The End of VSA

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Today was the last day of VSA, and it was a jam-packed one.

In the morning I finished up packing all the rest of my stuff, just barely fitting everything in my bag (it always seems like it's harder to pack back up when leaving, doesn't it?) We then all went to breakfast, marking the last time we would eat together in the dining hall. By that time, however, some people had already left for early flights so it wasn't everyone. Term books were signed during breakfast as well since we hadn't had much time yesterday to do it. It was sad, but after breakfast were the final goodbyes.

Our last group photo.

We were given a few minutes to hug everyone and say goodbye out on the patio in front of the dining hall, but were then dismissed back to our floors to wait until our parents or otherwise came to get us. That was about 9 AM, so our cohort had some time before Ms. Hansen came in the shuttle. On my floor, we said goodbye to our proctor group members one-by-one until it was only Michael, Navarrone, and I left. When Ms. Hansen arrived around 10:30, it was my turn to say goodbye to them. I then walked out of the Hank Ingram house for the last time.

Although it was sad, it was made a little better by the bright pink shuttle we took to the airport. It really stood out.

At the airport we saw a couple of people from VSA, but I only knew one - and she was on the same flight as us! Unfortunately we were on opposite sides of the plane, but it was still nice to see another VSA-er after we had left.

The flight was mostly uneventful to Chicago, but our layover was extended by 50 minutes because of the weather in Philadelphia. We had a couple of hours in the airport, so we all walked to get some food in the food court. We had Greek food from a place called Pegasus, which was pretty good. I like Greek food - I'm actually half Greek myself. After we had eaten, we headed back over to the gate to wait.

Chicago, as viewed from my seat.

We boarded our flight and took off for Philadelphia a short time after that. We got a great view of Chicago as we were heading out, but after that it became Ohio and I decided to get some sleep.

I took a great nap, but the last half out of the flight was a little bumpy. It wasn't too bad though, and we landed safely.

Our shuttle driver, Dianne, both welcomed us to Philadelphia and told us happy weekend. I don't think I've seen a happier shuttle driver, so I think that counts as an auspicious beginning to our trip to Philadelphia.

We picked up the rental car without much problem, but as always, it took a little while. Still, we managed to leave in a nice, pretty close to new, Chrysler Minivan. I don't like Chryslers, but I don't think Avis had any Model X's for us to rent.

We drove straight to the hotel after picking up the car, going through what looked like an industrial area, then into Philadelphia itself.

A very futuristic lobby.

It was dark when we arrived at the hotel, but it looked pretty nice from the outside. I was surprised at how urban it was, since the outside of it was flush with the surrounding buildings. I'm used to hotels that are free standing buildings. The weirdest part though, was the parking garage above the bottom floor of the hotel. The actual hotel rooms are set back from the street, and look out over the top of the parking garage. That's something else I haven't seen before, which was cool. Further things about the hotel was the modern-looking lobby, and the Sangkee Noodle House that was directly connected to the lobby.

Hey look! Another view of a parking garage. Imagine that.

When we got our rooms, I was surprised to learn that everyone but I was on the seventh floor. I got a room to myself on the tenth floor. I'll be honest, being the only guy in our cohort does have some perks.

By the time we had all checked in and headed to dinner, it was getting pretty late. We walked over to a place called Distritos, a Mexican food place that was pretty good. I got a plate of chicken enchiladas that at first I thought were a little small, but ended up filling me up pretty well. We had a very relaxed first dinner in Philadelphia, and walked back to the hotel afterward.

I personally like the feel of Philadelphia so far, it's not only a bit cooler than Nashville but it also feels closer to San Francisco in some ways as well.

Back at the hotel, we settled in to go to sleep, as we'll need to get some rest before our full day in Philadelphia!

Saying Goodbye to VSA

Wednesday was the last SOFT night and a very busy day all throughout. We started with a puzzler that was almost the same as one we had worked on before, except this one involved 17 people (the number of students in the class). It was the prisoner and hats scenario, each prisoner gets a black or white hat and if they can guess it they can go free. The person in the very back can see everyone’s hat, so we figured out a way to help them save everyone. Solving this puzzle was lots of fun for me because it showed me how much I have learned about problem-solving. 

Our last study hall was spent at Ben and Jerry's, here's a candid

After testing out the puzzle, we went over teaching evaluations. In short, I could’ve done a lot better as a teacher but Dawson doesn’t expect us to be perfect.

In the afternoon we had our poker tournament. This was my first time playing poker so I learned a lot from the experience itself, but I also made it to the top 7—out of 19 people—so that felt pretty sweet. We worked on a lot of probability based on poker hands last week, and it was great to see that in action.

For SOFT night, my friends and I decided to try out Cabana. It ended up being very convenient since they had a “Girls Night Out” $6 appetizer special. We got 5 appetizers to share and I was very satisfied by the end of dinner time. But, the night didn’t end there. We stopped by Dunkin’ Donuts and that resulted in being the highlight of SOFT time. We got copious amounts of donuts and oversized coffees for very reasonable prices. We then got to share all the food with our proctor group!

Today started out pretty sad, knowing that it would be the last full day at VSA. We treated it like a normal day but it was a lot to deal with. Time feels like it went by so fast, and I genuinely wish I could spend more time with all these amazing people.

We did a pretty fun puzzler in the morning that turned out to essentially be a form of tic-tac-toe. We followed that up with the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind, about the mathematician John Nash. It was a rather sad movie but very inspirational as well. After lunch, we completed a very impressive math problem that I can’t explain in its entirety due to word limitations.

Ming and Jon! My groupmates almost every day

With the time we had left, we completed some housekeeping things and took photos and signed term books. Then, we went to the closing ceremony. It really didn’t feel as though we were getting ready to leave though. More like we were just beginning.

Amanda, Katelyn, Juliana, Kiara, and me pre-dance

After everything came the final dance and some more tearful goodbyes. The dance didn’t really compare to the first one for some reason but I’m glad I got to spend more time around all of these people.

The Last Full Day of VSA

But before I get to the last full day, let's start with Wednesday. 

Wednesday passed in a blur, starting with running club in the morning. I was the only one, surprisingly enough, but that didn't affect my run at all. 

After showering and eating breakfast, we went to the last full day of class. We were pretty productive in working on the problems in the book, and my group was able to make three new posters to put up on the walls of the classroom. We didn't have a final presentation though, like some classes, but I thought that not having a final presentation was nice in some ways, because it's a more relaxed ending to our three weeks together.

Jason and I 

After class was free time, dinner, and the last SOFT night. I mostly just hung out with the group of friends I've been with for almost all of VSA. I also meant to go to the San Antonio Taco Company again, but I helped out Keaston and Carmen by eating some of the Chinese food they had ordered because they couldn't finish it all themselves. It was a lot of food. 

After dinner we played a couple of games in the library until the proctor group meeting. One was paranoia, where someone asks another person a question in secret, but the person says the answer aloud. Someone then flips a coin to see if the answer will be revealed. I had a lot of fun playing it, because I hadn't before. Just another thing I've learned at VSA!

The next morning (today) marked the beginning of the last full day of VSA. I could tell that many people new it, too, as there was a lot of talk about what was going to happen in the afternoon, at night, and the next morning.

We had a good final day of class. We started out with some problems similar with what we had done on the first day and went from there. We also recapped what we had learned. In the afternoon, Jason had everyone say what they had felt they learned the best, and what they wanted to learn more about. I put that I had learned about different bases and mods really well, but of course I wanted to learn more about everything. The entire class was a great experience with a lot of challenging and interesting material. I wish all of my classes could be like it. All too soon though, we were heading to the rotunda for the closing ceremonies.

The funny photo we took as a class

The closing ceremonies weren't too long, but it nicely wrapped up the program. There were a lot of speeches, even one by Olivia. Olivia is a fifth-year returner, which means she's been here for all five of the years she could. I know a lot of people (including myself) started tearing up at her words. As a couple of my other friends here are also fifth-years, they felt especially sad. It was their last year at VSA, and they had done so much there. Other than Olivia, Rosie, Doctor David Dun, and Victoria all spoke, and the heads of houses spole as well. It turns out my house, V-house, did not win. A-house did, but that's alright - it sounded like they won by a lot, so good for them. Once the closing ceremonies had closed, we headed back to Hank Ingram.

At Hank, we cleaned up our rooms and packed up a bit before tomorrow. 

After that was dinner and the dance. Dinner was mostly spent signing term books, as we didn't have much time to do that before.  The term books are kind of like yearbooks, so it was very similar to the end of the year at regular school. The dance was fun, especially because I was feeling so much better at this one. 

The dance got out pretty late at night, so we just went back to Hank Ingram to do our proctor group meeting. Our meeting went a little longer, as we had more to talk about. It gave good closure for the program, I'm glad my proctor group was so great. After that, we went to sleep, finishing out the last full day of the Vanderbilt Summer Academy.  

The End Road to Tomorrow is Just Over the Riverbend

We're in the final stretch ladies and gentlemen. I can't believe I've made it this far.

An example of the UV-Vis readings

So Monday was running test after test after test in class. Doctor Sutton wants us to write a report as our 'final' for the class and thus we had to take today and yesterday in order to run final tests and do readings for the report. We are preparing to process the data tomorrow. I've probably run the UV-Vis a minimum of 20 times in the passed two days, to be quite honest, but at least we're getting somewhere!

We noticed a strange trend with our nanoparticles. Our first frozen batch made beautiful red particles, and it had been frozen for 15 hours. However, when we had a solution frozen for almost 40 hours it only stayed in solution for 12-18 hours before crashing out into a clear solution with black precipitate.  It was so strange and we had to test a few more times. We found out that the solution is very sensitive to the amount of time it's in the freeze.

An example of  the freezing time effect comparing 1 hour (left) to 3 hours* (right) of freezing

Also- Tonight was the second and last proctor group night. We ate pizza and we watched the Lizzie McGuire Movie and Mulan while we made friendship bracelets. It was great to just joke about the films and how they were not "VSA appropriate" and throw pillows at each other. In such a short amount of time I have come to love my proctor group and my proctor and just be able to let loose around them.

I'm going to miss them so much.

*Side note- we marked the vial for 2 hours but left it in for 3 hours

My last Monday and Tuesday at Vandy

The laminating stage 

Yesterday was my last Monday at Vanderbilt. It was, as all others before had been, a really great day.

The first half of my class was spent working on cars, we were mostly doing the finishing touches. Leah and I were able to finishing making the supports for the seats and add a few other details. It was really exciting to see how well the car was coming together, and how well everyone else’s were coming too. By the time lunch rolled around we were mostly focusing on testing everything out, but we would have to continue this tomorrow as our next activity was a field trip.

We had the opportunity to tour a prosthetics manufacturing company called Amputee Inc. During the tour we were shown the three main stages that go into making prosthetics, those being the mold making phase, the first time the plastic is poured, and the final lamination stage.

My favorite part of the tour was seeing how they used various forms of technology to make the molds in the first place, while taking physical casts is common, many practices now use a scanner and CAD software to create molds. I had the opportunity to try scanning my hand with the software, it was pretty cool to see how technology like this works first hand. 

Me scanning my hand

At the end of the day we had SOFT time, I went to Ben and Jerry’s with some friends for a nice cold treat on such a hot day. It was a fun end to such a full day.

Our (almost) finished car

We finally got our finished story books 

Today was also really busy. We worked on our cars for the first few hours of class and had a quick lecture on basic mechanics, and then were getting our lunches at commons and heading off on another field trip.

Today we visited the Nissan Smyrna manufacturing plant. There we went on tour and got to see all the different steps that go into the creation of six different Nissan cars. The plant is laid out in an assembly line fashion, with robots and people doing different jobs. The robots were the most surreal part of the tour, it reminded me of a scene from a sci-fi movie with all of the actions the robots were seamlessly preforming. It was interesting to see how the plant is laid out and functions overall as it’s gigantic and produces massive amounts of cars every day.

It was even more interesting when, after we got back to Vanderbilt, we had a discussion about the similarities and differences between Nissan and Permobil. Each have similar long term goals, mobility, but one is much more specialized and on a much smaller scale. 

After class we had some free time, which was followed by our last proctor group night. My proctor group decided to stay in, order pizza, and watch Tangled. It was nice spending some time together as a group as the next few days will likely go by fast, though I hope that isn't the case. 

A Surge of Emotions

As the final week at VSA is progressing I’ve realized how unprepared I am for the experience to end. Yesterday and today were the final two days of teaching presentations, which was a great relief but also signified that we’re running out of class days. We completed a rather simple puzzler that dealt with trying to figure out who had shaken hands with a number of people. It seemed like there wasn’t enough information to find out how many hands the main person had shaken but in the end, we had all we needed. To my surprise though, even Jon and Ming didn’t get the answer right away, which they usually do.

After lunch, we got into nonclassical logics. I think logic has been one of the more straight forward and interesting topics to me so far, despite the “lack” of real life applications to the concept. We went over three-value logic, which is logic that not only has false and true values but also “less” false values. Then, we learned about logic with an infinite number of true values. It’s all very vague in words but seeing truth tables and practicing the notation makes it easy to understand.

The Hattie B's sign

Yesterday was also the first day without an arête class. I had intentions of going to the gym above Commons during that free time, but that ended up not happening. We then had dinner at the usual time, which I should’ve skipped since my friends and I were planning to go to Hattie B’s anyway. Unfortunately, I couldn’t resist grabbing some cannoli. If there’s anything the Commons dining always provides it is good desserts.

Hattie B’s wasn’t as life changing as I was hoping for it to be but it was still a great ending to the second to last SOFT night.

Class today started out with Dawson’s favorite or 2^nd favorite math problem. We were given a scenario in which there were 100 people boarding an airplane. The first person dropped their boarding pass so they were going to pick a seat at random, thus affecting the way the rest of the people took their seats. After acting out 17 scenarios with the class, we concluded that there was a 50% chance the last person boarding the plane would take their assigned seat. There was some very exciting math behind that problem.

A beautiful Nashville sky

We ended class with some more frustrating but exciting to solve puzzles about stacks of gold coins containing a fake, or several, fake coins. The last question was left unanswered but I’ll find some time to try to solve it outside of class.

What I was looking forward to all day was Proctor Group Night In! Sasha got a bunch of snacks, face masks, and Mellow Mushroom pizza and my group had a sort of slumber party in the lounge area of our floor. After the movie, we had some karaoke time. It was so lovely to bond these girls that I’m going to miss so much.

The Beginning of the End

Monday was the marker of the last week of VSA, a sad occasion. Nevertheless, it was still a good day. I woke up early to go on a run for the first time in about a week and a half, which was nice. I felt a little out of shape though, being sick doesn't help increase your fitness. 

After my early morning run and breakfast, we went to class. There, we worked on some problems from the textbook like pack that we have up until lunch. As always, they were pretty challenging, but fun. After lunch was my favorite though, because we were able to create our RSA public keys. This allowed us to send and receive coded messages amongst ourselves. Of course, it was only a matter of time until people started breaking each other's codes so they could intercept messages and read them as well. I enjoyed it.

Vanderbilt looks nice no matter what time of the day.

After class and dinner, we had another SOFT night. I went with a group to the CVS and Panera Bread. I didn't get anything at CVS, just walked around, but I did get a bagel with cream cheese at Panera Bread. Panera kind of reminded me of Noah's Bagels, but they do a lot more than just bagels, and their stock of bagels is a little more limited. My bagel was still good though, and so I was able to enjoy good food and good company during the SOFT night.

When we got back from the SOFT night, we had a proctor group meeting. When everyone had finished the customary highs/lows from the day, we wrote our instructors and TA's thank you notes. I liked being able to thank Jason and Wei for giving up their time to be here, and just being a great teacher and TA. I wasn't one of the people who encrypted their notes to them with the RSA algorithm, but I know a couple of my classmates who did. I thought it was funny that they did that, but I decided to stick with plain English, as it's easier to read. 

The rest of the night was just free time until bed, so it wasn't too interesting.

The next morning, today, I decided to not get up early to go on a run, and slept in a little bit. Unfortunately, sleeping in at VSA means waking up at a little past 7 AM. I was able to get up, do some core exercises, and take a shower before breakfast, and by that time I was awake enough for class.

Connor made a massive swan!

Today in class, we talked mostly about groups, which are sets of numbers that satisfy certain criteria. Our entire class has been about patterns and solving tricky equations, and so today was no different. It was fun, as usual. 

After class, we had some free time now that the Arete classes are finished. It was nice to be able to relax for a couple of hours in the afternoon, and tonight I was able to relax even more. We had another proctor group night, but instead of going out to eat my proctor group stayed in and watched a crazy movie called Coherence. It was about Super String Theory, but it was also like a horror movie. I recommend it, but it's a really weird movie. I was also pretty interested in Will's (a guy from my proctor group) min-lecture on what Super String Theory is and how it works. I think I know what I'm going to look up tomorrow during free time. 

That basically wrapped up the night after our proctor group meeting. We just had some free time and went to bed. These next few days should be interesting - I can't wait to see how we wrap up class, but I'm also sad to have to wrap up class.