Top 10 Reasons I Like Math

I feel it is time I indulge into the notorious past time of bloggers (namely, Valerie, Elika, and Meghan) with a top 10 list of my own.  So here I go.

Top 10 reasons I like* math

1) It’s black and white.  There is one right answer, and everything else is wrong.  In a world colored in various shades of grey, the comfort of having this one thing as ether RIGHT or WRONG is very reassuring**.

2) It’s practical.  You can use it for just about anything.

3) Once you understand it, it’s easy!

4) You can draw a picture for everything, and who doesn’t like pictures?

5) You can model just about anything with a function: daylight, populations, profits...

6) There aren’t exceptions to the rules like in English.

7) If you’re good at it people think you’re smart.

8) You don’t have to study and memorize things for tests, you just do the problem.

9) There are always multiple ways to reach the same answer, you’ve got options.

10) You can use it to predict the future.

Pi Alley in downtown Boson.  I actually had to go here for my journalism class...
But I figured it applied to this post as well

And because I’m sure Valerie is thinking right now that I have completely defaced the wonderful reality of top 10 lists by using one to promote math, I will, for Valerie’s sake write another.

Top 10 reasons I dislike* math

1) I got assigned 5 sections of calculus homework today.

2) Math is no longer just numbers, there are so many letters and symbols it may as well be English class.

3) Proof.

4) The fact that you can do a huge giant problem and do all the calculus right and then miss one tiny addition step somewhere and get the whole thing wrong.

5) You can’t graph 3 dimensional functions in your notebook.

6) Before you understand it, it’s hard.

7) All those algebra rules you learned so long ago and don't remember? Yeah they still apply.

8) There are lots of things that you think should work, but they don’t, so you just get the problem wrong.

9) There is no opposite of a square***.

10) I could be completely done with math right now, like no more classes in my life, but I’m not.

And there you have it.  My top 10 reasons for liking and disliking math.  Agree with me or not, I don’t really care, but I do think that math automatically gets a shutout that’s not necessarily fair.  What’d it ever do to you?  Ha, besides lower your GPA.  Hope this at least then makes you think about it!  And maybe even laugh.

 ~Emily

* I feel it is safer here to use “like” and “dislike” than “love” and “hate" for a number of reasons. 1) If you love math people think you’re a nerd, 2) If you hate math people just think you’re stubborn and are refusing to try – DIE MATH DIE, and 3) Like and dislike seemed like a happy medium.

**I’m a little worried that I find my security in math…

***To clarify: The shape.  This was actually a line from catch-phrase the other night, which is why I put it in there.  My favorite line of the night however: Me: "It's where you sell your kidney!"  Maureen: "Craigslist!" umm... no.

My Life In A River

While there is TON of stuff I would like to write about, e.g. shells, moral debates, and calculus, but I’ve got like 10 minutes now to do a quick one. So…

My life in a river.

This was a thing I had to do today.  To explain.

1) Heart – my name, when and where I was born.  For those of you who don’t know and can’t read, September 11^th 1991 in Palmer, Alaska.  And my name is Emily.  You should know that.

2) Up – Living is a positive aspect of my life in the first few years, so my river’s going up.

3) Swirl – Elementary school, or school in general, I think that’s a pretty big step.

4) Down – from there my river goes down, and there are mountains because it was a harder time in my life.  Shy little Emily on the play ground with no friends.  Ok, I had some friends, but socialization was a difficult aspect of life for me at the time.

5) Swirl – Middle school I’m calling a turning point.  I joined Science Olympiad and that’s when I knew I wanted to go into Biology and specifically genetics. 

6) Up – life went up then until I had to split up with my friends to go to different high schools (i.e. mountains)

7) Swirl – High school switched my life up a little bit.  I had to find me again and make new friends.  There were some mountains here as well.

8) Up – High school was great not gonna lie.  I had a wonderful time and made the best friends a person could ask for.  I loved Student Government and XC and Pep Band and everything else I became involved in and excelled in school.

9) Swirl – senior year added a new aspect to my life – plans for the future

10) Down – Unfortunately I had a rough senior year.  It was stressful and difficult in many ways.  Applying for college, 3 AP classes and physics and chem, scholarship applications, extra-curricular activities, relationships, and everyone getting ready to leave.  It was a difficult time in my life.

11) Swirl – College definitely marks a step in a new direction.

12) Up – I feel like I’m on the river up now at Northeastern

13) Swirl – Leading to the future, not quite sure where my life will go.

14) Side – This was meant to be an up, but I ran out of room on the paper.  I’m looking forward to the future and whatever it may bring.  My goal as of now is research in genetics.

And now you know what my life would be like if I lived in a canoe. 

I just thought this was hilarious and wanted to share it.  I picked this up at the Student Activities Fair last week.  Since I used photo booth cause I’m too lazy to pull out my camera, all the words are backwards, sorry, but here’s what it says.

“NU & IMPROV’d!”

(Sarah Palin picture)

“The only thing funnier than Sarah Palin running for president!”

“NU & Improv’d first show of the year!

Come see Northeastern’s primere comedy troupe!”

It’s for the improv club in case you didn’t gather that.  I loved the little play on words in their group name, and of course also the Sarah Palin reference.

This is a picture of me after I’ve done the same chemistry problem five times and still don’t have the right answer.  The set up, the theory, the stoichiometry, and the conversions I can do.  It’s just the simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division that gets me.  EVERY SINGLE TIME.  I’m dyslexic I swear.

And finally….

I love my friends.  All of you.  So if you gave me your senior picture and it managed to get stuck in my notebook and transported to Boston with me, you are on my wall.  There are a ton of other pictures and memorabilia scattered around other parts of my room.  So it you don’t see yourself and are like “WHY AM I NOT ON YOUR WALL!?”  You probably are, I just haven’t gotten around to taking pictures of the whole room to show people where I’m actually living.  And if you want to look at my previous post about the calendar, you can probably find yourself there.  If not, SEND ME YOUR PICTURE!!!

So in conclusion, it’s been a great two weeks! I’ll try to find some time this next week to write about the things I actually wanted to write about, but as of now the cards are callin’! Literally, I love nerts!  And if you don’t know what that is… well no help for you there, you just haven’t hung out with me enough.

Miss you all! Hope you are having an awesome life! And always remember to SMILE!

~Emily

September 11th

“There were shelves upon shelves of the most succulent-looking sweets imaginable.  Creamy chunks of nougat, shimmering pink squares of coconut ice, fat, honey-colored toffees; hundreds of different kinds of chocolate in neat rows; there was a large barrel of Every Flavor Beans, and another of Fizzing Whizbees, the levitating sherbert balls that Ron had mentioned; along yet another wall were “Special Effects” sweets: Droobles Best Blowing Gum (which filled the room with bluebell-colored bubbles that refused to pop for days), the strange, splintery Toothflossing Stringments, tiny black Pepper Imps (“breath fire for your friends!”), Ice Mice (“hear your teeth chatter and squeak!”), peppermint creams shaped like toads (“hop realistically in the stomach!”), fragile sugar-spun quills, and exploding bonbons.”

~Exert from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

And you didn’t know it, but this exists right in downtown Boston, Mike’s Pastries, 300 Hanover St.

Perhaps not magic in the literal sense of Harry Potter, but to my naïve mind and limited worldview, this place may as well have been the closest thing you can get in reality to Honeydukes.  But let me back up.  For this adventure began way before I even knew what a cannoli was. 

September 11, 2010.  Nine years after the tragic attack on our country, nineteen years after my birth.  I awoke and headed to the dining hall for a birthday breakfast of waffles and Lucky Charms* and then proceeded to Blackman Auditorium to receive my community service assignment for the day.  After hearing from the founder of 826 Boston (a tutoring center for writing for kids in the Boston area) I headed out with Group P to find Southwest Corridor Park and begin our cleaning project.  Our assignment was somewhat typical** of what you would expect for a community service project; we swept the sidewalks, raked leaves, and picked up garbage.  I enjoyed the service, and am looking forward to the start of the CEP (Community Evolvement Program) here at Northeastern.  I will be partnered with a group where I will volunteer at all year and I am very excited to actually begin.

Anyway, upon completion of our project we headed back to IV.***  I decided the time had finally come to brave the laundry room, and after collecting my things I set out on my mission.  I love how it’s set up.  You go in, start the wash, then walk across the hall and jump on a treadmill – or in my case an elliptical because my knee still isn’t back to functioning in it’s entirety.  So after a good work out**** and some clean clothes I settled down to relax the rest of the afternoon.

Well come evening, after dinner, and everyone is just blah.  Nothing really exciting is going on and “The Runaway General*****” is where I resign the rest of my birthday evening.  And then comes Eugenia to the rescue.  She picks me up and we set off for North End or “Little Italy” in the search of birthday cupcakes (and cannolies).  We hop on the T and realize shortly thereafter that we don’t actually know where we are going.  So we get off at North Station, the logical if you ask me stop for North End.  Except guess what? It’s not.  So we wander around for a little while till I call Dan, so I can talk to Rob, who then gives the phone to Andrew who I haven’t actually met but was very nice and tried to help us get un-lost.  I sort of (not really actually…at all) get an idea of where to go and then thank him for his help and hang-up.  I turn around and Eugenia is talking to two guys, Chris and Alex, who also happen to be Northeastern students, who also are freshmen, who also are lost, and who also are looking for cannolis.  And they have a map.  Now if only we knew our destination…

So the four of us wander around and make this giant loop along the outskirts of the city (literally, it went the city, us, water) until we know we are getting closer because we start to see people walking around carrying “Mike’s Pastries” boxes, and finally low and behold, we identify our destination by the line spanning two blocks out the door.  Thankfully the line moved fast, and we finally crossed the threshold into the chamber resembling that described above.  It truly was that amazing.  The most remarkable assortment of decadent cakes, cupcakes, pastries, cookies, candies, and I don’t even know what else.  Oh, and of course, cannolis.  It was pure magic.

We made our choices and headed down the street to a little park to sit and eat them, and what do you think is 200 yards to the right?  The North Station T stop.  If only… if only.

And that about wraps up my birthday excursion.  Thank you to all my friends and family who made my first birthday away from home special.  You guys are the best, I miss you, and love you all. 

Take care.

~Emily

*This is kind of a tradition.  I always get a box of Lucky Charms for my birthday, and I figured this one should be no different.

**Some groups had a more atypical assignment – Working at a carnival painting faces or manning the cotton candy machine, writing letters and making cards for our troops – and then there was of course mowing the lawn and playing with or tutoring children. 

***International Village – my dorm

****MY KNEE DIDN’T HURT AT ALL AFTERWARD!!!

*****Article published in the Rolling Stones magazine that got General McCrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, fired.

The First Day

Classes Begin

Calculus and Differential Equations – Biology 1, my first class at Northeastern University.  The title of my first lecture – “To Infinity and Beyond!”  The irony didn’t escape me, and so I figured I must put this in my blog.  And even though I must retake this class, I did learn something new on the very first day.  Infinitesimals, really really really really really really really REALLY small numbers.  Really, like as close as you can get to zero without actually being there.  Actually, zero is an infinitesimal.  I get infinity.  It took me awhile, but I have finally grasped the fact of having a number that is so large it can be given no finite value.  Infinitesimals however are a different story.   How come we can’t just say 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000….1?  Is that not an infinitesimal?  No, only e (epsilon) and d (delta) -- by the way, these aren't the right symbols, but blogger doesn't let you do the real ones apparently--, and I’m sure a few others that were not mentioned at this point and will come back later in my calc career to confuse me even more.  Maybe graphs will clear things up.  They generally do.  Except when they make things worse.  So thus begins my calc experience.

General Chemistry 1, my 150-student lecture hall.  The professor wrote the textbook, I’m already behind it seems.  I’m actually really excited for this class, I’ve always liked Chemistry the subject, I’m yet to have a Chem teacher that I’ve liked, but this is looking promising.   It’s my only class tomorrow,* so that should give me some time to catch up.

Inquiries to Behavioral and Evolutional Biology.  I’m going to hold off giving my impression of this class, and wait till it gets going a little more.  This isn’t my favorite topic in biology, though I don’t have a lot of experience in this specific topic, so I guess it’s a good area to get more of a solid background in.

And now off to homework… They don’t wait for nuthin.

~Emily

*I actually am supposed to have 4 classes tomorrow, but all but the one are cancelled for one reason or another.  Friday however I do only have one class.  Interpreting the Day’s News at 8 AM.  I am completely done on Friday at 9:05.

Big Steps

So now that I’ve finally gotten a moment to breathe… In, out, in, out (I’m taking full advantage of this 10 minutes).  Whew, it’s been a whirlwind, though a fun one.   I’ve wanted to write something now for a while now, like about LEAVING.  So then I could write one about ARRIVING.  But since I’m already here and settled, I’ll just have to recap.

Packing:  I’ve only moved once, 11 years ago, and we moved pretty much across the street.  I brought just about everything.  This was an entirely different experience.  Figuring out what exactly is worth lugging 4554 miles (yay google maps) across the country to take up residence in a tiny dorm room is harder than it sounds.  And me, being the procrastinator that I am, waited until the day I was scheduled to fly out to pack*.  This can be problematic in a number of respects, but for the most part I think I was lucky and managed to avoid those problems.  I did however forget a $1000 scholarship check, my coat, and my phone charger (which I actually found out that I had buried in another bag).  So there be my packing woes, thankfully though I had Ava to help my scatterbrain remember the essentials.  Two suitcases and a duffle bag later and I am done.

Goodbye Alaska:  I flew out Monday August 30^th at 9:35 PM.  We got into Anchorage at about 5 to meet the Schleichs for dinner at the Thai Kitchen (Valerie flew out just a few hours after I did).  After a delicious meal, the company of wonderful friends, and lots of socks,** I headed to the airport, boarded a plane with my mom, and took off.

Hello Boston:  After flying all night, and getting very little (none) sleep, we arrived in Boston at about 10:30 AM.  The hotel shuttle picked us up and brought us to the hotel where I promptly took a nap. 

NORTHEASTERN:  My time here has already been amazing.  I managed to sneak move in early because my roommate was here for orientation.  Her name is Margaret and she is from Denver.   It was right in the middle of International Orientation, so just about everyone here was from a different country, which was really cool.  We moved in slowly, a little bit at a time because it was all we could manage without a car.  The second day we went shopping and joined the hundreds of other college students dorm shopping.  Running around Boston in the crazy heat has been interesting… not too much fun…  Anyway, we went to Target and Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  Meghan and Linnea would both love my room, pink and orange.  I love it!  The dorm is small (I think that’s in the definition of a dorm room), but it’s new and clean, which is what really matters.  I’m in a suite, with two double rooms connected by a bathroom, which is also really nice.

So, move in complete, stocking up complete, goodbyes complete***, moving on to college.

It’s crazy how much this school has set up for this Welcome Week.  They gave me a book practically (44 pages counts as a book) of the schedule of events from Monday August 30^th to Saturday August 11^th.   There’s no way you could do everything, but you have like 20 choices of events each day.  A bunch of things are required, especially for the Honors Students.  Like ice cream socials…  No we do work stuff too.  Like this morning we had “Understanding Zeitoun, Faculty Panel and Breakout Workshops” from 9:15 to 12:30 about a book (Zeitoun) we were all required to read over the summer.  It was a good book, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone.  Tomorrow we have “Honors Teambuilding Retreat Northeastern University Ashland Campus Ropes Course” all day from 7 AM till 5 PM.

My dorm is in International Village, which is the newest building on campus (it opened last year) and has a work-out facility and dining hall in the building.  The food is actually pretty good.  There are lots of choices and you can eat healthy really easily.  You can also eat ice cream with every meal.  I like it.

Mail has been a challenge.  Like I said I forgot my scholarship check, which I need to buy books.  So my dad Express mailed it here.  That’s cool, except I randomly get a mail box in the one row of mailboxes without combination locks on them (it’s also the bottom row, about 3 inches off the floor), so I get a key instead, and guess what!? They aren’t ready to hand out the keys.  So I’ve been running around for the last few hours trying to work that out so I can get the check so I can deposit it before all the offices close for the weekend so I can buy books… It’s a vicious cycle.

I have more stories and experiences that I would like to relate, but I should probably go try to be social with people while everyone is still in the meeting-new-people mode.

Hope all is well!

~Emily

Oh! And there is a hurricane coming!  I’m excited.

*I did have one suitcase already packed, and a lot of thinking had gone into what I was going to bring, I just hadn’t put my plans to action.

**Sauce

*** This is my least favorite part.  I already miss everyone so much.  I really did have the best community, best friends, best family…  none of you will ever be replaced and I love you all so much.