A VSA Weekend

Even though Friday isn't technically part of the weekend, it's close enough to be included under today's title.

On Friday, we had class as normal, and finished up our Arete classes. We were introduced to the RSA algorithm in class, which was great - Jason had given us a "kid-friendly" version before called Kid Krypto to introduce us to the general concept, but it was cool to finally see the actual thing. Even if it was crazily complicated. Jason had prepared us quite well for it though, I was able to process what was going on pretty well, but I know if he had given it to us the first day we would've been really lost.

After class, I had my last Tai Chi lesson. We performed the movements we had been taught in front of a couple of other classes to showcase what we had learned. I was a little disappointed that none of the other classes performed what they had done, because we had been told that at least Cultural Dance would perform as well. 

At the talent show

That night, we had a dance that really wasn't a dance. There was dancing involved, but there were numerous other activities around the Hank Ingram house as well. I was in the basement the whole time, watching the talent show. It was a lot of fun to see a lot of the people I know (and some I didn't) show everyone how talented they are. And they are really talented. I was constantly being impressed by how skilled all of the people I had just met are. It was awesome. 

After the talent show, we just cleaned up a little and headed back to our floors for the proctor group meeting and bed. Our proctor was out of town (he's back now) and so we had Erik as our stand-in proctor. It was cool to have Erik, because he's a great guy, and pretty funny too. 

Saturday was interesting to me, because I hadn't been here on a weekend before. We had class in the morning for a couple of hours, but we just watched The Imitation Game. 

After class and lunch, we had a TA activity. That meant that our TA, Wei, took us over to Smoothie King and the bookstore for a couple of hours in the afternoon. We ended up playing cards in the Starbucks cafe attached to the bookstore, so that was fun.

 After that it was SOFT time until about dinner time. I didn't go out, but instead hung out in the commons area playing cards some more. It was a nice, relaxing afternoon, and I enjoyed it. 

Outside of the mini golf place

After dinner came the real adventure. We had signed up for activities for that night earlier in the week. I chose mini golf - the other choices were bowling, rock climbing, and rollerskating so I would have had fun no matter where I went but I went with mini golf. I and three of my friends, Olivia, Carmen, and James played an 18 hole game that was pretty fun, but we managed to get Rajul (one of the proctors) to play with us on the challenge course. That challenge course was really hard, which makes sense, but I wasn't expecting how hard it was. There were stream jumps, multiple paths, and lots of almost lost balls. It was great. 

After a bus ride back, we had a quick proctor group meeting and headed to bed.

Pancake Pantry!

The next morning Ms. Hansen signed us out to go to a place called Pancake Pantry. Those were some really good pancakes. We also walked around the area a little bit, but then headed back to the VSA. 

We had lunch, then went to the mall for the afternoon. The mall was alright, as it was fun to be with friends and do something different, but I'm not much of a shopper. After the mall, we came back and had dinner.

Directly after dinner, we went to VSA Expert Night. This is where you go to a panel of experts you previously signed up for to learn more about a topic and get your questions answered about it. I went to the "Career Paths Less Traveled" one. It was interesting to listen to the panelists, Rosie, the director of VSA; Dr. Lapointe, a PhD in Biochemistry who is in education; and Greg Kyle, an IT professional who deals with data management and software to solve problems at Vanderbilt. It was super informative, and they talked about their careers and their life paths a bunch. I was also able to ask a lot of questions of them too, mostly of Mr. Kyle and Matthew Garcia, the TA for the Special Topics in Mathematics class. They were super helpful in answering all of the questions I asked them, and I'm glad I had this opportunity to do so. 

After the panel, we just had free time and our proctor group meeting before bed. Tomorrow we start the last week of VSA! It's crazy how fast the program has gone so far.