What we leave behind

Dear Reader,

We've been friends for what now, six years? That's a good stretch of time. You see, I have a couple of unusual hobbies that I typically wait until I get to know someone before divulging them. I did break my rule a couple of months ago in my youth group-- luckily everyone was sharing weird hobbies so I tried to gloss over mine as normal weird hobbies and everyone kind of went along with it.

You see, I like cemeteries. I find them fascinating-- I love wandering through the carefully arranged bleached forest of headstones. Behind each name lies a full and exciting life-- the details of which are tantalizingly just out of reach. The saddest stories call out the loudest-- a mother who outlived her son, a infant child buried without even a name. Happy stories-- like good deeds-- often stay interred with their bones which means that imagination tends to be a substitute for facts.

I also like reading obituaries-- I know, I know, stay with me. I scan the obits for anyone over 90, and then eagerly read what their relatives thought a fit summary of their life. It's a rather doomed interest-- I rarely find an obit that makes me feel like I caught a brief glimpse into at least some approximation of the fullness of their lives. More often than not it ends with frustration-- 100 years of life and all I get is who survived her? I want to know what it was like growing up, how she met her husband, all sorts of stories that rarely are published in an obituary.

While the common tie to my interests seems to be death it's actually a bit more subtle. What I'm really interested are stories, especially the ones we leave behind. Not anything as grandiose as a legacy-- I don't really care about the perhaps massive impact on future generations-- I'm more interested in the mundane. For example, anyone who read the obit of my great-grandmother probably didn't realize that she attended 8th grade twice. High schools were far off, expensive, and for boys, but my great-grandmother loved school so much her parents let her go to 8th grade a second time before she left academia for farm life. There are so many stories like that hidden behind every gravestone, every obit, and sometimes I can be lucky enough to stumble upon them.

If you ever visit a thrift store/antique mall with me and I find a heap of old postcards, you better resign yourself to the better part of an hour spent flipping through them. As you saw in my previous post I love old postcards because they have the rare ability to break down that barrier that death erects, to show me a small, personal glimpse into a life that has long since ended. 1909 seems impossibly in the past and out of reach, until you read a note between friends joking about hunting for the perfect husband and then the past collapses and you see that people back then weren't so different from people today.

But there is one big difference between us and them-- the physical remnants of our lives. In 1909 they didn't text, they sent postcards. Postcards that later their great-grandchildren would throw into a bag and drop off at a thrift store. We take thousands of photos but rarely print out one. Will our entire legacy be online? A hundred years from now, when my great-granddaughter is musing about the inaccessibility of the past, what will she use to reconstruct my life? Facebook certainly won't be around, my text messages will have long since echoed into silence-- maybe I'll print off my blog one day, stick it in an old binder, shove it into the attic for my grandchildren to stumble upon. Maybe that's why I write this blog-- to have a say in telling my own story. From high school, to college, to grad school-- a short time in the grand scheme of things but a massive span to me personally.

Maybe, one day, this will be the story I leave behind.

But until then, dear reader, thanks for listening.

Thrift Store Haul

I've always loved thrift stores. 

I love any place where the possibility of finding the perfect item is equally matched with the possibility of finding pure junk. It just makes any good find that much more exciting-- and the work needed to sift through the junk typically means that the good finds have equally good prices. 

This past weekend I had unusually good luck as I browsed a couple of my favorite antique/thrift stores. For those of you who aren't sold on the idea of sorting through old stuff to find the perfect item, then maybe the cool things I stumbled upon will sell you on the idea! 

But first, a cat.

Here's Otto in typical cat fashion sitting right where I don't want him to be. He's cute but I didn't buy him in a thrift store so let's move on to (perhaps) my most exciting purchase.

I didn't set out to buy a purse-- but that's how thrifting works. Sometimes you walk in with a set goal (like when I was furnishing my apartment) and sometimes you walk in with no goal in mind.

I found this Coach purse in the back of the thrift store, hanging unassumingly next to some other black bags. It was only when I picked it up that I fell in love. You see, it's a 100% leather Coach bag, handmade in the US. It's old but looks and feels brand new (that's leather for you!). The best part?

The purse was only 24 dollars. 24! For a leather messenger bag! From a good brand!

And now for something completely different-- a postcard, complete with written message, postmarked in 1909. In the message, the writer asks her friend how she was spending the winter. "Are you still teaching? Or have you captured one of the good looking widowers and are keeping house? I just have the 'bestest' one ever and a splendid home." The candidacy made me laugh and I had to buy it for one dollar. If I can dig up some info on either the writer or the receiver I'll write a blog post devoted to that!

To call my haul eclectic perhaps doesn't cover the full extent of it. Next up, I bought two small test tubes-- some manufacturer had gone out of business or something and there was a whole box of them for sale. My mom had the cool idea to use them as single stem vases-- I haven't worked out how I'm going to prop them up yet, but they were super cute and a steal for one dollar a piece.

I have a well documented (if you've ever been to my apartment) love with stained glass. Soon I'll reach maximum capacity-- you can only fill a small space with so much stained glass before it becomes too much. I have a couple small pieces like this one hanging on my kitchen wall-- and when I saw this being sold for five dollars, I had to pick it up and add it to the mix.

 And now for perhaps the most interesting find. I was wandering down the ailse in the massive thrift store when a pile of black and white photos caught my eye. They weren't priced, just dumped into a wicker basket (which was being sold for 12 dollars). I picked one up and flipped it over. I was surprised to see the back of the photo covered in beautiful cursive, a scrawling message from a sailor stationed in Japan to his wife. I began to sort through the photos and a lovely story began to emerge-- one that I am going to write a whole blog post dedicated to because holy cow how often do you find something so personal in the thrift store? Old photos are everywhere, but I've never found ones with messages written on the back. Keep an eye out for the whole story ;)

And that's it! A purse, test tubes, stained glass, postcard, and a smathering of photos of 1950s Japan! Part of the magic of thrift stores is that next time I wander through the ailse there could be entirely new treasures waiting to be found.

I hope I convinced you (if you need convincing!) of the benefits of sorting through sometimes overpriced junk in order to find something really cool.

Thanks for reading!

The Quiet (unplugged) World

"In an effort to get people to look 

into each other’s eyes more, 

and also to appease the mutes, 

the government has decided 

to allot each person exactly one hundred   

and sixty-seven words, per day. 

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear   

without saying hello. In the restaurant   

I point at chicken noodle soup. 

I am adjusting well to the new way. 

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,   

proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.   

I saved the rest for you. 

When she doesn’t respond, 

I know she’s used up all her words,   

so I slowly whisper I love you 

thirty-two and a third times. 

After that, we just sit on the line   

and listen to each other breathe."

--The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel 

When I was younger, in some fuzzy area of my life that existed before the right now, I read that poem. It stuck with me, just another small, glittering thread in the tapestry of stories that I carry around with me. It is a tapestry woven from childhood, flipping through the threads is like flipping through my life at high speed. There's Where the Red Fern Grows, a book I read eleven times, keeping track by secretly marking my second grade desk. There's the unnamed novel I read in junior high which, in part, started me down this crazy trail of physics. There's In the Time of the Butterflies, a novel that took my breath away in 12th grade.

There's 1984, a novel I read purely because an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was inspired by it. There's Catch-22 a novel I trudged through, though love to reference now that the arduous process of actually reading it is over. 

Growing up, I lived my adventures through the flipping white pages of library novels-- the bigger the better. When life seemed boring-- when reality was merely humdrum, literature promised the impossible, a crisp dive into a universe that was refreshingly different. 

Books have unique powers when we are young; they leave impressions on us like marks on drying clay, which, once hardened to adulthood, is no longer so malleable. Surrounded by the marks of adulthood, jobs to do, apartments to clean, pets to take care of, it would seem that books would still provide a trusty refuge yet I read startlingly few books now. 

But why? What changed? Why do so many unread, promising, I'll-get-to-it-someday books sit quietly in my bookshelves?  

 Books haven't changed. Certainly I've changed in many ways but my love of books remains strong. Last Christmas break I spent two days in WWII Germany and France jumping through years and lives, devouring a six hundred page novel.

But that was Christmas break-- a time with few things pulling at attention-- maybe that's what has changed. When I was younger-- even up to college-- I didn't spend much time on Facebook, I didn't have a Twitter, Snapchat didn't exist, I barely knew what YouTube even was, and would stare blankly at you if you so much said the world Tumblr. Today, though, the story is different. I have five hundred Facebook 'friends', over a hundred YouTube subscriptions, an Instagram feed I'm proud of, and somehow a Tumblr blog/profile/thing (I'm still not 100% sure how Tumblr works). 

I have free time to read-- that's not the problem. The problem is how I'm (unconsciously) prioritizing my time. Time is a precious commodity, one that I throw by the handful at social medias. I watch YouTube videos I love...and then spend an hour lurking around watching videos I'm not even interested in. I learn about exciting events in my friends lives on Facebook...and then I scroll on for thirty minutes for no good reason. 

Obviously social media isn't a Bad Thing-- it's just a thing, a tool that we can use for great purposes (I saw this fascinating video on YouTube about defining the flow of time with respect to changes in entropy) or use it to mindlessly pass the time (I really could get all the useful info from Facebook by just going on once a day...not once an hour). 

But if time is such a precious commodity, then maybe I should be more mindful in how I spend it-- thus my first 'no media' day today (I scheduled it in my bullet journal so you know it's official). For just one day a week, I resolved to stay off of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/YouTube/Tumblr-- you get the idea. 

There is so much more that I want to do-- during the month of November I engaged in a crazy competition to write a 50,000 word novel and was struck with the disconnect between my love of writing and my complete lack of writing. What books are going unread, what words are going unwritten, as I overspend my time on the internet? 

Even now I itch to switch over and skim Facebook, not for really any reason except it's what I'm used to doing. Habits are unconsciously ingrained and are difficult to consciously overwrite. For now I will stick to my once a week absence from social media and see how I can more consciously spend my time.

Maybe soon I'll be able to say I am adjusting well to the new way. 

Until then, thanks for reading. 

Thanksgiving

Every year, when the trees start to reluctantly lose their summer coats, one of them in particular is a show stopper. It deigns to go out in style, producing a stellar burst of robust orange which lights up in the entire yard.

As you can see above, this tree is the sugar maple and since this spectacular show typically takes place in late October, I expected to come home for Thanksgiving break and be greeted more a mostly winter-ready backyard.

But, thanks to an unusually warm fall the colors started to shift only days before I journeyed home, leaving me with a beautiful fall tableau to photograph!

My photography has been a victim of graduate school-- I still take family photos at gatherings but besides that, my beloved DSLR has been quietly gathering dust in the corner of my bedroom.  

Even before graduate school I started to lean away from nature photography and into portraits. Which is an unusual move for several reasons, one of them being the lack of subjects. A couple years ago I was able to do an surprise engagement shoot for one of my high school friends and I loved it. Previously I had only shot nature but it was really cool to be able to do something so different.

To be fair, I was really spoiled for my first couple! She had not only brought coordinating change of outfits for them both, she came equipped with props and ideas for what type of pictures she wanted (and she didn't even know he was going to propose! It was a fun night).

Regardless, I really enjoyed wandering around my backyard upon arriving at home after a long car ride with my cat. Luckily Otto doesn't mind road trips too terribly-- as long as it's quiet and I'm not singing.

I can't believe the semester is almost over-- though I'm at an odd part of my graduate career where the lines of semesters ending/beginning start to blur and lose their meaning. Research, after all, is not confined to any time schedule except its own, and there's always more work to do. I'm only taking one course this semester-- and teaching two labs and three discussion sections-- and next semester I may take none, focusing on research until a class I want to take is offered.

But for now I'm on break (sort of, I have labs that need to be graded and a coding project that won't fix itself-- or will it? Wouldn't that be a wonderful world to live in) leaving me time to metaphorically dust off my trusty Photoshop and catch up on my NaNoWriMo word count. A couple weeks before November started I decided that what I really needed to do was a writing competition that I fell in love with during high school. It's called National Novel Writing Month and the goal is to write 50,000 words during the month of November...which is an awfully lot of words by the way.

Which reminds me-- my novel is woefully behind on word count (and woefully behind on quality writing but then again, that's not the point of NaNoWriMo). I'll leave you with these photos of my backyard (doesn't it look like a nature preserve or something? Considering we live in the middle of a city we definitely won the yard lottery).

I hope that you will have a great Thanksgiving-- I for one am looking forward to my third Thanksgiving meal this season. Last year I racked that number up to four or five-- I don't think I'll be able to break that record!

As always, thanks for reading. :)

Looking back: summer

During the spring semester I used to daydream about the upcoming summer.

It was going to be my Shangri-La where everything was going to magically be perfect. Gone would be the endless lab grading, gone the stress over homework and exams, and my days would be spent "researching". How romantic! 

Blissfully, I ignored the reality of starting a new job, even though I've started enough new jobs to know how tricky that can be. I ignored all the messy complications we shove under the carpet of "research" and I naively assumed my summer would be perfect and stress-free. 

Well. 

My summer was not perfect but it was pretty great. Sometimes you get so caught up in the day-to-day, so concerned with everything you have yet to learn, yet to understand, that you forget just how far you've come. I wanted to take a second to reflect on how my summer was; how I went from day one, knowing literally nothing about the AFM, to now, being pretty comfortable with the sometimes infuriating machine.

I started my summer off with a brief vacation home after my super stressful spring finals.

Have I mentioned lately how beautiful my garden is? To call it mine is misleading, as I do 0% of the work but still reap the benefits.

I traveled north to visit family, stopping along the way at this small town. There was a thrift store facing this courthouse where I snagged a beautiful blouse that I wear all the time for the low low price of like two bucks.

I dove headfirst into research, learning what it was like to go entire days without seeing the sun. The machine that I work with is super sensitive, which means it needs to be housed in basements where there are no windows. Melodrama aside, I made it part of my lunch break to take a walk around the deserted campus and soak in the vitamin D.

I learned what to do and what not to do with the AFM, I read a ton of papers, I drank a lot of coffee, and somehow, the summer managed to slip away when I wasn't looking.

The first week of July I traveled to Florida to visit my college roommates. I swam in a river, went canoeing, saw an alligator (all three happened on the same day), went to Diagon Alley, drank butterbeer, sweated more than I thought possible, pretended I was in London, saw cute animals, went to the beach, got hit in the head by waves (whoever said the beach was relaxing clearly did not go swimming), got sunburned (we all saw that one coming), ate delicious food, and was sorely sad to say goodbye.

Then, at the end of July I went to the University of Illinois for a week long biophysics workshop where I learned all about DNA while performing experiments and running theoretical simulations to model the flexibility of DNA. I met some awesome people, got spoiled by the utterly amazing food, went to more bars than I've ever been to, nearly fell asleep during the post-lunch lectures (we all saw that one coming), was exhausted but sad to see it end.

And then, in between my two trips I became an aunt. Charlie Pittman was born and he is, of course, the most perfect baby ever (though I just might change my tune whenever I end up having a kid). Even though I'm very far away, being an aunt is the best thing ever.

And then, the last few weeks of summer were spent cramming for qualifying exams which are an archaic, highly inaccurate way to determine if I can continue pursuing a PhD.

Somehow, my laid-back, chill summer turned into a jam-packed experience that flew by without me noticing. We are a couple weeks into the semester and I'm already missing it. It's difficult to juggle research with teaching two labs, three recitation sessions, and a class of my own with associated homeworks. Either way, change is what keeps things interesting, right?

Right? 

Dear Charlie

I remember when your parents first told us that they were going to have you.

It was Christmas, and we had just finished opening the gifts. We were making some pretty funny jokes about your father owning an alpaca farm (yes, your father went through an alpaca phase. If you are reading this from your room at the alpaca farm...blame your grandmother, she's the one who first gave him the farming magazine). Your parents seemed nervous as they handed a tiny slip of a gift to your grandparents. Your grandfather decided to open the gift out of my view-- leaving me to judge from his reaction what this final gift had been.

It was a children's book. I craned to get a better glimpse of the cover as the realization dawned on me that I would be an aunt.

An aunt! With all the joys of a new child and none of the responsibility. What could be better??

As the months went on, your parents planned a gender reveal party-- which is exactly what it sounds like. Family and friends gathered at your great-grandparents to learn if you would be a Charlie or a Charlotte. I, sadly far away terribly busy getting a PhD, video-called the party and saw, through granulated pixels (a breakdown of technology you'll probably never understand--lucky), the pink balloon fly far away in the perfect cloudless sky, leaving your father proudly holding a blue balloon.

A boy.

And, on July 18th, 2016, I waited with my phone on loud, taking data (ask me about my research project when you read this, I'm sure I'll get a kick of it) and waiting for the text to let me know you had officially arrived. I wasn't able to be at the hospital to meet you when you were born; I had this silly notion that I should spend five years of my life six hours away from home getting as many degrees as possible.

Your mother sent me a photo of you-- a photo of the cutest baby I've ever seen, eyes shut tight against this bright new world. I had to ask what color they were, in every photo you stubbornly refused to open them. As I write this, I have yet to see you in person. As you read this (how old will you be? when do kids learn to read? I know nothing about children; good thing it's my brother becoming a parent and not me) we will have hopefully spent much time together (and also hopefully not on an alpaca farm because I've heard they can be mean).

I'm so excited to watch you grow up, to see what color your eyes settle on (apparently babies are born with one color that can magically change to another, who knew?), and to get to know your budding personality.

And who knows, maybe by the time you're reading this you'll even have a cousin (wait, just did the mental math; this is impossible unless you're a really slow learner, which is fine!)-- or, more likely, you'll have plenty of cats and dogs to play with when you visit me. Either way, I can't wait.

Love,
Aunt Anna
((it feels so weird to write that! it feels like I should be selling pretzels or something-- ask your parents to explain that one))

My Etsy Shop: An Update

You may remember, around a year ago, I opened an Etsy shop. I discovered how surprisingly easy it was to create watercolor marbled mugs and figured I would try and sell them online.

Spoiler alert: this isn't a rags-to-riches story. I did actually sell one mug-- and I realized that I wasn't going to be able to make any profit with shipping costs as high as they are. So, I took the mugs down, and figured my Etsy days were over.

Skip to present.

I don't really do New Year's resolutions, but I do make new semester resolutions. Every time I start a semester I start out with such lofty goals. I'm actually going to read my textbook before class. I'm going to go over my notes and not just when I have to when doing homework. I'm going to spend spare time reading academic papers related to my tentative research area.

And, every time I get a couple weeks into the semester, these goals mysteriously disappear. The textbook is only opened when I'm stuck on homework, and my class notes are put away after class and not pulled out till the next class. And don't even get me started on the papers/textbooks I need to be reading for research!

So, I decided to set myself up for sucess and make (and use) a weekly planner. Before the week starts, I'll plan out exactly what I want to get done during the week. I'll be specific on the paper I need to read, the chapter in the textbook I need to study. It'll also help me become more organized with meal planning, something I never fully got the hang of last semester.

I wanted something simple, with plenty of room to write out homework deadlines, meeting times, and all my goals. I also have an obsession with water color; mix it all together and you get the following weekly planners!

I can't believe I have a watermark on something I made. What has my life become? I contemplated making it say "haha suckers" but figured that would be too antagonistic.

I made the weekly planner in three new and exciting colors! (how's my pitch going?) Blue, green, and black&white for those trying to save their poor ink supply. Check them out!

I'm excited to use them. I know I'll hole-punch them, but I haven't figured out how exactly I'm going to store them. A binder is too bulky for what I want, I might find a folder, or make a cardboard cover like I did with my journal. And maybe this post will hold me somewhat accountable, and I won't let my goals fall by the wayside this semester!

One can always hope.

Looking Back: 2015

2015.

How do I sum up my last semester of college? Freak snowstorms, free coffee, new haunts. There was the horrid, long wait to hear back from my grad school applications. There was the surprise snowfall on my birthday, the spontaneous Taylor Swift dance party in the field. 

It was pretty awesome turning 22 with this surprise--and PERFECT--cake

Then, there was that epic road trip to Florida for spring break-- an amazing vacation we partially chronicled through vlogs (get ready for me to rock my one dollar aviators!). Needlessly to say, my vlogging career did not take off. 

I discovered some great books-- such as American Gods by Neil Gaiman, such a game changer. Blair and I nearly stranded ourselves in a doomed icy journey to pick up Anna at the airport. We were barely a block from the apartment when we realized that sliding over the dark icy roads was not a good idea and headed back in defeat. 

I discovered Brooklyn-99, after ironically writing up a report on its failings to represent the spectrum of femininity in the same approving manner it afford the spectrum of masculinity for my brief stint in a feminism class, and my life is not the same because that show is EVERYTHING. 

And then, in May, I graduated with a BA in Physics with a minor in French. Which is crazy. I have a degree! I often forget that as I'm so focused on the next step, my final degree. 

I spent the summer with my lovely Bryan-- our reunion was primarily anti-climatic as the affection lay mostly on my side. ((I retook a horse riding class that I had taken a coupe of summers ago and was paired with the same stubborn lovely brown horse)) I turned my back on the new kid for one second and the next thing I knew all the horses escaped their fields and were frolicking in their new found freedom. I relearned how to lope and how awful it was to change leads (Bryan never did listen to me). 

And then, in August, I moved to Columbia to pursue my PhD in physics (biophysics most likely). It was my first time living alone-- meal planning and grocery shopping is a far cry from the cafeteria I had grown accustomed to. I taught my first labs-- and I think the kids kind of liked me! I took three classes, and somehow managed to finish with a surprisingly respectable GPA. 

I explored the parks around Columbia, finding some cool trails. And I spent countless hours on the phone and skype calls with friends living too far away. 

I've spent a large part of my Christmas break reading books-- I might rummaged together a post listing some of the recent gems I've stumbled upon. 

I'm not one for resolutions, just reflection. 2016 should hold more physics courses and summer research! Who knows what stories I'll have to tell one year from now. 

Thanks for reading! :) 

The Sudden Silence

Alternative title: I guess it's break? 

This morning I woke up to snow. Not much, mind you. Barely a dusting collecting on car hoods and rooftops. The snowflakes cruised on by my window, borne on a strong northern wind. I dream of the day I'll look out my window and see an expanse of nature. But for now, I'll settle for bushes, a parking lot, and the occasional squirrel. I'm still a student after all, though this whole getting a paycheck thing has been amazing. 

So today marks the beginning of my Thanksgiving break! I'm not the type of person to skimp on my eight hours of sleep-- ever! The closest I've come to pulling an all-nighter was one absolutely miserable computer science assignment which had me stumbling to bed around 2 am. However, there is something to be said about the bliss of sleeping in, even if, when the alarm blares, I technically have had my eight hours of sleep. 

I'm excited about my first (massive) solo road trip coming up on Monday. I'll be traveling down south to spend Thanksgiving with some relatives – – as my parents were inconsiderate enough to be (safely) in France till Christmas. Six hours with just me, the road, and an audiobook of my choosing. Oh, and a AAA card in my back pocket. 

By some weird fluctuation of the universe, I don't exactly have homework over the break. However, I am excited to finally have time to devote to my biophysics reading. I've been swamped with either work, or a need to take a break from physics, and haven't read as much as I would have liked. 

The sun is threatening to come out and soon the snow will be whisked away. That's alright-- I have loads of laundry to do and a library run to make. After all, I can't let the beauty of the past interfere with my appreciation of the present. 

It'll snow again, mostly likely before I leave for Christmas break, and it'll be a rich, deep snow that'll have me griping about wet shoes and messy roads. Until then I'll enjoy the delicate balance of fall and winter, a patchwork quilt spread over my city. 

After Thanksgiving break, I have two weeks of classes and then finals. Though to be fair, I only have one final during finals week – – my other classes have take-home finals before the week of finals. And then, poof, my first semester of grad school will be completed! Only nine more (hopefully) after that. 

A couple years ago, I wrote Thanksgiving post in which I don't believe I said that I was thankful for it all. So in parting, I am thankful for a challenging, but not overwhelming first semester, the friends I've made here, my beautiful apartment with a cheerful little fireplace, and the friends I have scattered around the world. 

As always, thanks for reading :)

A Tale of Two Graduates : What You Need to Know About Me

Check out Dave's first post here!

And the award for the longest title goes to me!

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Dave eagerly approached me with this idea of a joint blog series where we depict two paths which diverge after college graduation. Him, entering the workforce. Me, entering graduate school.

The hopes are to provide dubious advice by telling our story, our attempt to enter the real world-- or perhaps just to entertain you. But before that can happen, you need a little backstory! And since Dave seems intent of drudging up bad photos from freshman year, that's where I'll start.

((I actually have a whole treasure trove of worse photos but I'll be nice and just leave you with this Dr. Who watching party :))

Dave and I met pretty early on freshman year. From day one, we were confident in what we wanted to do. I wanted to get a bachelors in physics, minoring in French, and then go on to graduate school (for astrophysics at the time), and Dave wanted to get a bachelors in history.

Why physics?

I was tempted to cut and paste my personal letter from my graduate school applications where I addressed that same question but I think I'll just sum it up in two words: Star Trek. I was introduced to Star Trek when I was in middle school and quickly became enamored with their romantic portrayal of space and science. I decided I wanted to go into astrophysics-- a title I stumbled across on Wikipedia. I wasn't entire sure what 'physics' was, but I knew that I needed to get a degree in it first, before I could move on to astrophysics.

And that's pretty much how I found myself at my first physics class on the first day of classes at Hendrix. I wasn't entirely sure what I had signed up for, but I knew I wanted to major in physics.

Luckily for me, I loved physics! Literally I was sitting in a general physics lab (background: aka known as some of the most boring labs) timing a ball dropping from a height and I was so taken with the determinism of it all. Give me enough parameters and I could tell you exactly when the ball was going to hit the ground, without actually dropping the ball-- and that, oddly enough, was what made me believe that maybe this whole physics major thing would work out.

A year later I was in yet another lab (background: these were the really cool labs) measuring the charge of an electron, a fundamental property of the universe. I was definitely hooked. :)

My Plan

So, four years and one degree down, I find myself studying at the University of Missouri on a five-year track to get both a master's and a PhD in physics. Now, if we look briefly at the financial side of my plan, I'll tell you straight up that I've been incredibly lucky.

Since I'm from Arkansas, I received some really awesome scholarships if I went to college instate (which I did). Paired with some generous donors at Hendrix meant that I got out of undergraduate debt free (I know! I'm very lucky).

In most physics graduate programs you work for the university while studying, and they pay you. This means that I'll be teaching three intro physics labs this semester and in return will be paid enough to cover my expenses (and hopefully put a little into savings!). Not all graduate programs have such a generous stipend. Some graduate programs have you teaching actual classes (like English 101) while a grad student which to me just sounds crazy. I'm not at all ready to teach general physics to undergraduates!

That's it!

That's me! The major challenges I have up a head are mainly in the realm of time managment; with three courses to keep up with (which is a challenge!), and three labs to teach, making time to keep sane/do laundry will be interesting!

Thanks so much for checking this out! Dave and I will (hopefully) put out a new post every Monday so check his blog next Monday and then come back here the following Monday to hear more!

An Upcycled Loveseat

Next up on my search for furniture was a loveseat. My apartment isn't the largest, so I opted for a smaller loveseat rather than a couch. At first, I figured this was something that I would just have to buy new. After all, loveseats from the thrift store conjure up all sorts of bad imagery.

However, after seeing the price of loveseats today, I decided to consider a secondhand loveseat. The cheapest loveseat I could find new was around 350-- and I didn't love it, just the price.

But where could I find a decent, clean, affordable loveseat? A co-worker recently raved to my mother about this thrift store she had found in a nearby town. She got some great pieces for even better prices, so we headed to check it out.

And we hit jackpot. My entire apartment was like 80% furnished by this one thrift store (or antique mall; I use the words interchangeably, though I know for some people they mean very different things. This place was clean and organized (not like a thrift store) and had quality pieces (like an antique mall) but for thrift store prices (see my confusion?)).

I found this adorable loveseat tucked away by the front window. It was small-- two cushions wide rather than three-- but lovely. It had a yellowish cream damask fabric that I wasn't loving, but it was for the most part clean and without stains. The cute wood feet hinted at the age of the loveseat.

I plopped down on the loveseat and promptly found my first problem-- it needed a new cushion; it had so much give I figured the cushion was just shot. Also, the fabric wasn't the color or pattern (or century) that I wanted and reupholstering isn't cheap. I figured it was a lost cause until I saw the price. 86 dollars!

86 was a steal for the loveseat. It was in great condition (no smell and only one small stain), even with the thin cushion. If I needed to, I could've used it as is. But with that price, I had room in my budget to update it and still come in less than a new loveseat.

Here's where I lucked out-- my father knows a guy. He owns an upholstery shop called Trumann's Upholstery in Bay, Arkansas. Trumann is small town and Bay is an even smaller town, barely a wide spot in the road, near mine. It's a rundown old white brick building with absolutely no signs anywhere. Every time we drive there we're leaving Bay before we realize we missed it.

Bubby (that's his name. For real. It's great) has been in the upholstery business nearly his whole life-- and if you stop by you're guaranteed to hear at least a part of his story. Most likely he'll start in the middle and leave you trying to puzzle the stories together. The shop itself must break every fire code ever written. The front portion has every square foot covered with the bones of old furniture and dusty fabric to the point that you can't even walk in. Instead you have to go to the unmarked white door to the workshop and walk in. The workshop isn't much better-- there is a thin path, one person wide, carved out between work stations and projects.

He also doesn't really quote prices, he just assures you it won't be much (and it never is!). When we brought the loveseat to him we still didn't have fabric. Upholstery fabric can run 20 a yard and we didn't know how many yards we would need. Bubby was able to tell us the age of our loveseat-- it was made either in the 1940s or 1950s, judging from the way it was constructed. Also, that cushion I thought need to be replaced? It was down feathers! This loveseat was quite fancy back in its day-- instead of a foam cushion, they had a large pillow that was full of down feathers.

Bubby estimated it would take 8 yards of fabric-- which is also how he prices the work. The work he estimated would run around $240, still making the loveseat less than the new ones (which are found in big box stores that mostly certain do not have the history mine has;)). I explained how I was looking for some neutral color, not too dark, but not light enough to show stains. He dug around in his shop and pulled out a huge bolt of light green/grey fabric, which he graciously threw in for free. ((Perks of knowing the right guy!))

This brought my loveseat up to 326, all in. Bubby added a zipper to the main cushion, stuffed it with some batting to make it super comfy, made arm covers, and made two little pillows, as I had mentioned wanting some.

It turned out great! The new fabric is gorgeous and it looked great. Not only that, but the extra batting in the cushion makes it perfectly comfortable. It'll look great in my apartment. :)

I originally titled this post "DIY loveseat" but then I realized I didn't do really anything-- I had a professional do it instead. Seat cushions are one thing-- an entire loveseat is way out of my crafting league.

Anyway, just wanted to share my story! Apparently it is possible to shop for couches at the thrift store and not end up with a smelly/stained/awful mess.

Thanks for reading!

The Move: stage 1

Last Tuesday night I began to process of packing up all my stuff for the first stage of my move to Columbia. Since my lease began earlier than I wanted to move to Columbia, I thought I would make the move in two parts-- which also allowed us to use a small U-Haul for part one and then just load up the car for part two.

 

I wish I had taken a photo of the inside of the U-Haul! I think my dad broke some world record as he Tetris-ed a desk, a dinning room table (with two removable legs), 5 chairs, a coffee table, a tv-table, a twin mattress, a twin box springs, a huge dresser, a shower rod, a curtain rod, two small bookcases, and a lot of packed, heavy boxes all into that small trailer! Suffice it to say, when we were done, the trailer had reached maximum capacity.  

And that's not even all my stuff. 

Still to go are all of my clothes/shoes/tv/love seat (which will get its own post soon!)/crafting supplies/misc. But those will all fit between the two cars we'll take up for my final move-in to Columbia. 

We took the long way up to Columbia-- we wanted to stop at a flea market/antique mall an hour or so outside of St. Louis. This route took us through my favorite national forest-- the Mark Twain National Forest where we stopped for a quick picnic lunch at an old abandoned town-turned park. Unfortunately, this route also took us through the bedlam that is St. Louis ten-lane traffic (I wasn't driving so maybe there were less lanes but it sure didn't feel like it) so this isn't a route I would take up myself. Which is sad because I love any opportunity to visit my favorite national forest.

The flea market stop was successful and I picked up a huge four drawer well-loved dresser (pictures later!).

After 8 hours, and as many stops, we finally arrived in Columbia and set about the very fun task of moving every piece of furniture into my semi-basement apartment.

Here's the before picture of my living/dining room area! Note the fireplace on the left wall :) The space is huge! More than enough room for me.

It was surreal to get keys to my very first real-world-non-Hendrix-off-campus apartment! The complex I'm in is very nice. Not only is it pet-friendly but it has a lot of security, which is great. It's a short drive from campus. If all goes well, I should be able to park at my church and walk the short distance to the physics building!

Flea Market Finds:

I thought I would share just a couple of the furnishings I got from scouring dusty flea markets/over-stuffed antique malls.

Isn't this cute? I found it when we stopped to get a dresser from a flea market outside of Farmington, which is close to St. Louis. It's funky and when I saw it I realized my search for a nightstand was over! It's solid wood with a leather top and two functional drawers. For those playing along at home, this piece was around 40 dollars. I probably could've bought a cheaper nightstand but it would have been cheaper materials. For what I'm getting, this piece is a better buy for me. 

While we were in Columbia we headed a mile or so out of town to visit the plethora of antique stores/flea markets that surround the city. I'll write a more detailed post about the stores but I wanted to share a great find.

We were browsing through the many stalls at a place called Veranda Antique Mall when I found a tub of hand-crafted photo mats! The map mat above really accents my photo of Big Ben. And the total cost?

Mat : 5

Frame at Hobby Lobby : 3.60 (use the 40% off coupon!)

Photo : 2.84

Total : 11.44 for a personal, gorgeous wall hanging 

This was another mat I picked up at the antique mall. It's hand-crafted and cost only 2.50! The total cost for this wall hanging was just over five dollars!

I love how the colors complete this photo of my roomeis and I :) It's going to be a change, to say the least, to live on my own as I have been spoiled with amazing roommates. 

Here's a panoramic of the almost-finished living/dining room! Fun story, that isn't my couch. As we were pursuing the antique malls, my parents stumbled upon this antique love seat that was in great condition. The fabric is in pristine condition-- with fabric on the back of the love seat as well, which meant it was pretty spiffy back in its time. When they saw the price of 48 dollars they were sold. Unfortunately, it wouldn't fit in the car on the way back home while still leaving room for me. So, it's hanging out in my apartment until I make my final move up in a few weeks when my parents will drop off my love seat and pick up theirs.

That's it! I still have the love seat to put in the apartment and a lot of decorating to do. But, for now I'm just going to enjoy the last two weeks of my (possibly very last!) summer before grad school started. I bought two of my textbooks today-- I can't wait to start classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and math methods (okay maybe I can wait on the math class).  

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for a couple apartment crafts and flea market adventures!

Change Is Exciting and other lies we tell ourselves

In four short weeks I'll be in Columbia, Missouri starting a PhD program in physics.

I'll be trading the comfortable -- the green, leafy, haven of Hendrix, where all of my friends lived within walking distance -- for the unknown. My friends will be scattered around the US which makes for great road trip opportunities, but not great Friday night Catan/movie/over ambitious baking projects parties I had grown to expect. 

I'll be trading two(four) roommates and spontaneous Batman singing for a lovely one bedroom (with a fireplace! #winning #sorryforthehashing). And hopefully I'll be trading wild party animal neighbors for quiet, friendly neighbors. The will-there-be-vomit-on-the-stairs-today? game got old fast. 

I said goodbye to the physics professors who introduced me to the wonders of the universe -- my graduate application essay referenced that one lab sophomore year where we measured the charge of an electron, a fundamental property of the universe. I'll go from tutoring maybe one student a month in physics to teaching an entire general physics lab (by myself!). 

We tell ourselves change is exciting -- but it's not. 

I'm a creature of habit; I like my routines, as dreadfully boring as that sounds. Change is scary and annoying and wouldn't life just be better if it didn't exist?

But of course if there was no change, then I would have never gone to Hendrix and had the amazing time that I did. And I have a feeling that the University of Missouri will be much the same -- a nerve-wracking start that leads to a great time. 

Change sucks, but it can lead to some awesome things, awesome things that become clear once the chaos of moving settles down and new routines are established ((okay okay I think we can all agree that I'm basically 80)). 

I just wanted a brief moment to rant and rave before the adventure starts and I forget why I was ever stressed. ((Sounds ridiculous but that is what happened when I went off to college)) 

This summer has been spent scouring flea markets and antique malls and everything in between to furnish my new apartment. I found some great deals that I can't wait to share with you once everything's moved in and organized. 

Another thing you can look forward to are cooking blogs, as I'll be entirely in charge of my food. No cafeteria cooking and cleaning for me, no fresh fruit already cut for me in the morning. Man the real world is hard; I already miss the sandwich line at Hendrix...

As always, thanks for reading :)

6 Things You Realize Senior Year

Warning: Entirely Sappy, Cheesy, and Nostalgic words ahead.


1. Holy Cow It's Almost Over
If you're like me, you have a blog that records all the foolish things you said freshman year, including but not limited to: "oh no! It's Christmas break! I won't get to see my friends for an entire month!".
 
Yeah. Past me? One month is no big deal. Four weeks compared with the foreseeable future? You had nothing to complain about.

Denial runs pretty thick senior year; it still hasn't fully hit me that in a couple very short days, I will be saying goodbye to all the amazing friends that I have made here. Luckily with Skype, Google+ hanging-outs, and road trips, I know that we will all keep in contact. Still, I know that I will never live within a 5-min walk of almost all my friends again; that is a peculiarity known only to college.

2. Wait, there's no cafeteria in the real world?
Next year, one of the hardest adjustments (and believe me there is a long list) will be going from only cooking a meal or so a week to cooking every single meal I eat. I've been tremendously spoiled here at Hendrix; our caf has literally won awards for the quality of food. And while, after four years, some of the dishes have grown old, I will sorely miss both having meals already cooked for me and having all the dishes done for me.

3. Dreams don't necessary come true
"You can do everything right and still lose. That's not fair, that's life."
A friend recently posted that on Facebook, and I've been repeating it every since. As everyone knows, hard work doesn't always pay off. I had a rough graduate admissions season-- I worked very hard, crafted what I thought was the perfect resume and cover letter-- and then proceeded to get rejected from almost every school I applied to. Luckily I struck gold on one of my applications-- they contacted me to accept me even before my application was officially complete.

Which, coincidentally, is why I'm proud to say I'm attending the University of Missouri this fall to start the long, arduous process of getting a PhD in Biophysics.

For those playing along at home, you might be wondering whatever happened to my dreams of astrophysics? Around my junior year, I began to realize that what I wanted most out of my career was the ability to help people, to somehow actively strive to make their lives better. I had briefly toyed with the idea of going into medicine, but with my lack of med school pre-requestite classes that was never a serious option. However, I realized that there was a way to marry my love of physics and desire to help others: biophysics.

4. Liberal arts education is not the norm
These past four years have been a wonderful amalgamation of courses in physics, french, English, history, mythology, and more. I didn't come to Hendrix because it was a liberal arts college-- quite honestly I didn't know what that even meant.

What that meant was that while my friends at other universities had schedules weighed down with only math/science courses, I took courses in Classical Mythology, History of Medieval Europe, Minimalist French Literature, Intro to Film Studies, and many others. Heck, I took an entire semester away from math and science and only studied the French language.

That breadth of academia will be gone next year as I enter a very focused physics program. And while I adore physics, I will miss the opportunities I've enjoyed here.

5. When Panera does Bagel Tuesday, hop on that
But for real though. That's an awesome deal. ((Baker's dozen for like seven dollars))
While perhaps the least deep revelation here, I felt the need to mention that recently my breakfasts have been brought to you by the wonderful world of Panera.

6. How easy it is to forgot about your blog
I might have forgotten to post this entire semester.....I wish I could say life got in the way, which it did, but still I always had something that I could've written about. My new resolution is to try and blog this summer (perhaps once a week? I have an overload of opinions, so writing opinion pieces would be easy to do). 

And that's it!

As graduation draws closer and closer it's hard not to label everything we do as "the last time". The last Sundae Thursday, the last game of Catan, the last hike, the last coffee shop visit. In a couple days I'll be saying goodbye to this beautiful campus which has become a home and my friends who have become like family.

Women in Physics

This past weekend a couple other Hendrix students and I headed to Ole Miss for the Southern Undergraduate Women in Physics conference. ((Think that's a mouthful? Try the acronym! SUWiP. Yeah. Catchy.))

Having a conference solely for women in physics might sound a bit odd, until you look at the numbers. Recently a university emailed me to check out their physics graduate program. They boasted a relatively large number of female students-- almost 20%!

20%. That means the student body is 80% male. And that's supposed a number that they want to brag about? That describes, in a nutshell, why there is an entire conference whose purpose is to encourage women to study physics.

There are cautionary tales of sexism women face in pursuit of the sciences. Personally, while I have been told I'm unable to do plenty of things because I'm a woman, physics has never been on the list.

However, physics is still lagging far behind the other sciences, which are getting closer to the 50%-50% gender ratio.

I've never cared or really noticed that I was in the minority in my physics classes, being a woman. Though that tells you sometime-- I've come to fully expect to be in male-dominated classes, so it is no surprise when that is true. The only instance where I've ever been really frustrated with the lack of other female students was when I was trying to make assertations about the way society views female physics students.

You see, whenever I tell a stranger that I'm a physics major they typically respond with two emotions: shock and awe. Awe is too strong of a word, but you get the idea, right? Here's a typical interaction.

Them : "So what do you study?"
Me: "Oh I'm a physics major."
Them: "Wow! Physics! Man, I could never do that. It's so hard. You must be so smart!"

Which is not true, but that's a topic for another post. Anyway, it was only after a couple years that I began to really analyze the typical response. While there is the whole "you must be super smart" which, once again, needs to be delegated to its own personal post about societal perceptions of science, there is always an element of surprise.

As a scientist-- or rather, as a rational human being-- I can't just jump to any conclusions. I can't declare 'oh they must be so surprised because I'm a woman! They must not expect me to be into the sciences'. While this might be true, there are too many other plausible answers. Perhaps they don't meet many physics majors-- and would respond with the same level of shock if a guy told them he was a physics major.

To try and ascertain if my gender actually did play a role in peoples' responses, I turned to other female physics majors.

Oh wait.

 There's only one in my grade besides me-- and she's a physics/English double major, which skews the results. Peoples' response could be due to the duel major or just the English part-- I have no way of knowing how people perceive just her role in physics.

Out of the eight senior physics majors, two are female. Could be worse, but it could be better. There are three female physics majors in the class below me, but there are also a lot more male physics majors.

The purpose of the conference was to encourage those still on the fence about physics, hoping to trickle the numbers so that eventually schools will be graduating a physics class that is half male, half female. Of course, we really need to talk about science education starting even younger than college freshman-- somewhere in elementary school girls start dropping out of the sciences.

But that's a topic for another time! I've already put off application work long enough. I only have two more graduate schools to apply to but I need to go and actually apply.

Thanks for reading! :)