The Workload

This morning I woke up at 8:30 AM to go to breakfast with Oyin, Dani, and Alexa. Thanks to Oyin I got to eat because if I didn't eat I would be hungry until dinner which would have been bad. I'm glad she got me up and told me to go eat with them. At breakfast I ate cream of wheat, eggs, and waffles covered in syrup. After breakfast I went back to bed until 10:30 AM and left to go to my class at 11 AM so that I could get help on my lab report. The TA didn't come until 12 PM because her commute there was bad and the bus she takes didn't come for about an hour.

I thought that it was kind of helpful to actually start on the report but I didn't get that much out of it. The professor was there while the TA wasn't and she gave me information that helped to start the report. I stayed at the class until 2:30 PM and missed lunch. (So glad I ate breakfast, Thanks Oyin) When I went back to my room and started to work on my report more but still haven't finished it. I have a two reports due on Tuesday and one on Thursday plus a poster that's due on Friday.

For me not to have work for the first two weeks is bad because it would have been better to do these reports the first and second week. If I had these reports assigned to me a week ahead it would have been better because I would have more time to do them instead of cramming them in one week.Even though I have a workload to do, I'm still having fun. I decided that every time I stop working I will do ten push-ups.

I am ending the night by working hard and finishing these assignments. Even though I have a lot of work to do, I will make sure that it is done even if I have to stay up late. Hopefully I finish it on time and be done with everything. Wish me luck!!!

Time Management is Everything

Oyin woke me up at 8:30 AM this morning to eat breakfast. It was a great breakfast, which I think might have been due to the new summer program that arrived today. I had waffles with syrup, potatoes, bagel with cream cheese, fruit, and turkey bacon (read: carbs on carbs on carbs). Afterwards, I went to the Crerar library with Oyin and worked on my book report on embryonic stem cells. We stayed there for about six hours straight! We worked so hard we missed lunch.

Spent 6 hours working at one of these cubicles with Oyin

I was so proud once I finished my book report. The walk back to South Campus was much welcome—it helped me stretch out my numb limbs.

I did what any person working on four hours of sleep would do—I took a nap. The college students I’ve met on alumni dinners are right, naps have become my best friend.

Oyin woke me up at around 5:30 to get dinner. Since we skipped lunch, dinner was much needed. I had a salad, fries, macaroni and cheese, ice cream, fruit, and tea. I went back to my room, edited my book report, found a biotechnology article (that I’ll present tomorrow in class) about scientists recently sequencing African rice and an inedible wild South American tomato. African rice is more drought resistant than Asian rice, and the South American tomato has genes linked to dehydration resistance, fruit development, and ripening. Sequencing of the South American tomato is already being used to improve the common tomato through interbreeding, and may help breed tastier, more stress-tolerant tomatoes.

Oryza glaberrima, or African rice

After finishing that, I went out of my room for study break (we had homemade pizzas! They were so good) and ended up studying with other people. We stayed in the Halperin lounge and did our work. I was able to get some reading material done early! Staying at UChicago really is improving my time-management skills. I’m glad I got a lot of work done today; I’ll be able to have more time to relax or study later on this week.

Halperin lounge

 I took a study break after finishing the reading assignment. After finishing this blog, I’m done for the day! I might even have time to watch a movie or have a full seven hours’ worth of sleep! What I learned today: Time management is everything! It all pays off in the end.

Day Off

Today I took the day off so I can get some rest. The whole week I had only slept about five-hours each day. I wanted to repower up for tomorrow. I missed breakfast and lunch. I woke up late in the afternoon around 2 O’clock.  I started to work on my revision for my personal story because Achy send an email to everyone to correct our dialogue, punctuation, and use the elements that she has taught us. I needed to change the last paragraph to a failure. My character desire was to win a soccer tournament. The failure needed to be that he doesn’t win the tournament. I was into the story that I forgot about the elements.  That’s the first thing I started doing when I woke up.

Then, I took a break to go make some popcorn in the kitchen on Halperin lounge. I went upstairs to Vicky room, asked her if she wanted some popcorn. Vicky wanted to make pizza that she bought yesterday in Target. We went to the kitchen on Halperin lounge. We stayed there because the pizza was going to take forty minutes to make in the oven. While we waited, Vicky and I started playing foosball. We barely started playing, when Alexa comes in to the lounge, coming back from class. She looked very tired and sleepy. Vicky asked her if she wanted pizza that she was making.

When the pizza was ready, Vicky cut the pizza into three slices for Alexa and me. When I finished eating the pizza, I went upstairs to get my laptop, to keep on working on my last paragraph. Then Oyin came back from the library where she was at with Dani. Oyin was by herself when she came to the lounge. Vicky was working on her lab report. I was working on my personal essay. Oyin than joined us by reading her book that she needs to read six chapters.

Later on, we all went to get dinner at the Dining Hall. But first, Oyin needed to wake up Dani because she told her when we go to get dinner to wake her up. We got to the Dining Hall, sat down together and started talking about how our day was going. We stayed at the Dining Hall for an hour. We went back to the dorms to keep doing our work. I stayed in my room and worked on the worksheets that Pamela left me. It was work sheets about simple past tense verbs, regular and irregular.

When, I was done with all the work sheets, I went down to Keller lounge where Alexa and Oyin were. I started reading the book that Pamela gave me. The book name is, “A Girl Named Zippy.” This book is about the author telling her story when she was three years old. I barely started reading it, so far I have read to chapter two. This book was interesting that the author can remember all those memories since she was three years old. My memories could only remember from age five.

Then, I went up to Went lounge with my group Evan and Liwen to revise our story. The story was due at midnight. We didn't really work on it for a long time. We changed a few things and fixed our dialogue. After we finished revising the story, Evan read the story to see if we can change things or cut unwanted details.

Today was only for work and sleep. I needed to be responsible and turn my work in. Besides, my mind was weak every time I get a moment of silence I would fall asleep. I needed to restore energy back to my body. Overall, today was a good day I had fun playing Foosball with Vicky and Alexa.

I hope tomorrow goes well. I wonder if Achy would like any of the class stories because she was really upset about the dialogue errors. I hope I get feedback from her about my story. I know is not going to be good feedback, but at least she can tell me was wrong with it so I can go back and revise the story. 

The Sunset

Busy Day

I had a lot of work that I needed to get done for my sustainability class. I had to finish my BRICS assignment with my partner, I had to finish the book Enough is Enough and I needed to write a reflection on the documentary that we watched in class Friday. To add to all of this, I also had to prep for our afternoon speakers for tomorrow.

After breakfast, I went to the John Crerar Library with Dani to try and finish some of this work. Last night, I prepared most of the information that I needed for the PowerPoint and I only needed to try and find a few extra things. I had a lot of trouble with finding out any sustainable infrastructure that the South African government invested in and that really troubled me because it was the last bit of information that I needed. I asked my partner Barbara for help and she was able to link me a document that answered the question for me. Once I had doubled checked all the information that I had, I was able to put it onto the PowerPoint and Barbara was able to do the same with the information that she had researched.

I was really glad that I got the PowerPoint finished and that opened up some time for me to finish reading Enough is Enough. Me and Dani got caught up in our work and we didn't realize that the time was going by really fast. It wasn't until about three hours after the dining commons closed that we realized that we missed lunch. Luckily, dinner wasn't too long away so we decided that we would just wait until dinner time to go eat. At this point, I was already really close to finishing the book and I had already submitted my documentary reflection paragraph. When Dani was finished with her work, we decided to go back to the dorm rooms to relax before it was dinner time. 

After dinner, I went to an empty lounge so that I could finish reading Enough is Enough. At this point in the course, it is becoming easier for me to read the business and economic language that I come across. Before at the start of the course I would have to read slower so that I could comprehend the material. Now, I am able to read the material at a quicker pace and I'm understanding it even more. In between my reading, Barbara came to me so that we could add some last minute touches to our presentation and to make sure that we were ready for tomorrow. When we finished that, I went back to reading Enough is Enough and I was able to finish that also.

I got all of my work done sooner than I expected today. I thought that I would have to work into the night like the other days but I finished everything surprisingly early. I'm not complaining because that means that I could potentially get more sleep tonight. I got more sleep this week but my eating breakfast had to suffer because I kept on sleeping in. I was able to develop a better flow this week and I sort of developed a pattern for my day that I stuck to. This week, I want to make the best out of my last week here. In class, I want to see my presentation skills improve and I want to spend as much time as I can with a lot of the people here. 

Sunday's Class

Even though I was the only one in the cohort who had class today, Oyin, Dani, and Victoria also had breakfast with me, before I started walking to class. Because it was Sunday, the building was locked and we all had to meet at 9:30 at a specific spot around the building. Class started out with the studies right away. The different groups all joined up, and discussed details of the study before the participants showed up. The first participant was the daughter of the program daughter. Cassie jokingly told us this was the one participant whose study had to be perfect. Her daughter was six years old. This time, I did all of the talking with her. She was very cute and cooperative. She also, like the first participant in our study, took two toys from the bowl. She was also honest about it, and told on Meg, the negative peer influence, the moment I reentered the room. So we started to see a pattern emerging, but unfortunately out of about ten participants, only the two we tested were girls. For this reason, my group is going to have to use the data of a second group to make a more complete research paper. The other group, which consists of Katherine, Eugenia, and Cookie, is basically doing the same study as us, with a few changes, but with boys. We are going to compare what we found out with our subjects with what they found with theirs.

Our next assignment is to write up the results/discussion portion of the final paper. This is supposed to be about three pages long, but it should include charts and graphs. The results part of the paper is supposed to have all of the raw data and statistics of the study we did. We have to show the data in multiple forms. The discussion part is more about what our findings mean and how what we learned can be applied outside of just the study. This is due by Wednesday, and we just started because we just finished gathering all of our data today. Our first participant was at about 9:45 and the study only took about ten minutes, so we had a lot of time in class to just work on our paper. I revised my introduction and literature review again, as well as my methods, and then I e-mailed them to Cassie. She told she would do a second look over of our papers if we e-mailed them to her by tomorrow morning, so I took advantage of the opportunity. We also all reviewed our videos and recorded the data. We had to stay in class until 3:30 and then we were let go.

 After class, I walked back to the dorms, where I met Victoria and Jimmy in a lounge. I hung out with them for a while, and we played foosball. Then after a bit, we all went to dinner. I wanted to work on my paper some, and everyone else had work to finish for tomorrow so we went to a lounge. Tomorrow I will probably work on my paper, and I might go into the city with Catherine and Eugenia if I have enough time.

Trip to Millennium Park

This morning I woke up at 8:15 AM so that we could all go to the info session at 9 AM. Before we went to the info session we got breakfast and left around 8:50 AM because the place wasn't that far from the dorms. The place where the info session was held is called Julius Rosenwald Hall. On our way there we ran into Leilani from the Chicago dinner. In the info session they talked about applying to the school and what majors and minors were the most popular. After the info seesion Oyin, ALexa and I went back to the hall to get a folder with all of the information and ended up running into Teddy and Eric. We talked to Teddy for a couple of minutes and then we left because Oyin and Alexa were going to church with Dani.

While Oyin, Dani, and Alexa went to church Jimmy and I went to the city to go see the bean in Millennium Park and we got there by bus. We left campus around 2 PM. While we were in the city we saw some people drumming on buckets  making music, which was very interesting to me. Then we went to Target to buy some things we needed. When we left Target there were people protesting about the killings of children. We also saw my roommate Katherine. After that we went to a variety of stores to look around. Then we walked to this area where there was a Chicago Summer Dance Festival and we sat an listened to the music for a while until we went back to the dorms.

But when we first got to the city we walked by The Crown Fountain. Before we left we went to go eat Subway and then we walked to the bus stop to catch the bus back to the dorms. I really enjoyed being in the city and I also enjoyed all of the entertainment that occurred today. When we got back to the dorms we met up with Alexa and Oyin in Keller House lounge. Dani wasn't there because she had work to do. We hung out until curfew and Jimmy went back to his room an hour after while Oyin, Alexa, and I stayed in Keller lounge. I left 45 minutes after Jimmy and Oyin and Alexa were getting ready to leave as well. I ended the night in my room with my roommate doing an assignment from class.

Exploring Millennium Park

Beautiful

Watching the sun rise

ss

Today in the morning I needed to wake up early to go to the admission info at 9 AM. I started getting ready; put my laptop in my backpack because after the session I was meeting up with Pamela. I needed to meet up with the girls at the Dining Hall, from there we would go to the admission office. When we got to the admission office, they told us were the presentation was being held. The presentation was about the academics and courses that the school provides, early admission, be creative on your prompts, what are the best qualities of the school, goes by quarters, dorms are divided by houses groups, and could be undecided until your third year of college. I have learned more about the school because my RA talked about it in the first day. Pamela give me background info about the campus.

Ready for church

When the Info session finished, I left the building and started jogging to the International house. I got there at 10:15 AM. I thought that Pamela was at the door waited for me, but she got stuck in traffic. When Pamela arrived at the International House, she apologized for being late, and asked where I want to work at. We went outside; to work revise my personal story. We went through the last paragraphs that I finished last night. We were revising the story because it was due today at noon. In my last paragraphs I was still making the same mistakes with the verbs ending. I was reading the paragraphs as Pamela goes along with me and stop me where I have an error. I needed to spy where the error was at and fix it. When we were done with the last paragraph, I needed to read the whole story because I still had errors to fix and ideas to add.  I still need to keep working on my verbs ending. I took off information that we didn't needed in the story. 

As I arrived to campus, I went to my room to leave my backpack and go down to get Lunch. At the Dining Hall, I saw Vicky and joined her. I asked Vicky if she wanted to go to the downtown Chicago. Alexa,Dani, and Oyin were not in campus because they went to church with Dani. Then Vicky and I went to up to get ready because we were leaving at 2 PM from the campus. When we arrived to the park, we walked to clown fountain, they are this two square tall rocks building. I think the clown fountain is so beautiful because is something that I have never seen. We were going to Millennium Park to walk around and to go see the famous bean. I also wanted to attend the Chicago summer dance that Pamela showed me and told me go check it out. Pamela told me about the summer dance because I told her that I like to dance and learn new dances. This is what Chicago summer dance is every weekend starting from Friday they have different variety of dances from around the world. From 6 PM to 7:30 Pm they would have dance lessons. From 7:30 to 9 PM is free-for-all dance to show what you have learned.

Then, Vicky and I went to Target because she needed to buy soap and toothpaste. I bought a pack of popcorn because we been having movies night and people be having popcorn, I love popcorn.  It was such a coincidence that Vicky saw her roommate in Target too. 

Vicky wanted to go back to campus because she needed to work on a lab report. We didn't really know how to get back, so we ended up walking a lot because we thought that the number six bus was going to pass in the opposite directions like in the Bay Area. We were wrong. I pulled out the bus app that shows me a map of all the bus stops close to my area. Then, I search for the number six bus that was 3 blocks away from us but in a different street. I thought this was very confusing that they don’t go back to the same street. Finally, Vicky and I were able to find the bus stop and it was another great weekend even though we just went to explore Millennium Park.

A Wonderful Day Attending UChicago's Info Session and Shiloh SDA Church

Our Chicago cohort went to UChicago’s information session today at 9 AM. Our speaker talked about the extracurricular activities one could participate in at UChicago, the house system used at UChicago, and the admissions process. She mostly talked about essays and grades—like all other admissions officers, she made sure to mention that SAT grades definitely do not make or break an application. She said that they look for students who are passionate and dedicated to the activities they do. As an example, she told us about an applicant who talked about winning an award for acting as “Best Peasant” for a historical event she took part in. It doesn’t matter what it is, she said, as long as you write about something you’re genuinely passionate about that also shows them your personality.

Every person we’ve met from UChicago says that the house system is great. Though I do like the people in the house I was put in, I wish we had gotten more of a UChicago experience by taking a survey and getting placed in houses due to similar interests.

Attending Shiloh!

At around 10:15 AM, Alexa, Oyin, and I went to the Shiloh Seventh-Day Adventist church near campus. It was so nice to attend a church service! I felt more and more relaxed after every song, prayer, and testimony. I felt ready to tackle our last week here at UChicago.

We also met a lot of people there! Besides Oyin and Alexa, the only person I knew there was Casey. Everyone there was extremely friendly and genuinely glad to be there! It reminded me of the church I attend in American Canyon, California.

Alexa, Oyin, and I explained the program to the people we met. When they found out we take classes at UChicago and live on campus, all expenses paid, they were shocked! One lady (Auntie Wennie) said, “You girls have it made!” We do—everyone part of ILC does.

We made it back to campus at around 2 PM. I changed and rested a bit in my room before going to a lounge with Oyin and Alexa to do our work. We ordered Thai food later on, which was delicious! It was the best meal I’ve had in days.

The cucumber salad they gave

While eating and talking with Alexa and Oyin, I found out on the social network that the Vanderbilt and Penn cohorts were arriving in California today! They all seemed really sad about it. It’s so strange to think that next week, that’ll be me leaving Chicago! I’ve gotten really attached to this place.

Since I’ve only gotten a couple hours’ worth of sleep every night, I took a nice, long nap after eating. I woke up, did some research for my book report and research paper, and went to the Dining Commons to grab some tea and doughnuts.

I’ve been working on my papers at my desk ever since then, occasionally taking a break to talk to a friend on the phone or watch people play foosball in the lounge.

The “calm before the storm” I talked about the other day? It ends as soon as I wake up tomorrow. I know it’ll be a fun and rewarding ride in the end!