Happy Birthday Dad!
Well, this morning started out horribly — I did poorly on the propulsion midterm — but it has shaped up beautifully tonight. It’s funny…the fact that I made some seriously stupid mistakes on the midterm doesn’t bother me too much. I don’t know whether grades just mean less to me now, or whether I’ve just decided to channel my anxiety into something else, or what. Last quarter I bombed all my midterms and threatened myself with thoughts of just leaving grad school altogether, because I obviously wasn’t any good at it. Then finals went decently, and all my final grades were actually above average. Bombed midterms, came out ok in the end. So I figure maybe I’ll just be repeating that pattern this quarter.
Anyway. After the test I headed down to the lab with Aaron and Mike and Steve to rebuild our control system plant and reposition the finicky actuator. We spent a good 5 hours working to prepare everything for our feasibility demonstration tomorrow and…it all works! Woohoo! We’re gonna rock the class with our PHATman balancing dude. PHATman, PHATman, PHATman! (Sing the old Batman theme song in your head.) I know you must all be wondering what this so-called PHATman thing looks like, so tomorrow I will borrow Nick’s camera to take pictures of it, and I promise to post one here.
I had piano tonight and am still struggling to get both hands to work together. This weekend is three days, so I will have lots of time to practice before next week’s lesson. I came home after piano to a bit of great news…the last week of June/first week of July, I have been picked to go to Mexico! See, every summer my family’s church back in Charlotte runs mission trips to Mexico, and on a whim this year, I decided to apply. My sister and brother have both gone in years past (Katie has gone three (?) times now), and seeing how much they have enjoyed the experience really made me want to try it. I have never been an especially religious person, and so I feel a bit strange going on a church mission trip…but I am excited nonetheless. The destination is the city of Reynosa, just over the border next to McAllen, Texas (the very southern tip of Texas).
I need to take a free elective this spring quarter, and I was thinking about taking a language…continuing my Russian, or taking some Italian, or relearning some French…now I think I might take Spanish!
