Spring semester I’m finished now with the first round of midterms and papers.

This semester has been more work than last semester, but my classes are also harder. All around I’m feeling pretty good. Courseload:

• Thermochemistry. Now deriving tools for chemical equilibrium calculations. Excited for the kinetics unit. The solution to most things on the problem sets is “throw python at it until you get a number.” XKCD summarizes the subject quite well.

• Proof-based multivariable calculus & differential equations. Definitely feels like there’s more for me to memorize than last semester. I think I liked linear algebra more, but I also have a really good professor for this class. The environment is pretty fun and light-hearted.
• Insects and human culture. I’m raising a pair of tobacco hornworm larvae in my room, behind the refrigerator. They’re just starting to pupate now!
• Black women writers throughout history. The readings are interesting and the professor is a great lecturer. It’s fun to learn about the context in which each book was written and published, and that adds a lot to the whole experience.

Lab x2 Still chugging along happily in the Coyle Lab.

I managed to get my fellowship application in on time, so I’m excited to hear back about that. Regardless of the results, I enjoyed writing the research proposal and thinking up ways to carry out the experiments. Ialso finished my giant screen and am trying to analyze the data. Learning more about matplotlib every day!

In my towering hubris, I started working in a second research lab for my chemistry class. I’m working in the Boros Lab on the radiocobalt project, where we’re trying to make ligands to control the redox state of cobalt. I’m learning a lot of organic and inorganic synthesis and analysis techniques. NMR is cool!

Learning python Learning to use python for data science. Working with

Anaconda and jupyter notebooks, since that allows me to save outputs and mess around with small parts of the code. Also learning to handle machine learning and modeling via scikit-learn.

Gaming The D&D group is alive and well. We took a break for two weeks to

handle midterms and so I could polish up some of the rules, but we’re back and kicking. We collectively decided that we didn’t like the way we handled the dice rolls in game, especially around high-stakes situations, so I wrote up some extra mechanics a la Blades in the Dark to address that.

Reading I’ve slowed down in reading a bit. I’m doing a little bit more

writing (at least, for school and private things). Currently working through American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. I didn’t realize that book took 25 years to write!