Day 19-20 - July 15-16 - These are a few of my favourite things!

Bonjour!

Going to bed soon to guarantee a nice rest because tomorrow Shad UBC is going on an 18km hike up some mountain!! And we are leaving at 6:45am, nbd, I know. Anyway, I know this will be my last 7hr sleep, so let's make the most of it I guess?

Soooo yesterday we went to a workshop by an electrical engineer, at least I think that was his discipline (my short term memory is failing me this past month). We constructed circuits on breadboards, my first exposure to them. I was able to draw on my knowledge from Gr. 11 Physics to help me out there. Series, parallel circuits, and motors, switches, light bulbs and transmitters were all used. I really enjoyed that workshop. It took place in the engineering building, which by the way, is super new and nice. We then had lunch. I haven't really talked too much about food on this blog, pretty much because it hasn't been too much to talk about. Breakfast is my favourite. Always eggs, home potatoes, sausages, ham, and either pancakes, waffles, or French toast. A variety of cereals, bagels and breads is always offered. At the start of the program I always had eggs, sausages, potatoes, and the pancakes or whatever. But now I am just getting sausages, peaches, and cheerios. My biggest problem here is overeating. Man, all the food is so good. For lunch, there is pasta everyday, with some sort of sauce, rice, pizza, garlic bread, veggies, and some vegetarian dish. They have sooo many types of squares and brownies for dessert, along with jello, cookies, and the odd cake here and there. They have a salad bar open at lunch too. At dinner it is the same as lunch, just without the pizza. I always drink chocolate milk for all meals. Mmmhmmmm, my favourite. A lot of people here complain, but it really isn't that bad. There could be more variety, but there is only so much you can do to please everyone here, as sooo many people stay at the residence. Unfortunately the rugby players from New Zealand and the track stars from Australia have left :(, but the computer nerd camp is still here, along with the new arrivals of the 6 year olds from China learning to speak English!

Ya so, moving on food, and gorgeous boys. After the circuit workshop, a lady who is a speaker for Al Gore came, and pretty much embarrassed herself. She delivered a good slideshow, but her speaking was bad as you could tell she was just reading off some paper. It was obvious she had no science background when we challenged her data. She had fool written all over her face. A lot of people were sleeping, but not unusual I guess. It's not rare for Shads to sleep during lectures. I'd say at least 5 of us always have our heads bobbing everyone morning and afternoon haha. After this horrible presentation, we did rec and it was sooo much fun. We did a campus Amazing Race. We were put in random partners and given tasks to fufill all over campus. We had to decode the clues and such. One task we had to find a math equation on a certain page in a certain book in a specific library. I found the book and after copying the equation I "accidentally returned the book to it's wrong spot on the shelf because I just don't get the Dewey decimal system, even after working for 3 yrs in a library!" Haha, all the Shad after were like, "we spent minutes searching for the book, but couldn't find it, so we just left!" Anyways, I believe my partner Helen and I finished in the top 10 couples overall, out of 25 I guess? So not bad at all. We then worked in our committees, mine being monthbook. It's going pretty well. I helped Nick, the computer program guy, who does the yearbook for his school with the ladder of the monthbook. Trying the learn stuff here from this guy! We still have a lot to do. Sooo many pictures to go through! We then worked on our house projects till 12am.

Today we went to the earthquake simulation centre on the UBC campus. People were obviously tired from the night before working on their projects as people started sitting on the floor in the warehouse like building. One girl, Michelle, actually fell into a deep sleep sitting there haha. It was pretty interesting. Once again, I was able to apply the concepts I learned in the waves unit from Gr 11 Physics. Terms used included frequency, period, cycle, altitude etc. Some people didn't get his simulations, but I did! After we went to this workshop where this biomedical prof did a simulated orthopedic surgery on a virtual knee on this new computer system they just got. We then did this lab where we did our own simulation of this simulate surgery! We made two homemade cameras out of cardboard boxes and made this grid on the floor. Then we lit a candle, placed it on the grid, and individually looked through the cameras taped to the floor to give the candle a coordinate. We then plotted the coordinates. It was kind of interesting, enough to keep me awake. We came back to rez, on the way singing all the tunes from the Sound of Music, kind of surprising how many people, both girls and boys knew the lyrics. We had lunch, then had a mini presentation on applied science from a mechanical engineering prof here at UBC. It lasted probably 15 min. But we enjoyed cake at the same time because the ladies at the front desk of the Frank Forward building, where the majority of our lectures are held, felt we were such a friendly group of people! After cake, we had rec from 3:30-6pm. We played Quidditch!! It was a blast. I really enjoyed it. I will have to teach you all when I come home. It's almost exactly how they play it in HP, but without brooms. Shoneth, the rec PA, said that it's actually played competitively amongst universities. We are actually divided into 4 teams here at Shad, and all our rec activities are apart of the Shad Olympics, and so whenever we win, we gain points. Unfortunately my team is in 3rd place haha, but we did win the spirit points a couple of days ago. We then had dinner. I had a shower immediately after because I was sooo sweaty. So I missed the announcement that we had to be the FF Building at 6:45. The last I had heard was be at the lounge in rez for 7pm. So while everyone was walking over the some lecture, I was cleaning my room haha. Ya so I was fashionably late on a presentation a 3rd integrated engineer girl was doing. She was trying to promote UBC Engineering to us all (ya, nice try). After her bragging, all the PAs sat on a panel and we got to ask 1.5hrs of questions to them on university. It was really helpful. I learned that I will not base my choice of university on $$, but I will on the campus, and the spirit of it because all PAs nodded it does. Specifically Shoneth said it makes a difference. She was in some engineering program that required her to transfer from St. F of X to Dal. She said X was a much better environment, with tonnes of spirit, whereas Dal is full of serious people too concerned about their marks. I don't think that's bad though, but maybe some other factors play a role. I also learned that I MUST live in rez first year no matter what. One of the PAs, Kailey didn't because she wanted to live with her mom, and she said she regretted it a bit (sorry mom!). Ya, got some great advice today. Anyways, they sent us back to our rooms immediately following the panel that ended at 10pm. It's 11:40 right now. I've really got to go. So much for a quality night's sleep. I don't really think that's heard of here at Shadd...

-Carolyn



Here's the account of Thursday, July 15 by a fellow UBC Shad.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do […] Explore. Dream. Discover.

- Mark Twain

I draw inspiration from this quote each day but I feel that these words of wisdom resonate no stronger than here in the Shad Valley program at UBC. I speak for all my fellow Shads when I say that I truly appreciate that so many opportunities have been presented to me - exciting, new things that I have never done before and other things that I have never dreamed of doing.

After breakfast in the Totem Park Cafeteria, we headed over to the Irving Barber Learning Center for an engaging workshop by Dr. Jon Nakame, the lab manager for UBC's Engineering Physics department. We were introduced to the wonders of electronic circuitry- breadboard, batteries, LEDs, motors, switches, accelerometers, capacitors, and much, much more. In pairs of two, we all tried our hand at constructing various circuits in increasing complexity. After, we made the short trek to the EngPhys Project Lab to witness UBC students in action. They are currently working on entries for a robotics competition. The theme changes year from year; this year requires competitors to put together a robot that races a rival robot around a winding race track. The catch is - there is a shortcut that eliminates the difficulty of several sharp curves but the robot must confront a ramp instead. After lunch, the Shads went to the Department of Forestry building for a lecture "Climate Project Canada, YesBC!" by guest speaker Judy Fanstein. We were interested to learn that she has just recently returned from a weekend training session with former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore where participants were trained to make presentations based on Gore's acclaimed documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". Half of her presentation was devoted to raising awareness of the cause and impact of climate change around the world. The second half was about the greenroots environmental leadership program that she founded herself - YesBC! (Youth for Environmental Stewardship). YesBC! also has received a grant from the Steve Nash Foundation with which they will purchase tree seedlings for participants. For rec, we all participated in "Shad Valley UBC Campus Chase 2010", which is inspired by the vastly popular television show: "The Amazing Race". Randomly paired with another Shad, we had to complete tasks at stations dispersed throughout the UBC campus. For the first task, we all had to collect 5 distinct items from a list. My team collected a maple leaf, a red pen, velcro, non-UBC lanyard, and a business card with an area code not in the Vancouver area. For the other tasks that were required to successfully complete the challenge, my partner and I did had to unscramble cryptic clues in order to find the next waypoint including the following:

This ain't no carnival, foo!

Don't be cheeky! There's no time to stop and smell the roses when there's a task at hand!

We quickly deciphered this clue and ran to the Rose Garden at the far end of campus. There my partner had to face-paint on me Nintendo’s Mario character to a PA's satisfaction. For the six tasks, my partner and I took a little over an hour to complete and to our pleasure; we came in the top 10 of the 25 team field. After dinner, we were given an hour for committee time and the rest of the time to work on the house project!

Our time at Shad Valley is winding down but I am ecstatic that I got to share my incredible experience here with 51 other talented and motivated Shads. Good luck with your house projects and good night!

Adam Hsieh, Shad Valley University of British Columbia 2010
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario