Last night while I was cooking pasta for dinner, I remembered a game Leslie and I used to play when we were little.
It was called Two Orphans/Widowed Mother and her Daughter/Teacher and Student/Princesses. The premise was this: there would be some hardship, and we'd have to deal with it. All alone. There would be invisible villains we'd have to fight and hide from and help each other escape from.
And when you are working so hard fighting evil, you get a little hungry. So Leslie made this brilliant discovery that if you fill the bathroom sink with hot (or lukewarm) water and then get some noodles from the pantry and put them in the sink, by the time you're done fighting the villains the noodles are now nice and soft and cold and delicious.
And I don't think we ever cleaned the sink out before we did this.
Yeah, I'm surprised Leslie and I ended up as okay as we did. Minus her getting cancer, of course. (But according to her that's from eating old ground beef.)
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Staples
So I chose the name of this blog somewhat on a whim, and for whatever reason, I picked "Staples, Tacos, and Love." I couldn't tell you why except that my relationship with Kevin has included staples, tacos, and of course, love. I already touched on tacos in http://kevinkyramoon.blogspot.com/2010/08/there-are-two-sides-to-every-taco.html and I decided now is as good a time as any to explain the staples part.
After all, it was almost two years that we started throwing staples at each other. So mature, right? I already know that's something you do in high school to flirt, and back then I was two years out of high school. But if it worked in high school, then I think it can still work in college (and for the record, I still love the gimmicks people use to ask each other to dances in high school even though people generally swear them off in college).
But yep. There we were in the CAEDM lab, that wonderful computer lab with the free printing for the electrical engineers. That's where we had met about three months previous and had slowly developed our friendship. But now I saw him differently. He was no longer just that brilliant young man with the hearty laugh. He was the brilliant young man with the hearty laugh that I had developed a major crush on. And despite my shyness about admitting that I liked someone because of fear of embarrassment and rejection, I decided to do something about it.
I don't remember why we started throwing staples at each other, but I am sure of a few things:
1) I started it.
2) He had it coming to him.
3) He retaliated.
And thus it began. We didn't have full-out wars in the computer lab, but probably more than half of a stick of staples were used as projectiles rather than for their intended purpose. One time Kevin collected all the staples I had thrown at him and started throwing them at me. I thought he was going to throw them at my face so I was quite happy when he kept on missing it. But it turns out he wasn't aiming for my face. Hours later I realized I still had staples in my hair.
I think the staple throwing continued through finals week, but then it stopped once Kevin went to China for a few months. Once he came back we didn't need them anymore to break the ice, so we haven't really thrown them since then. But nevertheless I'm grateful for those couple of immature weeks where we both pretended we were back in high school and let down our guards enough to show our silly sides.
After all, it was almost two years that we started throwing staples at each other. So mature, right? I already know that's something you do in high school to flirt, and back then I was two years out of high school. But if it worked in high school, then I think it can still work in college (and for the record, I still love the gimmicks people use to ask each other to dances in high school even though people generally swear them off in college).
But yep. There we were in the CAEDM lab, that wonderful computer lab with the free printing for the electrical engineers. That's where we had met about three months previous and had slowly developed our friendship. But now I saw him differently. He was no longer just that brilliant young man with the hearty laugh. He was the brilliant young man with the hearty laugh that I had developed a major crush on. And despite my shyness about admitting that I liked someone because of fear of embarrassment and rejection, I decided to do something about it.
I don't remember why we started throwing staples at each other, but I am sure of a few things:
1) I started it.
2) He had it coming to him.
3) He retaliated.
And thus it began. We didn't have full-out wars in the computer lab, but probably more than half of a stick of staples were used as projectiles rather than for their intended purpose. One time Kevin collected all the staples I had thrown at him and started throwing them at me. I thought he was going to throw them at my face so I was quite happy when he kept on missing it. But it turns out he wasn't aiming for my face. Hours later I realized I still had staples in my hair.
I think the staple throwing continued through finals week, but then it stopped once Kevin went to China for a few months. Once he came back we didn't need them anymore to break the ice, so we haven't really thrown them since then. But nevertheless I'm grateful for those couple of immature weeks where we both pretended we were back in high school and let down our guards enough to show our silly sides.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
So, I've become one of those people who talks a lot about sports. It's become one of my favorite conversation topics (quickly catching up to weather), and scarcely a day goes by without me checking espn.com.
How on earth did this happen? How did the little girl who has never participated in any kind of organized sports (not even soccer) and rolled her eyes whenever anyone watched sports on TV suddenly know about how all the teams in the Mountain West Conference?
I guess that's what college does to a person. That and marriage (though Kevin's not really a sports buff either, so I can't really blame him).
I think I've figured out what it is about sports that has me intrigued. Sure it's awesome that Jimmer can score from 40 feet away, but in all honesty, I don't even watch the games. (We don't even own a TV, which has probably improved our marriage substantially.) I just watch the scores. I've figured out that games are not isolated events, and that how one team does in a conference affects how the other teams do. When a team loses to a "bad" team, it hurts a lot more than when it loses to a "good" team. When the teams ahead of you lose, you'll probably go up. And . . . that's basically how sports works.
It's simple logic, and there's not really all that much math. But nevertheless it's intriguing to see how the dice will fall each week. Will Jimmer explode or will the Cougars have 30% shooting? Will Duke stay higher in the rankings despite their losses because they're more respected? What will the implications be if BYU gets a #3 seed instead of a #2 seed?
It's a mix of athletics, statistics, probability, politics, and economics that has me just interested enough to keep on watching. And clearly, it's got a lot of other people hooked too. Thank goodness we don't own a TV.
How on earth did this happen? How did the little girl who has never participated in any kind of organized sports (not even soccer) and rolled her eyes whenever anyone watched sports on TV suddenly know about how all the teams in the Mountain West Conference?
I guess that's what college does to a person. That and marriage (though Kevin's not really a sports buff either, so I can't really blame him).
I think I've figured out what it is about sports that has me intrigued. Sure it's awesome that Jimmer can score from 40 feet away, but in all honesty, I don't even watch the games. (We don't even own a TV, which has probably improved our marriage substantially.) I just watch the scores. I've figured out that games are not isolated events, and that how one team does in a conference affects how the other teams do. When a team loses to a "bad" team, it hurts a lot more than when it loses to a "good" team. When the teams ahead of you lose, you'll probably go up. And . . . that's basically how sports works.
It's simple logic, and there's not really all that much math. But nevertheless it's intriguing to see how the dice will fall each week. Will Jimmer explode or will the Cougars have 30% shooting? Will Duke stay higher in the rankings despite their losses because they're more respected? What will the implications be if BYU gets a #3 seed instead of a #2 seed?
It's a mix of athletics, statistics, probability, politics, and economics that has me just interested enough to keep on watching. And clearly, it's got a lot of other people hooked too. Thank goodness we don't own a TV.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
The Best Treasure Hunt EVER
I’ve always loved treasure hunts. For several years, on Valentine’s day, my mom would make each child an individual age-appropriate treasure hunt to find our little box of Sweethearts. Since I liked those so much, I started making treasure hunts too. When my cousins came to visit, if we didn’t put on a play, we made treasure hunts. Some of them required us to go traipsing around in the foothills behind my house, and I think someone threw up and another person got a gash in their leg, but hey . . . there’s still treasure at the end! Some treasures were more disappointing, like the little baggie of Marshmallow Mateys buried in the sandbox one time, but to me the thrill of the hunt was just as awesome as the treasure at the end.
The more elaborate the treasure hunt, the better. For example, I loved setting up treasure hunts where the treasure ended up being in the same room everyone started in. I remember one family home evening lesson where I sent everyone off to look for clues I’d already planted, while I set up the tootsie pops I had bought for the treasure. I think it was supposed to explain how we lived in heaven before we were born, but we had to go to earth (aka, the treasure hunt) to get the treasure at the end. It made sense when I was 9, okay?
I remember another treasure hunt I set up when my parents weren’t home, and I decided I wanted to make homemade pretzels. I sent my sisters and their friends on a treasure hunt while the pretzels were cooking, and then just before they got to the location of the treasure, I put the pretzels there. I think the pretzels were formed to spell out “You found it!” or some other encouraging message. Food is always a good treasure, right?
And the fun didn’t stop in high school. One of my favorite parts of date dances was the treasure hunt aspect — finding the bulky envelope under the globe in the library, decoding the obscure message about taffeta gowns, solving the sudokus to find out who was asking me.
But then I came to college. Suddenly there was no reason for treasure hunts. If a boy was going to ask you out, they weren’t going to waste time and energy asking you out. There wasn’t really anyone to make treasure hunts for like siblings or cousins, anyway.
So I kind of forgot about them. I got busy with other things. Occasionally I would walk around on campus and suddenly think about things in treasure-hunt mode. For instance, I was standing between the Harold B. Lee Library and the Herald Clark building and thought, “I’m standing between 2 Harolds! This would make a great clue . . . for what?”
But then Kevin and I started dating, and he in his infinite kindness and patience decided to humor me. One Wednesday afternoon last November while we were eating lunch, Kevin said, “I’ve got a special date planned.” After a bit of pestering from me, he finally admitted, “I’m planning a treasure hunt.”
“What’s the prize?” I asked. “A toaster oven?”
He paused for a second. Then, “Sure. Yes, the prize might be a toaster oven.”
And that was all he would say about it. The thought of this treasure hunt started driving me crazy! I knew he was going to propose any day, but I thought for sure it was going to be after Thanksgiving. After all, he had to ask my dad for my hand. So . . . what was the point of this treasure hunt?
Well, Friday rolled around, and after my terrible EE 313 quiz, I got a piece of engineering paper with instructions and mysterious matrices on it. Since “love note matrices,” as we liked to call them, weren’t unfamiliar to us, I was able to decipher it pretty quickly. (I have since learned they’re actually called Hill ciphers. Yay for cryptography class.) Where were we going to dinner? The decoded message said, “Australia.” In other words, Outback.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t pay much attention to anything that day. As I took what I mistakenly thought was a very easy Complex Analysis test, I kept thinking, “the sooner I finish this test the sooner I’ll go home and go on the treasure hunt!!!” I finished it and came home and got ready for my date with Kevin. He came around 5 with a beautiful bouquet of 5 roses. I found a vase and put them in. “Did you notice something about the roses?” he asked. “No . . .” I responded. “Aren’t there usually . . . 12 roses?” he hinted. I then looked at the plastic which the roses came in. Yep, there were supposed to be a dozen. Thus, the mission was made clear: recover the missing seven roses.
As we drove north on State Street under a beautiful, fiery sunset, I continued to pester Kevin. “What’s the prize going to be?” “I already told you, it’s a toaster oven!” Though Outback was packed, Kevin had already made a reservation. As we ate our steak, we talked about life and love and our relationship. When the waiter came with the check, he also brought a rose and an envelope. “Congratulations! This is a great idea, by the way,” he told Kevin. “I think I’ll use it for my girlfriend.” Did I catch on? No! I was so convinced that he was going to propose after Thanksgiving that even this huge slip didn’t faze me. I think when the stakes are high enough, even those who pride themselves on being ungullible can be surprised.
I read the note which said, “Go to the place where we had our first date and look for something that makes noise.” I smiled and said, “The Malt Shoppe.” (I could write another blog post about this long about how this first date even happened, but I’ll leave that for another time.) So off we went, looking for something that made noise. Kevin helped a lot, pointing to a pillar, then pointing to a particular spot on the pillar until I finally saw the whistle. I looked at Kevin quizzically, and he said, “blow it!” So I blew it and there from the darkness came one of Kevin’s roommates. He gave me another rose and envelope, then gave a slight bow and backed away into the darkness.
This note told us to “dig for treasure! X marks the spot”, or in other words, go to the Museum of People’s and Cultures to look for treasure. So off we went to the sandbox by the totem pole at the museum we had gone to a few weeks previously. We both dug and dug until we found another whistle. I blew it again, and Kevin’s roommate Ian came with his girlfriend Emma, both wearing warrior paint. Another rose, another envelope, and they too disappeared into the darkness.
This one told us, “Let’s hike the Y!” I said that jokingly almost every day as we walked home from school. Was he really going to make us do it? Luckily, the whistle was just waiting at the base of the Y, attached to a flashlight which was dangling from a branch of a tree to make it visible. Again, I blew the whistle, and one of our engineering friends emerged from the darkness with another rose and note.
The note informed us that the next clue would be waiting where Kevin had first seen me. It was in August 2008. He was fresh off his mission, and I was working as a Math Lab TA during a Math Refresher Course. Though we had never talked to each other, he had still remembered me and recognized me when we became friends 5 months later. Once we were in the math lab, I looked around a bit for the next whistle. Once I found it, I blew it, and there came Kevin’s roommate (the same who had delivered the whistle at the Malt Shoppe) with another rose and envelope.
All that was on the next clue was a door code. In we went to the CAEDM lab, where our friendship had first developed, where we first started to throw staples at each other. (We were shameless flirts.) We walked in, and there was a whistle in plain sight on a table. But there was a problem. Even though it was a Friday night, there were still people in there doing homework. I hesitated, and Kevin said, “You have to blow it.” So I did. A nice loud screech. The tapping sound of people typing stopped, and I could feel everyone looking at me. It felt like eternity before Ian and Emma finally showed up with a rose, a note, and a . . . toaster?
“See, I told you the prize was a toaster oven! Or at least, a toaster!”
“A toaster?” I asked. I examined it more closely. There were bread crumbs in it.
“It’s ours. You actually have to give it back.”
Ian and Emma took some pictures with us and the toaster and then left. I read the note. “Congrats! You’ve finished the treasure hunt!”
Kevin then said, “There are only eleven roses. But I know where the last rose is.” I would hope so.
We drove up University Parkway past the Marriott Center, then turned on 900 East and drove past the MTC, past the temple (wait, past the temple? My suspicion was wrong), and then Kevin took a right and we ended up at the temple after all. Oh boy. By this point I knew for sure what was coming. The butterflies in my stomach began to flutter excitedly. Kevin led me to a bench with another rose and another whistle. I blew the whistle and Kevin pulled a letter out of his pocket. I read it and teared up a bit. When I had finished reading, there was Kevin on bended knee, holding a beautiful ring out. “Kyra Michelle Moon, will you marry me for time and eternity?”
“Yes!”
And that was that! The best treasure hunt of my life ended with the best treasure I could ever dream of! I was engaged to the man I loved! (It turns out he had called my dad earlier that week but failed to mention it so I could still harbor the delusion that he needed to ask.)
This past year has been so happy and so fun, and I’m so grateful to Kevin for everything he has done to make me so incredibly happy. I love him lots!
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