Some VSA Perks

For some reason, yesterday’s class time seems like a blur in my mind. We continued with the teaching presentations, and they were as fun as always. We then got to put our number theory into practice and encrypt codes to send to each other around the classroom. It was exciting to punch in all these huge numbers and know that they all were actually part of a word.

After class, I went to my arête, which is quidditch. The first few days we did drills, and practicing drills is never fun. But, yesterday we had our first short scrimmage and despite it being tiring in the hot sun, it wasn’t so bad. The biggest downside is the people who pass by and see looking a little ridiculous; then they proceed to take photos.

Instead of having SOFT time or regular activities yesterday we had Admissions Night. Several Vanderbilt admissions officers came out to talk to us about the application process and give us some insight on how holistic Vanderbilt is when looking at applications. My favorite part of it all was meeting Brandon, who happens to be the admissions counselor for my region. He’s actually fairly new at Vanderbilt but he’s worked in admissions at other schools as well. He gave me some good advice on what to hone in on for my essay and overall he and Garth, the other counselor who spoke to us, cleared up some doubts we had about what they look at in the applications. What I found really funny was that when we played the GPA game, the person at the very front was someone whose family had donated a building to the school. They said that was obviously rare but connections, in essence, play a big part when applying to colleges.

Class time today started out very skeptically. My teacher and TA were MIA, and they left us instructions that involved decrypting some codes and using a map to find them. Luckily, the decryption key was all the same and we worked together to crack the code. This was just a preview of what tomorrow is going to look like, scavenging all over campus. Apparently, though, we’re going to be implementing some Sudoku into all of this. We got to practice with Sudoku today, and I struggled a bit but it was honestly very fulfilling once the boxes were full.

For SOFT time, instead of going out for a snack as I usually would, I went to the Rec. At the Rec I was finally able to swim after so long. The pool was relatively empty so I had all the lane lines to choose from. I didn’t even realize that the water was pretty cold since it felt so good to be in the water. The pool closed before it was time for us to go back, so I went upstairs to the area with all the fitness machines. There is also an indoor track and rooms for other sports.