Monthly Archive for May, 2006
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Officially, my undergraduate education is over. Classes are over. Project reports have been handed in. Final grades have been posted. I got all A's this semester, and am graduating with a 3.79 and magna cum laude status. I must admit that I had wanted to graduate with a 3.8-, but I seem to be the only person who thinks less of myself for having failed to.
My research is not quite where I wanted it to be when I left. I won't be able to conduct the last experiment, but I'm hoping to have it set up so that the graduate student I've worked with is able to run it once he comes back. The next few days, with the exception of Tuesday's trip to Cedar Point, will be spent in the lab working on that. I feel as though I ought to have been in the lab this weekend, but in talking to others--my advisor included--it seems like they think it best if I take a few days for myself and relax. The rainy weather we've been having has only encouraged this lethargic feeling.
A bunch of us went to Borders a few days ago, where I picked up What Do You Care What Other People Think? and The Right Stuff. Both are scientifically-oriented people stories, which says something about the state of my mind, I'm sure. Much of this afternoon has been spent chuckling over WDYCWOPT; Richard Feynman and his stories never cease to amuse me. (As an aside, someone's uploaded a copy of a documentary with him here, and I recommend it to anyone who has the time to watch.) Another thunderstorm's come up: perfect weather for curling in bed with a book. Either that or sleeping, another thing which I've been doing a fair bit of lately.
Yesterday included a trip to Best Buy, where Mark got to spent the gift card he picked out. Among other things, he got Civilization IV, which I've been watching him play. (I, incidentally, got a collection of the first three Myst games, none of which I've played before.) I grew up in a household where gaming was not allowed beyond educational games, and I certainly played more than enough of Oregon Trail II and Carmen Sandiego (the third "Where in the world" version for those interested) to justify their prices. But I never got to make the jump from games like those--which were still directly educational--to games like Myst and the Civilization games, which, though educational, were not games purely dedicated to education. This is something I've always been a little disappointed about because I simply cannot count the number of times people have told me that I would love those games. And I fear that the time during which I would have enjoyed them--Myst, in particular--may be past. Civilization, on the other hand... well, the meglomaniac in me just refuses to let go of that one. We'll see what happens when I get my hands on a copy. I'm sure there will be reports on how I'm conquering the world.
All in all, things feel a bit surreal at the moment. I still can't fathom that in one week I'll be receiving my diploma, packing my bags, and leaving for good. There's no way to really express my sorrow yet because it's just not real. I'm trying instead to focus on enjoying what remains in terms of time with friends, work on research problems, and in simply being here. In some ways, it's kind of how I felt when my time in Tanzania was coming to an end. I knew that, very soon, I would be leaving a wonderful place (two wonderful places, actually: Tanzania and Germany) and wonderful people for a period of purgatory in a place that was unfamiliar and unexciting before making another move to something to which I actually look forward. The advantages this time are that there's a good chance that I'll be able to see my friends again; my place of purgatory is not entirely unfamiliar; I'm only there for a couple of months this time instead of a year; and I already know what I have to look forward to, namely graduate school at Cornell. In fact, as part of my efforts to look brightly forward, I will be wearing the blouse that Bill Nye dubbed "Cornell red" at Commencement next Sunday.
Weeks ago I got an urge to make some chocolate chip cookies but didn't have enough chocolate chips for them, so I went down to the Village Convenience Store to get some M&Msfor a substitute . I ended up giving the woman working the counter a couple of the cookies when I was done. Today she saw me on my way out of Starbucks (with an espresso brownie!) and had to ask me how I got my cookies all the same size. Apparently she thought my cookies were really good because she said that I should open a bakery. I had to laugh. Mark pointed out that I've been wasting my time with this aerospace engineering thing. Obviously I should have gone with the bakery. I pointed out that my baking skills will help ingratiate me with any lab I end up in. Who wouldn't like the new student who brings cookies?
It's nice to see that people like my cooking, though. I used to worry about coming from a family with a grandmother and mother who were known for being excellent cooks. I feared I'd never manage to live up to it. But over the past couple years, I think I've improved a lot, in confidence as well as ability. Oddly enough, I now cook more than my mom does, and last time I was home, she actually told me that she was impressed at how capable I've become in the kitchen. There's hope for me yet!
I allowed myself to get thoroughly distracted by Wikipedia today, and it was great fun. Somehow I managed to (eventually) make my way from Guy Fawkes to a discussion of American English at which point I decided to investigate some of what Greg has said in the past about my speech patterns, and I am pleased to report that my accent seems to fit best into the category of General American, which is frequently perceived by Americans as being "accentless". I can't say that I understand the phonetic alphabet and all of the terminology used in the article, but there are several things that I do understand.
While there is and can be no single formal definition of General American, various features are considered to be part of it, including rhotic pronunciation, which maintains the coda [r] in words like pearl, car, and court. Unlike RP, General American is characterized by the merger of the vowels of words like father and bother, flapping, and the reduction of vowel contrasts before [?]. General American also generally has yod-dropping after alveolar consonants. Other phonemic mergers, including the cot-caught merger, the pin-pen merger, the Mary-marry-merry merger and the wine-whine merger, may be found optionally at least in informal and semiformal varieties; however, the most formal varieties tend to be more conservative in preserving these phonemic distinctions.I definitely display rhotic pronunciation (i.e. I pronounce my rs) and flapping (i.e. metal and medal sound very similar when I say them), and father and bother rhyme when I say them. I'm a bit iffy on the cot-caught merger--I seem to waver in whether they sound the same or not. I'm thoroughly off the fence on pin vs. pen--there's a clear distinction between them in my speech. Mary, marry, and merry all sound the same, and wine and whine tend to, too. By comparison, I have very little in common with the characteristics of Southern American English although I'm familiar with and can readily imitate many of the pronunciations/tendencies discussed within the article. With few if any exceptions, the pronunciations are things that I've heard but never really done myself. I did note one grammatical tendency that I do still use, namely: "The so called inceptive get/got to (indicating that an action is just getting started), as in the phrase "I got to talking to him and we ended up talking all night." Get to is more frequent in older SAE, and got to in newer SAE." I do think that I will still use got to on occasion. Another one that I will admit to is the use of dove as the past tense for dive. I do have to admit, though, that dived sounds absolutely atrocious to my ears. They also mention drug as the past tense for drag, and I'm sad to say that I did use that one at one time. I typically catch that one now. The same can be said for dropping the -ly off of my adverbs. In terms of Southern word usage, I have used yonder in the past, but it's not something that comes up frequently, I must admit. I do love the phrase hither, thither, and yon, though. And I must answer a positive both on the roley-poleys instead of woodlouse and crawdad instead of crawfish or crayfish. My cousin and I used to chase those in the creek, which, incidentally, I do not pronounce as crik. I do not, however, call shopping carts buggies or jitnies or trolleys. That would just be silly. I think that sums up my phonemic discoveries of the day. From there my Wikipedia search derailed into the descriptions of the Ozark Mountains where I grew up. It was interesting to see them refer to the Boston Mountains and Shepherd of the Hills country. Those are certainly terms I don't hear outside of the Ozarks. One of these days I should really take some time to recount some of my favorite parts of growing up in the Ozarks. For awhile, I was very interested in the history of the area--a situation only amplified while my mother worked at the local historical museum--and I can still tell some ghost stories and tall tales unique to the Ozarks from memory. And the Internet seems to be distinctly free of the story of Mary Calhoun. I wonder if my parents would still have the recording of that story my sister and I made when we were little...
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