February 23, 2000
Noteworthy

I said that I probably wouldn’t be writing another diary entry this week, but have a little time on my hands tonight (very little) and I decided that today was just strange enough to make a note of. Let me try and give you the general scheme of things as they happened, starting last night

At 9 PM I sat down in the dining room of the Alpha Chi Omega house to work on my astrodynamics take-home exam. My intention was to work on it non-stop until it was finished – that didn’t exactly happen. At 4:30 AM my brain stopped functioning enough to do mathematical calculations so I realized I would have to get a little sleep before finishing the test. My alarm was set for 6:30 AM – I never heard it. I opened my eyes by chance this morning looking directly at the clock by my bed and it read 8:08 AM. There is no better motivation to get out of bed than the feeling that you are late. I wasn’t late if I was only going to get up and go to class at 9:35 AM, but the fact that my astrodynamics exam was only about half done gave me a sinking feeling in my stomach. I got to class with no more work done on the exam than had been done last night. It’s funny how things sometimes work out for the best – Dr. Fitz-Coy didn’t even show up on campus today. The time the test was due was pushed back to 4:30 PM (which wouldn’t have helped me much if I hadn’t finished before my next class). Now those few pieces of paper are out of my hands and that is a great weight off my shoulders – until Dr. Fitz-Coy grades them and returns them to us.

After my normal three hours of class (minus the hour when I usually have astrodynamics) I went over to the Engineering Fair to work the AIAA booth for a couple of hours. Someone else was supposed to be with me, but she never showed up and I was stuck running two experiments by myself. I added a box fan right behind the mesh of little fans in the tunnel and the plane flew much better than it had been before. I took some pictures of the tunnel and the plan flying inside so maybe soon I will be able to post them on my webpage somewhere. A girl came by and took some pictures with a nicer camera and took information about AIAA and out project so maybe we will get a picture in the Alligator or something like that. That would be great. Fortunately Jason showed up, even though he wasn’t assigned to be there, to take over so I could go to class at 3 PM.

I got home (for the first time since 9 AM) at around 4 PM. Today was jersey day for Greek Week so I wore the only jersey I have that I don’t hate. Too bad we had to check in at a table in Turlington Plaza to get any points for participating! The check-in was from 10 AM to 4 PM and I was busy that whole time. Greek Week for me is an exercise in futility (much like the astrodynamics take-home exam). Pratt-Whitney had an information/lecture session tonight at 6 PM. It lasted two hours, but the lecturer was from the liquid space propulsion (LSP) division in West Palm Beach and his talk was interesting to me. I do get fidgety after trying to sit still for a long time, though. I need to go back to the Engineering Fair tomorrow morning and hand out my resume to at least Pratt-Whitney and Lockheed Martin. Not that they don’t already have a copy of it, but having personal contact with the recruiters is always a good idea. Hopefully I will get an interview with Pratt-Whitney when they come back in March. Maybe I will have heard from Boeing by then.

My sisters are getting ready to go to our Greek Week social right now – we are having a Toga party with Beta Theta Pi. I am not going to attend considering I have a circuits prelab to do for tomorrow, numerical analysis problems due Friday, and I am tired enough to fall asleep on my feet. Three and half-hours of sleep isn’t enough to sustain me for a whole day’s worth of activity. I think I am going to take a shower, work on the circuits prelab, and watch “The X-Files” before I go to bed. That sounds like a plan.