As Time Goes By

                So it has come to this. You. Me. This place. The seasons are changing, and I find myself with the urge to write a blog post. I must say that I am not looking forward to Spring or Summer nearly as much as I was Autumn and Winter, not when it comes to the weather. Don't get me wrong, Spring is a stunningly beautiful season; the trees are budding with not only green leaves, but pink, violet, red, white, and all colors of the spectrum, and it creates such a beautiful scene at any time of the day. Particularly beautiful for me is when the sun is hidden behind a thick layer of clouds, so that it creates a dark, grey atmosphere. Perhaps this sounds dismal to you, but I think it creates a beautiful contrast between the bright colors of the trees, and the darkness of the skies. This is most captivating when the sun has just dipped below the horizon, so that it's dark all around, but the trees and other plants seem to emit light from every pore. Despite this beauty, it is loud in the way it calls your attention. This is why I much prefer Autumn to any other season. In Autumn you see the trees changing color to bear these beautiful hues of red and orange, and at times you have the sun beaming brilliantly from above. And yet, amid all this beauty, there is a quietness, a finality to Autumn marks the end, whether this be the end of the trees, as they die for the winter, or the end of the Summer. It is this feeling that draws me to Autumn more than Spring or Summer. But, I have digressed. My point is that, as beautiful a Spring and Summer are, I'm not looking forward as much to the sweltering heat that it will bring.

               With this season change comes something else: the end of my first academic year in college. It has truly been an experience. At the beginning of the year, seemingly so long ago, I felt like an outsider in my own department. I forced myself to stay in the physics department as much as possible to try to create relationships with my fellow majors. However, I quickly saw that nearly all of the other majors already knew each other, and had strong bonds between them. Because of this, I found myself spending more time out of the department than in it, most often spending time with Dogmeat, The Muse, and The Settler. Once a week, Messy would join us on campus, and those were fun days indeed. When I wasn't spending as much time with the gang, I was still forcing myself to stay in the department to try to connect with my fellow majors. At the end of my first semester, when I last wrote to you, the most I had done was attend nearly weekly lectures on various different Physics topics. They were very interesting, but I still felt like a bit of an outsider. The second semester started, and I again attended the now weekly physics lectures. These were even more interesting now that I had obtained a bit of a basic understanding of advanced Physics, and was able to see what was going on. Because of how my schedule lined up for that semester, I did not get as much time with Muse, Messy, and Settler as I would have liked, but I did see much more of Dogmeat and Clangore, which resulted in many jokes and puns that still make me wince, along with many beautiful League games with Nimagist. When I was not carousing with the gang, I was in the department, and this time I felt more a part of the family. I started talking to different people more and more, asking people for help with problems, and just conversing with them in general. It made it much easier that there is a very out going student who is a first year like me, so he created a bridge between me and the upperclassmen. As we neared the end of the semester, I realized that I had grown closer to my fellow students than I had realized. 

                During this past semester, I had quite the class schedule. Mondays were the easiest because I had only Calculus in the morning, and beyond a Physics lecture in the afternoon there any responsibilities other than homework and studying, so I spent the majority of  my time the Muse and the Settler in the library. Tuesdays were difficult because I began with Calculus in the morning, followed fifteen minutes later by Intro to Mechanics, followed thirty minutes later by a research writing class. I finally got a break after my English class until 4 pm, then I had to go to my Intro to Computer Science class. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, my schedule was pretty much the same, with an absence of English class on Wednesday. On Fridays, that's when it got interesting. I started with Particle Physics, which actually turned out to be a kind of terrible subject. The class itself was fantastic, but I've become almost entirely disinterested in the field of Particle Physics. All Physics is built on the idea that everything can be explained, and Particle Physics seems to make all sorts of assumptions based on theory, and scientists seem to almost be making things up at this point. After Particle Physics, I went onto Intro to Mechanics, then onto Intro Mechanics Lab. The lab was very interesting to be a part of. We were given an objective to complete, like prove a well known theory. When we set out to prove it, we had to do so without making any assumptions, such as gravity. We couldn't assume that gravity works, if we did, we had to prove that. It's essentially how the physicists did it in the 1700s. It was a lot of fun having to justify physical laws that we knew to be true, but had to find some way to prove them. I think my lab partners and I did a fairly good job in justifying the various laws that we needed to.

                Another exciting thing happened this semester: I rejoined the Bach Collegium. I don't remember if I talked about that in my last post, but during my first semester, I sang in the Collegium with the Muse for a segment, but backed out of the second segment to make sure that I could properly focus on my studies. It's really too bad that I could not join for the second segment, because the choir had an absolutely beautiful selection of music. Despite not being able to sing for that segment, I was able to attend the concert, and was blown away by the choir's performance. After the second segment ended, I rejoined the Collegium, much to the enjoyment of both Muse and myself. In the first weeks, I needed rides from Kantor to the rehearsals, but after a few weeks, Muse finally was able to legally drive people outside of her family, and so Dogmeat and I joined her and her family at their house for dinner every Tuesday before practice. Those days were definitely one of the highlights of my weeks during this past semester. I had a blast singing with the Collegium again, It was frustrating a times: sometimes we would drag the tempo, other times we wouldn't hit the right notes. But, in the end, we pulled together an amazing concert. After getting my schedule for next semester, I know that I can join the Collegium yet again for the next segment. With luck, Muse and I will be able to sing in the choir for many years to come.

                Now that you're all caught up, let's talk about the present and things to come. I finished finals week just last week, and unless something changes in the next few days, I managed to get one B+ and the rest are As. This is better than last semester's grades, so I am content with it. Now that the semester is over, I'm moving onto my summer schedule. After talking to different faculty members in the physics department, I decided to help with the research of superconductors. I will be doing this on Mondays and Thursdays at IPFW, but today was a bit of an anomaly, because one of my partners needed to take care of his children. Because of this, I spent the day familiarizing myself with the programming language we will be using to make the superconductors. From 10:30 am to 4:30 pm, I worked with a chip to make it accept an analog input and convert it a digital output. After working nearly nonstop with quite a bit of help, I was able to complete my goal, although it was crude. I hope to improve upon it at some point. Beyond research, I have a job tutoring math for IPFW, and will be doing that on all Tuesdays. On Wednesdays I will actually be traveling out of town to Indianapolis in order to work at an auction center. On Fridays I will be tutoring by appointment, and I am free for the rest of the week.

                All in all, this is lining up to be a fantastic summer, filled with Physics and friends. Perhaps I'll write again when the next semester starts up, but we will just have to see. Until next time.