What I did in kindergarten all day

Today, I visited the school Joseph is mostly likely going to go to if the odds work out in our favor. I felt pretty reassured by my visit -- it seems like a cute place with reasonable policies (a whole half hour for recess after a half hour lunch, for example). As we saw the halls filled with 100th day of school pictures and Dr. Seuss birthday decorations and Valentines and shamrocks, I got really, really excited about him going there. (If the lottery works out :D)

This whole process has given me lots of flashbacks from my kindergarten days. As far as I can remember, it was just 180 days of nonstop fun with my energetic teacher, Mrs. Cooley. As I recall snippets about Thanksgiving plays and Valentine teas and chicks in incubators, I think, "Oh, I hope my kids get to do this fun stuff too!"

My kindergarten picture. Still not sure where it falls on the spectrum between darling and creepy doll. 

Although I can't remember all the specifics (I couldn't say, for example, if we did 90 minutes of literacy and 60 minutes of math, like these kids will), I have definitely held onto the most important elements of what we did in kindergarten all day. For example:

1. Talk. We all sat at tables and chatted with each other as we worked on our assignments from Mrs. Cooley. There was one boy that was a little mean so I was a little scared of him, but he was also a fountain of knowledge.
"If your brain stopped working, you would just freeze in place. Like this!" And he would demonstrate. The argument commenced about whether you would die or just freeze, and I really didn't know the answer. (Apparently you die.)

He also taught us the cool way to count to 100. "One, two, skip a few, 99, 100." I kind of liked the real way better, the way with all the numbers on the chart with all the great patterns. But he did seem really cool when he counted like that.

So I wanted to be cool back. One time he and a few other boys were talking about football because somehow even 5 year olds can be fairly knowledgeable about the NFL. I decided to interject.

"My uncle plays football. Maybe you've heard of him." I knew that my mom had mentioned that he played football in high school, so maybe he was kind of famous.

"What's his name?"

"Erik Rytting."

The boy paused for a moment, looked thoughtful, and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah. I think I have heard of him!" I felt a glow of pride to be related to someone so famous.

I learned lots from other kids too. One boy started always saying, "I don't like you. I love you," to me and everyone else all the time. Then he explained. "Since we are all children of Heavenly Father, that means we're all brothers and sisters. So we all love each other! That's why I love you.

I thought that was a pretty good explanation, and I also felt flattered that he loved me. Maybe it meant we would get married someday.

2. Recess was a pretty important 15 or so minutes of the day. We cycled through various parts of the playground different days depending on the weather. In the early fall and late spring, the big south-facing metal slide was way too hot to go on, but in the winter it was a coveted piece of real estate to lie down on, basking in the heat it provided. We also used it for some weird game called "crocodile" where I think kids at the bottom were the crocodiles that tried to drag kids down the slide, and other kids at the top would help rescue them. Although I don't remember any dislocated arms or other injuries, the slide was gone by the time I finished elementary school so someone somewhere must have recognized it as a safety hazard.

Except for the one boy who was shorter than me in both kindergarten and first grade, I was probably the smallest kid on the playground, and it was intimidating being out there with all the big kids, especially the 5th graders. One time a bossy 5th grader wouldn't let us go on the twisty slide, and our teacher got mad at her. I was grateful for her intervention, but I was also just in awe that a person could be as old as that 5th grader. Somehow I knew that even when I was a 5th grader I wouldn't be as old as her. It's been almost 22 years, and I'm still not as old as her.

Although I usually stuck close to my friends Rebecca and Brittany (we were dubbed the Three Musketeers), one day they must have been gone and I was playing mostly by myself. Then I looked around and realized I was playing even more by myself than I thought -- I couldn't find any of my classmates! Where had they gone? I frantically ran all around the playground again and again and again. Surely someone was still out there! I saw a neighbor boy in 1st grade playing and ran up to him, eager to see a friendly face. "Maybe they went inside," he said. Then his whistle blew and he said he had to go. "See ya," he said, leaving me alone.

In what felt like a matter of seconds, whistle after whistle blew, and all the kids hurried in. I stood there in horror. I was the last kid on the playground.

I saw the last teacher heading inside, and in a panic I asked her where my class went. She took me to my classroom and found my teacher. The rest of my class had gone to some assembly with a clown, so for the next little while it was just me and my teacher there. I sipped my milk (I was way too late to get the chocolate milk that day) and ate my graham cracker and she just sort of chatted with me. Cleaned up some milk that spilled on the ground. It was sort of a surreal experience being there with a teacher like that. Before too long, the rest of the class was back, and no one seemed to care at all about my traumatizing experience on the playground. But that was okay -- it was less embarrassing that way.

3. There were plenty of other times I was traumatized, come to think of it. We learned a lot about fire safety, especially since it had just been a few years since the school had caught on fire, and I spent days following those lessons wondering when my house was going to catch on fire. And what was I supposed to do? I had just moved down to a bedroom in the basement, and all we learned about was how to leave upper-story bedrooms. My parents reassured me it would be really easy to climb out of my basement, but it was still really troubling to think about.

Worse though was the poison assembly. It wasn't a normal assembly in the gym. Instead it was in a smaller room so we could be up close for the horrors that ensued. They acted out scenario after scenario in which kids made unwise decisions about dangerous chemicals, and then they would freeze. A woman dressed up like Raggedy Ann would press play on the tape recorder and sing, "Some things are No-No's! No-No's! Stop before you do!" or some other melody that seared itself into my hippocampus and left nightmares for weeks afterwards about poisons. 

Then, of course, there was the time there was a substitute. I think we had one very occasionally, and most of the time it was really fine. But then one time it was just this strange, strange man named Dr. Cool. He had funny glasses, short golden curly hair, and a bowtie, and he seemed oddly familiar in an unsettling way.

"Who is that?" we whispered to each other. "Maybe it's Mr. Cooley," I suggested. We knew there was something unnatural enough about Dr. Cool to be some kind of joke, but who was playing it?

After recess, we were all relieved to find out Mrs. Cooley was back. And, lo and behold, she had been Dr. Cool all along! Then she promised us to never tell our younger siblings so she could play the same trick on them in a few years.

What wasn't so traumatizing though was her classroom. It was more cool than scary to have a pet tarantula in the class, and once you got used to the mounted deer head on the wall during Christmas time, that was kind of cool too. We learned pretty early on that tarantulas, snakes, and mounted deer were not real threats, but fires and poisons were. So I guess in that sense I learned what I really needed to from kindergarten.

4. Utah turned 100 years old about halfway through kindergarten, so that of course meant lots of celebrations and assemblies.

I was in the black, doing my usual strange smile.

Perhaps the most exciting part was how we got to learn all the songs for the centennial assembly. Of course, only the 5th graders got to sing the best song about iron wheels a-rolling and meeting up at Promontory Point, but we still had the tape so we could sing it at home. And, of course, dance to it.

In addition to the assembly, we had lots of assignments having to do with Utah turning 100 -- birthday cakes, prompts, and pictures to draw. As you can see, I clearly took advantage of everything Utah had to offer.

although, I enjoyed croquet less once I learned about poison

of course I did. there were free samples.

5. Somehow in the midst of all this we found time to learn our letters and numbers. Each week we had an assignment to find a few pictures that started with the letter we were learning about and glue them into our workbook. I recently talked to my mom about this, and this was the first time I found out it was just supposed to be 3 pictures per letter. I had thought we needed to fill the entire two pages. So each week I would come in with all sorts of pictures from all sorts of ads and magazines glued in, often overlapping each other because there wasn't space for all of them. It was hard work, but it sure was satisfying to see that my book could barely close right for all the glue and pictures in it.

We also spent a lot of time coloring, which I really enjoyed. One time though we had an assignment to draw a bus. I looked around and everyone reached for the yellow and black crayons to draw the school bus. I frowned. I didn't ride the bus to school, and I had never even been on one. I knew what they looked like well enough, but that didn't mean I wanted to draw it.

But I still drew a bus. The city bus. Not that I had been on that either, but at least it was not as ugly as a school bus.

Although my defiant streak didn't manifest very often, I guess it showed up when I colored. One time my teacher told me that rainbows and fireworks would never happen at the same time. So when I got home, I decided to draw my own picture that she would never see. It had rainbows, fireworks, and even candy falling from the sky for good measure.

I am pretty sure I kept that picture on my wall for like 6 years.

And that defiance served me well on the last day of school. As Leslie and I walked home, some boys came out with their squirt guns and began to spray us in a last-day-of-school kind of exuberance.

I immediately stuck my hands in the irrigation ditch and waved the droplets at the boys. "We don't need you to spray us! We're already wet, see? SEE?" Leslie dragged me away, telling me that would only encourage them. She didn't understand that I had probably just saved her life, but it was okay. Kindergarten had been a triumphant year of my life, and I had just ended it in victory.

Negative red

There's been something on my mind for the past little while that I've wanted to blog about. I think the best way to introduce it is to start at the beginning.

When I was 7, I went straight from 1st grade to 3rd grade with only a summer in between. I skipped 2nd grade entirely.

It wasn't really that uncommon in our district, come to think of it. I remember off the top of my head that Jessame, Dani, Leslie, Brooke, Mandy, Becca, and Ishmaal also skipped a grade. Possibly other kids as well. My mom and at least one of her siblings did, too. When there's no gifted and talented program, and not even Accelerated Reader at your school, that's kind of what you have to do to keep the smart kids from getting bored out of their minds.

I think the possibility of me skipping a grade had been open for a while. I was an early reader and loved to learn about pretty much everything. But I feel like what had cemented it was what I brought for show and tell  one day in 1st grade. Leslie and I had made up a joke a few days before. Since red plus yellow made orange, orange minus yellow made red. Therefore, yellow minus orange made, wait for it, negative red.

And it was the funniest joke ever to two little girls! "What's yellow minus orange? Negative red! Bahahaha." We told that joke back and forth all day. I decided to use one of the coveted pieces of poster board in the house to even diagram it. I made a chart with all the primary colors and described their addition and subtraction properties. I brought that poster in for show and tell and explained to the class what all the colors meant. "And right here, see, yellow minus orange equals negative red," I told them, trying not to laugh.

Blank stares. My smile faltered.

Shortly thereafter, it was time for parent teacher conferences. I seem to remember that they cut to the chase pretty quickly.

"We think Kyra should skip a grade."

The discussion veered that direction, talking about social aspects of it and would I fit in and should I start transitioning sooner to be with that class. Then they asked, "Well, what would you like to learn about?"

What would I like to learn? Goodness, what was left to learn? I knew how to read well. I knew how to add and subtract and tell time. I even knew what photosynthesis was because my teacher had taught it to us one day. Didn't I basically know everything about everything?

Then I realized I didn't. There was something I dealt with daily and didn't understand.

"Zippers."

"Zippers," they repeated. Yup. Zippers. After looking at me quizzically for a minute, they continued their big long conversation about the whole thing. I was already fairly young for my grade (spring birthday), I was the second smallest in my class (thank you Channing for being shorter), etc, etc, etc. I didn't really pay attention.

"Um, I thought of something else I want to learn about," I announced. "Fans."

"Oh, okay," they told me. And then I think the conference was over.





You know, I never did learn about zippers or fans in school. I had to look them up on Wikipedia.

A few songs

This morning, I remembered my magnum opus.

Okay, my real magnum opuses are my marriage to Kevin, my baby Joseph, and my master's degree. But besides those, I have another magnum opus. It's called "Mediocrity."

Kind of ironic, isn't it -- my greatest work is about mediocrity. But it is! It's a song I wrote 4 years ago about feeling mediocre at BYU. And today I remembered it. And I remembered that I wanted other people to know it. A few other people do -- my ward once used it in a little musical they made. (I wish they would have consulted me on things like the tempo or rhythm a bit more, but alas.) I sang it once at Acoustic Explosion. So it's not entirely unknown.

But the thing is, it's never been achieved on the large scale like I wanted. To be done right, it requires at least 4 singers as well as some dancers. It would sound better with a few instruments besides the piano. At the very least, I feel like it deserves to be sung by people who are . . . better singers than me.

Here are the words, at least. I have the sheet music in PDF form but I don't know how to add that to this blog post.

I come from a little town in Texas --

Only pianist in my ward.

I was helpful, I was needed,

At least, I wasn't ignored!

My high school was in East San Francisco --

I stood up, I stood out, was strong!

But here at BYU, I'm not different;

I'm just another Mormon in the throng.

Cuz Mediocrity is my specialty now

I used to be the very best but now I blend in with the rest

No one flocks to me as the special one now

I'd like to be important again, somehow.

They call me AP Harold --

I took 4 tests each May!

But now I'm here at BYU

That's not a lot to say!

Cuz Mediocrity is my specialty now

When all your ward got 4 point oh's I guess that's how it goes.

Please talk to me like I'm special somehow

Cuz I am feeling small and unsure right now.

I did ballet and racquetball,

Piano, tennis, band,

Was student body president

But now can't understand,

If I could be in NHS

And be first-ranked, no less,

With all my high school accolades

Why can't that save my Econ grades?

English and Chem 105

American Heritage, stay alive

Physical Science, Math 113

These classes make me want to scream!

(dance part)

Mediocrity is my specialty now

It stings, it bites, it's really lame to find out we're the same

But though mediocrity is my specialty now,

Someday I know I'll find my place

I'll help the world! You'll know my face!

Cecil, Karl, and Brigham will cheer when they find out what's in store

That mediocrity is not for me anymore!

The end.

So yeah, it needs music with it because the rhythm is a little tricky (some words have to held longer in order for the lines to scan, etc). But yeah. My magnum opus. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I am, however, too shy to demonstrate how it is supposed to sound because that would require me singing. Which is a scary thing to do on the Internet.

Anyway, my dream is that somehow someone somewhere decides to do something with this. Since I never got around to it. Surely there are some BYU students with too much time on their hands, at least in the summer.

Oh, and one other song. I realized this morning that with the changing demographics this other song won't even make sense anymore in a few years, so I ought to share it now. It's called "Freshman Reunion" and it's to the tune of "On top of Spaghetti."

At freshman reunion,

Each girl sports a ring.

You ask, when'd that happen?

Oh, two years last spring.

It started in April

When classes were through.

The girl who'd write weekly

Forgot about you.

The AP was handsome,

And he spoke Chinese.

Her little heart fluttered

When he fell to his knees.

She now has a baby!

And soon will have two.

But you should feel flattered -- 

One's named after you.

This may seem disheartening

But don't waste your time!

Those BYU sophomores

Are now in their prime!

The end. And thus ends my plea for recognition.

Dear World,

Back in the day, you may have said something like "Me 'n Kaylie went to the store." Your mother may have given you a funny look and said, "Mean Kaylie? I think Kaylie's very nice. Don't you mean Kaylie and I?" You may have rolled your eyes, said, "Yes, Mom," and cemented it in your brain that "I" (or "myself") was always appropriate.

You would have been wrong.

Let's say that Jennie comes to the store now. "Jennie went to the store with Kaylie and I." Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!!!! You don't say, "Jennie went to the store with I," so why is it okay if you stick a Kaylie in front?

[Insert grammar babble about subject vs direct object and mention that "myself" is reflexive, so don't use it unless you've already referred to yourself.] If you don't want to be bothered with grammar rules, just remember this: If you're at the beginning of the sentence, use "I." If you're at the end of the sentence, use "me."

Or even better: If you leave the other person out, would you naturally say "me" or "I"? That should solve the mystery.

I believe that if we all fix this problem, the it's/its and your/you're and definately/defiantly/definutly/definitely issues will melt away as surely as the murder rates decreased in NYC when they fixed up the subway windows.

And speaking of murder, every time you use "I" when you should use "me," Shakespeare kills a kitten. Think about that the next time you go to the store with Kaylie.

Sincerely,

a girl who used to read grammar books for fun


ps: this doesn't give all you real English majors permission to peruse my blog for bad punctuation, overuse of parentheses, or bad word choice. It's been a long time since I read those books.


pps: Thanks to Kaylie and Jennie for helping out with my demonstration

The End of an Era

Well, I'm done. After a mad dash to Graduate Studies yesterday at approximately 1:55 to get everything approved by 2:00, I finished my masters degree and am graduating in August.

And with that last desperate sprint, I reached the finish line for a lot of different things. After 17 years of school (and some preschool I guess), I am done with school, possibly for forever. I'm done with college, done with my masters, done with my thesis . . . it's a little surreal.

Although I've reached the finish line for many different things, most of all I feel like I've reached the end of an era that began in winter semester of 2009. Why then? I feel like life has changed very little since then. I did get married in 2010 and got my bachelor's in 2011, but even those events, as momentous as they were, still felt like part of a pattern rather than abrupt shifts. In fact, I feel like the last huge shifts in my life occurred back in 2009.

Let me explain. It was that semester that I really started taking engineering classes and seriously considering electrical engineering. It was during that semester that I made many friends in that major that I still do stuff with today. In particular, it was then that I met Kevin. And it was then that I started going to the Clyde Building all the time. So even after I got married, it was just a transition from being with Kevin all waking hours to being with Kevin all hours. After I graduated, it was just a transition from going to the Clyde Building all the time to going to the Clyde Building even more.

So when I look at how stable things have been for the last 3 years and how much they're going to change within the next few months (no more school, brand new baby, brand new state), I think it's safe to say that I've reached the end of an important era in my life. It's been a wonderful 3+ years, but it's time to move on to a new phase of life (the new moon phase, pun intended).

In the spirit of nostalgia, here are a few things about the past few years that I won't miss, and some that I will.



Things I won't miss

--Research. It has its moments, but more often than not it is frustrating, confusing, and downright annoying. And sort of lonely.


--Working with engineers. At least, not engineering professors. Don't get me wrong -- they are brilliant and considerate and make awesome advisers in a lot of ways. But when it comes down to it . . . they're still engineers. By this I mean some of them would say things that were . . . off-putting. Now, I know they made fun of all the students, so I shouldn't have felt singled out, but when you're kind of the only girl they have different things to make fun of, so I felt singled out anyway. At the beginning it was all about was how I looked 12 years old (just fyi, women don't take that as a compliment until they're like 40), and at the end it was all about how grotesquely large I was (which I didn't appreciate for some odd reason). And if I ever hear the word "waddle" again I may throw something. I guess the take-home message for all professors who may read this is that you are never quite as funny as you think you are, especially when you're making a joke at someone else's expense.


--My computer. The version of Firefox it ran was made in 2006. 2006! Now, I'm sure that back in 2006 Firefox 2.0.0.17 worked great, but by 2012 it was completely lousy. I couldn't check several websites, the BYU homepage was a complete mess, I couldn't make comments on Facebook, and by the end, gmail only showed up in html. I wanted to do a print screen of several webpages to garner pity, but even print screen didn't work on my machine. Furthermore, it was just soooooooo slow. I could have exactly one program running and it would still take several minutes for it to do anything. They're finally going to upgrade the computers this summer, go figure.



Things I will miss
--Research. It can be frustrating, confusing, and downright annoying, but when you figure out how to make the algorithm work or how to simplify the equation, it can be exhilarating.

--Working with Kevin all the time. Those of you who have heard us work on homework together may wonder if I really mean this. After all, there were times when we disagreed and were quite intense in our disagreements. But we both knew that we were disagreeing about how the homework should be done, and as soon as we came to what we thought was the right answer, the fight was over. So yes, I will miss working with him. I'll miss our date nights in the Clyde Building and our late-night adventures getting projects done and the giddiness we both felt when we finally got something to work at 11 at night. I feel like we were able to see problems from different angles and were really able to help each other learn the material better.

--Learning about engineering. One comment I've never appreciated is, "Good for you for going into a technical field. Then if something happens to Kevin you'll be able to support yourself." That is a 100% true statement (albeit a bit morbid), but I feel like I misses the point of why I went into engineering (or why any woman bothers to get an education). I really did like learning about the stuff! If I hadn't liked it I wouldn't have done it. The math, the applications, the theory, all of it was just fascinating. I've still got a list at the back of my mind of stuff I still want to learn about and textbooks I still want to read. And now that school's out of the way I may just have time for them all . . .

So . . . yeah

So, if you didn't bother reading my last post because it started out way too nerdily for you or stayed nerdy too long for you, then let me tell you the punch line.




I'm pregnant. Due May 25th.

How's it going? Well, other than the nausea, fatigue, headaches, cravings, and mood swings, I can hardly tell I'm pregnant! In all seriousness, I think I've been pretty lucky. I've only thrown up a few times, though I've almost done it lots and lots. And who's to say that I can blame the cravings and mood swings on being pregnant? I've always had those!

There is one thing though that I will blame on the pregnancy. I call it "doing math for two." On the off chance I make it to my 8:00 class on time, it's usually because of a quiz. (Being places at 8:00 just does not work very well for me these days . . . it's nothing personal, Dr. Mazzeo . . . in fact, I really enjoy your class.) I've thought these quizzes have been reasonably easy, and yet I keep missing points for stupid mistakes.

Well, I started looking at my mistakes, and I realized that on most every quiz, I was doubling or squaring an answer at least once. On this last quiz, I did it twice! I knew the answer was 'X,' yet in the last two seconds I put 'X^2'. Why, you might ask? Well, I think this little baby inside just wants to have his/her say, too, and so when I put my answer down, the baby does too. So when I mean to write 1, I instead write 2. When I mean to write X, I instead write X^2. Hence, doing math for two. (Too bad I don't think I can argue back points with my theory . . .)

For the most part, things are going well. It seems like I've made it blatantly obvious what with my awkward questions and my not-so-surreptitious snatches of corn flakes in Relief Society on Fast Sunday (yes, I saw you watching me) and my refusal to do anything fun after 9 pm (because that's about when I start falling asleep) and my decidedly unfunny blog posts . . . so, if you suspected it already, I'm not too surprised.

So, yeah. 12 weeks along, life is good, no clue if it's a boy or a girl, and Kevin and I are both ridiculously excited!

Grad School

As you may know, Kevin and I are currently in a masters program at BYU in Electrical Engineering. I thought it would be fun to let you know some of the classes I've been taking.

670 (Stochastic Processes) This class is all about probability, especially for systems. When you put something into a system, what will you get out? If you only get what came out of the system, can you estimate what was put in? When can you ignore events that happened in the distant past? How good are statistical tests at indicating if something is present or not?

775 (Error Control Coding) This class talks about how to improve one aspect of digital communications. Whenever you use a cell phone or other wireless devices, the signal (like your voice) gets transmitted through the air to the receiver on the other end. But between you and the receiver there may be a lot of noise, which may corrupt the signal and cause errors. This class discusses how to "code" the signal so that on the other end you can fix the errors that were caused by the noise. So, it's basically a class on dealing with noise. And then some.

564 (Radar and Satellite Communications) Radar and satellite are all about detecting things. Is there a target there? Is it moving? Is what you saw a missile or the moon? How can you prevent false alarms?

671 (Mathematics of Signals and Systems) So this is basically a linear algebra class. Linear algebra is basically solving Ax = b, where A is a matrix (think of systems of equations from your algebra class in junior high). But from its humble beginnings, this class answers a lot of interesting questions. Like, what's the best way to solve the equation? If you have a bunch of data points, can you create a line or a curve which fits the data pretty well? How do you optimize things?

The cool thing is, even though all this stuff is pretty theoretical, it actually has a ton of applications. For example:

(670) Given that a test indicating the presence of hCG is positive, what is the probability that hCG is actually present?

(775) How do you deal with the noise caused by the construction across the street when certain limitations are set (such as not being able to use any of your preferred pain medicines for headaches)?

(670, well, all of them) How do you best filter out the noise to detect a signal with a rate of 150 beats per minute (particularly when that signal is buried under lots of junk and a louder signal with a rate of approximately 80 beats per minute)?

(671)  How can you tell if something is an inner product space? What properties does it take on?

(564) Given that you wake up nauseous every morning, can you detect when you will actually throw up vs. when you will be fine (that is, the nausea is a false alarm)?

and of course,

(671) Given that a body increases its mass by approximately half a kilogram per week, what is the best-fitting apparel for the curves that will soon be appearing and will change from this

to this by the middle of May?

(thanks to Matthew and Stephanie for letting me borrow their high-tech future camera!)



I'd say grad school has been a great preparation for life.
















(I guess I'm also taking a writing class. This post has been its application.)


(Kevin's in most of these classes with me. Except that instead of taking 775, Kevin's taking Real Analysis, which has been good for him in answering questions such as, "Is this really happening?" "When will this feel real?" "Do I dare analyze her mood?" "Am I really doing a 4th load of dishes in a row?")


Answers:
1) The probability is not 100%, since tests can give false positives. But not these types of tests, at least not very often.
2) Tylenol.
3) I dunno . . . the doctor used a nifty little radio/stethoscope thing that did it just fine.
4) In my case, something is an inner product space if it expands as the inner product expands.
5) Nope.
6) Whatever it is, I am going to have to buy it at some point.

...and not that any of you care . . . but I don't think I look as pregnant in real life as I appear in my first picture. I blame it on the shirt since I stretched it out by taking the second picture first. So you're not seeing a baby bump, I promise. Just poofy shirt and awkward angle and bad posture. And in my second one . . . well, hopefully the baby won't be as lumpy as it looks in this picture.

What I didn't do at BYU

So now I've finished my undergraduate education. It feels . . . interesting. I don't feel a huge sense of "doneness" because I'm going to turn right around the Monday after graduation and continue my research, and then start grad school in the fall with teachers I already know, research I've already been doing for a couple of years, and even textbooks I've been trying to understand for the past decade. So it doesn't feel all that . . . climactic.

But still, it does feel good to be at least sort of done. Since I've reached an end of a chapter of my life, I just want to take a couple moments to reflect on the experience. In retrospect, perhaps I rushed through too quickly. But I've always been like that (I suppose to make up for being born 12 days late). Skipping grades, teaching myself classes in the summer, piling on the AP classes during the school year . . . so double majoring in math and electrical engineering in just 8 semesters (okay, with a spring and summer term) was nothing out of the ordinary for me. Furthermore, a lot of things that I didn't do were things I never considered doing, or didn't even want to do. Do I regret it? Not exactly. But it's interesting looking back at what BYU had to offer.

Here are a few things that I was never able to fit into my to-do list:

1) Study abroad. I'm beginning to regret this one, but for the first few years of college I just didn't care. Why go to Paris when you can Google images of the Eiffel Tower? Why go to Jerusalem when there are the maps and pictures at the back of the Bible? Why go to England when their beef isn't all that good? All of you who have traveled know how faulty my logic was, and I'm starting to realize that I should have taken advantage of these amazing opportunities. Alas. I try to live vicariously through other people's blogs.

2) Go to the Holi Festival of Colors. While this isn't a BYU sponsored event, a lot of BYU students go. The year I may not have been too busy (freshman year) I didn't go because I had a date with a guy later whose name I didn't know until 15 minutes before the date ended (it's a long story . . . basically we were coworkers but he never wore his nametag). And since then I've been too busy on the Saturday it's held. But ever since I read this: http://stuffbyupeoplelike.blogspot.com/2010/03/18-holi-festival-of-colors.html, I haven't felt too bad about missing it. Again, maybe I'm just too cynical, or maybe I'm just not too thrilled about getting chalk in my hair and staining my clothes. (I'm writing this post during finals week. Don't judge me too much.)

3) Do pretty much anything associated with Homecoming Week. In particular, the True Blue Football. Again, I'm not really into getting all colorful and staining my clothes. I'm sorry I'm so boring. :)

4) See any of the old movies in the library. I still feel bad about missing "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."

5) Drive on the sidewalk. Ever since I almost got ran over by a police car going down the ramp (which I had previously thought a sidewalk) just south of the RB, I've wanted to drive a car on the sidewalks on campus. Just like the grounds crew. They say there's a $50.00 fine. I say that's a fair price for a thrill ride of a lifetime. But no, I haven't dared. I haven't even gotten so much as a parking ticket. And actually I'm okay with this one.

6) Buy bookstore fudge. I guess it's not too late now to get some.

By now you're probably thinking, what on earth did she do with her time? How could she have gone to BYU without doing these wonderful things?

Well, I guess here are some things I did.

1) Homework. Lots of it.

2) Take the bell tower class. It was a remarkable experience going up those 99 steps every day and playing the bells for all of Provo to hear (I was actually a little bit embarrassed to realize just how far the sound reached . . . I was hiking the Y one time and could hear the bells). And since it was springtime, the bell tower was surrounded by pink trees and green grass and ducklings and strollers . . . it was incredible.

3) Check a book out of the library. It took me 3 years, and it was a music book (as opposed to an actual novel), but I finally got the courage to check out a book and walk past those security guards with it.

3) Write a musical. Well, parts of one. Well, 4 songs plus a couple of scenes. Someday it will be produced. I have faith. At least some of my songs were used for a ward musical.

4) Get married. At the ripe old age of 19.

5) Get a Jamba Juice, go to the Varsity Theatre, go to International Cinema once, Light the Y, hike to Squaw Peak, throw pennies down the SWKT, chase ducks, go to football/basketball/volleyball games, publish a paper, submit a conference paper, go on a date to the library, witness a marriage proposal in the math lab, eat ice cream from the Creamery/Subzero/Malt Shoppe/Wendy's/Baskins&Robbins, attend Divine Comedy/Laugh out Loud/Humor U/ComedySportz, participate in DanceSport (and make it past the first round, just like BYU basketball in 2010), start the Honors Program, not finish the Honors Program, . . . and the list continues.

I guess I did more than I thought. Perhaps I took advantage of my BYU undergraduate experience after all.

Frequently Asked Questions

It struck me today as I was walking to school that Kevin and I answer the same questions over and over again. On the off chance you haven't met us yet, you can come here to find the answers to the questions.

1. Wait, you guys had the same last name before you were married? So, is there . . . any relation? You guys have checked, right?
Answer: Yes, we had the same last name, yes we're distantly related, no, I don't think dating or marrying your third cousin once removed from another wife is all that weird or gross. People have told me about siblings marrying fourth cousins without realizing it until they were already married, so at least we got the hint beforehand. I'm not too worried about it until our kids start coming out with extra ears or missing fingers.

(as a side note, when girls who are recently married find this out, their response is usually like "oh! you're so lucky you didn't have to change your social security/driver's license.")

2. Oh! You're both electrical engineers! Can you fix my ____ (fill in the blank with toaster, oven, computer, lights, camera . . .) ?
Answer: Two fun facts. One: most modern stuff isn't made to be fixed. It's made to be thrown away and replaced. It's cheaper. Two: you're thinking of electricians, not electrical engineers. I can derive Maxwell's equations and probably do a z-transform or two, but as soon as I have to handle wires and circuits I'm a dunce.

3. You're an electrical engineer! Is your dad so happy?
Answer: If he is, he hasn't told me yet. (Okay, so I'm sure he's happy, but he's not the reason I went into it. All the exposure to engineering he gave me helped but I think it was a couple things my mom said that convinced me to give it a try.)

4. You're both electrical engineers! You must be so smart!
Answer: Thanks. It's nice to hear compliments like this but at the same time I'm a bit troubled. If I were doing elementary education or family life, would I not be smart? I've known plenty of extremely intelligent people in both majors, yet I doubt they hear this compliment when they share their major.


Okay, so now you know what questions I don't like to be asked. (I admit the last one was a comment, but I still don't like it.) Now you are free to ask me other (more interesting) questions such as, "What color is your toothbrush?" or "Given the choice between flying a kite and eating a marshmallow, which would you choose?" or even "Do you know what the weather's supposed to be like tomorrow?"

Yes, I think conversations would be a lot more fun with those sorts of infrequently asked questions.

My First (and Last) Undergraduate English Class

This past semester I took my first real English class in almost four years, and my first at BYU. (I’m not counting Technical Writing because it was technical by its very name, and not at all about literature.) After bouncing back and forth between the math and engineering buildings for my entire college career, I thought it was time to sneak in a proper English class for my Letters GE requirement. I was intrigued by what my EE 485 (Digital Communication) teacher told our class last winter — that we would “melt” in humanities classes. They were that hard.

Oh, really, I thought. I’d have to try it out.

Turns out, I didn’t “melt.” Engineering and math classes still are harder for me. But it wasn’t a waste of time. I still learned things which were applicable to life in general, which is kind of the point of general education classes.

Here are some of the lessons I learned:

1. Good authors choose their words carefully. I was skeptical the first day when my professor insisted that every alliteration, every stress on each syllable was chosen carefully if the author knew what he or she was doing. But as I’ve read more poems, plays, and novels throughout the semester, I’ve come to see what he was talking about. There is a great deal more planning that goes into good literature than I had anticipated. Coincidences just aren’t this consistent.

Of course, there were times where it seemed like my teacher went overboard, like when a passage described trees which were “blocking breezes.” “‘Blocking breezes.’ Isn’t that just beautiful?” he raved. Personally, I like alliteration just as much as anyone else, but I don’t judge a book based on it. Yet my teacher did. In fact, he said, “That’s why I couldn’t get through Harry Potter. It just didn’t sound pretty.” He said similar things about Twilight, namely, “I read it. I had to finish it. But it was like chewing on this wall here.” And I think he has a point — there’s more to a book, play, or poem than just the story. If story were the only issue, most of us would probably be content watching it than reading it. It’s the words themselves and how they connect together that make something worth reading.

2. There’s more to literature than theme. Ever since seventh grade, I’ve been hardwired to find theme in literature. “This story is about love.” “This story is about family.” “This story is about the futility of wickedness.” “This book is about inasmuch as ye keep the commandments ye shall prosper in the land.” So like many of my classmates, I was ready to find the theme in all the literature we discussed. But on the first day, my teacher basically said that he didn’t care for theme. What? No themes? What was literature without theme?

But now, having read literature without looking for themes, I think I know why my teacher had an issue with them. It’s the same issue I have with picking favorites. Questionnaires with too many “favorite” questions have always been a bit painful, to be honest. What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite animal? What’s your favorite ice cream flavor? What’s your most embarrassing moment? (Okay, that’s not a favorite, but I still hate that question.) How do any of these really help you know me any better? It’s great that you want to know my favorite candy bar, and I’ll probably be really touched if you give it to me for my birthday, but I think there’s a lot more to me than just my made-up-on-the-spot favorites.

And the same goes with literature. There is a lot more to a good story than its moral. There’s dialogue! Action! Plot development! Character development! The way the words flow together on the page! Must we force every piece of literature to have grand meaning? Can’t we just enjoy it for what it is?

3. Literature is like a mirror.  Over here in the electrical engineering department, we believe in doing research for a reason. We like building new things: bigger telescopes, faster chips, algorithms with lower complexity . . . you get the idea.

And so I think many students and professors in the Clyde Building look at the research done in the “Great and Spacious Building” (the JFSB) with a bit of disdain. Who really cares what Hemingway was thinking? What difference does it make if someone was an existentialist or not? Why write about Shakespeare again????

Having sat through an English class, I can now see why they want to write essays about old stuff. You see, I now think good literature is carefully fashioned as a sort of mirror. There are definitely things the author puts in for everyone to recognize, but somehow there are also elements of a good story or poem that are flexible enough to mean something different to anyone who reads it. For example, I read the short play Sure Thing by David Ives. It was set up sort of like the movie Groundhog Day where the two characters Bill and Betty get chance after chance after chance to go back in time and fix their words so the relationship could progress. Since I had more than my fair share of boy drama before I met Kevin, I really appreciated the play, especially with the way awkward encounters were handled. David Ives had no idea that I would be reading the play and bring my specific experiences along, but he did word things in a way I could relate to them. Thus, I was able to write a paper that pointed out things that my teacher had never noticed before because he hadn’t experienced them the same way. And I think that’s why they keep publishing papers on old literature. There’s still more to say, even if the authors didn’t originally intend for people to read everything they do into the literature that they do.

4. Aristotle is lousy when it comes to science, but he did know what he was talking about when it came to literature. Since about, oh, eighth grade, all I’ve heard about Aristotle was that it was his stupid ideas that kept Europe in the Dark Ages, since he didn’t believe in experimentation, so none of the Europeans believed in experimentation either til the 1600s or so. I saw the video about Galileo dropping the orange and the grape and them hitting the ground at the same time, and how everyone thought he was cheating or something because Aristotle said that running tests introduces bias (which we’re actually finding to be true at the quantum level).

But yeah. I had this notion that Socrates and Plato were smart guys, but Aristotle was just completely crazy. Now I haven’t actually read any of these philosophers (and I call myself an educated person . . . *gasp*), but my professor has read us some Aristotle in class, and I have to admit that Aristotle wasn’t completely crazy. I think he understood the elements of a good story, be it tragedy or comedy, and he had good things to say about “causes” in literature. I don’t think I’ll actually seriously study any of his work, but at least I can forgive him now for thinking that men have more teeth than women (seriously, man, just count them!) or thinking that the earth was at the center of the universe, since he did have good ideas in other areas.

5. English is not entirely subjective, and engineering is not entirely objective. It was kind of funny learning about poetry terms and the technical side of literature because at the same time in my control theory class we were learning about design and tweaking things. Thus, it seemed like my English class had the equations and my engineering class had the delicate, artsy side of things. The point is, for both the humanities and for engineering, there are lots of bad answers, and there’s a wide spectrum of good answers. The trick is knowing what makes things good and implementing it into both your writing and your engineering.

6. This stuff is hard. Not everyone can do Fourier Transforms, prove calculus, or design controllers. But nor can everyone write well and read carefully. Like every other art (music, dance, animation, visual art, etc), there are subtleties and nuances that make it more than just a fill-in-the-blank exercise.

And that’s very hard for me to accept. When I play piano, I like to just throw chords down and assume that they sound good on the first shot. I’m decent at improvisation because of this . . . I can’t afford to fix my mistakes while I’m performing, so I have to know a couple of basics and just go from there. But good music and good writing are carefully planned out and revised. This doesn’t really appeal to me.

In fact, that’s probably one of the reasons I never considered doing an English major. If you had known me when I was younger, you might have never guessed I would end up doing math since I wrote plays, poems, and stories long before I cared about Pythagorean Triples or differences of squares. Yet I have done very little non-academic writing other than journals, letters, blog posts, and Facebook statuses since I came to college. Why is that? It’s not because I was bad at it . . . though to be honest, a lot of stories I wrote were pretty terrible (but no worse than anything else people my age wrote). But I didn’t want to take the time to perfect them. And I didn’t want to spend four years in college trying to perfect something that could never be quite perfect. So I went for math and electrical engineering instead, where answers came more easily, and where “good enough” was preferable to perfect. (Of course, it also helps that those have much better job placement, and I slept better at night feeling like I was developing things which could help starving children in Africa.)

So this class reiterated what I already feared about literature — it’s hard to write. And even when it’s written well, only well-educated people will appreciate its true value. Yet for those who do pursue this route, just know that there’s plenty of respect coming from the Clyde Building.