Planet Olin

And it's my birthday, he he he.

I turned in my paper on Wed, gave my presentation yesterday and took my leave of my prof and grad student. Today I just laze about and pack. And gloat about the fact that I go to the best damn college I know. After seeing the presentations of the other students, I can with all confidence say that OLIN WORKS. We crank out the most consistently awesome kids - other places have isolated geniuses, but the average Olin kid is better than the average kid somewhere else. Not because we know more, but because we are, to paraphrase my prof, energetic, motivated, and willing to work hard. My head is getting so big I can barely pass through the door.

I am going to apply to Cornell for grad school - there's too much interesting work going on here not to. Weather be damned. Speaking of which, I'm going home! Yipee!

I'm afraid I've got nothing more profound to say right now.

make for one productive summer research student. Too bad I'm not one of them. I did spend all weekend at work (and I do mean all weekend...), although I got precious little work done. Well, that's not true - I did precious little work, because I was mostly waiting for layers of resin to dry before pouring on more. Reason is, according to ASTM standards, polymer composites have to condition (ie: absorb atmospheric moisture) for five days after being cured, before they can be tested. That means in order to have my PowerPoint done by next Monday, I have to test them this weekend at the latest, thus leading me to spend all last weekend making them. It really wasn't too bad - everyone from the lab showed up to work at some point or another, so it was quite the party. Or as much of a party as can be had in a cramped lab/office that smells a bit like fermenting soybeans. I got a lot of reading done. I've also looked at a lot of grad schools and fellowships to pay for said grad schools. Good news is, all the engineering/mat sci programs I've seen so far are fully funded, so extra fellowhips are just icing on the cake (although, as Brian told me, coming with your own funding means grad schools love you, since they don't pay a dime for having you come). Cornell pays its grad students about $20,000-22,000 per year (I asked), which, considering monthly rent is something like $300-400 in Ithaca, is pretty nice. I expect (hope) other places aren't much different.

Speaking of Cornell, they're doing a damm fine job of making me want to come for grad school - almost all of the research talks we've had have been totally fascinating and cool, and something I'd like to work on. The last one was especially interesting - check out this prof. He's done work in 3-D printing of living, breathing cartilage - a prototype of custom-made replacement organs. Really neat work.