Much like the Oscars and Grammys honor the best works in cinema and music respectively, the first half of this blog will be giving awards to the best aspects of my past semester. Let’s get the ball rolling.
Best Trip
- Weekender against Stanford. Good friends, good times.
Fight on!
Best Professor
- Toss up between Radovich/Franke Mech-Op combo and Prof. Lynett in Fluids. Although I genuinely enjoyed all of my professors this semester, these two classes/professors really stand out in my mind.
Best Class
- AME-341AL – Mechoptronics aka MechOp. Although I spent more time than I care to imagine writing up the Mechop reports and working in the SAL computer lab, this class was incredibly interesting and well taught. From learning how to write scientific reports and utilize Excel to understanding op-amps and digital logic, this class was a fantastic hands-on engineering heavy class. Looking forward to the second semester of it already!
Best Weekend
- Parent’s weekend definitely takes the cake in this category. Got to hang out with my entire family and had a great tailgate for the USC football game.
Gameday fight on!
Parents Weekend Tailgate
Best Concert
- With USC being located in one of the premier music hubs of the world, I can see almost any artist I would ever want to see. This semester the intimate Coheed and Cambria show at a local record store and the trappy, bass pounding performance put on by Flying Lotus and his Brainfeeder label stole the show.
Meeting the lead singer of Coheed and Cambria at a nearby record store after seeing them play for free.
The crazy light show from the Flying Lotus show at Club Nokia in LA Live. It even got a write-up in Wired magazine (http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/10/flying-lotus-live-show/)
Best Movie Watched
- Yet another competitive section for this prestigious event. At this point, it’s too close to call, with Skyfall and Looper tying for the win.
- Not surprisingly, since Southern California is the movie and entertainment industry’s home, there are so many different options nearby USC where you can see new movies (see Arclight Cinemas, AMC Century City, and LA Live for starters)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt + Emily Blunt + Bruce Willis = WO
Let the sky fallllllll, When it crumblesssss, We will stand talllll, Face it all together
Best Night
- Bayou Annual Christmas Party
Happy Holidays from the Bayou! Can you spot the 8 engineers??
As for my winter break plans, I’ll be heading home to my lovely hometown of St. Louis for the first time since summer to spend the holiday season with family and friends. I’m looking forward to seeing my dog and eating at all of my favorite restaurants.
Pappy’s Barbeque…nom nom
After New Years, I’ll be heading back to Los Angeles for my flight to Honduras for Engineers Without Borders. Over this January trip my project, Corral de Piedras, will be doing extensive surveying and community interviews in order to determine what our best course of action will be for the upcoming semesters.
The team standing in front of our work after the December 2011 trip.
Since we finished our past rainwater catchment project last March, we’re essentially starting over from scratch with a new project. Although it’ll be challenging, I know that myself and the rest of our club is really looking forward to ushering in this new phase for EWB-USC
Well, that’s it for me this semester. Hope you’ve enjoyed my posts, and I’ll see you in the New Year!!
