Graduation

I graduated yesterday! (Yay!) Three pictures are added to my Fourth Year album, go to the third page at the end of the album.

It was a nice day. It drizzled a little bit on our outside Physics Diploma Ceremony, but it wasn't bad. In addition to my BS in Physics with High Distinction, and BA in Chemistry, I received the Physics Department's Most Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award for the work I did in the fall.

A nice day!

walking to work this morning...

..I was reminded of one of those sights you see only on college campuses. Older, male professor-types riding bicycles to work, dressed in wool suits and dress shoes, with a reflective band around the right ankle and a briefcase bungee-corded over the back tire. Incredible.

Yesterday was the last day of exams and now the Grounds are empty, devoid of human life. It's kind of peaceful, kind of creepy.

Ten minutes ago I handed in my take-home exam. That was the last item for the winter exam period. So my penultimate undergraduate semester is now over!

It's funny, though I didn't have any "real" exams--no three-hour closed-book, in-class exam--this was probably one of the tougher exam periods I've had. A lot of writing to do. Yuck. But I got it all done, and now it is Winter Break time!

Between semesters, I'm going to keep doing research for Stefan. I wasn't able to actually collect much data during the semester in my independent study, and there are other things we'd like to know, so I'm getting paid for a few weeks this winter. It should be nice, keep myself busy during the days, and yet also relaxing.

Dedication.

Oh wow, it's December.

Yup.

This week was the last week of classes for the fall semester! That's almost equally crazy. So today I had a presentation for my lab class, which was in lieu of a lab report for one of five physics labs this semester. My partner and I talked about a nuclear lab we did, in which radiation spectra were taken of a few different sources. But since it was the one required lab for everyone, we wanted to focus less on rehashing every single experiment and instead we focused on the practical side of the experiment. Namely, how do you decide what detector is appropriate for an experiment? So for a lot of our presentation we contrasted the main types of detectors.

Okay. So there's this class of detectors called scintillators, which means that the detector absorbs a high energy and emits a lower energy. The first scintillators used were in about 1906, way before technology caught up to the science they were trying to do. So they had materials that emitted visible light when hit by radiation. They would actually take a piece of the material under a microscope and count the flashes of light as it was hit by radiation.

Wow. That's some dedication to science.

Protesting a Protest

Last week was "Proud To Be Out Week", here at UVA, with events every day to make the general student body aware of the prevalence of and obstacles faced by 'out' members of the community, especially other students. On Friday was a performance of "The Laramie Project", essentially a play written from the documentary of the responses in the Laramie, Wyoming community to the murder of Matthew Shepard. A few other universities were also having performances, I think that PTBOW is a national thing.

On about Tuesday, word got out that Westboro Baptist Church (yes, that one: the small congregation that protested Shepard's funeral, as well as funerals for soldiers and even the victims of the VA Tech Shootings two years ago) was going to come to UVA to protest the "Laramie Project" performance.

A counter-protest was organized. Anyone interested in showing Westboro Baptist Church that their hateful messages were unwanted were to show up outside the performance venue wearing black, to line the pathways to prevent WBC from preventing the audience from entering. I decided that I felt strongly enough about the issue that I went, though I've never protested anything in my life.

We organized an hour before the start of the play and lined the brick pathways, which at that point of Grounds extend in three directions. The protest-protest organizers passed out candles; the plan was to maintain silence no matter what WBC did or said, just in a line of solidarity and light. It was incredible to see so many people there, to see the radiant candles against the sea of black.

Westboro Baptist Church never showed up. A rumor spread about that they might have gone to Richmond to protest their "Laramie Project" instead of ours. It didn't matter, really, that we had no opposition. I think the overflowing support for the rights of a play to be shown, for a group of people to exist without hate, was a message in and of itself. It's a shame that we couldn't do that without an outside threat, but all the same... it was beautiful.


In the news!:
Local CBS news (check out the video at the bottom!)
Cavalier Daily (student paper)

One of my favorite signs at the protest simply said:
Love One Another
As I Have Loved You

Summer in the City

I guess that travel can include Charlottesville. I am not sure. Either way, it's interesting to note what is different since coming back. Many of these things are particular to Cville, the plethora of summer construction, including the physics side parking lot, tearing up the main road through Grounds, and work as always and yet with little progress behind Cabell. I used to park behind Cabell a lot, it actually had spaces... I wonder where all those people got displaced to. The sculptures in the medians are mostly changed, as are certain restaurants/bakeries/cafes. I can't find anything in the grocery stores, but that is a problem wherever you go.

Even the Cville Kroger has a British food section, of two small cases at the end of the Frozen Pizza aisle. Most of the shelves are empty, but they have McVittie's Digestives. I'll be honest, I was tempted. I'll bet Harris Teeter has more, and Foods Of All Nations more still. The cider situation is worse than I thought, but it's nice to know exactly what's in the food I'm buying. Amazing how different packaging can be. As yet the only food I would like but can't find is haggis. No one understands haggis.

I'm slowly adapting to American currency, American prices, and American attitudes. Sometimes my friends tease me for using British phrases, but "half-seven" for 7:30, "queue", and "can't be bothered" will stick for a long time I hope. I know how to drive on the right-hand side of the road, and I'm getting used to looking left-right-left when crossing the street. Life skills, life skills.