Tech Trek ~ Part 2

*Go read Tech Trek ~ Part 1 before this one if you haven't already.*

              Classes throughout the week were the one of the most interesting diverse classes I've had. I really enjoyed listening about how Pixar movies are made by woman by the name of Danielle Feinberg. She is a long time Pixar employee who has worked on the lighting of many movies such as Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, and Finding Nemo. The lecture started out with explaining the philosophy of Pixar movies. The story itself is more important than the money made on it. According to her, that's what makes the movies so brilliant and entertaining. She demonstrated making and animated figure by using a software called maya. Coordinates in math turn out to be useful (who new) and are used to structure objects and people in movies. Turns out, a simple wavy line can turn into a 3-D vase.

             A woman came and spoke to us about the Night Sky. I learned more about our universe and what makes it so special. I learned the earth has and SPF of 250 and that the northern lights are the effect of the sun's rays affecting the magnetic sphere. Later in the week, we went star gazing out in an open field with large telescopes. Much of what I learned at the speech, I saw out there. I looked at the Moon's many craters and Saturn's icy rings. I saw Betelguese, the star that was the closest to Earth and the closest to exploding. It was beautiful looking at the stars.

            And as my brother has requested I shall talk about food. Yes, food. We had 3 meals a day and the Stanford campus turns out to have delicious food in their cafeteria. Although the meal timings were a bit weird (dinner started at 5:30) all of us made the most of what we had. Breakfast consisted of fruit, eggs, cereal, french toast, pancakes, pastries, and donuts. Lots and lots of donuts. Lunch was different everyday. It varied from Mexican fajitas to Thai curry and rice to even Indian food. Pasta was a constant at both lunch and dinner as well as pizza. Dinner also had many options and there was always a desert. Whether it was coconut creme pie or carrot cake, it was always there to feast on. Then there was the soda machine. We went absolutely nuts on it. With no one to supervise our eating habits, some of us had soda for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And lets not forget the ice cream machine. Oh, the ice cream machine. There was always a large line to get a large serving of that desert. Being inventive, I stuck vanilla ice cream into my root beer soda and made a root beer float. Now that was yummy. Now there's one more reason to go to Stanford for college. The food is good.

            There were a few more classes I had like Robotics and the Spaghetti Bridge challenge. It truly learned a lot that week and had so much fun. I made new friends, met new people, and got to meet people that had the same interests as I do. I will never forget this experience I had and what I learned.

Tech Trek ~ Part 1

                I raced past my brother to the front door steps. As I clumsily reached in the mailbox, I found what I was looking for. A white envelope with words "Tech Trek." I opened it up hastily and read the first few words. I was accepted! After the long wait, the day finally arrived that I was anxiously waiting for. It was truly an amazing week. I experienced a few of my most life changing events all played out in a week. I got accepted into a camp called Tech Trek earlier in the school year. My science teacher introduced it to us by showing us a video of a previous camp. The camp I would be applying to would take place at Stanford for a week. It was sponsored by an organization called AAUW. The camp was meant to encourage girls at my age to be interested in the math and science fields. To apply into this camp, I had to write an essay describing how I thought math and science affected my daily life and then be interviewed. They only selected a couple of girls to be sponsored and be able to attend Tech Trek. I happened to be one of those girls thanks to the encouragement from my family and friends.

                 I was so excited the day I was going to Tech Trek, that I couldn't sleep most of the night. Which turned out to be a bad decision because I got very little sleep for the rest of the week. Sleeping at 12 talking and then waking up at 6:30 to another busy day is not a fun experience. By the time I got home a week later, I could barely keep myself from crashing onto my bed and sleeping like a bear. Hibernating until some force (mom) woke me up. But, it was all worth it. Going to this camp would have to be one of my biggest achievements. My family and I walked together to the area in front of our dorm building. Finally, I got to see all the girls that would become my friends for the next week. I met my dorm group which consisted of 12 girls and our dorm mom. I placed all my bags into my room which was small and had two beds, a desk, and a couple of closets/ drawers. My room mate walked in then with her mom. She had ginger hair and reminded me of one of my all tine favorite characters, Ginny Weasley. We learned so much about each other that week and we definitely bonded over our love of Harry Potter. The rest of my dorm group was filled with wonderful people that I became friends with over our week together.

                 The next morning started out with getting up at 6:30 for the first time in a month. It was definitely not welcomed. My first class of the day was going to be my core class, Marine Biology. Marine Biology was one of the four core classes that were offered. We introduced ourselves to each other and started what would be a wonderful week learning from depths of the ocean to invertebrates to marsh life. A definite highlight of the class would have to be dissecting a squid. It was white, a foot and a half long and had wavy tentacles. As much as I hated cutting open animals, I was fascinated by the many components it took to have a living squid. We even cut open the ink sack and used a stick to write our names with. Maybe now the door of becoming a doctor would open thanks to my newfound interest in biology. Also, when learning about invertebrates, we designed and created our own low tide animal that could retain the most water by using ordinary objects like foam, bottle caps, beads, and a hot glue gun. Well that was what I used, anyway. I made mine into what looked like a turtle and was voted ad top 3 most creative in the class. On another day, we took a small field trip into the Baylands Marsh nearby. We looked at the plants and animals living there with binoculars. I learned so much the entire week from my Marine Biology teacher and I was so glad I chose that course as my core class.