemical Engineering

Industrial Engineering

I didn’t make it to all the info session but they had all of the engineering types covered.

After the info sessions was dinner. We had Jimmy John’s subs and chips. The high school girls had the opportunity to talk to some professional women over dinner.

Talking to faculty and professionals at dinner

After dinner, there was a panelist of professional women to talk about the careers in engineering. The high school girls could ask anything they wanted about education, classes, internships, and careers in engineering.

Talking about being a woman in the workplace

After the professional panel, the girls had another type of panel come in. They had to guess which guys were engineers by asking questions like “How much time do you spend studying?” The guys were good at disguising their answers.

The “engineer” panel

Then it was time for dessert! Does this look familiar? The girls got to make ice cream in a bag, just like my chemical engineering seminar did.

Chemical Engineering at its finest 🙂

They really enjoyed it, other than the cold hands 🙂

We even got to make liquid Nitrogen ice cream again! The girls thought it was pretty cool too.

Yummy ice cream 🙂

And of course dancing to Backstreet Boys was a must 🙂

Some of the SWE girls having fun 🙂

The night ended with the girls making the trek from the Seamans Center to the WiSE floor in the residence hall to spend the night with the WiSE girls. The WiSE girls played games and just hung out with the high school girls until they all went to bed(somewhere around 2 or 3am).

Off to the dorms for movies, games, and snacks.

The conference was a lot of fun (not much sleep) and it was awesome to meet some of the girls who will hopefully be on the WiSE floor next year. The really cool part was that exactly one year before, I was in the same seats as the high school girls. I attended the SWE high school conference last year after I had made my final decision on where to go to college. I decided it would be the ultimate test. I would be on my own on campus, without my parents. Several girls that attended the conference with me even ended up in some of my classes, which was really cool. It was so nice to get to college and recognize a few faces. I was also able to recognize upperclassmen SWE and WiSE girls from the conference. After attending the conference and having such a great experience, it was awesome to help out and give other girls the same great experience. Just one of the awesome giving back volunteer opportunities of college! 🙂

Hey Hawkeyes!

In case you haven’t noticed from my blog posts (or lack thereof) it’s starting to get busy around here. Something about midterms? As you know I had my first chem exam 2 weeks ago and I did pretty well on that. I had a psychology test this past week and just recently(today) got my grade from that, which was also pretty good (yay! :)). This coming week I’ll have my first calculus test (eek!). I never really feel ready for a test, it always seems like there’s something I should know more about. I’ve been staying caught up in homework, but I’ve determined that in order to actually be ready for upcoming tests, I need to be ahead.

Quick update on my week (+ pictures :))

Last Friday I went to an indoor track meet to watch one of my friends from another University. It was amazing to see her running against all the college athletes.

One of our athletes getting ready to run. I think he won his race.

Hurdles

I went home for the weekend, which was awesome. I learned the Ultimate College Student’s Lesson: I can go for over a month without doing laundry. Since I live so close to home it seems silly to do laundry here, but with different volunteer things going on it’s hard to go home often enough to do laundry on a regular basis. I was also able to visit one of my friends who just got this adorable puppy!

Isn’t he adorable?!

On Tuesdays I have a Chemical Engineering Seminar for an hour in the afternoon. This past Tuesday found us talking about mixtures and how the amounts of components affect the product. Like in the making of ice cream, more air means not as good. So to demonstrate this….we made ice cream!!!!

Making the shake ice cream 🙂 Hands were a little cold afterwards.

Making liquid nitrogen ice cream

And what would a week be without

A study party!

I’m taking a photography class (that I’m absolutely loving other than the fact that it’s 5:30-9pm), and had an assignment to represent University of Iowa.

My friends decided to help out and make sure I knew where the Old Capitol was 🙂

I also got this picture, which I thought was cool

On Friday night I volunteered with the Society of Women Engineers at the Children’s Museum at Coral Ridge Mall for their STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) Night. It was a ton of fun. We basically played with kids all night, which was awesome!

Playing around in the Hospital room before the kids started arriving.

Saturday was the FIRST Tech Challenge State Championships. In high school I participated in the robotics club and have fond memories of coming to the State Championships here at Iowa. So this year, I decided to volunteer.

Ring it up! The challenge for this year.

It was a great experience and it was awesome to see all the robots and meet so many new people, as well as see my high school team and coaches. I’m excited for next year so I can be more involved and maybe even volunteer at some of the qualifying competitions.

I’ll try to keep you guys updated more often, so watch for another post in the next couple of days! 🙂

Hey Hawkeyes!

Some of the new friends I’ve made in one of my classes

Just a quick update from me this time! The week started off a little hectic, but still fun none the less.

I’ve already made some new friends in a few of my classes. Here’s just one of the pictures from hanging out and talking after class. I’ll post more pictures later. They’re so much fun and I’m going to miss them when the class finishes in a couple weeks(it’s just a seminar). A cool story about this picture though: The guy on the left, the girl second from the right, and I all had the same  high school band teacher. Two separate high schools (he left my school and went to a different one) and we all met in this class. How awesome is that?! And it gets better: the band teacher graduated from University of Iowa! Yeah. Small world, huh? 🙂

On another topic, I had my first chem test last night. It went pretty well. I was really unsure about it. There were a few questions that I felt like I knew it, but I just couldn’t come up with the right process. But several questions took me forever to work out were actually correct, which made me feel good. I used the full time, which means that I kept trying instead of just guessing and getting it over with, so I was happy. I felt like I genuinely did my best. Granted yes, I should have studied a little more (the one question was so similar to one I had practiced but I just couldn’t remember it), but I know how to prepare for the next test. I’m also a bit more inspired because this semester is (so far!) starting off better than last semester as far as exams go.

Have a great day, talk to you soon!

Hey Hawkeyes!

Wow, we’re already almost a month into the semester. It seems like it’s going by so fast! I’m getting ready for my first chem test this week (AHHHHH!!!!!). But before the chem test, I had my first chem lab!  Our first lab talked about using cross-links to connect polymer chains together to create new substances with different properties. To test how the number of cross-links affect the product, we made our own polymers. In other words…. goo and a bouncy ball!

 It was a very fun lab, even if we did sort of run out of time. That was the fastest I have ever filled out a lab report (we’ll wait to get excited until we see the grade…). I feel like I really learned the material too.

After recovering from chem lab, I decided to try my motion photography at the swim meet last Friday. My friend/lab partner even came with me (thank you!). Since she was on swim team in high school, she was able to explain the different events to me.

Now that’s team spirit
Go Hawks!

Practicing dives

There’s a track meet that I’m excited about going to this weekend and hopefully get some pictures of that to share with you. I’m really enjoying going to all these different events and learning more about them. It’s also a nice break away from all the studying, especially if you have friends to go with.

Hopefully talk to you again soon!

Hey Hawkeyes!

I hope the first several weeks of the semester have been going well for everyone! I’ve been so busy with homework and I even have a few tests coming up (ahhhh!). I knew I was going to have a busy week, so last weekend I decided to have a little fun too. A girl on my floor volunteered to go to the women’s basketball game with me(thank you!) so I didn’t have to go alone. It was a lot of fun and a great experience. I had never been to a college basketball game before so this was a first for me.

The pep band before the game started(we got there pretty early)

The dance team(Spirit Squad) and the cheerleaders dancing to the fight song to start the game.

Good shot!

Shoot!

We ended up losing, which was sad. We fought hard though and the game almost went into overtime. We lost with a last second basket with :02 left on the clock. It was an awesome game, I just wish we could have won.

After the game I decided I should do some cleaning around my dorm. First on the list was wash dishes (I really should get on a more regular dish-washing schedule). I couldn’t get hot water, but decided I didn’t want to keep putting off washing them. I used a new dish cloth for the first time and ended up with this result. Isn’t it pretty? My favorite color is purple, you know. 🙂

Lesson Learned: watch out for dishcloths that might lose dye. Don’t wash them with any lighter colors! 🙂

After washing dishes, I checked my Hawkmail (University email account) to find out the steam plant had a power-outage and we would be without heat and hot water for approximately 4 hours. It was really not a huge issue for me. Our room is always too warm anyway (with the heat off it was actually quite comfortable) so I wasn’t too worried. I had actually wondered why our room was so comfortable when I walked in. I guess I just assumed my roommate had opened the window. In the email informing us about the power-outage, our Hall Coordinator recommended that we also avoid the showers for this time period. It made me laugh, the showers would not have been something I would have thought about until I was actually in the shower with the water on. I love that even in a big university, the staff still has a great sense of humor that they’re more than willing to share. It just makes everything feel more like a community rather than a school, especially in the dorms when you’re just looking for that home-y feel.

I actually have quite a bit more to talk about but those events also include a lot of pictures, so I’ll save that for a different post. Consider this one of my semi-mini-posts 🙂 I’m really excited to tell you all about the first chem lab of the semester 🙂

Hey Hawkeyes!
Guess what?!

Snow!!

It SNOWED!!!!!!!

Isn’t it exciting?! Ok, yeah, it made everything wet and sloppy and kinda cold to walk to class in. I didn’t have far to walk today, but I know several people who had to walk across campus and they really didn’t enjoy it. However, I love snow! I think campus looks so pretty covered in it. I plan on taking some more pictures soon. The snow was just blowing too much for me to want to take my big camera outside. Word of advice: invest in some nice warm, water-proof boots. A lot of people were taken by surprise by the snow and didn’t have proper footwear. Ok, I might have been one of them (I didn’t have room in my bags when I moved back to campus 🙁 ). But a lot of people tried just wearing their rain boots and discovered how cold snow actually is. A couple people with nice, warm boots discovered the necessity of water-proofing.

In the meantime, here’s some pictures of the snow and ice (from the safety and warmth of my lounge with HUGE windows 🙂 ).

Hey Hawkeyes!

Ok, so technically survival and winter storms have nothing to do with each other, but hey, it sounded cool 🙂

I apologize for not blogging about my second day, but I figured I might as well wait until after the first week so I could give an update on the whole week in general. I did, in fact, survive the first full week and it was not that bad. I’m still working on some last minute scheduling things but hopefully they all work out.

Wednesday was my first Chemistry II lecture. I’m still a little hesitant about my chemistry abilities, but in the short review we did in class, I understood most of it, so I guess that’s a good sign. I also had my first Calculus lecture. After the discussion on Tuesday, I was a little hesitant about that too. But the new professor we have for Calc seems really nice and really willing to help us learn (he even said “Bless you” when I sneezed during lecture). I also had Chemistry Case Study, which is what we normally do the week before lab to discuss the experiment and learn the equations we will need. Since this was the first Case Study, we basically went over some of the safety guidelines and how lab will work. I’m a little terrified of lab because my lab partner from last semester couldn’t take the same lab as me, but luckily I managed to find another lab partner who will also be awesome at explaining the things I don’t understand. I also had University Band, which for the night is just information and chair placement tests. My chair placement test really didn’t go very well so we’ll see where I end up. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if I can even take band yet. There’s another class I’m trying to get into that will overlap band. The directors for band are being totally awesome about my attendance until I find out about this class.  One of the biggest lessons I have learned in college is to let your professors know what’s going on. If they know what’s going on, they are way more likely to be cool with it or even offer help; however, they can only do that if you tell them, the earlier the better. I really want to be able to do band. It’s a lot of fun, even if you’re not the most amazing player. I’m hoping I can work something out. If I can’t, I will definitely be back in band next semester.

Thursday was fairly uneventful, only two classes, same with Friday. Weeeeelllll, I guess Friday wasn’t completely uneventful. We had a substitute chem professor, since our usual one was at a conference. This substitute had a unique way of teaching chemistry. Since we were discussing solutions (saturated, unsaturated, super saturated), she compared the solution to a night club. If you have a saturated solution, no more solute will fit into it. Kind of like a night club, once the dance floor is packed, you can’t fit anyone else in. Along with this came the lesson that if your dog drinks methanol, you should get him drunk because the alcohol slows down the chemical process that will make him blind and possibly dead. In the extra time you have from the slowed down reaction, you have more time to get your dog to the vet. We also came up with our own analogy from her description of gases, “if a gas can make a run for it, it will.” My friends and I decided that gases were like guys, they make a run for it at the first chance they get (kidding, of course :)). We also learned that insoluble solute-solvents are like bikers and hipsters. They know they’re different and will just stare at each other from across the room. They will not mix unless forced (but it takes a lot of force for a very unsuccessful attempt). We also learned a few pick-up lines. “You’re a bit dipole, I’m a bit dipole, let’s get together.” And something about being like ions and mingling. Let’s just say that for being an 8:30 class, we were all quite awake and entertained.

It’s kind of nice to have a busy beginning of the week and a relaxing end of the week. I think it will help me get my homework done before the weekend rather than spending all weekend working on it or doing it Sunday night, which is one of my goals.

My academic goals for the semester:

1. Get an early start on homework.
2. Schedule time to read.
3. Plan time to go to office hours and get help before I really need it (aka two days before an exam).
4. Get better grades than last semester (let’s be honest, first semester was a tad rough).

My social goals for the semester:

1. Volunteer more, I want to get out and help more.
2. Join another club (currently thinking dance club or photography club).
3. Be more active in Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE).
4. Plan at least one friend activity a week to get away and relax for a little bit.

I might add more to these goals as the semester goes along, but those are the basics. Some people say that you’re more successful if you don’t share your goals, but to me it seems like the more people who know your goals, the more likely you’ll be held accountable to meeting your goals.

On Sunday, after catching up on sleep, I was greeted with an ice storm! It was amazingly slippery outside (increased slippage, as a high school friend and I decided). I just about fell three or four times walking across the street to Burge for lunch. It was also entertaining to watch people walk/slip (I’m really a nice person, I am!). Here are some pictures for you. Sorry they’re mostly from around my dorm, I really didn’t want to go very far with the horrifying image in my mind of slipping and falling on top of my camera (it’s my baby!).

Hey Hawkeyes!

I’m so sorry I haven’t blogged in a month! The weeks after Thanksgiving were a whirlwind. I’ll try to go through each of the weeks and update on what’s coming this next semester.

So November 27th was my registration day and 9:20am was my time. I was at my computer at 9:15am and at 9:18 I was hitting refresh every 30 seconds. I had spent my break planning the ideal (or close to it) schedule. Some of the classes that I needed to get that schedule were starting to fill up so I knew I had to register for those classes first. I am happy to say that I am now registered for all my classes. Well, almost all. One of the classes I was really looking forward to taking was restricted to a different major. I couldn’t register for it. However, the course description said that I could contact the instructor. Moment of hope! I emailed the instructor. After a week of no response, I am left with talking to the professor on the first day of class. I’m really hoping it works out.

December 3rd was the University Band concert. A couple of my high school friends came to watch, which was awesome. It was cool to have my high school friends meet my new college friends. It was also fun to finally perform the songs we’d been working on. It was sad saying goodbye to some of my band friends though. If I get into the class I mentioned earlier I won’t be able to do band next semester. I’ll definitely miss it. It was a nice escape from science and math.

The following Friday, the prototype for Engineering Problem Solving 1 was due. In my last blog I mentioned the Zero Energy Loss Homeless Shelter project. We had to make a scale model and test it under a heat lamp and in front of a fan. We had tested it before and had some issues, but we made improvements and had high hopes. We had insulated our shelter so well that heat couldn’t get in(kinda a big issue). We flipped our ceiling to the floor, made our window bigger(and less insulated), and changed our door from a doggy door to a halfway normal door. Isn’t it pretty? 🙂

Group 11’s homeless shelter the Iowa City Emergency Shelter, ICES for short 🙂

The next week was full of chemistry homework, my last computer program (in MatLab… ew), making a poster for ICES, and math presentations. My engineering group worked for about 10 hours on the poster for the poster presentation. It turned out pretty nice.

My group, Group 11, with our poster. What do you think?

This was our last project together, so the picture of our group that we put on the poster was done ceremoniously. We put tape on the back, put it on the poster and we all put our hands on top of each others and pressed it on. It was by far the dumbest thing I have ever done, but it was actually great team-bonding. I loved this group, we had a ton of fun. I’m really going to miss them.

For math, we had a presentation about applying math to our hobbies or using math in a real world situation. My group chose how math is used in photography. It was fun to research, and it made me realize that I really like photography. I’m thinking about taking some more photography classes. It would be fun to get better at it and have a break from all the science and math of engineering.

On that Friday night, since it was the weekend before finals week and the last weekend my friends were all together, we had a pizza party and played games. While we were hanging out, we looked out the window and it was snowing!

First snow of the year!

So we, of course, had to run outside and stand in it. It was way too warm for it to stick and it melted before it hit the ground. By the time we came in it was more like rain, but it was still exciting. I’m glad it didn’t snow while we were there, a few of my friends may have had a hard time getting home.

That weekend was filled with studying and review sessions led by Teaching Assistants. I also applied to be an RA during that weekend (hoping for the best!).

My finals were 7:30am and 8:30pm Monday and 7:30am Tuesday. It was nice to be done so early, but it didn’t give me much time to study between them. All of my finals went ok. I wished they could have gone better, but I tried my best. All in all my homework grades were pretty much perfect so I knew my overall grade couldn’t be too horrible. It was sad saying goodbye to my friends, especially knowing I wouldn’t see some of them for over a month. When you get used to seeing people every day, it feels weird when you realize you won’t see them at all.

Packing to come home from break was a bit stressful too. I didn’t want to forget anything I might need since the dorm building closes for winter break. I also rearranged my room. I’ll take a picture and post it when I get back. There are some other things I might try with rearranging my room too. We’ll see how the current one works out.

Well, I think I’ll end this ridiculously long post here. I promise not to go an entire month without blogging again. Good bye for now 🙂