Stress and Relaxation

I had a final today.  During pre-finals week.  It was weird. 

Weirder, every time I take a test, I get a kink in my neck from sitting funny for an hour or two.  It's a kink that keeps my head tilted so I appear to be puzzled or in  deep though, when actually my muscles are just too tight from taking the test.  I call it post-exam-tilt head. 

So today I was walking out of the classroom thinking I should go home and go lay down with my head the oposite way of how I had been holding it, when Lisa Campbell, the assistant dean of students at the Center for Student Development, told me that there were free massages and snacks around the corner.  Um, yes, please.  It was absolutely delightful.  There were yummy snacks to eat while waiting--fruit, Capri Suns, and granola bars.  To add to the greatness, the Discovery Park library had cookies sitting out!  I had 30 minutes of pure bliss before heading back to reality.  The school put it on as a way to de-stress before taking those dreaded finals.

In the spirit of pre-finals week, I have compiled a list of the top 10 ways that I like to de-stress.

10.  Sitting in the sun

9.  Cooking

8.  Going to church

7.  Doing community service

6.  Yoga

5.  Reading

4.  Taking a bubble bath.

3.  Listening to Taylor Swift, Colbie Caillat, and John Mayer

2.  Exercising

1.  Getting a free massage (duh)

Random Fact: In Shakespeare’s time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. That’s where the phrase, “goodnight, sleep tight” came from.

This week at Discovery Park...

This week was pretty darn busy for me.  Coming back from vacation, I had a Computer Programming test and a Spanish presentation waiting for me.  It's nice to know, though, that when I need a little study break, Discovery Park has some great activities.  From the PS3 to the ping-pong tables to the piano, there's something for everyone.  Sometimes, we even have little programs going on. This week, there were two great programs that I just had to participate  in! 

First, the Student Development Center had a few tables out to make bookmarks and blankets for children.  The bookmarks went to at-risk pre-school children as an incentive to learn to read.  The blankets were for children who had lost their veteran parents overseas.  I made two bookmarks and helped with a blanket.  It was a very rewarding experience, and I love knowing that I did something that will make a child smile. 

I've put in a picture of Oscar, an engineering ambassador, making a blanket...

The other great program was a Paper Airplane Competition put on by the Transfer Center.  The rules for this one were pretty tough!  Our airplane MUST include (but is not limited to): 1 sheet of paper, 1 paperclip, 3 staples, and a bendy straw.  The hardest part was knowing what in the world to do with the straw!  Mine may not have gone the furthest (one went 25 feet, the other went backwards), but they are still in the running for the best design.  The winners of furthest flight and best design get a giftcard to the UNT bookstore, just in time for spring semester!

I've also put in a photo of my two planes... 

Thank goodness for study breaks!

Random Fact: Cereal was invented when colonial housewives started serving up popcorn with sugar and cream for breakfast.

THANKSgiving

I got to go home to Oregon this past weekend for the Thanksgiving holiday.  When I landed in Portland at almost midnight, it was a crisp 18 degrees outside.  Nice.  Since Portland and Eugene were forecasted to have freezing rain on Thursday, my dad and I drove down to Roseburg Wednesday night right after I stepped off the plane.  We got in about 3:15A.M. local time, which was actually 5:15A.M. for me!  So, you can imagine how tired I was!  I didn’t even get to sleep in.  We woke up at about 8:00 to get everything ready to head up to the snow.  My family and our good friends, the Smiths, go up to the snow every year to get a Christmas Tree.  We decided to go on Thursday instead of Friday because of the weather.

So we head up towards Diamond Lake—elevation 5200 ft—to find our perfect Noble Fir Christmas Trees.  There was so much snow [and ice].  We had a party of 5 vehicles – a Jeep Liberty, a Ford F150, a Dodge Ram 2500, a Ford Expedition, a Nissan Xterra, and a little piece of junk pickup.  So we were all driving pretty slowly as the roads had not yet been rocked.  All of a sudden, the third car in line (Xterra) started fish tailing.  The rest of us held back waiting for her to get it together.  Alas, the car did a 180 and rolled down the hill, landing on its side.  The rest of the cars stopped as carefully as we could so as to prevent another wreck.  My best friend Morgan and I raced down to the car to see if everyone was all right.  Inside was my best friend’s sister Nikki, her husband, and their two babies.  To everyone’s shock, nobody was hurt!  The oldest baby, who would turn 4 in three days, was crying not because of the wreck, but because she thought they couldn’t get a Christmas tree anymore.  So we pulled everyone out of the car, and planned the next move.  The guys decided they could tip the car over and assess the damage.  Another surprise – the car had one dent above the front fender and the passenger mirror was broken off.  We could not believe there wasn’t more damage!

However, my best friend’s little brother Danny couldn’t find his brand new iPhone.  He had dropped it in the snow while tipping the car over, and it was, in fact, protected in a white cover.  Perfect.  The whole party of us [about 20 people] searched for the phone for at least an hour, but couldn’t find it.  So we continued up the road in search of our Christmas trees.  Everyone was so shaken up by the wreck, that we didn’t have much luck finding a tree for everyone.  My family found two, and Morgan found one for her house.  Of course we had to walk 50 yards in waist-deep snow to get to them, saw them with a saw that was about as sharp as a butter knife, and then pull them back out through the waist-deep snow.  Trust me, it’s much harder than it sounds.

By the time we had cut down a few trees, sledded down the hill, and eaten hot dogs, it was getting late.  We all piled back in our cars and headed down the mountain.  Danny wanted to stop one more time to look for his phone.  Everyone was walking around kicking the snow hoping the phone would turn up.  Danny was so frustrated and decided to give up looking.  He walked back to the car and kicked the snow in anger.  Turns out he kicked in just the right spot; his iPhone was kicked loose!  And it still worked perfectly.

Looking back, there are so many things that could have gone horribly wrong that day, but we got very lucky.  There is so much to be thankful for in life, and that Thanksgiving in the snow opened my eyes a little wider to really seek out all of the blessings in my life.

Random Fact:  A 747-400 has six million parts, half of which are fasteners.

Texas BEST 2010

This weekend was the annual Texas BEST Robotics competition. It was absolutely crazy. Schools from all over Texas (and even New Mexico) made their way to UNT's College of Engineering for the event. My first duty as an Engineering Ambassador was to give tours of the campus. The first was to a group of about 25 students from an all girls private school. The second was a group of around 15 home-schooled students. I got, let's say "lucky," with the size of my tour groups. I saw other tour guides walked around with near 60 ELEMENTARY school students. Elementary school students can program robots? When I was that age, I couldn't even figure out how to use Kid Pix (please tell me that someone remembers Kid Pix)!

Once the shock of 9-year-olds programming robots wore off, --well, no, that still hasn't quite wore off yet. I am still light years beyond amazed. Later that night, the whole lot of participants, mentors, drivers, chaperons, judges, and volunteers made their way to the Coliseum.

The teams had set up presentations for attendees to view. These things were huge; I saw one come out of the back of a U-Haul! A few of them even had big screen TVs with presentations playing on them.

The Friday Night Mixer was a blast.

The Engineering Ambassadors had a few game booths where BEST participants could win prizes including: an iPod Touch, a PSP, a digital camera, and even an iPad! I was at the "Name That Tune" booth which was great. The music DJ would announce an eligible song, and participants would have to write down the title and artist of the song in order to be put into the drawing. We had so much fun dancing to Cupid Shuffle and the Cha Cha Slide!

Texas BEST was a great experience; I can't wait for next year!

Random Fact: Leonardo da Vinci drew up plans for an armored humanoid machine in 1495. Engineer Mark Rosheim has created a functional miniature version for NASA to help colonize Mars.

Here's Your Sign

I should have figured that engineering is my destiny.  When I was little, I hated getting out of bed to turn on/off the light.  I was always designing contraptions that reached from right above my headboard along the wall to my light switch.  They didn't always work, probably because I was 6 and had no access to money or Radio Shack.

People often ask me why I want to be an engineer.  Why on earth would I want to go through 4+ years of math, science, physics and engineering courses?  What is so great about knowing how long it will take a room at 50 degrees, Fahrenheit to reach 72 degrees; or the force it will take for a hammer to pound a nail into a board; or why an LED will blink rather than glow steadily when you add an IC 555 to a circuit? 

The answer is simple:  I want to change the world.  No, you don't necessarily have to be an engineer to change the world, but think back in the past few hundred years to those inventions that we can't seem to live without today--the light bulb, cars, airplanes, computers, the iPhone.  I could very well spend a couple of months walking in the dark across the country just to ask my mom for more money for school, if it weren't for engineers. 

There is such a broad spectrum of engineering opportunities, too.  Maybe I want to build the next space shuttle; maybe I want to program a robot that will make all of my meals for me; maybe I want to design turbines that rotate by means of ocean current and produce enough power for the whole country; maybe I want to develop a material that will sustain a trip down an active volcano.  There are no boundaries when it comes to innovation and ingenuity, which is perfect since I am a color-outside-the-lines type of girl.

Random Fact:  Australia was the first country to use postcards.

Rain, rain, go away!

Well the internet is currently down, so I figured now would be a great time to open Microsoft Word and write a blog!  What a day it’s been!  It feels like a whole week has gone by with the odd weather patterns we’ve had in the past 3 hours—clouds, sunshine, thunderstorm, blue sky, clouds, wind, mist.  Welcome to Texas! 

(…On a side note:  I’m sitting at a table at Discovery Park writing this blog when one of the academic advisors comes and sits down with me!  He just had a few extra minutes to talk about internships and scholarships.  It makes me feel so good when the staff and faculty actually know not only my name, but my whole story—where I’m from, my major, my goals, etc.) 

Back to the weather.  It doesn’t rain a whole lot in Texas, but when it rains, it POURS.  Since it’s such a flat area and the ground isn’t at all absorbent, my poor little car refuses to drive.  The tires will spin out when I accelerate, and the whole thing will fishtail when I drive over 30 mph. Come on, car, you’re a Tiburon.  Tiburon means shark.  Sharks are kind of awesome in the water.  I just don’t get it.

Luckily, UNT has an awesome bus system that will pick me up from my apartment and take me to school, so my little weenie car doesn’t have to worry about driving in the rain.  The bus fare is included in tuition, so I never have to search under the couch cushions for spare change at the last minute.  It runs pretty late, too, for those semesters when our only choice is to take a night class.

So a big “Thanks!” to the UNT bus system.

Now my only worry is what on earth I will make for dinner.

Random Fact:  When a fly lands, it will vomit 7 times.

Robots of the Future

You may remember (or own!) the Rumba—you know, those robots that will scoot around and clean the floor?!  Well robotics has come long way since then!  Another Engineering Ambassador from UNT and I have been mentoring high school kids in programming robots, so I have been doing some research.  Since the Rumba, engineers have developed a robot floor-waxer and lawn mower.  But that’s not even the most incredible invention.  Engineers in China and Japan have developed human-looking robots.  There’s actually a robot that can do yoga!  Japan recently unveiled their new Robot Nurse (Actroid-F).  She knows how to mimic facial expressions—everything from a pleasant smile to a concerned brow-frown.  These new realistic robots even respond to touch!  Check out the video…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7tYwnqot6M

The nurse robot will be such a big help for hospitals.  While they can’t perform surgery (yet!), they can talk to patients and try to make them feel better.  I’m still undecided as to whether I’d be delighted or frightened by a robot telling me my cut-off arm was looking better.  It’ll just take some getting used to!

The aforementioned robots clearly have a purpose and function, but there are some that were created simply for entertainment purposes.  There is an annual competition called the Bacarobo, or stupid robot, contest.  The sole purpose of the robot is to make the audience laugh.  Check out this video…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQtwV0Atzdc

These new breakthroughs are so inspiring.  Right now I’m simply helping high school students program a Lego robot for a robotics competition, but maybe one day I’ll be programming a robot to program a robot!

Random Fact: Laughing can burn off 6 calories per minute!