Grad School

Another milestone

2008-07-09T21:01:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that my extended absence from making any posts has been broken! After a considerably long lapse since my last post, I have finally gotten around to writing again. As indicated by the title of this post, I have reached yet another milestone in my academic career- the end of classes FOREVER! I finished the 15 course requirement for my PhD in the middle of June, and now for the next 2-3 years I will be doing strictly research. The next step for me is to gather a committee of 4 faculty members and present my qualifying exam before December where I will propose the topic I will be studying for the rest of my PhD. Grad school is going by so fast!

It's already midnight, so I won't write much. I did want to mention that last weekend I went to a funeral for one my grandparents- Grandpa Sollars. While I am comforted by the fact that he no longer has to struggle to breathe and deal with recurring bouts of pneumonia and hospital visits, he will be sorely missed. He always had such a warm personality and a great sense of humor, and it was always a treat to come visit him, even as his health started to fail him in recent years. As kids, my brother and sisters and I would always joke that Grandpa Sollars knew everybody, and we would count the number of people he would talk to at restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, etc., because anywhere we went, he always seemed to find people he knew by name and could strike up conversations in a heartbeat. That's just the kind of person he was, and by no means do these few simple sentences do justice to the life that he led and the strength of character he possessed.

We all miss you Grandpa Sollars and love you very much. Rest in peace.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-02T18:36:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

Since my last post, there have been many events that have transpired- a visit to North Carolina, Thanksgiving, end of exams, Shull Group coffee hour, more broomball, Christmas, and of course New Years.

Since that's probably too much information to summarize in a single post, so I'll just ignore most of it. Pictures are better anyway so here are some pictures from my past few weeks:

Kristin, Brian, Abby, and me at Grandma and Grandpa Sollars's house for Christmas.

Abby and me at Grandma and Grandpa James's house.

The beautiful kitchen table decorations/food for Eddie's surprise birthday party.

Me with an amazing broccoli/alfredo/garlic/sun dried tomatoes/onion pizza at Eddie's party

Me at the Sollars' Christmas.

The next academic quarter starts next week- classes begin on Monday and I haven't gotten my books or anything yet. I'm not sure I'm ready for classes to start so soon. On the bright side, I only have to put up with classes until June and I'm done for good! How's that for some good news?!

Alright, I need to get back to work. Hope everyone is doing well.

Broomball and more

2007-10-28T12:04:00.000-07:00

So as follow up to my last post, I've included a picture of everybody who came to the first broomball outing. There were 31 of us total, and it was a blast. I personally had three goals- one of them from between the legs and another beautifully coordinated with Sapana from the sidelines. I think everybody had a great time, and I'm expecting an even bigger turnout for the next event, which will be November 30 from 9-11 pm.

In research news, I finally characterized one of the diblock copolymers I had made at the beginning of October. They were better than I could have expected. The length of the polymer was almost exactly what I predicted, and it had a low polydispersity (meaning that all the chains were pretty much the same length). Since then, I've had a few complications with equipment working- I had to order some new glassware, rewire an electrical plug, and change the oil in a vacuum pump that I use for polymerizations. However, this past week, I dropped a class so I have a bit more time to be working on research, which I'm pretty excited about.

Yesterday, Eddie's family came over for dinner, so Eddie and his girlfriend made an awesome turkey dinner. The three people on the side nearest to the camera are Eddie's dad, mom, and sister, respectively, and in the back is Eddie, me, Joe, Andres, and Diana. Nikhil is standing in the back. Anyway, it was a very tasty dinner, and we had the place looking cleaner than it's ever been for their visit.

There's not much else going on. Between classes, research, and being a TA I haven't been getting much done, but I'm having a good quarter overall. I'll be sure to keep putting updates as I have time. I hope everybody is doing well!

Is Kevin dead?

2007-10-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

Contrary to popular opinion, I have not died despite my lack of posting updates on my blog. Since my last post, I have moved into a new apartment with 5 other guys. The moving process was long and arduous, but we have settled in after our first month here, and I really like the place. Here are some pictures of my room:

If you can't tell from the pictures, my room is like twice as big as it was at my old apartment. However, I don't currently have a door that shuts all the way, compliments of the people who put in the new carpeting in the adjacent living room.

So you may be wondering what prompted me to write all of a sudden. Well, today I stayed home sick due to a sore throat. We kind of had this sickness epidemic going through the house, and now all of us have been sick except for Kunal.

I've had a lot going on recently- I'm taking 3 courses right now plus I'm TAing another course. In addition I've been organizing The Graduate Broomball League (http://studentassociations.gsad.northwestern.edu/tgbl/) for Northwestern graduate students, as I got an $1800 grant to start the organization. Our first outing is tomorrow and I'm expecting about 30 students (though mostly from Materials Science). I've also had all my research to do, so I keep myself occupied.

Anyway, that's a very brief summary of what I've been up to. More to come later...

Busy Summer

2007-08-11T18:20:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, I have not updated my blog since June, and it is now almost mid-August. Here are a few updates of what I have been up to-

Research- I've been trying to get a lot done this summer in lab before classes start again, but I'm having some difficulties with some polymerizations so work has been going a bit slow. In addition, I had a summer research student (actually a teacher but that's another story) who I had to mentor this summer, which also consumed some time. Her last day was actually yesterday, and though her project didn't go exactly as planned, the data we got from her project will be useful to me as I try to finish it up. I'm supposed to be getting an undergrad this fall who is interested in hydrogels for biomedical applications so I'm thinking that he can continue on the project from my summer student. We'll see how things turn out...

Visiting North Carolina- I made it down to NC for a week in the middle of July for my summer vacation. Brian and Rachel brought down Abby with them from Connecticut, so I got to see my niece for the first time (I'll post pictures later, but I'm currently at a lab computer running an experiment so I don't have them with me). We stayed near Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks, and I managed to get a lot of reading done as well as lots of rest. Before heading back, I was also able to see a good number of my friends in Chapel Hill who were there for the summer or hadn't already graduated yet. I drove back from North Carolina in the minivan that Kristin used to drive (she now has a Mazda Tribute so I acquired the party wagon). On the way, I stopped by Aunt Carlene and Uncle Bob's house in Tennessee and was able to visit with them and Dawn as well as see their new house which I hadn't seen since it was being built. My friend Joel accompanied me on the trip so I wouldn't have to drive alone, and he flew out the day after we got back to Chicago. Also before making it back, I swung by the grandparent's to pick up some corn and visit. I had 96 ears in the back of the van before we headed out, and it was gone within 2 weeks. I wouldn't mind having some more right about now....

I've got about three weeks left until I have to move into my new place. I'm waiting to hear back from my new landlord as to when we're able to move in, since our lease at our old apartment ends on Aug 31 and I can't move in until Sept 1. I do have some friends I can stay with or my five roommates and I may need to go camping or something for a night. I heard from my friend Sapana that she'll be moving to Chicago that same weekend, so maybe if I snag some free time I can go down to South Chicago and help her move in.

Alright, I'll try to post some pictures later. I don't really have many except for the beach pictures, but I'll try to post some pictures of my new place once I move in. I hope everybody is doing well, and I'm sorry for not posting in so long!

Summer!

2007-06-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

So there has definitely been yet another lapse in my blog posting. I was hoping that since I had finished classes I would be able to post more regularly, but as it turns out, my computer decided to just stop working, so I've had to deal with that first. So here's what I've been up to:

-End of the quarter! Finally, the courses for the year have finished and I can focus on some research for once. Since I've been putting off my independent study, I only finished two classes for the quarter, but I did well in both.

-Movies!: Since the end of classes, I have been watching an inordinate number of movies. Included in this list are Tremors 4, Stranger than Fiction, History Boys, and Da Vinci Code, and I'm planning to watch the Last King of Scotland this week. It's a nice feeling to be able to just sit back and do nothing for hours on end and just relax.

-Picnic!: This past Sunday, several of my friends and I dragged a cooler and loads of food to the beach near Lake Michigan to grill out for the afternoon. We had loads of hamburgers, hot dogs, watermelon, chips, strawberry pie, and who knows what else to gorge ourselves on, and we spent the rest of the time throwing around a football and frisbee or walking on the beach. I think we might make this a weekly occurrence to replace Sunday brunch during the summer.

-Nonfunctional appliances!: So as I have mentioned, my computer decided it would stop working the day I turned in my final paper (luckily after I turned it in, not before). For the past week and a half, I've had to deal with a computer that would randomly not turn on or decide to freeze when it was working. I have since purchased another hard drive (for only $57), and while it works much more dependably now, I've been having problems with my video card since I reinstalled it. I may just need to start over and reinstall it again, since I don't think it's a hardware problem as I would have noticed it before. On an unrelated issue, I also bought an air conditioner, which has a fan that works wonderfully, but does not cool at all. Some Frigidaire person is supposed to come take a look at it. Maybe I'll have air conditioning in like 2 weeks....

Okay, that's about it for now. I'll try to update more regularly now.

Here's a picture of Joe, Matt, Andres, and I at a picnic for the department last week. I think Nikhil is the partially hidden person behind Joe. Anyway, my face is classic as always...

The Past Few Weeks

2007-05-19T20:36:00.001-07:00

After a few more weeks, it's about time for me to post again. Let's start from the top:

-Katie's graduation- I flew down to North Carolina the weekend of May 6th to see the last Henderson sibling graduate. We are all now officially finished (unless you count graduate school for me, which will be another few years). It was good to see the family again and drive my car again. Unfortunately, I had a test on Monday so some of my time was spent studying. I also had to catch a flight Sunday night so I had to cut out early after lunch on Sunday. In any case, it was nice to be back in NC for the weekend and meet Kristin's new chinchilla Mya. I also got to see Naman for the first time since he was in India, so that was also cool.

-Birthday!- That's right. I'm getting up there- 22 years and counting. My MatSci friends came over at midnight on my birthday and we had a Dairy Queen ice cream cake. Nikhil bought me a deep fryer (and Louise bought me potatoes) so we tested it out by making curly fries. They definitely tasted awesome, though Nikhil broke out into hives from the seasoning that we used, so we try not to use it anymore (unless he makes me mad...haha). That night I went out to dinner with Alpana, Louise, and Nikhil to celebrate, and we went to an Indian restaurant in Evanston that I had never been to before. The food was really good, and I would definitely go back in the future.

-Broomball!- I rented an ice rink for 2 hours on Saturday, May 12, and about 17 of my friends from the department came to play broomball. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the sport, it's basically like ice hockey, except everybody runs around with tennis shoes on the ice, and instead of a hockey puck and hockey sticks, we use a rubber ball the size of a soccer ball and "brooms" which are really just sticks with rubber wedges at the end that resemble brooms. It's one of my new favorite things to do. Here are a few pictures:

This picture is kind of funny because Eddie, Nikhil, Andres, and I all have our sticks parallel to each other.
Here's a nice image of me after falling on the ice.

This is a pretty good picture that shows most of us running around on the ice.

In conclusion, broomball is amazing.

Frisbee- This past week was the start of the ultimate frisbee tournament for intramurals. So far, our games have been rained out on two different days, but our co-rec team was able to squeeze in a game on Wednesday before the rain. Unfortunately, we lost the game to a pretty bad team, so we're out of the tournament, but our men's team still has a chance. The game is this Wednesday at 4, but we'll see if I even go because this week is probably going to chew me up and spit me out. Too many things going on- presentations, projects, hw, coffee hour, group meeting, etc. etc. If I could just fast forward the next two weeks and forget they ever happened that would be nice.

But hey, on the bright side, classes will be done for the semester and I'll have all summer to recuperate!

Oh, before I go, I thought I'd post a picture of my new niece Abigail. That's right. I'm now officially an uncle. Enjoy!

Abigail Joy Henderson

Another long-overdue post

2007-04-27T22:15:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I'm getting really bad at posting. Hopefully by the time summer rolls around I'll be back on my game. Let's see, what have I been up to since last time?

I volunteered at the Illinois State Science Olympiad tournament last weekend at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. I was the event supervisor for an event called Write It Do It for the middle school division. Basically the event consists of a pair of students, one the writer and one the doer, who get a structure provided by yours truly that they copy as closely as possible by having the writer look at the structure and write instructions on how to make it and the doer using those instructions to try to recreate the original. I brought a few of my friends down with me to Champaign for the competition and we all stayed with the grandparents, who were very gracious hosts. I've included some pictures below that Alpana took with her camera:

Kunal, Nikhil, and I the night before the competition getting everything assembled for the next day.
Me in Grandma James's basement, staging a picture to give to one of our friends to show how bad the living conditions were.

The past few weeks have also been the start of the intramural frisbee season. I've got to say, Wednesday has been the worst day of the week to play games, but that is the day we have been assigned to play every week. Two weeks ago, it was snowing on a Wednesday. Last week, it was about 40 degrees and windy. This week it was about the same except it started to rain during our games. I have never played in such bad weather. In contrast, every Monday has been sunny with 70-80 degree weather, but I don't think anybody plays on Mondays. This upcoming Monday is supposed to have a high of 87 degrees, while Wednesday is supposed to be about 58. I smell a conspiracy. If this keeps up, I may not play next year.

Oh, I went to an informational session this week about a "Medical Innovations" course that is being offered for the first time this fall at Northwestern. Basically, it draws students from four different Northwestern schools (the med school, business school, law school, and engineering school) and about 10 teams are assembled consisting of students from each school. The goal of the course is for each team to develop a medical-related innovation based on shadowing doctors at Northwestern's hospital in Chicago, pitching the idea to get funding from the faculty and venture capitalists funding the course (~$15,000/group in actual money!), using that money to develop a working prototype, filing a preliminary patent application, and delivering a final presentation to market the idea to potential investors. It sounds like an awesome opportunity. The course is actually a two-quarter course, so it runs from September to March, but I'm seriously considering taking it for my PhD minor. It sounds like it may be a lot of work, but it's divided up into a group project, so my main contribution to the team as the engineer would be developing the idea and determining feasible ways to go about making a prototype. In principal, if I apply for the orthopedic research area, I could potentially use my own research as the motivation for artificial cartilage applications. Not a bad idea... The application is due by May 11, but I'll probably try to get it done this weekend.

Other than that, I can't think of much else I'm up to other than coursework and research. I'll be visiting North Carolina next weekend for my sister's graduation from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. My birthday is also coming up in a few weeks. I'm thinking about having a broomball party, but more to come on that later.

Sorry for the long-delayed post. If it happens again, just leave me nasty comments or something. Hope everybody is doing well...

Long time no post

2007-03-27T21:33:00.000-07:00

Sorry about not posting for a while. I guess it's just been one long progression of events. Finals week, then Science Olympiad tournament, then visiting North Carolina, then ACS meeting and the start of a new semester.

As to not write a monstrously long message, I'll keep it fairly short.

The Science Olympiad tournament went really well. I wrote the exams for two events, but given my limited ability of being in only one place at a time, I only ran one of them, but was in the room next door to the other one so that if there were any questions the proctor had about the other exam, they could easily come over and ask me. Alpana and Nikhil volunteered with me, which was really helpful, and I think both events went smoothly (at least I didn't hear any complaints). I've talked to the state tournament director, and I'll be running another event at U of I on April 21 for a middle school event. I'm having trouble finding people to help me out for that one though... everybody seems to be busy that weekend.

My visit to North Carolina was nice. The weather was warmer, and it was relaxing, albeit short. I'll have to find time to visit longer next time, but it was good to see everybody since it had been 7-8 months since I had been home.

In other news, I found out I got an National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship! This means I have my own funding for grad school for the next 3 years, and it gives me a lot more flexibility for projects I want to pursue. This is excellent news for any grad student, so I'm very excited about being awarded such a prestigious fellowship. Of course, it was also great news for my advisor, since he'll save a lot of money from not having to pay my stipend.

I'd love to write more but I'm exhausted this week from class and attending the ACS meeting. The meeting started Sunday and runs through Thursday, and I've had to take the train over an hour each way for the past three days to watch 4 hours of talks every afternoon. I enjoy it, but it's just tiring.

I'll try to post again soon, and not wait over 3 weeks to update.

Another update

2007-03-05T22:16:00.000-08:00

Alright, I never posted what else I did besides the ski trip last week. I can't even remember what I did in the early part of last week- it was probably just studying for my polymers test so who cares about that. Thursday I presented at group meeting again, and Brian visited me Thursday night since he was in the area for the week. We made homemade pizza (alfredo/broccoli, pesto, and tomato/onion/garlic/pepper/pepperoni). I hadn't had a pizza night since December, so the pizza was especially tasty. Then Brian and I had a Trivial Pursuit showdown which was rather disappointing. We pretty much each got our 6 pieces at the same time (technically I was first by a turn or two), but then I absolutely could not get to the middle of the board for the final questions. Brian ended up getting into the middle 6 times before getting his question right, and I only had 2 chances even though I had probably rolled the dice about 3 times more by answering lots of science questions. Anyway, he won legitimately (even if the question was ALMOST a repeat question about agent orange), so I can' complain.

This past weekend I went to a blues bar called Kingston Mines with prospective students for the department and a whole bunch of current grad students. The music was alright, but I wasn't the biggest fan of the smokers, loudness, drunk people, etc. Not exactly my scene, but it was cool to get to talk to some of the prospective students (after leaving of course, haha).

This week I've got two finals and a project due so I'm not getting anything productive done in terms of lab work.

In other news, I ran into a door today. Yeah, that's right. I was leaving campus, and I wasn't really paying attention when I went to open the door to leave the building, and the door just stopped opening about halfway. The door stopped, but I continued moving and ran headfirst into a giant heavy metal door. Needless to say, there's a huge gash above my left eye (about an inch long) that gapes wide open without the butterfly band-aids and liquid bandage I covered it with. There was a guy coming in from the other side of the door at the same time, but after he saw what happened to me said "I think I'll try another door". I proceeded to bleed everywhere and had to go back into the building to the men's bathroom to check out the damage. It actually stopped bleeding rather quickly, but I had a case of the uglies before walking to CVS to buy hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin, and all the band-aid equipment. Now when everybody asks me what happened to my face, I hesitantly admit that I ran into a door. I may need to complain to somebody about that door. It's strange because I always walk out another door, but for some reason I went out a different one today, and needless to say, I won't be using that door again.

I'l have to post a picture later. I've got work to do.

Hope everybody is doing well, and avoiding all doors...

Ski Trip and more

2007-03-02T11:39:00.000-08:00

So I haven't been able to post since the ski trip, so I'll give a little run down on how it went to start off:

A group of 12 of us headed up from Evanston last Friday to Wausau, WI, to enjoy the slopes of Granite Peak. The car I went in left around 7 since some of the students had group meeting until 6, so we didn't end up getting there until midnight. We played a huge game similar to Mafia for a few hours, and in the morning at 9 hit the slopes. I had to teach Nikhil how to ski, so the entire day I was going down the beginner's slope helping him. He actually wasn't that bad, aside from not being able to turn right. Here's a picture of me, Andres, and Nikhil about mid-day. My face is half-frozen so I'm not smiling normal, but I assure you I would be smiling less awkwardly if I had feeling in my cheeks.

I kept skiing all day until about 7 o'clock, after which I came back to the lodge to find almost everybody in the hot tub situated outside in the freezing weather. As nobody brought their swimming suits, everybody was wearing either their underwear or a pair of shorts, so it was rather comical. We relaxed out there for a while and then dried off in the sauna for a bit before having an awesome dinner cooked by one of our classmates, Zhenxing. By that time, I was pretty exhausted, so I ended out the night with a game of Taboo and a few more Bang games, and headed to bed.

Luckily the next morning it wasn't snowing and we were able to hit the road and make it back to Evanston on schedule. It was a great trip, and I look forward to doing it again. Here are some more pictures:

A scandalous picture after coming back inside from using the hot tub.

The Rib Mountain Inn, where we stayed.

A picture of the group who went; I'm the one taking the picture so I'm not in it.

I'll post more about the rest of my week later. I hope everybody is doing well.

Oops

2007-02-21T23:00:00.000-08:00

I apologize for not having posted something in the past few weeks. I was trying to hold out until this weekend, as I am going on a ski trip and I thought it would be nice to post a few pictures after that, but I figured a small post now wouldn't hurt.

So what have I been up to? Well the first thing that comes to mind is hockey this week. I had my last two games on Monday and Tuesday. Both of my teams lost in the first round of the final tournament, but the co-rec game was a heart-wrencher. We went into the tournament with no wins, so of course we were seeded against a higher ranked team. Surprisingly we tied the game 3-3 and went into overtime. You'd think it would stop there, but we held them in overtime twice and went to a shootout to decide the game. After the shootout, both teams had scored 2 goals, so we proceeded to have everybody on the roster participate until we were out of players. We then had to start from the top of the roster again. At this point, the other team scored a goal that we couldn't match, so we ended up losing. It was painful. The men's game we just flat out lost 3-1.

Another exciting occurence in the past few weeks was the 8 inches (or so) of snow that we got. I hadn't been in that much snow for a while, so it was nice to have to trudge through the winter whiteness for a few days, despite the blisteringly cold wind and sub-zero temperatures.

Oh, speaking of hockey and winter, I played broomball a week or so ago with the department, and it was AWESOME. I had forgotten exactly how much fun broomball can be. I'm looking forward to playing again hopefully a few more times intermittently throughout the year. I was a bit crazy on the ice, as I would run harder than anybody else and just stop myself on the side of the ice rink, so I was typically falling over but seeing a lot of broomball action.

Dad came to see my last week, as he had some appointments with clients throughout Indiana and Illinois for a few days, but thanks to the snow, many of them were canceled so he just stayed at my apartment from Monday to Wednesday. It was good to see him, and Eddie and I made dinner on Tuesday for the first time in a while, and that was also nice. Brian will be visiting next week, so I'm planning to have a pizza night and possibly a Trivial Pursuit showdown. We'll see how that goes. I'm hoping that I won't be busy at all next week. The following week I have final exams, so I should probably start studying for those... now. I don't really want to think about the next few weeks.

Anyway, I need to get to bed. I'll post more after the weekend when I should have some pictures. Sorry if this post was a bit scattered- I haven't really organized my thoughts, and I've got a lot to finish before leaving for Wisconsin on Friday. Hope all is well!

Classes...again...

2007-02-03T23:34:00.000-08:00

I don't have much time to write as I am studying for two tests this weekend, and the Superbowl is tomorrow! I'm hoping that if I get a few practice tests done before I go to sleep tonight that tomorrow I'll be prepared enough for the Monday tests that I can watch the whole game. Otherwise I'll have to take my dad's advice and only watch the first half unless it's close and gets interesting in the second half. The other alternative is staying up til about 3 am tomorrow. Also feasible.

Just as a quick update, I'm applying for housing in the fall at a 6 bedroom duplex apartment. Joe, Andres, Eddie, Nikhil, and Kunal (Nikhil's roommate) will be living with me. I found an advertisement for a place on Monday, we looked at it on Wednesday, and if we turn in our applications by tomorrow I hope that we'll be approved for it. There are atleast two other groups filling out applications, but I am optimistic because the other two groups are undergrads, and I think the landlords really liked the idea of having 6 graduate students over 6 undergrads. I can't blame them. Anyway, they told me that none of the applications have been turned in fully yet, so if we get our applications in by Monday it is likely that we will have turned in the first completed set of applications. If all of this works out, it will be nice to already have a place squared away for next year. It's only about 2 blocks away from where I am now, and runs roughly the same cost, but I'll like having more company around and 2 kitchens! Pretty sweet if you ask me.

Hockey is cancelled this week because of the Superbowl, but we had practice today, which was fun. Our team captain thinks we may have too many forwards so I may have to start playing defense. It's okay though, I think I'm pretty good at defense anyway. I won't have to worry about puck handling as much.

Oh, I got a few pictures from Ivana this week from my friends visiting in December. I'll post them and then get back to work! I hope everybody is doing well.

Me, Matt, Ivana, Emily, and Naman skating at Millenium Park.

Naman, Joel, Emily, Ivana, and me sitting on some cow statue by the old public library.

Well, it started off as Joel grabbing Emily's leg, and then things just got out of hand...

Long week

2007-01-28T00:53:00.000-08:00

This week consisted of... well basically homework everyday. I had a math homework set due on Wednesday and a 3 hw sets due from my other classes on Friday. Not my favorite experience. I'll just provide a recap of what I've been up to:

Last weekend: I went to a musical last Saturday with a few of my friends. We saw Into the Woods, based off Grimm's Fairy Tales, and it was really good. It was put on by a group on campus, and student tickets were only $10, so it was pretty cheap too. On Sunday, I started writing the exams for the Science Olympiad tournament events that I'm supervising. There were five of us working on it, so we planned a brunch and had cinnamon rolls, metal muffins, banana bread, fresh fruit, and omelettes. We're planning the same thing for tomorrow, so I'm pretty excited about that. Sunday night I had hockey games again, and we won our first men's game, but lost in the co-rec league. Maybe tomorrow will be our day!

Wednesday was my friend Nikhil's birthday so a few of our friends organized a surprise birthday party for him on Tuesday night. I had to keep him distracted until 8:30 and then bring him back to his apartment. We watched an Indian movie, but I don't remember the name of it. I ended up getting back home at 1:30 am and was up til 3 finishing my math hw which was due the next morning.

In terms of research, I started doing mechanical measurements on my polymers this week! I like to think of my experiments as controlled poking, because that's essentially what I'm doing. Poking stuff. Preliminary results indicate that the double network polymer systems have increased strength over the single network systems, which is what we anticipated, so I should be able to move forward with my polymer gel experiments. Good news...

That's about it for now I guess. Not a whole lot of excitement around here. Just the humdrum of classwork. That's what I get for taking an extra course this quarter. Though if I do an extra course the next quarter and in the fall, I'll be finished with classes forever in December, a quarter ahead of schedule. More to come on that later. I'm off to bed. Good night everyone!

Quick update

2007-01-16T21:57:00.000-08:00

I've been busy this week working on homework so I haven't had time to post. Here's a quick synopsis.

I've starting doing intramural hockey now. Our first games were on Sunday- I'm in both the men's league and the corec league, and both of my teams lost our first games. The corec team's game was against another MatSci team, who just happens to be the returning champions from last year, so we got obliterated. In the men's league we didn't do so badly, but we just didn't get a lot of shots off. A lot of us are new to the sport, and I personally haven't played since middle school. Oh, and it's floor hockey, so we just run around in our shoes, not roller blades, which is kind of disappointing, but I won't complain.

I also went curling this past Sunday, but I think it will be my last time until hockey is over. Both are on Sunday, and I can't waste my entire Sunday just playing sports. Plus it's tiring. Anyway, we had a mini-curling match, and my team beat the other team 7-0. I had some particularly good placements that were pivotal in our win, so I was pretty excited about that. In our last round, the other team had like 4 stones in the 'house' and we only had one, which they had just knocked out. I was trying to take out their closest stone to keep them from winning 4 points, but instead, I messed up the shot, knocked out their second closest stone, and ricocheted off it to put my stone smack dab in the center. The beauty of it was that this was blocked in front by about 3 other stones, so the other team even with two more stones left, was unable to take out my stone so we got the point instead of them getting 3 or 4. I was quite proud of my mistake.

Also on Sunday (I know, busy day) I met with the regional science olympiad director, and she gave me the rules for the events I will be supervising. I have a group of 4 friends who said they'd be willing to help me out with writing the exams, so we're having brunch on Sunday at my apartment and doing some brainstorming. The two events I will be doing are Five Star Science and Forensics. The Five-Star Science event is a pentathlon of Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Earth Science/Astronomy, and Data Analysis, while the Forensics is like a crime-solving event where I get to devise a made-up crime with suspects and the students have to solve the crime using fingerprint analysis, chromatography, identification of white powders and polymers, etc. It should be a lot of fun, and I'm really looking forward to this weekend (gotta get past the homework this week though!).

In lab, I was able to successfully polymerize poly(n-butyl acrylate) as an elastomer and then polymerize the same thing in the presence of a triblock copolymer. The idea is that we will compare the two polymers to see whether the triblock copolymer strengthens the poly(n-butyl acrylate) network, and then proceed to the hydrogel systems if it looks promising. I'm presenting at lab meeting this week, but once again, there are like 4 of us presenting so I want to keep it at about a 5 minute presentation with room for questions. Next week I'll actually be doing the mechanical measurements to see if the one polymer is stronger than the other. I would have done it last week, but I had some issues with my polymerizations shooting into the water bath and then bubbles forming during polymerization, which I have since corrected.

I guess that's about it for now. Thankfully my homework this semester is only worth about 10-15% in most of my classes so I don't need to worry about it so much. However, I'm doing an extra class this semester so that probably makes up for it. But, if I take 4 classes this quarter and next quarter, I'll only have 4 left until I'm done with classes forever! That means I could potentially be done with classes in December, but my guess is that I'll just end up taking like 1 or 2 at a time instead because of when courses are offered that I want to take.

Anyway, I need to get back to work or go to sleep. Sleep sounds better. Hope everybody is doing well. For your viewing pleasure, I'm attaching a picture of a group of us doing homework in my apartment with the "wall of laptops". I'm not in it, as I'm taking the picture. The guy on the couch is Nikhil, the girl standing up is Louise, and the guy in the background is Andres.

Doritos Commercial

2007-01-07T15:23:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Kristin, I would like everybody to look at the following link and vote on this commercial to win a Doritos Superbowl contest. It's actually really funny, and two of the people making it went to my high school.

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1128505/

That's the link for the story.

http://www.jumpcut.com/view?id=F0CBEA0C841311DBA3823EF340157CF2&b_id=1FE7BE2457D211DB9D601EE329CBD869

That's a link for the commercial.

First Week of Classes

2007-01-07T11:22:00.000-08:00

Now I'm back in lab and starting courses all over again. The first day of the quarter was Wednesday, and lucky me woke up having a bit of a cold (or something respiratory). Anyway, I was pretty miserable for the first day, as my nose was running everywhere and I didn't have any Actifed or Sudafed to put a stop to the torrential downpour. On Thursday I felt pretty much the same, but I suffered through it so I could go to lab for 8 hours to set up and carry out my first polymerization for my research! I made a small 3 milliliter sample of poly(n-butyl acrylate) and was quite excited to see a gelatinous product stuck in the reaction vessel, which was what I was going for. Thursday was also the first day of hockey practice for the intramural league, so I went and played floor hockey at the gym for 2 hours despite my fever and impaired ability to breathe. I actually scored 2 goals within like 5 minutes of playing, but I quickly died out and I think scored only one other time in the ensuing 2 hours.

Yesterday, I went with Joe, Andres, and Nikhil to check out an open house of a 4 bedroom house about 5 minutes from here. We're checking out places for next year. Ideally, we'd like to find a big, cheap 6 bedroom a little further south that we can all live in along with Eddie and Nikhil's roomate. We've found a couple 3000 square foot houses for ~$1350-$1700/month with heat, but the problem is that mostly all the ones we're looking at will be gone by the fall. Blast! Then later in the day I played squash for the first time against Andres and Nikhil, and topped off the night by watching Children of Men. I think it was a good movie, but I felt like it could have been awesome if it were more believable. Anyway, it was a good day.

Today, I think I'll be doing my homework for the week so I can get ahead. It's always a good feeling. Until next time...

Christmas and New Years

2007-01-01T23:06:00.000-08:00

Since I was subjected to dial-up internet while at my grandparents, I haven't posted anything in the past week or so since I was there. I'll give a brief run-down of what Christmas and New Years was like:

This year, we opted to have the Henderson Christmas a bit earlier than normal. We randomly decided on Friday night (Dec. 22) that we would open up presents to avoid the hassle on Christmas eve. I was a bit unprepared, not having wrapped any of my gifts, so all of my gifts were given out in plastic bags. Aside from Katie, Kristin, and Brian buying a few of the same gifts for people, I think everybody was happy with what they got and it was good to have the whole family together again. Also, that morning we took our family pictures. I'll post a few of them for those of you who haven't had the privilege to see our beautiful faces in a while:

I've got to say, the second one is my personal favorite. Just to keep the rest short and simple, on Sunday, we had Christmas with my dad's side of the family and attended the Christmas eve service that night, and on Christmas day we had a gift exchange with my mom's side of the family. I headed out on Tuesday night with Kristin back to Evanston as she wanted to come see where I lived and hang out in Chicago for a day.

Some highlights from Christmas: Rachel and I winning Trivial Pursuit at Grandma and Grandpa Sollars's house, participating in a huge round robin tournament of gin (and practically breaking even), watching like 6 DVDs with the family, going to Fazoli's twice, seeing Kendall's huge belt buckle, and of course getting to see everybody after a my absence last Christmas.

On Wednesday, Kristin and I headed to Chicago around 9:30 am (and missed the express train by about 5 seconds, but that's another story). I took her out to lunch, then to the Sear's Tower and Merchandise Mart, and then we stopped by both B. Dalton's and a used book store. We also just strolled around the city for a little bit, and I bought her dinner to take on the train with her before she left. We had a good time, but she had to leave by about 3 pm, so next time she visits, we should plan on more time so we can go see some sketch comedy or something.

For New Year's Eve, I just took it easy. I didn't really feel like going to any parties and watching people drink their lives away, so I hung out with Andres and his friend Naomi and went to see fireworks on the lake. It was basically just what I wanted to do, though I've got to say it didn't really feel like New Year's. Maybe next year I should go into Chicago or something. We'll see...

Tomorrow I've got to get back to work, and Wedneday my classes start. Then I'm pretty much booked until June.

I hope everyone's holidays went well, and I wish you all a happy New Year!

Friends visit!

2006-12-22T21:49:00.000-08:00

Since it’s been about a week since my last post, I figured it was time for an update. Since my last post, I had several friends come visit me from North Carolina- Matt, Joel, Naman, Ivana, Emily, and Emily’s boyfriend Amr. They come up on Sunday, and I took the El into the city and met them in downtown Chicago. That day, we went to a German Christmas festival that was being held near the Thomson center, and walked around downtown seeing some of the sights. That night, we walked to Navy Pier, and then headed back to my apartment for a pasta dinner. On Monday, we slept in, and then prepared a picnic lunch to eat on the shores of Lake Michigan. I showed everybody my lab, and then we ate at the lakefill on campus overlooking Chicago and played some frisbee in the cold wind. That night we saw Second City with a few of my MatSci friends. For those of you who don’t know, Second City is a sketch comedy/improv show where a large percentage of SNL stars originally got their start, like Chris Farley, Tina Fey, Bill Murray, Mike Myers, etc. It was a riot, and I would definitely recommend it to anybody who will be in the Chicago area.

On Tuesday, we headed into the city around noon and had lunch in Millenium Park. Afterwards, we ice skated in the park for an hour or so before heading to the Sears Tower. We went up to the Skydeck after nghtfall, and the view was simply amazing- I had never been up before at night, and the lights of the city were just incredible to see. To finish off the night, we saw a UNC basketball game in a bar in Chicago, and had Giordano’s deep dish pizza for dinner. Before going to sleep we watched a few episodes of House from the DVD I got Naman.

On the last day everybody was there, Emily drove up to Milwaukee to see a friend, but the rest of us headed back to the shores of Lake Michigan and made s’mores before heading out. They dropped me off at the grandparents’ house that evening and immediately proceeded to Cincinatti for the night. It was awesome to see my UNC friends again, and I hope they visit frequently. The Vora triplets will have to come up this summer since they were unable to come up this time around. And of course, I expect Rez to come up and visit again even though he couoldn’t make it this time.

More to come later about Christmas at the grandparents.

First semester is done!

2006-12-13T13:52:00.000-08:00

Well, since my last post I've had an exciting few weeks. Last week was my final exam week, which was basically spent studying into the wee hours of the night for 3 days in a row. Despite all the long nights and grumbling, I ended up with a 3.90 GPA for the quarter, so I guess I can't complain too much. I'm glad to get my Physics of Solids class behind me though. Let's just say it was the hardest final exam I've had... ever.

This week is my unofficial baking week. On Monday, I went to the Shull group Christmas dinner from 6:30-11:30. It was filled with a lot of good food, company, and conversation, and I rather enjoyed myself. I brought Death by Chocolate, but half of it still remains in my refrigerator despite my attempts to pawn it off on my friends. Last night, Nikhil and Andres came over and we made sugar cookies, poppyseed bread and metal muffins. Somehow my timing got all screwed up in the midst of everything and I was up til 3 am waiting for the metal muffins to stop rising so I could put them out in pans. I've decided I need more airbake sheets because the dark ones I have cook the bottoms of the dough too much and I don't like it. Anyway, since I put them out so late I had to wait until noon to bake them, so I came back to the apartment during lunch and baked them all. I still have issues with my oven. I think it's never at the right temperature, so I tried turning up the heat, but then the metal muffins were done in like 6 minutes, so who knows.

I've been trying to get some work done in lab this week. I've got a Materials Science Student Association dinner to go to tonight (hence the metal muffins), and tomorrow my group is in charge of coffee hour (hince the poppyseed bread and cookies). I've got some chemicals I need to order, but I'm planning on mooching off some other groups until I get them in. Naman, Matt, Joel, and Emily Cupito are coming this weekend to visit me, so I'll probably take next week off as I'm planning to leave for Champaign on Wednesday anyway.

Anyway, I've got to head back to the apartment so I'll have to write more later. I hope all is well.

SNOW!!

2006-12-02T14:47:00.000-08:00

A front view of my apartment complex- my apartment is on the first floor in the back right.

A view of my walk to campus. The El is visible on the tracks.

The church across the street from my apartment building.

A random light post that I thought looked kind of cool.

I've got to get back to studying, but I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Update!

2006-11-30T22:27:00.000-08:00

So it's been a while since I last posted. Let's see if I can remember what I've been up to the past few weeks.

On Nov. 19 I went curling for the first time ever. A few Mat Sci grad students started a Northwestern club last year, and apparently the guy who's in charge of college recruitment for the curling sport in the entire US is letting us use his facility for free. I've got to say, it's a lot harder than it looks to hurl a rock down the ice with any accuracy. For those of you not familiar with curling, it's basically a form of ice shuffleboard. There are two teams with 4 members and 8 stones. Each member of the team has to slide 2 rocks down the ice and the teams take turns going to get their rock closest to the middle. If your team is closest to the middle, you get 1 point for every rock that you have in the target area, and the other team gets 0. Atleast that's how I think it works. I'm still kind of new, but that's what I gathered when I was there. There's a bonspiel this weekend (I guess that's what they call a curling tournament), so we don't have practice this week, but I'll probably go next time we have it.

Last week of course was Thanksgiving. I took the Amtrak down to Champaign to spend the 5-day holiday with my extended family. Thanksgiving day was a blast- I helped get the food ready for Thanksgiving dinner, and got to play croquet and the bean bag toss with my cousins in 60 degree weather. Later that night, we all watched family videos and laughed hysterically at all of our past idiosyncrasies (like 80's short shorts!).

For the ensuing few days, I worked on some homework (a travesty!) and took it easy. I went to go see For Your Consideration with Grandma James and briefly stopped by the mall to pick up a few things on Friday. Saturday afternoon I helped Grandma Sollars with her exterior Christmas decorations, and then did some Christmas shopping with Danielle and Kelley later that night. I really had a great time during my stay, and I'm glad that I live close enough now that I can come down for a short visit without much of a hassle. I think I missed out on Thanksgiving with the extended family for about 8 years. Definitely doesn't seem that long....

On a side note, it was also nice to see Grandpa Sollars out of the hospital and recovering from a bit of a nasty bout with pneumonia. His recovery has been a bit slow, but positive, so hopefully that trend will continue.

This week was pretty bad in terms of work. I had two homework sets to finish, a group meeting presentation, and two practice final exams to finish. I worked almost non-stop Monday through Wednesday to get it all done, and it feels great to have that behind me. Now I'm left with final exams and then CHRISTMAS!!! My group meeting presentation went well I think, even though I haven't actually started research yet. It was about what I had proposed to do in my NSF proposal, and my advisor came down to my office afterward and said he was very pleased with what he saw and said I did a great job. He's a very encouraging, laid-back guy, which I think will be very conducive to me getting work done.

Well, that's it for now. It's supposed to snow about a foot tonight, and it's started to sleet already. I'm hoping to wake up to huge sheet of white in the morning. I hope everybody is doing well and enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday.

Trivial Defeat

2006-11-18T01:22:00.000-08:00

So as you can tell from the title of my post, I finally lost at Trivial Pursuit tonight. I'll start with that I did today:

I organized a group of about 7 MatSci students to come with me to a soup kitchen in Chicago to serve Thanksgiving dinner (I guess a week early, but who's counting?). There were probably like 70 volunteers there (yeah probably overkill, but it worked out fine) and we fulfilled various tasks. Personally, I had to help wheel in a woman on a wheelchair, serve milk, and clean up tables. Others served soup, walked around with condiments, washed dishes, and who knows what else was needed. It was really a lot of fun.

Afterward, we ate at Chipotle in Evanston, and I had a chicken burrito that was monstruously sized but worth every bite. To top off the night, 6 of us came back to my apartment and played Trivial Pursuit. That's where the king's crown was sadly ripped from his head and tossed aside like pillow bodyguard.

I pretty much followed the same trend as previous games. We started off ahead 3-0 in pie piece terms, but then ended up being down most of the game 5-6. Pink is the bane of my existence! We can't answer any pink question ever (except the questions that aren't ours). Luckily we finally got one that I knew (me pulling the team in the pink category is not a good sign)- I answered "A League of Their Own" in reponse to a question about Tom Hanks being a coach in like a 1992 film. We would have gotten it sooner but I couldn't spit out "Fatal Attraction" before time ran out for the question before it- instead I was writhing under the pressure and came up with "Deadly Seduction" knowing I was wrong. I'm still proud that I got that close. You have to admit... maybe my brain is not wired corrected and its set on synonym mode. That happens too much. Anyway, the other team got some question about "The Joy of Sex" and somehow pulled that answer out of somewhere I don't want to think about. The next pink question was about what Judge Sheindlin is more commonly referred to....Judge Judy! I totally would have gotten that if we had made it to the middle (and obviously would have been asked pink). Alas... we still had a good show, even if we second-guessed ourselves a few times. Team games are so much fun.

I've got a research webpage now. It's not anything I'll update periodically, but it's more for general information for people who want to know what I'm researching (potential collaborators, etc.). The site is: http://shullgroup.northwestern.edu/member_profiles/Henderson.html . I suggest everybody check it out. I think it's a good picture of me that Eddie's girlfriend took a few weeks ago. Plus, I'm sitting on my infamous couch that everybody is jealous of... and by everybody I can think of about 3 people. Haha.

Anyway, I had a good night. The Trivial Pursuit game was more intense this time around becaues there were some underhanded tricks going down. My team personally rolled a few times extra to try to land on specific spaces without the other team noticing, but they would rig the question order to keep from giving us easy questions. Haha, plus we timed eachother's respones and made noises or sang songs to distract the other team. Well, I was the only one who sang songs... Endless Love... and Celebration. Haha. There were related to questions. I should have sang Nancy Sinatra- These Boots are Made for Walking (I don't know the title) but that was my teams question and I had to think.

Well, I need to get some sleep. Next week should be nice- classes until Wednesday and then Thanksgiving with the extended family! I'm excited.

I shall contain myself.

Until next time...

Excited!

2006-11-10T01:03:00.000-08:00

So I'm in a pretty good mood right now. It stems mostly from submitting the NSF application last night, which means I don't have to worry about editing all those essays anymore.

On Tuesday, I pretty much didn't get anything done because I decided to make sugar cookies and watch the election results on TV. I've got to say, it was a great night, and I'm pretty pleased with the election results. However, I would have liked to see more support for the Green Party candidate for Illinois governor. Haha, I wasn't really a fan of either Dem or Rep candidate, so voted Green Party for the first time, and the candidate garnered about 11% of the vote. Not too shabby, but the incumbent Blagojevich was re-elected, the lesser of two evils between him and Judie Barr Topinka, who I fear would eat my children if I had any.

It will be interesting to see the new dynamics in politics for the next two years, with Bush still on his throne and a Democratic-controlled Congress. Plus Rumsfeld stepped down. Hopefully, they'll hit the ground running with some new legislation in January and get Americans less apathetic about politics. It's so disheartening to hear everybody talk what little faith they have in politicians all the time. It's probably somewhat justified though.

My hope is that we'll see more expansion of research funding in the coming years. There have been a few bills tossed around in Congress, one of which would double that National Science Foundation budget by 2010. I am a little biased, but I strongly advocate expansion of research in biotechnology, green chemistry, renewable energy, and fuel cells in particular. Since America's losing its edge in science to many Asian countries, we've got to put a firm foot forward to stay ahead of the game. Of course that's not all we need to be worried about, but it's what I'm most qualified to assert. I'll leave Social Security and healthcare-related matters up to the more qualified and experienced in those matters, but of course those are topics that need to be addressed as well.

I've got a lot of good ideas for my research, and I'm ready to get started as soon as next week. I'll need a short stint of training to use lab equipment, but I'm practically frothing at the mouth to get started. If working on my NSF proposal did nothing else, it forced me to do some background reading on what I'll be doing and gave me a lot of good ideas. Hydrogels are awesome!

Tomorrow (or today rather since it's pretty late at night) I'm probably gonna have another wild and crazy baking night. What will it be this time? The jury's still out on that one. I already made cookies this week, so maybe I'll try to make something substantive. Some vegetable fried rice? Metal muffins? Nobody knows. Stay tuned for more details.

Pumpkin pictures

2006-11-05T15:36:00.000-08:00

While I'm working on my NSF proposal, I'll provide these pictures for your viewing pleasure. Haha, check out the pimp mustache on that pumpkin.

Short update: Last night I went out to a Peruvian restaurant for dinner with some friends and had the chicken in peanut sauce. It was quite the delectable dish (much like myself, haha), though the Inca Cola wasn't my favorite. It was like drinking Bazooka bubble gum. But I guess if you're into that sort of thing, then be my guest.

On Friday night, I took a break from homework to make a little brochure for my mom to use at work that contains lots of spanish words and phrases for nurses. I'm planning to print it off in color at Kinko's and have it laminated so it's durable and easy to clean off it it gets dirty. You know those hospitals. Mucus flying everywhere! She offered a few suggestions for some phrases, but I may need some assistance from my spanish-speaking friends on some of them. We'll see how that turns out, but it was a nice little break.

Alright, back to work. I've had a hankering for some sugar cookies all week (or even better, sugar cookie dough!), so I may throw down a baking party on Thursday after the NSF proposal is due. That's how I roll..

Pumpkin Carving!

2006-10-29T12:02:00.000-08:00

So yesterday was fun. I went to Kendra's with Joe, Praneet, Nikhil, and Andres, and we carved pumpkins! I got this huge one for $11, but I think Andres's may have been a bit bigger as he paid $12. We gutted the pumpkins, cooked their seeds, and ordered pizza, and then we watched about half of The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was a blast. I gave my pumpkin a pimp mustache, as I was trying to make it look like my research advisor, though I don't see the resemblance. I guess my pumpkin carving skills are just sub-par. That's okay though, as long as I never have to make it as a professional pumpkin carver when the job market plummets. I'll try to post some pictures later, if I can get Kendra to email them to me but she doesn't check her email on weekends.

Haha, so I tried filling out a volunteer form on the Illinois Science Olympiad website last night, but apparently, I just have really bad luck because none of the forms were working, and I could only find one email address on the entire website. So I emailed the State Tournament director about volunteering and who I should contact, so we'll see if I get a response. I figured I could be an Event Supervisor for something, seeing as how I now have an undergraduate degree, and if I can't waive that around and get some respect, what possible good does it serve? I'd want my money back that's for sure.

Last night, I finished up a rough draft of my personal statement and previous research experience essays for the NSF Fellowship. Haha, as Sapana can attest they are a bit colloquial at the moment and need some serious editing, but I like how I addressed the topics and I think there's a obvious passion for science that comes out in the text. I'm working on editing my research proposal today, and later tonight I'll start studying for my math test on Wednesday. One thing I was excited about was that I didn't realize that Daylight Savings was last night, so I celebrated by staying up late working on my essays, not going to sleep until 5 am (which should have been 6 am!). Good times... Needless to say, I slept in til noon today, but I also got a lot of work done.

Any opinions on purple dress shirts? Haha, that's what my sister, mom, and dad picked out for me to wear with my suit, so I got that in the mail a few days ago. I'm still on the fence, but I guess I'll have to give it a try...

Until later...

My weekend

2006-10-25T22:02:00.000-07:00

So this past weekend, I went down to Hope to see the grandparents and cousins, and had a blast. On Friday, Danielle, Kelley, and I planned our own mini birthday party, since I had missed Danielle's from the week before, and none of us had really seen each other for any of our birthdays in the past...ever. Haha. So anyway, we all bought each other gifts, and they picked me up from the train station at about 10:30 pm. We stayed up til about 4:30 am watching old Christmas videos and messing around with all the things they had picked up for me on the children's aisle at Wal-mart (my presents to them were kind of boring- Northwestern t-shirts because I couldn't find time to go anywhere with a decent selection of random gifts). There was this little dancing hamster thing that sang Macho Man, some 'flarp' (kind of like Gak), some noise-making balloons that were fun to launch around the room at each other, a cheap voice changer, some slinkies, a sticky hand that we played with for about an hour picking up dollar bills and miscellaneous items until the hand broke off, and who knows what else. It was a really fun night. Unfortunately, Danielle had to work the next morning so they had to leave, and we all probably got to sleep by the ripe old hour of 5 am.

The next day I spent predominantly with Grandma and Grandpa Sollars. They were watching my cousin Kendall (technically 2nd cousin I guess) who is about 5 years old, so I played some games of Connect Four and makeshift baseball with an inflated hammer and plastic ball while there. I got to discuss a lot of current stuff I've got going on with the grandparents, and then later that night I helped Grandma James make some cinnamon rolls and tried to tend to some computer-related issues.

Sunday was church, and later that afternoon I went to go see Danielle again at Uncle Buck and Uncle Terry's house for a few hours. My visit was concluded with dinner at Arby's with Grandma and Grandpa James who stayed with me until the train came, which surprisingly was only about 10 minutes late, and I got all the way back home to Evanston by 11 that night.

This week I've been working a lot on my NSF Fellowship proposal. I'm supposed to have a good rough draft by tomorrow so that's going to be what I'm doing the rest of the night. In other good news, I finally got an office! I'm gonna have to start bringing in some of my stuff to lab now because I have a desk now. I also got to watch Murat (a fourth year grad student in my lab) set up some purification experiments today for monomers that I'll probably have to become familiar with for my future experiments. All in all, a good weekend and start of a good week. Now I just need to buckle down and write an amazing proposal so I can get some external funding for the next few years.

Oh, I almost forgot. Last night was another pizza extravaganza, and I had 3 friends over to make 6 pizzas and play Trivial Pursuit. In a bit of an upset, my team came back to win the game by making up a 3 pie-piece deficit in a matter of a few turns. Some highlight responses- I guessed that Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi and (for the win!) that the Dodgers were the first Major League baseball team to set up an office in Asia. It's the second time my team has come back from a slow start to swoop down and claim the Trivial Pursuit champion title. What a night...

Well, that's all for now. I'll post more later in the week once I get some more work done. Until then...

Advisor Selection

2006-10-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

So I found out yesterday- I was able to get the advisor I wanted, so I'll be doing research for Kenneth Shull doing something polymers-related. I know that's kind of vague, but we haven't decided on a specific project yet. For the time being, I'm assigned to work on a project on perfecting the reversible assembly of a triblock copolymer in aqueous solution, so in other words I would be working on hydrogels. I'm pretty psyched about it. My goal is to have a good NSF proposal done by the end of next week, so I'll be done with my quantum exam tomorrow, and don't have any real homework due for a few weeks. I do have another test on Nov. 1 though, but it's for differential equations, and let's be honest, I could study the day before and probably do well. Haha. Luckily that class goes at a much slower pace, and most if it has been review so I'll just need to brush up on a few things before taking the exam.

Speaking of exams, the first half of my quantum test was less than pleasurable. I'm pretty sure nobody finished and we all think we failed miserably. Luckily, that means we'll all do well because he grades us all relative to each other. Haha. It was a really frustrating test because I was working pretty quickly the whole time, and still had parts that I didn't even manage to start doing, so I just scribbled some stuff down before turning it in that was basically devoid of all math. I don't think anybody actually used their calculator, which is funny because it's a quantitative exam, so theoretically all of ours answers should have involved some sort of intense calculation. Haha, but mostly that amounted to everybody writing sentences like "this is what I would have done if I didn't run out of time". Good times. I've got the second half tomorrow, and I'm not looking forward to it. On the bright, I'll have group meeting for the first time with my new group at 10:30 am. Nice... I've got to get some sleep, so I'll post again after this weekend.

What's going on

2006-10-15T16:09:00.000-07:00

So I realize I haven't posted anything juicy for over a week (though, that article about my trip to Guyana is pretty good I've got to say), but to be honest, there hasn't been too much going on. Last Tuesday I have 4 people over from my MatSci class to make Indian food, and then of course, consume it. That was a lot of fun. My friend Alpana had to show me how to make roti the correct way, since apparently I couldn't do it right when I tried a few weeks ago. I think the secret is folding in a layer of oil into the dough when you're rolling it out because I didn't do that, and I think when it heats up on the stove, it helps it poof up. On Wednesday, I realized there was this nanotechnology symposium going on that Northwestern was hosting and I had registered for, but had forgot that it was going on that day. I would have missed it, except my quantum mechanics professor was giving a talk and had to cancel class, which clued me in on my error. Anyway, I went to see a few lectures given by Angela Belcher of MIT, Mark Hersam (my quantum professor), and Joe DeSimone of UNC, who developed the polymer I used to mold fly's eyes at UNC (I was in his lab a lot). The convenience of the symposium being on campus was nice, and I hope it becomes and annual thing. Haha, Thursday night I randomly decided that I should format my hard drive on my computer because I hadn't done it in a while, so I stayed up til 4 am for no apparent reason and formatted my drive, reinstalled Windows, and then reinstalled a majority of my applications. I've got to say, my computer has been running a lot faster after I trimmed the fat. Haha. This weekend has been devoted to study for my test that's on Wednesday/Thursday (a two day exam), so I probably won't have anything exciting to post until this weekend. I'm currently planning to take the train to Champaign on Friday, though I still need to get my ticket. It's more expensive now since I waited so long, but since I don't have any other transportation expenses, I guess it's not too bad. More to come later this week. I hope you're all doing well.

Carolina Arts and Sciences Magazine

2006-10-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note:

Carolina Arts and Sciences magazine has published an article about my trip to Guyana with Naman, Rez, and Ivana and is now available online at

http://college.unc.edu/features/October06articles/article.2006-10-11.3011071158

On the page you have to click under "Related Links" where it says "Fall 2006" to actually download the magazine. It's kind of a large file, so those of you using dial-up (aka Grandma James) may have some difficulty downloading it. However, I'm planning to visit probably next weekend (Oct. 20-22) so I could just bring you a hard copy if you have trouble viewing it.

New events

2006-10-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

So, there's been a lot of small things that have happened this week. First of all, I've decided to change my first preference for a research advisor, after some deliberation and lots of advice from others. So, at first I was definitely gung-ho about working for Mirkin's lab, given that he's one of the top 10 most-cited chemists in the world and he has incredible funding and resources. However, despite the excitement of the quality of work I could do under Mirkin, I think I would also be under a tremendous amount of stress and pressure. Now, knowing myself I think I could adapt to the situation and get by, but I think it would be unnecessarily putting myself through a stressful situation when I do not need a huge name for an advisor to do well in life. Furthermore, after graduation I see myself working with polymers and not so much biotechnology, so I wanted to find another lab that was more low key, but still good. My first choice for an advisor is now Kenneth Shull, whose specialty is in polymer adhesion, but his group does a lot of stuff with polymers besides that. He was excited about my interest in the group, and has long sought to recruit a student with a background in chemistry, as chemistry students have a strong background in chemical synthesis. I have to turn in my advisor preference by Monday, and by Wednesday I'll know for sure if I'll be joining his group. There's still uncertainty as they have to make sure that all 38 of us find labs that have funding for us, etc., but I think it should work out.

In other news, I went to see An Inconvenient Truth tonight, which for those of you who don't know, is a documentary by Al Gore on global warming. If you haven't seen it, I would strongly recommend doing so, as it presents a lot of compelling evidence for first of all the prevalence, and secondly the need to address and correct global warming. While I already had known a lot of background information on global warming, seeing scientific evidence and even qualitative images of its existence and effects is quite frankly disturbing. What's more astounding is that in the scientific community, there seems to have always been this concern about global warming, while the media/government/oil companies/etc. have portrayed it as more of a theory or myth. As a scientist myself, I am quite appalled at the lack of consideration that the general public has taken toward the issue. We spend years specializing in the study of a particular subject area, and for someone to dismiss scientific findings for an issue solely for the reason of personal gain or convenience is quite frankly unacceptable. I'm also pissed off at the fact that our mileage standards for cars in the US is somewhere around 20 mpg while in Japan it's roughly 45 mpg and we still have oil companies suing state governments like California for trying to raise those standards. Oh, and how the president can hire a guy from an oil company to serve as his advisor on environmental issues. That seems like a good idea... Anyway, I'll stop ranting, but the point is, I thought it was really well-presented and it's something that everybody should see.

On Tuesday this week, I went to the Contemporary Art Museum in Chicago. It was actually really cool, as many of their exhibits were science-based. They have an exhibit on sustainable architecture, and lots of cool exhibits on electric/hybrid cars, energy consumption worldwide, and novel polymers. I think my two personal favorite things were a room filled with photography sorted by the part of the electromagnetic spectrum used to take them (ie, infrared, visible, UV, xray, etc.) and the crank-powered laptop developed by researchers at MIT meant for use in developing countries and sells for $100. I only got to see the museum for about an hour, but I definitely plan to go back, maybe in a few months or something after they change some of the exhibits. Also, on Tuesdays its free, courtesy of Target.

Tonight, I went to a Jamaican restaurant with some MatSci friends and we all shared some Caribbean cuisine (curry chicken, jerk tilapia, jerk shrimp, and plantains). The food was good, and afterward, a few of us came back to my apartment and played Trivial Pursuit before going to see An Inconvenient Truth. We played in teams, and my team was getting our butt kicked after the first few rounds, but thanks to some lucky guessing we snuck in and won even though we were like 4 rounds behind in getting all the pie pieces. It was a lot of fun. We're planning to play again maybe within a few weeks or something.

Anyway, that's pretty much what I've been up to all week, plus a crapload of quantum mechanics homework which I worked to finish by Wednesday to have the weekend free. I also started my TB meds, which I'll be taking for the next 9 months. I hope everybody is doing well. Until next time....

My week

2006-10-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

So without paying attention, it's almost been a week since my last post. Well, not much has really happened until this weekend, so I wouldn't have had much to post anyway. Here's what I was up to:

Tuesday- Classes until 3:20. MatSci seminar 4-5. Homework 5-2 am. SLEEP!

Wednesday- Sleep in. Classes until 2. Relax the rest of the day from the intellectual beating the night before.

Thursday- Finish up homework/help others with theirs until class. Class til 3:30. Finish up homework for another class. Materials Science student barbecue. It started raining right at the beginning so I got really wet and cold. However, there was free food and good company. I stayed out there for like an hour.

Friday- TB appointment. I met with a doctor to talk about the chest xray. Everything was fine, as expected, so I have the option of getting the treatment for TB or refusing it and potentially developing TB in the future if in fact I didn't have a false positive test. The meds are free from the university, so I think I'm just gonna take the treatment. I would feel really dumb if I developed TB later in life. There's also the option of getting this other test done for $45 to be more certain, but the doctor didn't think it would be worth it, as she only recommends it for international students who've had BCG vaccines against TB. The only stipulation for the medication is that you can't drink alcohol while on it or take Tylenol, since the antibiotic is metabolized by an acetylation reaction in the liver, and alcohol and Tylenol are also liver-metabolized. Since I haven't had Tylenol in probably 5 years and I never drink, I think that won't be a problem. The treatment is for 270 days though... but I'm not going anywhere, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

Also on Friday, Rez came up to visit from NC. I met him in the afternoon and we went to a Thai restaurant for dinner after we walked around campus for a few hours so I could show him the scene. He crashed at my place for the night.

Saturday- Rez and I headed into Chicago to meet a few of his friends for lunch and some brief sightseeing. We had some awesome deep-dish, Chicago-style pizza at Gino's Pizza and went up to the John Hancock Building Observatory. However, it started raining while we were going up so it wasn't the greatest view. Still kind of cool though. Then we went to the Cubs game, where 3 of my MatSci friends were meeting us. When we got there, it was the second inning and the Cubs were losing to the Rockies 8-0. Miraculously, the Cubs came back to tie by the bottom of the 9th and it went into extra innings. An inning later it started raining at the stadium and they had to cover the field for a while. The rain let up, so they started uncovering it again, but the immediately had to put the tarp back because the rain came back. After about 30-40 minutes, it had stopped raining enough to resume the game. It went until the bottom of the 14th inning (they had a 14th inning stretch, haha), and Cubs ultimately lost 11-9. Too bad. In total it was about a 5 hour 40 minute minute game. I went out to Taco Bell with my MatSci friends after the game while Rez was with his other buddies he met up with in the city.

Today- just a laid-back day. I've been working on getting ahead in even more of my homework, and random other stuff. I got a brief call from Naman in India for about 40 seconds. He had $1 of minutes left on his cell phone and generous enough to give me a call. Basically, all I found out is that he was at the airport getting ready to fly back to NC.

So there's my update. I tried to stay succinct. The Cubs game was awesome, so I'm definitely planning to go back to a few next year when the season starts up again and the weather warm up. Tickets were only $15 on the street, so it wasn't so bad. Anyway, I hope everybody's doing well. More to come later this week....

TB!!!

2006-09-25T21:19:00.000-07:00

So I got some weird news today. I had to fulfill a TB testing requirement for the admissions office at Northwestern, and I tested positive. Haha. It's still debatable whether it was a false positive reading or if I actually have TB bacteria in my body, but in order to satisfy admission requirements I have to go through some more tests and maybe a 9 month treatment. I had a chest x-ray following my PPD test, and I'm scheduled to go back on Friday. The good news is that I obviously don't have TB symptoms, so if I do have it, it's still inactive and I can't possibly infect other people. It just means I'm at risk of getting the disease sometime later in life. Anyway, everybody I've told thinks I'm dying or something, but I assure you I'm perfectly fine. I'm able to get the xray for free and the medication too if necessary, so I don't even have the expenses to worry about.

Yesterday I went to a picnic to meet the group members of the Mirkin lab. It was a beautiful day- sunny, no clouds in the sky, about 70 degrees. I spent 2 hours of my afternoon just meeting people in the lab, but still didn't even make a dent overall. So the lab has over 40 people, and I probably met 7 or 8 of them. I've got some work to do. I also went to a subgroup meeting for the biomaterials subgroup in the lab today, where I saw a few students present and had the opportunity to meet some more students. Lots of fun.

Since about 5 today I've been working on some homework for my Physics of Solids class. There are only 5 problems, but they've proven to be a bit mathematically challenging with all the integrations and such. Luckily, Eddie and I have the same classes at the moment so we can ask each other questions when we're having problems. Speaking of which, I need to get back to my homework, because I don't want to be working on it any more this week.

I hope everybody is doing well. If you have been anywhere abroad with me in the past year, you might want to strongly consider getting checked for TB. Later.

Baking fiend!

2006-09-22T23:04:00.000-07:00

That's right. I spent my Friday night baking miscellaneous foods for future consumption. Eddie helped me make 4 handmade pizzas to freeze, and I also just rolled out 26 cinnamon rolls using 1/3 of Mom's metal muffin recipe. In addition, we started a pan of baked ziti which just needs to be thrown in the oven whenever we want to eat it. For one of the pizzas we also made a pesto sauce, and its topped with fresh tomatoes and garlic. The other three have fresh jalapenos, red onions, tomatoes, garlic, green pepper, and parsley on them. We actually cooked one of the other frozen pizzas we had made last week for dinner today, and it came out pretty well, though it stuck to the pizza stone. I guess we'll need to flour it or something next time, as the dough just sticks to it once it thaws out.

Tomorrow, I'm thinking about trying my hand at some more Indian food. We cooked channa and roti last week, and though the channa turned out well, let's just say that my roti sort of ended up like tortilla chips instead of flat bread. One of the MatSci students who lives in the building next door, Praneet, said he'd come over and help me make it. He was over here for a bit today and commented that he hadn't seen anyone cook by "following the rules" before and enjoyed watching Eddie and I scamper around in the kitchen.

Yesterday, I got a book in the mail that I orderd last week called Knowing by Michael Munowitz. Dr. Samulski at UNC had recommended it to me, so I took his advice and got the book. I've just gotten started (about 50 pages in), and so far it's been pretty decent. It's supposed to be a layman's explanation of the physics of everything, so it delves into things like gravitational force, electrostatic force, nuclear binding energies, space-time, quarks, strings, etc. I'm still not convinced that the layman could just pick it up and understand what's going on, but he does leave out all the equations and sticks to simply explanation, which is good. I'm also concurrently reading Carl Sagan's Cosmos, as I bought it for $1 with Joel in Myrtle Beach a few years ago and never read the whole thing. My hope is that these books will stimulate my line of thinking into the very nature of scientific investigation, and who knows, maybe even provide a basis for some of my fellowship essays that will be due ever so soon (starting November).

Having been away from homework for such a long time, I got a hankering for some intense academic exposure on Thursday night and dove into my first homework assignments in my Thermodynamics course and Differential Equations one. I must admit, I was quite a bit rusty in both subjects, having not thought of either subject for well over a year, so it took me several hours to finish my work, but I'm convinced that of what I've done I have all the correct answers. After I get my homework set for Quantum Mechanics on Monday, I can finish all my homework though Oct 6 and take some time to work on those fellowship applications. It's definitely a bit of a different approach to what I've been doing the past 3 years, but it will be nice to not have to rush to finish assignments the night before they are due. Plus, homework doesn't seem so bad when you're doing it at a time when it doesn't have to be finished the next day. I do find it strange that all the courses I'm taking include a homework component of roughly 35% of my grade, which was rarely the case in my undergraduate career.

Lastly, I got an email today saying that the cover article in the Carolina Arts and Sciences Magazine covering my trip to Guyana with Naman, Rez, and Ivana was finally published, and I'll be getting a few copies in the mail soon. They always post each magazine online, so I would imagine that in a week or so, I can post the link so everybody can read it and admire the pictures from the photo shoot we had last April. I've read the first draft of the article, so I'm anxious to see how the final version is.

Anyway, that's about it for now. I'll try to post something more after the end of the weekend. Take care everybody.

First Day of Classes

2006-09-19T21:33:00.000-07:00

So I've decided to keep a blog about my grad school experience up here in Evanston. Let's recap thus far what's been going on up here before classes have even started:

Sept 1- My first permanent day in Evanston. I flew up to O'Hare and Eddie (my roomate) picked me up at the airport. For the ensuing week, I did some serious cleaning, set up all the utilities that Eddie hadn't already set up, and explored Evanston a bit. I slept on an air mattress and lived out of a suitcase, but other than that, all was well.

Sept 9- Mom and Dad came to deliver all of my stuff from NC. They arrived around 10:30 am, and we had unloaded everything by noon, which I thought was pretty impressive. We went out for lunch at Chili's with Eddie, and for a few hours in the afternoon put away all of my random odds and ends. Mom and Dad were able to head out by 4 pm to drive all the way back down to Grandma's in Hope.

Sept 10- I flew out to San Francisco at 7:40 am for the American Chemical Society Meeting. Upon arrival, I caught a shuttle to the hotel and then the BART (Bay Area Regional Transit) to downtown San Francisco. I attended a few talks on bionanotechnology and met up with Larken, a postdoc from the DeSimone research group at UNC. We went to a reception for Dr. DeSimone honoring him for his entrepreneurial endeavors and later went out for Mexican food.

Sept 11- I presented a poster from 2:30-4:30 pm, after having met with Dr. Samulski and Larken and another postdoc from the DeSimone lab to discuss the final write-up of my honors thesis for submitting for publication. Later that night, I briefly attended the SciMix poster session/mixer and got a free shirt and Nalgene bottle before heading back to the aiport.

Sept 12-18- Orientation week for the Materials Science Department. During this time, we heard presentations from every faculty member about their research (roughly 35 professors), went over general department information, lab safety, etc. One day we had fire extinguisher training which was actually kind of fun, despite the rainy weather outside.

Sept 15- Along with about 11 of my classmates, I went out for pizza and a theater production referred to as Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. It consisted of a series of roughly 30 skits performed within 1 hour and were typically comical though occasionally dramatic skits. I had a great time, and it was nice to get to know my fellow students.

Sept 16- I caught up on cleaning and putting things away in my room, and later that night invited Andres and Joe over to watch True Lies and have dinner. They live in the apartment building next door to me and are also first year Materials Science students.

Sept 17- I went to the driving range with Kendra (another classmate, from Purdue) and we went to Steak N Shake afterward for some milkshakes.

Yesterday- Last day of orientation. I also attended a group meeting for the Mirkin group, which is currently my first pick for a research lab. Kendra, Joe, Andres, Eddie, and I watched The Life Aquatic later that night, and I got to sleep early for class the next day.

Today, I had my first two classes, which were coincidentally both my Materials Science ones. I'm taking two MatSci classes and two Applied Math classes. I really enjoyed the lectures, and am actually quite excited to get back into the swing of lectures and coursework. The rest of the day I spent pimping my palmpilot with new applications like a dictionary, map of Evanston, and pdf files of class notes so that I'll actually start using it more. I'm currently ripping music off my cds to put on my computer so I can have some variation in the music I have on my iPod shuffle.

I'm doing very well, and I love Evanston and Northwestern thus far. I'll love it even more once I get my first paycheck and am not scraping the bottom of my checking account. I got an email yesterday from someone at Kodak who was interested in my research on compound eyes at UNC, so maybe they'll be interested enough to fund the further development of my project, as I don't think the Boeing thing ever got straightened out. Anyway, I'll try to post weekly or biweekly, so check up on me every once in a while to see what I'm up to. Until later...