OEPP presentations

The dead week.

The dead week is finally here. I'm glad to have this week because I need to study for my finals. We never had such long time in India to study for the finals. I planned to study this weekend too, but ended up doing nothing. On Saturday I had the Purdue Di Shaan's (Bhangra group) try outs and after I was done with then I had a severe body pain. :p Anyways I do not have much to write about this time. To this end I just want to mention that I enjoyed doing blogging all this semester ans I'll be missing this english class a lot. I still remember when I first came to this class, the first thing that I mentioned to Prof. Veronica was "I am really bad at writing and so I hate it too". Now at the end of the semester I have a completely different thinking. I wold like to mention that Prof. Veronica, you completely changed my style of writing and now I have no more writing fears. I'm glad. :)

thanksgiving break 2011

I had four more days of break than others. I had only one ENGR 103 class on Monday morning, but I didn’t go there (overslept). That day I went to Wabash Landing movies to “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1”. This was boring, except the last scene, when Bella turns into a vampire. Then I went to “Happy Feet Two”. I was expecting it to be enthralling, but it did not meet my expectations. The first movie was better.

On Tuesday (or on Wednesday) three friends went to Aurora shopping mall. I was looking for a jacket, but I could not find anything I liked. The only thing I bought was a hat from GAP.

On Thursday we celebrated Thanksgiving, (actually Kazakhs don’t celebrate it). It was just a “motive” to gather Kazakh students in one place. We went to a friend’s apartment and had turkey dinner.
At Black Friday I went to Chicago with the same guys. We went through Michigan Avenue; I bought a jacket at Columbia and two sweaters at Banana Republic. After shopping we drove to the Millenium Park. Then we took pictures with Marilyn Monroe sculpture.
On Saturday I went to play soccer. On Sunday evening I eventually was able to start writing an essay and finished it by 5 am. (I got extension for this assignment).

Dead Week

Its almost dead week! I am very excited, but at the same time I am very worried. I have to cram real hard for math and physics, but I'm scared I will totally not do any work because of the chance of having a great time without worrying about classes. Thank goodness I only have two exams, it would really suck if I had exams in every single class. One thing I don't understand is that apparently in my physics lectures next week we are still learning something on the first lecture that will be on the final and also have a long and boring lab. I just don't get it sometimes, it just seems that the physics department has no idea what they're doing. Anyways, I'm just going to pray that I will study hard for math and physics next week so I can hopefully get some decent scores on my finals.

The black friday!

Huh! So I am finally here to post a blog after a long thanksgiving break. :D   Although I still do not feel like blogging and am still a sleepy head, but I have to share some interesting experiences all this weekend. I didn't go anywhere during the break. All I did was shopping, eating and sleeping. Obviously this week was full of discounts on all the stuff I always wanted buy, so how could I even miss this. I experienced shopping on a Black Friday for the first time. Reaching the mall at 9 pm on the Thanksgiving and then standing in long queues waiting for the stores to open. Trust me, I never thought that people will be so crazy to get into a particular showroom. The rushing of people in store as soon as it opened was so amusing lol. I stayed calm all the time. I am glad I got a lot many deals. The best part is that I finally have the snow boots :D
I returned back to may dorm at 9 in the morning. It was so much fun. Shopping for 12 hours. wow!
Hope you guys also had a great thanksgiving with your families. :)

Classes, Part 1. Calc 2 and Physics.

At the beginning of this semester these two classes were the easiest classes. I even tested out Calc 1 after the first week, then I started to Calc2 which also seemed not difficult. I was thinking to get “A” in these courses. Even both these classes were time consuming because of homework (less time than engr131 though), I handled them with ease. I got almost 100% in the first midterm exams. But it was just the beginning… Topics started to get more difficult. Second exams were worse, third ones … I don’t know their results yet.

In physics I am trying not to lose points in homework, recitations, labs, lecture iclickers, because each point counts. I felt disappointed once I was late to a lecture and missed one iclicker question. Then I was more upset when I and my teammate cannot get all the checkpoints in a recitation. In Calc 2 things are even worse. I completely failed my last midterm (expecting about 50). But I still have two finals, in which I will do my best. Will try.

Changing Majors

I've been thinking a lot about changing majors, but I'm worried that I'm only saying this because of the courses that are required to get into my desired school of engineering. I plan to go aeronautical and become a pilot in the future, but I don't know if engineering is the right way or engineering technology. I've looked over the plan of study for AAE students and it sounds very interesting, especially the courses you can choose to focus on like low flight gravity experience or propulsion. I looked over the Aeronautical Engineering Technology plan of study and it also seemed interesting because starting second semester we actually start learning about flight. I do not know what to do and what makes it worse is that we have to choose classes for next semester next Monday! Hopefully I make the right decision and I get the time to talk to some advisers about my plans for the future.

Approaching the end of semester!

Just a month from now and I'll be in Seattle. Yay! I am glad that the semester is about to end. Trust me, I never realized where did the three months go. Sometimes I feel,"Wasn't it just yesterday when I entered into this university?". A wonderful bunch of friends and the interesting course material made me pass through. :) 

I am done with my third chemistry exam and all set for the weekend and of course Thanksgiving. I haven't thought of doing anything during the holidays except sleeping. I am sleep deprived and hopefully will manage my semester's sleep  this time lol.

All my friends are returning home during the winter break. I do feel jealous and bad because I wanna meet my family and friends too, but then I console myself by saying,"Dharna, you'll have so much more fun than your friends will. You'll go skydiving!". :D

I am go eager to experience new experiences!

WHADDDUPP?

Hey! I feel like I haven't seen anyone in forever. Right now it's snowing outside (say what?). I'm not prepared to break out my winter clothes, because I feel like I haven't worn my fall ones enough! Fashion crisis. haha jk. So, let me tell you what's on my mind. I love Purdue, seriously. But I'm considering transferring out of engineering because I really want to do journalism. I love writing and hate math. I have a D in math right now. I've never had a D!!! ever! And if I fail, I'll be 2 semesters behind (because I started in Pre-Cal, not Calc 1). ugh. But the main reason I came to Purdue was for engineering, and it's costing me $40,000 in loans each year. So if I switch my major to journalism, what would be the point of going here because I could go in-state in KY for like $10,000 a year. Poop. But Purdue is my favorite and I don't want to leave. I'm so conflicted. hahaha. I guess I'll just bust my ass (are we allowed to cuss on here...sorry, I just did) until the end of the semester and try to get my grade up. On top of this, my grandma passed away so I've missed a lot of school and school work. A lot of times I just don't have the mental willpower to complete my assignments. Bleh. You know how your eyes twitch when you're stressed out? Mine won't stop! I've missed a buncha blog posts and web assign homeworks and like 4 lectures from going home. And i have 2 tests early next week. booooo :( And then of course there's my grandma's will and family...craziness..that i'd prefer not to deal with. I was not expecting all this!

Too much of computer

On Friday, after class, as per my usual routine I went to the Hicks underground library to finish my MA 165 Webassign Homework. I specifically go to Hicks to study because of the double screened computers available in the digital media section located in the lower levels of Hicks. There I can do my homework and not tire my eyes as much thanks to the big screens.

However, last Friday was different. That day would have been the third day in row during which I only got less than 6 hours of sleep. Why did this happen? Well, despite keeping my procrastination at an acceptable level, during each day of the week something school-related conveniently came up and kept me up late.

Anyway back to Friday afternoon. I finished my homework, and got out of the Hicks library and impatiently looked forward to a weekend of well-earned rest. However, as I walked from Hicks towards my dorm, I noticed that anyone who passed by me looked at me in a strange way. I ignored the looks.

At my dorm, as I went to the bathroom to get a shower, I looked at myself in the mirror and realised the reason for those strange looks. The person who was looking back at me had a red bloodshot eyes and dark purple bags creeping right below them. The combination of sleep deprivation and computer usage had tired my eyes out to the breaking point. I hope I won’t be needing higher powered glasses. That would really suck.

OEPP round table

I came to Krannert an hour earlier than assigned time. I sat in the lobby and prepared to my ENGR131 Exam. At 5:30 pm I went to the room where roundtable would be held. There were Jayne and some Asian students. I sat next to Jayne, and introduced myself. Jayne said that those students were TAs and as I remember, by the round tables “they get experience and learn skills to become better TA”. First, they (one of them) asked me where I was from. I answered I am from Kazakhstan. I was not surprised when they did not know where it is, so I just pointed to a map and continued”it’s near Russia and China” as we, Kazakhs, always say. Then, they asked me second, third… Wait, wait! I did not expect that I would be attacked by a bunch of questions. It made me, shy guy, little nervous. I called Dharna, who was also supposed to come, but she could not… because of rain. =) However, after a while confidence came to me. I even liked being in the spotlight. I talked about FIFA 12, foods that Kazakhs eat, language barriers and so on. It all ended at 6:20. Then I, pleased with myself, went home and had a nice sleep.

The funniest Presentation comeback

As I was aimlessly surfing the web, I randomly typed on Google "the worst presentation of all time". I then randomly picked a link that read “The worst presentation gaffe you’ve ever seen”. This link led to what seemed to be a LinkedIN Question/Answer page. I scrolled down to the first answer and read.

The answerer had two to stories to share. The First one wasn’t very striking. However the second one was the best one I have read so far. Basically, the author recounts the presentation of her “humorous” friend. Here’s the story, the friend is doing her presentation for the first time with a microphone. The first two hours go by. And then she has to go to the bathroom. Once back in the lecture room, her crowd looks at her “strangely’. The responder continues by someone comes and tells her that she should turn off her microphone before heading to the toilet. The author then cites all the options the presenter had which included get out of the room, or continue the presentation as though nothing happened.

The presenter decided to stay and said: “Now that I'm relieved .... We can move on”. And the whole crowd was reported by the author to have laughed their backsides off.

What an excellent comeback.

Checkout the story for yourself: http://www.linkedin.com/answers/hiring-human-resources/personnel-policies/HRH_PPO/236335-8169793