First Day of Work

....was reading. A lot!

I worked mostly with the graduate student who will be supervising me during my project: Eva. She's extremely nice--very practical, very smart, very clear. I really like working with her so far; she's answered all of my questions and generally been very encouraging. She gave me lots of reading material to go through for this research, so I started going through it today. I actually spent about four and a half hours on it.

It's a little frightening, to be honest. There were a few times where I just had to stop reading, look at the wall, and take a deep breath while muttering in my head I'll be fine I'll be fine This is fine. It's complex stuff. This materials research--specifically looking at the electronic properties of materials--involves a healthy blend of quantum mechanics and chemistry, neither of which I am familiar with or good at. I'm trying to pick up what I can with this reading. It's not impossible, just extremely difficult, and I know I'm only retaining a surface-level layman's knowledge, which bothers me. I want to understand.

I'm probably being impatient, but. My professor is supposed to come in tomorrow and talk to me about the specifics of the project that he wants me to do. I'm hoping for a small mini-lecture on the physics of it, hoping he can clear things up at least a little bit. Enough for me to start getting it on my own.

I felt good about the fact that I figured out how to operate the simulation program I'm going to be using. Now, if I told you I was doing computational materials science, running a simulation program, the first thing that comes to mind I'm sure is some colorful program with a rainbow of molecules in complex, beautiful structures. It actually has a text file as input and a text file as output, in the ugly technical serif font of the terminal. Not very exciting at all. I had to brush up on my Unix commands (which I felt good about, because that was something I KNEW!).

Then we had a large dinner with all of the REU programs here at Cornell. There are a little less than 200 students, from what I gathered. 20 of them are in the CCMR program, like me. There's a bioinformatics program, a botany program, a veterinary program, the particle physics program, and a program for minorities which seemed to have a melange of majors and interests. Everyone I've met here has been extremely nice. There literally isn't a single one of them I don't like. No one is mean, shallow, or even obnoxious (usually the ones you notice right off). They're all friendly, and everyone wants to do fun things as a group. We're not loners and we try not to let anyone be alone if they don't want to be. It's really very cool, and very satisfying.

A little intimidating is the fact that I think I'm the only one here without research experience. Once again, I feel like I got something I wasn't qualified for. There are also people here with amazing experiences, like working for NASA or having their name on a published paper already....I just don't know how Cornell could have picked me with my boring application.

But I'm not despairing. Eva and Professor Fennie are very friendly and seemed very interested in my success. All of the people around me are so kind. I have a while to work this out.

To see pictures and a description of the campus, click the link below!

(You can click on the pictures to make them big!)

This hill, while beautiful, will be the bane of my existence during my time here. I wasn't even at the top when I took this picture. Going up it is not a fun time, but where I live is straight ahead and the rest of the campus is above me!

It is truly the most beautiful view on campus though, on top of what they call Libe Slope, or "The Slope". 

I went exploring yesterday before dinner, traipsing about near the gorge that runs through the northern part of campus. The gorge is GORGEous (aha), although the amount of water actually running through it is surprisingly little for its size. No more melting glaciers.

You wouldn't be able to tell, of course, from this picture I took of the dam that's right next to the footbridge crossing the river/creek. It dams up Beebe Lake, which I also walked along for a while.

I should have taken more pictures of the gorge itself, which had beautiful stone walls in parts. But from what I hear, the campus section of the gorge is not nearly the most pretty part, nor is this the most impressive gorge. The waterfall near the dam was impressive enough for me.

I took a trail down to the base of the gorge, and then back up. It was so steep that on the way down I had to hold on to nearby trees, and on the way up I was almost on my hands and knees. I wandered near the rec center, which had a nice patio in the back (from which I took that picture of the lake). 

Then I walked back through campus to the slope again, but this time just to sit. They have large rectangular rocks in several places to sit on the slope, and so I decided to sit there, rest my feet, and enjoy the view.

(The lake that you can barely see to your right is Cayuga Lake, one of the Finger Lakes. It is several miles away from where I sit.)

The weather here has been beautiful. I should have brought more sweatshirts. It's been vaguely chilly in the mornings, and in the low 70s during the day, even in bright sunshine. Perfect weather for pants and a t-shirt or shorts and a sweatshirt. The air is crisp and the breeze is clean. And there's so much green. It's just so beautiful here, with the hills and the trees and the creeks.

I will swim in a gorge before I leave. And I want there to be a waterfall. (Supposedly Treman Park is a good place to accomplish this goal. I think I'll wait for warmer weather, though.)