onward and upward

yesterday i was moderately irritated with the world by the end of the day. mostly just exhausted. i came home with the intention of reading and instead discovered that it was a brilliant idea to just lie still in the dark and not move for awhile :-)

housing orientation went great... 10 minutes of me dispensing common sense information about living in dorms, 5 more of general questions, then a bunch of the guys took over the pool table in the community room i had reserved for the reading, a bunch of the girls came and chatted with me about "dude, what's it like to be a grad student?", "what in the world is (fill in the blank with something on the REU schedule) about?", etc., etc. after the girls left, i chatted with the students who came in from prague earlier in the week. when i asked if they'd had any luck getting to the store yet, they started laughing and one of them told me that he had volunteered on behalf of the group to go to the store and figured it could be that far... after walking for 2 hours in 90+ degree heat, he realized it was longer than he thought (via the most direct route the store in question is over 4 miles away, jan admitted to getting turned around on his way there and taking even longer)... luckily, as he was checking out, he saw some students in math shirts and figured they HAD to be rutgers students and got himself a ride back. i told them in the future, they definitely should get someone to take them or call me, but i was impressed that jan was that determined to get there :-P

anyhow, when i'm not around people who have been part of the REU before, i feel totally at ease and enjoy getting to know the students. i can probably match names to faces for 17 out of 27 of them so far, and for the first 2 days, i'm pretty proud of that :-) in the hour i was around their apartments last night, i enjoyed myself and enjoyed being up in front of them. at the orientation dinner i was more self-conscious since many people have been involved in this much longer than me!... sometimes i feel like they know how things have been done before, and without telling anyone expect things will happen exactly the same again, and are surprised when bringing in a new person changes the order of events up a little.

anywho, that's that, and for the most part i'm pretty happy with my lot in life this summer :-P for 3 years at valpo i helped arrange a program for junior high kids each year... and i was always part of an undergraduate research team, and especially my junior and senior years, i enjoyed helping out people who were where i was a few years ago and being friendly. eric joked that it's a superiority complex and i like feeling smarter than people; i think he's completely wrong... i just enjoy helping pull this kind of event together and then seeing people have a positive experience getting stuff out of what i've worked hard to do. :-P

i think i've even managed to rearrange the REU calendar to the satisfaction of the one professor who had criticisms of it last night... we shall see. i'm just trying to make everyone happy... even though by now i know that never works :-P

later dudes