Calculators at the Empo

We have once arrived to that time of year again that everyone is preparing for finals. Almost all freshmen take a math class that has to take an exam at the math emporium. Since I am a Math major I do not have to take the basic math classes but still have math classes that test through the emporium. Last semester I was in linear algebra and which was technically through the emporium but we could take our quizzes anywhere and only had to take our exams at the actual math emporium. This semester I am in vector geometry and we have one exam left that is due this week and then our final exam. The exams are not bad but they are a pain because we cannot use hand held calculators we have to use the calculators on the computers at the math emporium. The calculators on the emporium computers are a pain to use because you can’t see what you are putting into the calculator compared to a graphing calculator where you can clearly see everything. You can have the paper tape on which helps but when you are trying to impute your numbers on the screen it is hard to tell if you have put the parentheses in the right spot or not along with other carious things that make it hard to use. My suggestion is that the emporium allows students to use hand held calculators that you receive when the test proctor gives you when they check your student id. The calculators could be cleared and just have the basic functions like we used in high school during out standardized tests. If we had handheld calculators I think it would make a big difference in some people’s scores. I know that if I could have used one on my last exam my grade could have been higher. Money might be a factor but I really think it would benefit the students to have a calculator in their hands and not on the computer especially since most students use a graphing calculator during their quizzes. The situation could always be worse but the emporium could find a better calculator policy if they truly wanted to help the students out.

April 16

My Blog this week may seem a little spastic but that is because I started writing it the day before April 16th after seeing people setting up the drillfield for the ceremonies this past weekend. Tomorrow is April 16, 2010 three years after the shootings occurred at Virginia Tech. Most of the students currently at Virginia Tech were not here when the tragedies occurred but it doesn’t mean that we should just forget about what happened that day. We need to remember the faculty and staff that were on campus that day and the ones who can still remember it clearly. I agree with the University to cancel classes on April 16 and I think that the University should continue to cancel classes and remember who died that day and what they families that lossed loved ones are going through. April 16th should not be taken lightly and we need to remember the fallen on this day every year. I know partying is a big deal but I was glad to see that people I know were respectful enough not go out on Friday night. It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal but how could you go to a candle light vigil, see people crying and listening to people speak about the students and faculty that died that day and then go out and get drunk? I think it is great that people have enough respect to not go out on April 16th. After seeing all the people at the vigil it was hard for us to have a lot of emotions left that night to do much. There were a lot of tears and there was also a lot of Hokie Pride present and it is something that I know I will never forget. As Hokies we need to stand together and support one another through everything. It’s not just April 16th but Tech students support each other no matter what happens, if it is on campus or somewhere else in the world. It is great to see that we the Tech community cares so much about each other.

Relay Weekend!

This weekend was a lot of fun. It started on Friday with me going home to pick up a tent for Relay that night. The trip to Salem was a lot of fun because one of my friends gave me a ride and we had a blast jamming out to different songs! Then came the real fun: RELAY FOR LIFE!! Relay was great but we started off struggling! Even though it was my tent and I had been camping before I had never helped set it up. My parents gave us directions but they weren’t very good. We got the poles in the right place but couldn’t figure out how to get them to stay but luckily I called my brother and we finally figured it out. Throughout the night we were walking around the track and one time when we came around the track the Hokie Bird was standing there so I went to give him a hug and when I did he basically tackled me. That was very interesting but it was also very funny. If you have never been to Relay I would highly encourage you to participate next year! All around the track different groups were selling things and a group of corps of cadets were letting people pie them in the face. My friend and I decided to pie one of them the next time around. We did and it was great because then after that we got one of our friends to agree to let us pie him in the face! It was a great time and a lot of fun but the real fun didn’t come until around 2 am when we did Kick Boxing and Zumba! We definitely were sore Saturday morning after doing that. We decided to come back in to our rooms around 4:30 am because we were all really tired and cold. Taking the tent down was really easy compared to setting it up. I finally got to bed around 11 and a bunch of us went to Jimmy Johns for lunch then went to the baseball game. We had a lot of fun and got sunburned. That night we went to the movies and saw Date Night. The movie was good and really funny and awkward in some parts. Sunday we didn’t do much but it was a great weekend!

Kroger Trip Part 2

Finally the bus came and we were finally leaving for Kroger. Most of you know that the bus stops in front of the chemistry/ physics building and it did on Saturday and a bunch of guys got on the bus that were covered in paint. Once we got to Kroger we only needed to get a few things and while we were getting what we need this one guy that worked always seemed to be where we were at. It was very interesting but it really wasn’t that bad. Once we had what we needed we had to wait for Tom’s Creek A for about 30 minutes. If we were smart we would have looked at the bus schedule before we left our rooms. The bus finally came after what seemed like forever, I’m just thankful it wasn’t freezing cold but thankfully it was a nice day outside. The bus stops at various places and at one of the bus stops more people got on the bus painted in different colors. Once the guys got on the bus they asked me to take a picture of them and we asked them what it was for and I think they said it was for the Festival of Colors. I am not exactly sure but I found an article online about it. It was very interesting to see all of these people painted. I couldn’t imagine trying to get all the paint off of me if I was them, especially in a dorm room when the showers are extremely small. No matter where you go on campus I bet you can always find something that is entertaining to yourself and your friends. There is always something going on here at Virginia Tech and it is great. Last weekend was the festival of colors and this upcoming weekend is Relay for Life and then the 3.2 run and Big Event are the weekend after that. I would encourage you if you aren’t already a part of a Relay for Life team to join one and to get involved on campus. It is a lot of fun and you can make a lot of new friends!

Kroger Trip Part 1

This weekend I went with a friend to Kroger over by the Math Emporium. With both of us being freshmen neither of us have cars here at Tech, which means we have to rely on the Blacksburg Transit to take us everywhere, or we could walk but that is a long walk from Pritchard to Kroger and then back. We walked over to Burruss to catch Toms Creek B since the University Mall doesn’t run on the weekends. When we got to Burruss we were waiting and noticed that we hadn’t seen a single bus all day long. Luckily my friend has blackberry so we found the bus schedule online and found out that we had about 3o minutes to kill before the bus came back to Burruss. Since we had so much time to kill we decided to walk around in Buruss for a little bit and there was a little girl in there with her mom trying to complete a school project. As we were about to go up the stairs she asked us if there was anyone we could talk to in the building. We had no idea what she wanted so we just told her that there might be someone upstairs but there wasn’t. My friend and I made our way upstairs to the bathroom and went inside. While we were in there the little asked if there was a blonde girl in there and my friend said no because she thought the little girl said blind girl. On our way out we realized that she was looking for me and I may have forgotten to mention this earlier but the girl is only in Kindergarten. Her project was for a kindergarten class! We were both shocked that a teacher would make a little kid to that kind of project. We also ventured on the lower level but we didn’t get far because of some construction that they were doing. We finally made it outside and the bus showed up. There is more to come but you will have to come back next week to hear about our epic trip to Kroger and riding Tom Creeks A on the way back to campus!

Choir Concert

On Friday night I went the Spring Choir Showcase featuring the Women’s Chorale, Men’s Chorus and Camber Singers, all under the direction of Dwight Bigler. The entire concert was very good and all of the pieces were wonderful to listen to. I was very impressed with all three ensembles of how well they performed singing acapella and just going off the starting pitch. It must have been hard for everyone to hear the other parts so they could all sing the right pitches.
The Women’s Chorale was very excellent also. I enjoyed all of their songs they sang and it was very different listening to them sing in a different language and trying to read what they were actually saying in English. I think my favorite song they sang was Go Down, Moses arranged by Mark Hayes. I have heard this song before and their version was very upbeat and exciting to listen to. All of their songs were excellent and I thought it was easier to enjoy the last two pieces because they were in English and I didn’t have to try and translate them. Overall I thought their performance was excellent
The Men’s Chorus was also great. When I first looked at the program I saw where they were going to sing Tech Triumph and it was very different from what I was expecting. It was very hard to not clap while they were singing since we always clap during it when the marching band plays it. They also sang songs in a different language which were difficult to understand but they made it easy to listen to.
The Chamber Singers were excellent and I enjoyed listening to them. I enjoyed the Bach piece they performed especially since we are studying it in class right now. I really enjoyed the Bach piece because the Chamber Singers accompanied by a Mondrian Quartet that included two violins, a viola, a cello, and the harpsichord. I was really impressed seeing the chamber singers being accompanied by a real harpsichord that a student was playing. I was amazed that a student knew how to play it and it sound really good. I was also amazed with “How Can I keep from singing”. The soloist Katie Blevins had a beautiful voice and the song was beautiful. If you have the chance this semester I would highly encourage you to go to a concert.

Kate Gosselin

Last night was the finale of the Bachelor, and with the end of one reality show, another one is getting ready to start up and replace them during their time slot. Since the Bachelor has ended, Dancing with the Stars will start up again. During the finale the new cast for Dancing with the Stars was announced and I thought it was interesting to see that Kate Gosselin is going to be on the show. I know she is use to being on TV, but what about her kids?
Dancing with the Stars is filmed in Los Angeles and her kids go to school in Pennsylvania. I would think that she wouldn’t want to be away from her kids for that long considering what they have been through the past year. She could have her kids go to school in Los Angeles, but she doesn’t know how long she will be on the show.
I began writing this blog two weeks ago and since then there have been several reports that the Gosselin kids have been acting up since their mom has been promoting Dancing with the Stars and rehearsing in Los Angeles. If you look at any of the tabloid magazines there have been numerous articles stating that the kids are misbehaving and acting out in school which is sad to hear especially after the kind of year they have gone through so far this year.
If Kate wants to compete on dancing with the stars I think it would make more sense to take her kids to Los Angeles with her and let them finish out the school year there instead of only being home a few days a week and not even really seeing her kids. Just because she is practicing at her home in Pennsylvania, it does not mean she is going to see her kids all the time. It is not fair to the kids for their mom to be gone all the time. If she wants to be a famous reality star then she needs to figure out a better arrangement for her children because when they grow up they are going to be able to look at everything that has happened to them. We can’t always trust the tabloid but that is all we can go by because we are not involved in their lives.

Road Trip!!

Have you ever gone on a road trip with your friends? If you haven’t I would highly suggest it for you to do! This weekend I went to Richmond with a bunch of friends for a Young Life retreat and it was a very interesting trip on the way there and back while we were driving. In our car there were 4 girls and we had a lot of fun starting as soon as we were loading the car getting ready to leave. I was about to place my bag in the back of the car but I needed to set my purse in my seat so I could rearrange everything to make room for my bag. When I sat my purse in the seat, I think my friend thought I was in the car because she began to drive away as I was leaning into the car to sit my bag down and it started to move. Luckily she was only circling around the parking lot but all we could do was laugh. We stood there laughing for a good solid five minutes. It was a great way to start off a fun weekend.
With every trip in the car you always need to have a great amount of songs you can sing obnoxiously loud too! We definitely had plenty of music to listen to and I’m pretty sure we were very entertaining to people when we passed by them because we are the type of girls that just can’t sit still while listening to music. We definitely got some weird looks and then there are always the people who are already dancing in their car, and we can’t forget the ones who just laugh at you when you pass them. The music was great but the people who were driving should probably go back to driving school. Our driver is very good but we definitely saw some people who shouldn’t be driving. We were pretty sure that one guy in a towing truck was going to rear-end us on an entrance ramp to I64. We were heading to lunch and the way the ramp is set up, several ramps all lead to the actual interstate and the guy in the truck had gotten on before us. When we merged over there was nobody coming and then one of us looked behind us and he was right behind us not slowing down, which made us swerve because we had no idea if he was going to stop. It was a scary situation but he finally slowed down after he gave us a look like we were a bunch of idiots! We were not very happy after that but it didn’t stop us from having fun the rest of the weekend! Everyone had a lot of fun and we can’t wait for our next adventure together!

Creative Story

Person: A high school whose girlfriend just told him she’s pregnant
Detail: An earring
Setting: A city on a hot summer night

Labor Day weekend was already here for Matt and Alyssa. They were extremely excited for their senior year of high school and were planning on going to college together next year in Virginia, which is far away from their home in New York. Alyssa was excited until this past week, when she learned that she was pregnant with Matt’s child.
Alyssa thought that this would never happen to her and that she would be living her senior year the way she wanted to by having fun and going crazy. She knew she needed to tell matt that she was pregnant but she just found out and hadn’t even told her mom yet. She needed to tell him and she needed to do it now.
On Saturday Matt and Alyssa were going to go into the city to watch the Yankees play – it was a hot day in New York but Alyssa knew it would be the best way to tell him. Alyssa had decided she was going to tell Matt after the game just before he dropped her off at her house. She had everything planned out and she even knew what she was going to wear. Alyssa has a favorite pair of earrings that have been passed down through her family that started with her great-grandmother, then her grandmother, then her mom and now they belong to her. They are her favorite earrings and she always wears them in situations where she is not sure of how it is going to go.
Alyssa was not ready for this night- she thought she would never have to tell someone she is pregnant until after she was married and had graduated from high school and college. When Matt picked her up she was extremely quiet and matt could sense that something was wrong. While they were at dinner, Alyssa noticed that one of her earrings was missing and she had to find it. When they started looking neither of them saw it around the table they had been eating at or in Matt’s jeep. Alyssa began to panic and she knew she had to find the earring because she needed to wear them while she told Matt she was pregnant. When they were looking Alyssa was becoming even more anxious and mad and when Matt asked her what was wrong she snapped at him and then she began to cry hysterically. Matt knew that something was wrong and wanted to know how he could help her. Matt then proceeded to hold Alyssa while she cried and that’s when she gave in and told him that she was pregnant.
Matt didn’t say anything to her right away and she wasn’t sure what he was going to say. After this long day, Alyssa asked Matt to just take her home and think about what is going to happen to them and talk about it the next day.

Technology

Technology is great, but when it decides not to work it is a pain in the butt! As I am writing my blog this week, I sit at the empo, specifically computer 3H3 because my laptop crashed this week and I am waiting for a new hard drive to arrive from HP. Every time I needed to check my email or to work on school work, I either had to go to the library, Math Empo, or use friends laptop since mine won’t be fixed until later this week. I have come to truly appreciate having my own laptop this week while mine is broken. Many people take for granted having a laptop and not having to go to the library or somewhere else to use the Internet or even complete work. Along with not having a computer, Facebook is also gone too. It seems that everyone is always on it, even if it was just sitting there and you were doing other work. I know that we have done that and I was bad about it, but let me tell you that we can survive without Facebook. The Internet has become addictive to everyone, along with technology in general. Along with Facebook, there is ITunes, computer games and many other social networking sites that are very addictive. My computer crashed on Thursday and since then I have come to realize that I rely on my computer to do everything. I think if everybody had to go with out technology for a day- including iPods, cell phones, laptops and what ever else we use daily, we wouldn’t know what to do because we are that addicted, especially to our cell phones. Everybody has their cell phone with him or her wherever they go. One of my friends actually has to go to his biology professor and ask for his cell phone back and explain while he had it out during class, because he left it after class and his professor now has it. It would be very difficult for me and I know it would be harder for some people who are even more addicted to their iPods and phones. So I challenge you to go one day without a computer, cell phone, or iPod. It is very difficult because in today’s society we use them for everything.

Reality TV

In the TV world there are so many different reality shows that are based on different things. You have Jersey Shore, Survivor, Big Brother, The Bachelor, and Real World/ Road Rules plus many more. I have yet to figure out why we are so interested in watching people on TV. Most reality shows are competitive but Jersey Shore has no competition in it that results with a prize because some people would argue that there is competition on Jersey Shore in between the cast in different areas. I have never watched Jersey Shore but that is because I chose not to watch it because it is all about rich kids throwing money away during summer getting drunk and doing other stupid stuff. Other reality shows at least have a point behind them. On survivor, you have to be able to survive the elements of Mother Nature and outlast the other contestants by beating them in challenges and not being voted off. I feel this would be a difficult show to be on because you are completely exposed to the elements of Mother Nature and on the other shows, you have a place to sleep and shower and food to eat.
The other question that I always come to think about with reality shows, is it worth competing to come down to the final two people and you are the runner up and win nothing, but do everything the winner has and get nothing out of it? If I was the runner up and didn’t win anything I would be very upset with myself, trying to figure out what I could have done better or what I should have done instead of what I actually did on the show. I think it would also be very hard to be away from family and friends for several months because we all know that you can’t film a reality show all within one week. Along with missing your family, you would have to take time off from work and in today’s economy, it would be very hard to ask your boss off for work to go compete in a reality TV show. No matter what reality show you watch they are all the same and will continue to be the same. They will have drama, and will always have a winner and loser and there is nothing we can do to change that.

Winter Weather Part II

I just realized that I blogged about the weather last week, but it seems to be the cause of all problems during the past few weeks. I didn’t mean to blog about this again, but it is always on my mind because it is just so cold outside.
The weather in Blacksburg is one thing that I would say many students would want to change if they had the power to. Most of us like the snow, but it is just not the same from when it snowed while we were in high school. When in high school we would have snow days and they were what we always looked forward to in the winter, but while being here at Tech, snow is something that really isn’t wanted around here. When it snows the school does not shut down and it is not very fun to walk across the drill field when the temperature outside is less than 20 degrees. Today is an example of a day that everyone could have used as a “snow day”. Many students have fallen on the steps, slipped on black ice, or even just stepped in a big puddle of water that has melted from the snow causing their pants/ shoes to be wet. Even though a lot of the sidewalks are clear not all of the steps are which makes it hard for students to pass each other as they go to class. As I walked to class I saw many sidewalks still covered in snow and some were beginning to melt making an even bigger mess. When the snow melts, we do not know if it is going to freeze back but it is not very safe it does.
Along with the snow, the weather tends to go from one extreme to another all within an hour or so. You could leave for class at 10 in the morning with the sun shining thinking it is going to be a good day, then you get out of class at 1 and it is bitter cold and it is snowing. There is no way to predict the weather in Blacksburg. The weather today was pleasant, but then for tomorrow they are calling for a wintery mix and then snow for next weekend also. No matter who you listen to or what website you look at, we will never be able to predict what the weather in Blacksburg is going to be.

Winter Weather In Blacksburg

Blacksburg, Virginia is known for having unpredictable weather and it always seems to happen at the most inconvenient time. This past week, classes were cancelled on Thursday starting at 3:30 and the University didn’t open until 10 am the next morning. It is just my luck that I happen to have a recitation at 3:00 on Thursday afternoons for Vector Geometry. The first week of classes everyone is trying to get a feel for what to expect for their classes for the semester and if having class cancelled during the first week must be a sign that the class is going to be extremely hard.
Vector Geometry is set up into a 75 minute lecture and a 50 minute recitation the following day and then you have a quiz due by the following week by 9 pm. The lecture is no big deal and you do all of your work during recitation to practice what was taught during the lecture except for this week, we didn’t have our recitation because classes were cancelled. Since we haven’t had recitation how are we suppose to take our quiz this week. I know many students had their recitation class earlier in the day but my class and the ones after me shouldn’t be punished for the weather we had last week. It might simple algebra skills but it is still part of a new class that we have never taken before and should be able to have the same classes as other students who are in the class. Hopefully our professor will change when our quiz is due or let us have recitation before the day the quiz is due, but it still isn’t fair for us who may have wanted to take their quiz earlier. It is nice to have classes cancelled but sometimes, it would be better if they were not when you are responsible for taking a quiz by a certain date. I love it when we have classes cancelled but having recitation cancelled for vector geometry was really inconvenient for me and the other students in the same class because as of now we have no idea what we are suppose to do.