How you feel when you miss an assignment

Everyone knows that feeling. The gut-wrenching, heart-jerking, stomach-dropping feeling of a missed assignment. The moment prior to realization, when you are blissfully unaware of the emotional havoc you will wreck on yourself; it's nothing short of a naive bliss. And then you open your planner, you look down at the one un-checked box and you realize that nothing will save you from the missed chemistry lab report. There is no God who can extend a hand to fudge the time stamp when you submit it late to the devil known as Blackboard, or it's counterpart Canvas. The following seconds are filled with frantic thoughts on how to save your ass from the 0/10 that will wreak havoc on your grade. The following minutes will have created several lies that you will tell to your lab TA or group members to persuade them that indeed, Blackboard was down and you were hospitalized that evening. The following hours may or may not result in a time of solace, where you come to accept the grade you will receive, and decide against immoral methods. The key phrase here would be "may or may not". No matter, it will be the first thing on your list when you rush out of class. No matter how sunny, the weather will be gloomy. No matter how cheerful your friends are, they are filthy plebes. No matter the greetings, the texts, the e-mails you receive during the rush back to your computer, there is only one thing on your mind: "God damn it, I done fucked up".
Throwing your backpack aside, you'll clear a spot where your computer will hit the desk. You'll frantically type your credentials to log-in, just to find that the wireless internet isn't connecting to your computer. After a few minutes of obscenities and desperate reconnection attempts, you'll finally log-in to Canvas to submit the late assignment. And as you log-in, and attempt to upload the assignment, of course the upload icon would be gone. Why wouldn't it? Canvas is practically the new-age spawn of Satan right? 

And that's when you'll notice. Your lab group did it for you. They fucking did it. 

Tears of joy and cuss-words will slur together, but nonetheless, chemistry lab has been defeated once again.

Sorry for the profanity. But it only better explains how emotionally distressed I was. 

Also, I did not proof-read. I never proof-read. You should know that.

Dead Week, RA position, and North Dakota

Wow, this term has kept me on my toes. It's interesting how classes aren't how they seem at the beginning. I went back and looked at my "Beginning of Term" entry, and how engineering was "awesome". Well, not so much awesomeness now but that's a totally different story.

Dead Week
Wow where do I begin? It's been a lot of Chemistry studying. My math grade is holding up, and I just need to get a passing grade on my final which has me extremely happy. Engineering allows notes so that hasn't been difficult to study for. Just taking in all our homework and assignments categorized to destroy that final.
Yesterday studying consumed most of my day which resulted in my first nap here at college where I passed out in the study room for a good 30 minutes. I had to go to an NRHH meeting which was in downtown Corvallis at a really cool Gelato shop. They all bought us half a pint of Gelato, but the servings were so generous it was probably closer to a whole pint. I got cookies and cream and then cookie dough since they allowed su to get two flavors. Highly recommend. 10/10 service and quality of gelato
(For those of you who don't know what Gelato is, it's like Italian ice cream but without so much fat and stuff so it's very smooth and very good)
Afterwards, Lauren and a new NRHH friend Jasmine and I went to the concert to support Lauren's roommate Kati as she sang. It was really cool to be there because the Acapella group started off and sang "Your Man" by Josh Turner and that was absolutely amazing. They also sang "Sweater Weather" which was really cool how they were all in sync. But then the final group sang a song called "Northern Lights" and it was the most amazing experience ever. I'm not good with music, and I bet I'm pretty tone deaf, but I know when I hear something amazing. Overall, I was glad that I went because dang, OSU has some people who can really sing.

RA Position
This was super nerve wracking leading up to the big reveal. They told us that March 6th at  5p.m. they would email us. Those who didn't get the job wouldn't receive an immediate email. So I was sitting there trying to study Chemistry and not freak out around 8 p.m. but I couldn't help but think the worst. Then I got the email notifying me that I will be the RA next year for the ILLC and I couldn't have been happier. The ILLC is the "international dorm"
So me being me, I researched what it was like at the ILLC, and I've paid a visit. Here are some pictures from a couple years ago that offer good insight into my room.

This is what my study area will look like 

Entrance. You can see the bathroom door is open 

Yes, I have two beds and two desks.

RA's have double the space and furniture. At first I thought this was because they worked hard and deserve the commodities as such, but then when I was signing my life away to UHDS signing my job acceptance, I was reading through the responsibilities and cam across one that was interesting. If a student is between places (so they want to move out of their dorm, or they are having roommate issues) an RA is expected to house them for a period of time, which makes sense why there is double of everything.
Now, not all RA's have a personal shower and toilet. Actually, come to think of it, I think ILLC is the only place that there is such a commodity. But each dorm has it's perks. Some are better than others. Taking my current dorm Sackett for example, they have walk-in-closets (two of them) that nobody else has. So that's really cool. But I think I'll take my own shower and toilet over more closet space that I wouldn't use.

Tl;dr: I got the job and I'm stationed at the ILLC and here are some pretty pictures.

I know I know, personal shower and toilet is me being spoiled

North Dakota
Man, whenever I mention this the first thing anyone says is "Why in the world would you want to go to North Dakota?" Well first off, I like traveling, and any excuse to go out and see the world is a good excuse. This is probably thanks to my parents spoiling me with trips to Japan or Thailand in my earlier years. Secondly, I'm attending a National conference for National Association for Colleges and Universities Residence Halls. Or something along those lines. Anyways, it's going to be an experience. I don't entirely know what to expect. I have some feeling that it'll be a lot like FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) back in high school, where we went to Leadership workshops and made connections. Something I've heard of though, is that we bring OSU gear to the event and trade with other students from other schools. Now if you know anything about me, I absolutely love gear from other colleges/schools. Don't know why, I just have. I like to collect things. That's just who I am.

Okay, well I guess I should study Chemistry. Honestly, Spring Break couldn't come any sooner. It'll be good to be at home with my family and eat real food!

Beginning of Winter Term

Hey y'all! It's been a while again, but I found some time to update my blog from last time.

So things that are going on right now!

Engineering 
Awesome. Just pure awesome. My teacher is very strict and keeps us busy for every minute of class. But it's really fun! Week one and we are learning how to use Matlab for coding purposes. Our first lab session was self-teaching Matlab, and since I took C# back in high school, it makes Matlab seem like a review session. During our second lab session, we used an NXT LEGO robot (which we built) and synced it with Matlab to write code and tell it what to do.
Here's a picture of the robot followed by an example code I wrote:

Lego NEXT Robot with Voice Command Module

%This program searches for right triangles for

%which all three sides are integers 

%Initialize the counter m

clear all; clc; close all;

m=0;

%Loop to check all combinations of x and y up 

%to limits

fid=fopen('output.txt','wt');

fprintf(fid,' x y h\n');

fprintf(fid,' === === ===\n');

for x=1:25

    for y=x:25

        %Calculate the hypotenuse h

        

        h=sqrt(x^2+y^2);

        

        %Check to see if h is an integer

        %If it is, write x, y, and h to the 

        %screen

        %and advance the value of the counter

        

        if h == floor(h)

            m = m + 1;

            fprintf(fid,'%5i%5i%5i\n',x,y,h);

        end

    end

end

fprintf('\nThe number of triangles found = %i\n',m)

Math
My teacher's sarcasm is hilarious and it makes it really enjoyable. He's super fast paced and it's sometimes difficult to keep up but he's very approachable and makes a world of difference between him and my last teacher. Definitely planning on leaving a good review!

Health
Yes. I have to take health. So far it seems like we will be focusing on nutrition this term. I'm not having too much fun, but it's supposed to get more fun approaching week five so let's see how it goes.

Physical Activity Class (10K Trail Running)
I chose this class because it's being taught by Tyler, the coach for Crescent Valley high school, and I definitely wanted to see what it would be like working with him. So far it's been a lot of fun, although I was only able to make one class (As some of you may already know, I injured my MCL (Medial Collateral Ligament) when on a run, and ended up going to Health Services to get it checked out and it's a sprain. Should be back in the game next month or so but we will see.

Chemistry
I kept the same chemistry teacher from last term, and I have to say I'm enjoying it. He's definitely the funniest teacher I've had in all of my college classes. One of the funniest things he's done so far was that he showed us what happens when you set fire to liquid Oxygen. It really makes the flame grow fast, and even though he had a "blast-shield" set-up, it burned over the shield and landed on a conveniently placed roll of cotton. The entire roll of cotton caught fire and he used a meter stick to push it to the ground. The plus outcome was that the cotton was able to be stamped out. The delta outcome (we aren't allowed to say negative in Hall Council) was that the meter stick caught fire too.

Hall Council
Man the opportunities! Joining Hall Council (HC) was by far the most important and door-opening thing that I've decided to do.

• NRHH (National Residence Hall Honorary): Basically a group of students who live in resident halls. This is a prestigious group that is limited to a total of 1% of all students in residence halls across the nation. I'm planning on applying for the position because it has a small time commitment and resembles National Honor Society back in high school. 
• RHA (Residence Hall Association): This is like the mother of all the hall councils here at Oregon State University. I'm planning on applying for the Treasurer position (surprise surprise). 
• RA (Residence Assistants): These are the guys and gals that monitor the halls to make sure you know where everything is and aren't doing anything illegal. If I get my RHA position, I would wait to RA until next year. 
• NACURH (National Association of Colleges and Universities Residence Halls): This is a huge conference in North Dakota and I'm really trying to get in. Everything would be paid 

Clearing up what it means to be a fan

Okay, so 2015 is already seeming to bring some tensions between teams. 42-20 the Ohio State Buckeyes just won the National Championship against the Oregon Ducks. However, this seemed to rustle some feathers on the University of Oregon side and cause an attack on anyone associated with Oregon State University. So here's some clarifications so we can all enjoy the National Championship next year no matter who goes:

1. The Concept of Being a Fan
There are many levels of being a fan. Some of us associate ourselves with one school (ex. Oregon) whereas some of us like myself have more than one favorite (Washington State, Oregon State, and Ohio State). There are also different intensities with which you can be a fan. Some just watch the game online. Some pay for season tickets. Others decorate the fire hydrant outside of their house to the colors of green and yellow. It all differs. No matter the intensity you wish to enjoy your game, you should never drag another person to your level. Don't tell others to "mellow down" or "you're not a good enough fan" unless the actions they are taking are directly hurting or insulting another. Easy enough since we're all adults.

2. Bandwagoning Fallacies
Hah, what a wonderful concept. In some instances, this seems to be a problem with people misdefining what it means to be a bandwagon fan.

A bandwagon-er is not someone who roots for a team AT THE TIME OF THE GAME. This is because of a novel concept that if you are watching a game, you will eventually choose a side. I know that no matter the sport or event that I watch, if it's a competition I will always end up choosing a side to support. This is not bandwagoning.

Also, don't call someone a bandwagon because that lowers the amount of people who watch the support. Basically you are trying to destroy the community. You need to respect how other people choose to support their team. Whether it's for one game or one year.

3. Support your state fallacy
Incredible. Our Duck brothers and sisters called on the Beavers to root for them and cheer them on when they made it to the National Championship. See something wrong with this? The famous quote "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" could not be more applicable here. This is because of something that has been long established as a tradition: RIVALRY. If you for one second believe that the FANS of U of O have built a supportive community that doesn't tear down the Beavers no matter the chance they get, then you are obviously blind and mistaken. A good example of this would be the Twitter account @AutzenStudents. They are the representative student body of the University of Oregon on Twitter and provide the prime examples of taunting and hatred towards Oregon State which keeps the rivalry alive. Because of this tradition, there is no way that there can be support from OSU to U of O.
To apply this to other sports, let's take a look at the Beavers two-time National Championship in baseball. Was there any support from the Ducks? Probably not. Will there be any support from the Ducks for our nationally ranked Women's Basketball Team? We can assume not.

4. Ducks will bring football fame to Oregon State as well as money
No. Just no. The state in general will not receive fame for football. Think about it: you're making one school look good if they win (U of O). Oregon State will actually see an increasing amount of difficulty recruiting because we have to play against U of O and compete against them for recruiting purposes. Also, the NCAA doesn't award any more money to the winning school. Schools that play in bowl games, and schools that advance to the top 4 receive money for their region. Hence, the PAC 12 received lots of money, and wouldn't have seen a shift had the Ducks won or lost. For these reasons, don't tell me to root for another school. Educate yourself on the laws first.

5. Ad hominems on ad hominems on ad hominems. 
Just stop these already. You look foolish and mark yourself as a complete idiot (haha get the irony in this?). Basically this: DON'T TEAR DOWN OREGON STATE BECAUSE YOU JUST LOST TO OHIO STATE. This is what I hate most. The Beavers who root for the Buckeyes are being tormented by Ducks who continue to argue that "Beavers football sucks" and "You guys haven't beat us since 2007". First off, schools is much more than football. So lets make an academic listing shall we?
A. Oregon State triumphs over U of O in research funding by 50+ million dollars a year
B. 78.9% graduation rate versus 67.4% and OSU triumphs again
C: 48,000 and 42,000 are the average salaries for graduates with Oregon State on top yet again
D: Linus Pauling, Cecil Andrus, and F. Wayne Valley are the first three "notable alumni" from Oregon State University. Their professions as a scientist, governor/politician, and businessman identify OSU as what it is. The Ducks starting three are Phil Knight, Bill Bowerman, and Mickey Loomis. They are in order, the founder of Nike, track coach, and NFL coach. If you have half a brain, you can see a trend. "What does this even mean?" you ask, and I reply as follows: Each school has its qualities. Obviously. Both possess different levels of different qualities.

Conclusion TL;DR
Don't embarrass yourself, read up, study up, and be smart when you enjoy a football game. Comment on something I missed, something you want to see me elaborate on, and I will be more than happy to add an *EDIT* section for anybody who reads this!

Finals (This is probably just me procrastinating but whatever)

Hello all, I know it's been a while and it's probably because I was on the verge of drowning under work.
So updates updates and more updates on my life!

1. Finals week and Dead week are probably the most interesting weeks at OSU
When these weeks hit, you suddenly see kids in your class you never saw before. Everyone on Yik Yak (a social media application) complains about finals and how they're all like "Don't drop that GPA, ehhhh" or "I feel great I got 40 minutes of sleep!" when in reality it's not all that bad. The only reason I got 40 minutes of sleep was because I was too excited for my final. Justin on the other hand decided to just pull an all-nighter because he didn't want to sleep through his final. Fair enough, right?

2. What is food?
At college, you forget what food is. It becomes bland. No taste. The same thing every day. Suddenly pizza doesn't sound so good and I get random cravings for salad. It's sad.

3. PACURH
Pacific Affiliate of Colleges' and Universities' Residence Halls (I think. or something like that). Anyways, they are like the Overseers of student council for Oregon State. Here's the food chain: NACURH > PACURH > RHA > Hall council. I am on Hall council, but also recently got a position on the Feedback and Revisions so I'm super stoked to see what that's gonna be like.

4. I am procrastinating
I had 3 finals this term: Chem, CBEE (Engineering), and Communications. Chem went well and I secured my A in the class. Kinda proud about that. Engineering was a slaughterhouse, in the sense that the Engineering exam is conquered. I am pretty sure that I secured my over 100% grade in that class, but the professor still has a few assignments to put in so we will see. I am procrastinating because my Comm finals is in 2 hours and I have been going over flash cards but don't want to do anymore work. It's been a long day/week.

5. I have some kick-ass friends here and I'm going to really miss them.
When you live with some people and share the same pain of finals, you get to really know them. Over these 11 weeks, I have made some amazing friends. Granted it will be only 3 weeks that I will go without seeing them, I will miss them. Some won't even return after the 3 weeks since they mistakenly transferred to a school where A) they don't party as hard as Beaver Nation B) they are ducks C) they rhyme with ducks. CoughcoughGoodLuckAtUofODereakcoughcough
But I will definitely miss Hall Council. Once elected, it was like immediate friendship. They are all awesome and have amazing ideas for council. But even better than that they are super supportive. Whether it's midnight brownie parties in H wing, or it's watching Spirited Away at 2AM during dead week, I am definitely excited to see what Winter Term has in store for us.

So with that Cheers! You can expect more constant updates now that it's break and Christmas/New Years is coming and my running is finally progressing in to looooong distance stuff.

A very happy anniversary

With my second week of school done, I was really looking forward to what the weekend had in store for me. Ally had a horse show down in Albany, and since my mom teaches at OSU on Fridays, I just asked for a ride to the arena. So here is my weekend broken down:

Saturday
This day we spent the whole day with the horses. For me, it's always a learning experience when I go. I'm not even close to being horse-smart, but I enjoy learning new things (and sometimes being forced to try new things). We had fun just hanging out or prepping the Daniel (Ally's horse) for the show. When I first met Dan, I was definitely intimidated by how big he is combined with how non-horse-smart I was. Now knowing a little more about horses, I'm pretty comfortable being around him which made this show much more fun because I hugged his face and snuggled with him which is actually quite comfortable. Ally also brought her slightly overweight miniature named Bucky to the show. Bucky's job was to show in the costume contest, but nobody knew that and we kept it a secret. When the time came around, we dressed up Ally in her usual running attire and then put XXL shirts and shorts on the Mini, gave him sweatbands, and put on shoes over his hoofs. He looked extremely cute as you can see in his half-dressed stage below.

Sadly the judges didn't judge on the character of the horse and owner in the arena, but only judged them by how they looked, which kinda took the fun away from Ally and Bucky running circles around everyone and then running through the finish line. 

Once the event was finished, we drove back to Silverton so we could go to our Color Vibe run the next morning. I was driving because everyone else was tired, and we were about 3 miles away from her house when there was something white in the road. We all thought nothing about it since it looked like a garbage bag. It was only when we were seconds away from hitting it did it rotate its head to look at us. I couldn't swerve, I couldn't hit the brakes, so I just kept on trucking, and that's how I killed an owl that night. After a scream from Ally, and a thump-thump from the owl, it was quiet. There was like a moment of silence before we all started freaking out and even though I felt horrible hitting the majestic creature, I coped with my guilt by laughing. 

Sunday

It was an early morning for us. Waking up so we could get to the race that started at nine. It was a chilly morning, and we left our sweats in the car because we didn't want to get the other clothes stained with color. We all had on our Color Vibe shirts, and Ally, Ally's mom and I met up with some of Ally's relatives at the race. Only Ally and I were going to run, and the others were going to walk the course. Well we all received yellow powder in the sign-up packet so we opened it up and were playing around when Ally thought of the brilliant idea to color her hand and smack me. The result was a pair of perfect handprints on my Gluteus Maximus.   

We snuck in to the first wave, and made our way to the front of the line so we could take off without having anybody interfere with our running. There were four color stations, starting with green, blue, pink and then ending with purple. A tip to anyone running these would be to close your mouth when you run by the stations or you will have blue teeth for the rest of the run.  We ended up running very consistent miles 6:41, 6:47, 6:45 ending around 20:40 if I remember right which counts as a new personal record for Ally. At the end of the race there was a very happy Ally and a very proud boyfriend by her side! (Also proud because every single person I've paced has a run a new personal best!)

After the race, we drove back to the horse show where Ally finished out her performances and we helped pack up camp. Ally's parents took the dogs and Bucky back home, and Ally gave me a ride back to OSU. We ended up walking to a Dutch Bros. on campus and got dinner at West Dining hall. Before Ally had to leave to go catch the season premiere of The Walking Dead with her family, and I had to attend elections for Hall Council where I was elected to be the Secretary/Treasurer for Sackett Hall. 

Long post, but all in all, an excellent anniversary weekend with an amazing girl! Thank you for everything Ally 

OSU to U of O

After the first week had finally finished here at OSU, Dereak and I made a semi-spontaneous decision to bike down to Eugene. Dereak wanted to hangout with some old high school friends and go to a concert known as "Life in Color", and I wanted to meet up with Kylan and hangout for the evening. Well since we are college boys, plans never really go accordingly. Our expected 7 am wake-up turned out to be 9 o clock, and we were about an hour and a half behind on departure (not that it really mattered). The total bike ride was going to be 50 miles, and we were following Siri's instructions and focused on taking backroads instead of major highways in the area.

The first long stretch was probably the worst part. We had about 18 miles or so on highway 99, and it was hard to get started because the miles were ticking away ever so slowly. I was also pretty relaxed during the trip and failed to hear Dereak's turn command or recognize his turn signal (The real reason was that there were sheep on the side of the road and I was "Baa-ing" as I passed by). So Dereak turned down a road, and I had to wait for it to clear before biking pretty hard to catch up.

The road we turned on was a really nice back country road of about 8 miles. It reminded me a lot of Silverton backroads, and was pretty awesome since we only saw 3 cars take the road we were on. We took silly videos on Snapchat, and Dereak sent one in to Snaporegon where we got featured, so he was pretty stoked on life when we decided to take our break. We stopped in the shade at a little house on the side of the road, and got some water. Taking a break is probably one of the worst ideas because starting back up seems a hundred times harder. We took about 20 minutes on the side of the road before tackling the last stretch of the backroads which lead us into Junction City.

In Junction City, Dereak and I wanted to find a convenience store to get some fresh cold water at, and we were almost out of the city when we found a tiny shack on the side of the road. It's one of those things that looks slightly sketchy, but you give it a shot anyways. Turns out it was really good because we got bottled water that tastes like mango for fifty cents. We took another 15 minutes here for a break before biking along the highway for another 8 miles.

Once we got off of 99, it became much more turn oriented as we were lead to bike paths in Eugene. This part was absolutely brutal because our thighs are already sore, my hips were tight, and my hands were raw from the uncomfortable handlebars.

Once we made it to Dereak's friends' apartment, we split up and I went to find Kylan and meet his friends. We had an awesome time catching up, I got to meet many new people who were equally surprised that I was a beaver and that I biked down from Corvallis. Admittedly, U of O's campus isn't as bad as I thought it would be. The feeling of being in a major city isn't appealing, but I loved the food there. Being a runner, it was like heaven when I heard that Ky's dorm (Carson) had an all you can eat buffet.

After staying up all night playing Risk and watching movies, we had the brilliant late-night idea of building a fort in the commons. We used the sofas and put bedsheets crossing over from one to another, and put chairs on the sofas to hold down said sheets. It looked really cool, and once we added the bed mattresses quite comfortable too. However, once it became noon and an RA walked out of her dorm, it was another story. The UO students all got written-up, but I was under the care of Ky so there wasn't much they could do about me. So that was a win on my part.

Dereak and I decided that that trip was freakin' awesome, and so we're looking to continue doing spontaneous biking trips. I don't know where we'll go next (Silverton? The Coast?) but I'm totally pumped for another adventure.