Happy tau day! 𝜏, which is approximately equal to 6.28318530717958, has always been close to my heart, and I’m happy I was able to write the blog post for 6/28.
In just the first two weeks, I’ve collected quite a few trinkets while working at SSP — with every day being so eventful here, just looking at them brings back vivid memories of the fun times I’ve had so far.
I got this nice blanket on the first day of SSP, waiting for me on my bed! I do like the embroidery and it’s very fluffy and comfortable, even if it does shed. I think calling it a keepsake is a little misleading — I don’t think I can bring it home, after all — but I think it’s a nice memento regardless. It’s very helpful on colder nights.
Also from the first day, we got some candy and our name tags. I ate most of the Jolly Ranchers, and my suitemate took my Twix. I still have to eat the rest of my candy…
Very soon after, I got this relatively unassuming image of a Volkswagen Beetle with my name on the back of it. That’s how I got to meet my team, the Medieval Beetles! It was fun matching up the bug puns on each others’ slips of paper. My teammates got an image of The Beatles and Beetlejuice. Definitely something I might take home.
Here’s a paper airplane I made for our paper airplane competition as part of the Question of the Day challenges we have! This was one of my attempts, called The Bird. Supposedly it was optimized to be a long-distance flier, but it didn’t work very well in my tests, so I ultimately didn’t use it. Instead, I opted for a whirlybird, a paper helicopter that spins in the air — if I couldn’t get distance, I thought that I could at least get the airtime award. Unfortunately, my whirlybird clumsily tumbled to the ground during the actual competition, without the spinning I had hoped for. I may not have won, but I had fun making airplanes! (Unfortunately, someone threw my whirlybirds away, so I don’t have them.)
This isn’t technically my item, but it was too cute not to share! My suitemate had won the competition for most Questions of the Day answered during the first week, so she won this adorable ladybug plush. It’s very cute, and it sits on her desk while she works. It was awesome seeing her walk up to get it!
On Wednesday, we went on a field trip to the Kia factory. I love robots, so I definitely got a kick out of that! It was a much-needed break from lectures, even if the tour was shorter than the two-hour drive to West Point, Georgia. Seeing the industrial robots chug away to make cars was so much fun, and I had a great time (plus I made some good progress on Super Smash Bros’s Spirit Adventure mode on the bus ride). The Kia tour leaders gave us these nice mechanical pencils — they almost look like pens! They’re definitely very cool.
This sticker was from Wednesday! We had Dr. Hodari-Sadiki Hubbard-James visit to explain his work in the search for extraterrestrial life near K-dwarf stars. Astrobiology is a field I didn’t previously know much about, so it was a very informative talk to listen to! I was able to ask him questions regarding his work in astronomy afterwards, and he gave me this sticker depicting the frequencies of various dwarf stars within one hundred light years. Neat!
And, most recently, I received this little gum wrapper paper crane from my classmate behind me during a lecture break. It was so cute!
As for things that happened today, we had a student-led lecture to help us understand these problem sets. It rained for the first time since we arrived in Milledgeville – and since it’s always sunny, we got this nice rainbow!
That’s all from me — please look forward to Sour’s post tomorrow!
-Sai
