Greek Week 2012

Posted on October 7, 2012 by lschommer

Every fall the Greek community has a week of philanthropic, scholastic, and interfraternal fun. This is what we call Greek Week. Fellow blogger and IFC PRogrammer, Brendan Witt, spent a lot of time over the past several months planning this week long event. This year our programmers did a fantastic job of balancing fun and competition, and words cannot express how excited I still am to have seen so many people from every chapter participating in all of the events throughout the week.

The first day of the week we have a BBQ on Greek Row, and provide free grilled food to our community members. We had a great turnout, college students don’t turn down free anything, especially food. It was great to see people interacting with people outside of their chapters, and we got to spend time outside on a sunny day listening to music and eating.

For our day of service we had people go to several different locations around Tacoma to help out for a few hours in the afternoon. I went to the Tacoma Rescue Mission, and my group worked on weeding and cleaning up some flower beds. We also had people go to Puget Creek Restoration and also to St. Leo’s Food Bank. Here is my group:

Every year we hold one of our Greek Week events at a sporting event to show support for our fellow Loggers. This year we attended the football game against Whittier, unfortunately the men didn’t win, but there was fun all around. During half time a member from each chapter participated in a “Dress Like a Logger” competition in which they dressed up how they think a Logger should dress. Later that evening we held the knowledge bowl to test our chapters knowledge of trivia. The Greek honor society Order of Omega created the questions for the competition, and our very own Moe Stephens was the host al á Alex Trebek, I think that he definitely enjoyed his role.

Sunday was the big day: Greek Olympics. This year we brought back the chariot races, it was interesting to see what the houses came up with to race with, and some chariots were definitely better and more stable than others. Other events included a relay that our Panhellenic Council programmer thought up; it included teams of 5 where 4 people spun in circles, ran to one end of the field, picked up a water balloon in their mouths, carried it to the other end, and then their teammates did the same thing; after the 4 finished successfully the last person ran to the other end, strapped a belt with a kleenex box (filled with 3 pingpong balls) to their waist, then they had to shake 2 of the 3 pingpong balls out of the box. We also had a three-legged donut eating race, tug of war, a frisbee toss, inflatable sumo wrestling. Here are some photos of the competition and hilarity that ensued:

Greek Week always ends with a speaker. This year we had Mindy Sopher as our guest speaker. Her talk was interactive and prompted members from each chapter to share what their values look like in everyday life, helping us to realize why fraternities and sororities are still relevant. Perhaps one of the most moving parts of the night was when the men of SAE all stood up and recited their creed, “The True Gentleman.” It was so moving to see them all stand up and recite that in unison. To conclude I would like to issue congratulations to Alpha Phi and Phi Delta Theta, our Greek Week winners this year. Also here is a photo of Panhellenic and IFC at the Greek Week Speaker:

Posted in 2012-13, Lindsay Schommer '13 | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Greek Week 2012

Midterm Update

Posted on September 30, 2012 by brathje

I can’t believe it’s already been a month on campus! I have been so busy that time has really flown by. Here’s an update on a few assorted things I’ve been up to lately (in no particular order):

I’ve been keeping busy with my classes this semester. Double majoring in Computer Science and English literature means a schedule full of classes for both majors, but since I really enjoy both subjects, all of my classes are fascinating. I’m currently taking Assembly Language and Computer Architecture, Computer Science II, Honors Art History, and Shakespeare. As it turns out, my two computer science classes technically count as upper-division courses, and my Shakespeare class is also an upper-division English course. Upper division classes are very focused, so we get to cover a large amount of material over the course of a semester.

Double majoring at Puget Sound is very doable, provided that you are able to fulfill the requirements of two majors and the core requirements. Often, students who double major replace their electives or a minor with the credits for a second major. As long as you know that you’re planning to double major early, most double majors are not too difficult to fulfill. For me, having AP credit gave me the flexibility to figure out what I wanted to major in during my first year and still double major starting my second year, but AP credits are certainly not necessary for double majors.

My classes are really interesting right now. Shakespeare is a nice mixture of discussion and lecture, and we read about a play every other week. This gives us time to discuss, but also to move through seven Shakespearian plays in the course of a semester. My Computer Science II class teaches not only intermediate Java programming, but also provides a thorough treatment of programming algorithms and data structures. A major focus is on efficient programming and good style, always useful skills. My Assembly class has taught me a lot about underlying mechanics of computers, and it should only get more informative as we dive into computer hardware in the next week or so. Learning how the computer actually encodes the instructions that allow me to type and display what you see here is really interesting. The class also has forced me to think about the most basic mechanics of computers. For example, computers do simple arithmetic simply by performing logical operations (with on/off electric currents). It’s really fascinating. Lastly, Honors Art History has been really enjoyable. We started with Egyptian art, investigating open questions and current scholarship in Egyptian art as well as the fundamentals, and we also looked at some art in the on campus gallery in a response paper.

Lastly, I wanted to update you on some research that I did this summer that I haven’t described so far. I did a lot of reading on dreams in Renaissance literature this summer, and also a fair amount of writing about the topic. It’s been very useful to have this additional knowledge about Renaissance literature for my English classes.

We are currently studying A Midsummer Night’s Dream in my Shakespeare class, and having some background on the issues related to dreams helps to explain why Shakespeare labels his entire play a “dream.” Moreover, the relatively subtle references to dreams throughout the play become much less subtle with some knowledge of Renaissance dream terminology and psychology. Reading the play again with additional knowledge of dream in the Renaissance has been a very interesting experience.

One fascinating part of the research was how strongly it resonated with other literature. In retrospect this comes as no real surprise: dreams, like death and taxes, are universal. For literature, this means that dreams have been depicted long before the dawn of Western Literature. They have been described in Greek and Roman poetry, Medieval literature (dream visions comprised some 30% of Medieval poetry according to Peter Brown, Reading Dreams), Renaissance literature, and onto today. There are striking similarities in dream literature throughout history, but there are also some puzzling historical differences. Why, for example, did the ancients tend to depict dreams as divine or other powerful figures visiting a dreamer with a message – something that does not seem to happen in ‘real’ dreams (Harris, Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity)? Why did dream visions account for so much Medieval poetry? Why do similar passages recur from antiquity through the Renaissance (and possible beyond)? Scholars have proposed answers to some of these questions, but the jury is out on most related to dreams.

That’s all for now. The Town Crier New Play Festival is opening this week (featuring a short play that I wrote!), so more about that soon. Until next time!

Posted in 2012-13, Billy Rathje '15 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Midterm Update

Writing and Theatre at Puget Sound

Posted on September 17, 2012 by brathje

Since my last few posts have focused on Computer Science, I thought that I would take this post to update you on some artistic and humanities elements of Puget Sound student life this year. It’s only been three weeks on campus and a lot has happened already:

My ten-minute play, “Short,” was selected as one of seven plays to be produced in the ‘Town Crier’ short-play festival. Town Crier is a festival produced by Student Initiative Theatre, Puget Sound’s student theatre organization. It features ten-minute plays written, produced, directed, designed, and performed entirely by students. The Festival is one of the more unique college theatre events because it features a large number of student-written and produced works on a yearly basis. The outpouring of talent and hard work that goes into rehearsing the Festival for a month and then performing at the start of October is always exciting, and seeing the Festival has inspired many students to write new works over the years.

In addition to sponsoring Town Crier, Student Initiative Theatre sponsors another play festival, the Infinite Monkey’s 40-60 minute play festival, as well as full-length independent projects. I work on the independent projects team of Student Initiative Theatre, which is involved in selecting and managing independent projects. Working with this group constantly reminds me of the large amount of interest and talent in student theatre. The outpouring of enthusiasm and excellent project proposals that Student Initiative Theatre gets to read is really indicative of an active student theatre community on campus. The number of students working toward writing and producing sophisticated, full-length theatre really transcends the Student Initiative Theatre organization itself. Student Initiative Theatre supports student work, provides a venue for production, aids with any artistic or design concerns and with script development, and provides resources to assemble a full cast and crew, but the immense creativity and effort that goes into these shows truly is the product of independent student work.

In addition to working with student theatre, I also began my first week working as a writing advisor at the Writing Center. The University of Puget Sound Writing Center employs fourteen student writing advisors to advise students about the writing process during hour-long appointments. Writing advisors help students at any stage of the writing process. Most appointments focus on improving the organization, logic, and content of individual papers, often addressing how to strengthen an argument or how to rework a thesis statement to lay out the argument of a complicated paper. The Center focuses on making students stronger writers by giving them strategies to approach and edit their own writing rather than proofreading student papers. Another interesting part of the Writing Center is reviewing research and theory related to Writing Centers. I didn’t realize before working at the Center that there is a large body of research on Writing Centers. Reading (and hopefully eventually contributing to) this scholarship has been very interesting, and has given me useful techniques for approaching writing appointments.

That’s all for now. I have to get back to editing one paper and finishing my outline of another. Until next time!

Posted in 2012-13, Billy Rathje '15 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Writing and Theatre at Puget Sound

Returning home

Posted on September 9, 2012 by astruxness

Some of you may remember me from last spring, when I blogged about my study abroad experience in Namibia and the Southern Africa region. This year, I am replacing sun block, lazy afternoons by the pool, and constant cultural immersion, for raincoats, afternoons spent in Diversions Cafe, and re-immersion into life on our beautiful campus. Join me as I appreciate my final year at Puget Sound.  I’m approaching this year with excitement, anticipation, and a little bit of nostalgia.

Beautiful Tacoma

I arrived to Tacoma in early August to fill in as a temporary student worker in the school accounting department before classes resumed. That job gave me a huge appreciation for the hard work that countless staff members put forth to make our school run smoothly. For those few weeks, I was inspired by the dedication of the accounting team that literally pays all of the institution’s bills– keeping our library full of books, our dining hall brimming with food, and our buildings sparkling clean and well maintained.

Another perk of my early arrival was getting to see all the freshmen move in for their week of orientation. Three years ago it was me who was tearfully saying good-bye to family and heading off to experience the magic of Passages. In many ways that feels like forever ago; I have grown up and challenged myself to accomplish things I never imagined I could do. And yet, I still vividly remember that pivotal day. To the freshmen, I say cherish these new moments and memories. You only get to experience the freshness of a new beginning once in your time here. To the seniors, look back and see how far we have come and what a journey it has been and continues to be.

Posted in Abigail Struxness '13 | Comments Off on Returning home

Happy Belated Log Jam

Posted on September 9, 2012 by lschommer

Much like my last post, I am still a little bit behind, this hopefully won’t be a trend for the entire semester. Last Friday (the first Friday of school) was one of the best days of the Logger year: Log Jam. All of the clubs and organizations have booths for students to learn about all of the activities that campus has to offer. The best part about it is all of the free stuff. And the sub caters with food that is good and hasn’t been sitting in a warmer for hours before we actually eat it. One of the coolest parts is that this event is open to the whole community, so professors and neighbors to the university will bring their kids to the event.

For Greek life, Jane, our director of recruitment, had this awesome idea to go around Log Jam with this big white board and markers, and ask people to write down their values, and then we took a photo of them with their values. The message that we wanted to get across was not only that Greek organizations are values based, but that a lot of the values that we have are similar to the values that people have outside of Greek memberships. Even though it took some prodding to get people to participate, once they had that marker in their hand a lot of our participants put a lot of thought into what they value most. We had a good range of participants, from new students, to professors, to Greek life members, and even general community members. To see the whole album of photos visit Panhellenic’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.358290237586284.82340.112911375457506&type=3.

Posted in 2012-13, Lindsay Schommer '13 | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Happy Belated Log Jam

Computer Science Internship: Part 3

Posted on September 3, 2012 by brathje

Over the course of the summer I have been updating you on my computer science internship at the Oregon Health Sciences University. In my last post I described how I completed two software programs in Python to expand a data analysis software package for proteomics research. I finished these programs about halfway through the internship, and spent the rest of my time doing data analysis with our software package.

Data analysis was completely different from both computer programming and from my experience doing protein research in the past. While we were performing experiments with hypotheses, methods, results, and conclusions, all of the work was done through testing and interpreting computer data sets. I had never done this type of experimentation before, and had previously thought of computer programming as limited to applied program design rather than academic work.

In many ways, the work that I did helped me to understand aspects of proteomics that I had never thought about. I realized that all proteomics experiments, by nature, produced large amounts of data presented in computer results files, but I had never thought about the steps involved in producing these files. In learning how things worked under the hood on the software side, I also learned how mass spectrometry, protein chemistry, and laboratory methods worked in more detail.

At the same time, I also learned how many types of data fit similar mathematical models. Although the work that I was doing was primarily biochemistry and proteomics, genomics and physics data tends to follow similar patterns. Statistical, mathematical, and computer analysis techniques can be applied to a variety of scientific fields, making the quantitative and computer science sides of science relatively tailored to interdisciplinary work.

Moreover, computer science is evolving constantly, but the underlying science tends to stay relatively constant. One thing that this internship taught me is how readily many scientists pick up new computer tools and languages, or even scientific methods, on their own. Most computer scientists have to be self taught to keep up in their field, and the same is true for scientists, who must adapt to the latest technological tools without necessarily obtaining formal classroom instruction.

In short, my internship taught me a lot about learning and self-motivation. I think that it prepared me to do independent work very well. I now feel confident about picking up new programming languages quickly, and in adapting my programming style and knowledge to new circumstances. I also learned a lot about the academic side of computer science and data analysis, which has inspired me to continue to pursue computer science research. Computer science research is so exciting because it allows me to incorporate programming, language and logic, critical analysis, and writing into one career. Although computer science work can be highly technical and detailed, it can be equally abstract. The versatility of the field, not to mention the variety of computer applications, is really exciting.

That’s all for now about my internship. I’m keeping up with the lab to continue to work on and write about our project, so I may have some more updates as the semester goes along.

Posted in 2012-13, Billy Rathje '15 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Computer Science Internship: Part 3

New Student Orientation

Posted on September 2, 2012 by lschommer

This week marked the beginning of my last year at the University of Puget Sound. It was a bit of a whirlwind, as the start of the semester always is. But this post isn’t going to be about that, it’s going to be a retrospective post about new student orientation. My intention was to write this post over a week ago, as orientation was happening, but in stead I was relishing the fact that I had nothing to do before the semester began.

On freshman move-in day Greek life always plays a special role in helping move new students into their residence halls. We call ourselves SWAT, or the Student Welcoming Assistance Team. It’s a courtesy that is offered to the families by the Greek community. Though this is hard work for all of the SWAT volunteers, and they work up a sweat, especially this year in the 90 plus degree weather, it is a great opportunity for our community to get our name out to the new students and their parents. The free muffins and pizza, help to keep our volunteers around as well.

In addition to move-in day festivities Greek life also helped out with other orientation activities throughout the week. On Monday and Friday the Panhellenic and Interfraternity Councils sponsored hypnotists for the evenings’ entertainment. Following the shows the council members lead tours of the fraternity and sorority houses for students who were interested in learning a little bit more about our Greek community. For me the house tours were a particularly eye opening experience because it was the first real time that I was acting in my Rho Gamma role. It was both difficult and extremely exciting to be able to answer these girls questions about all of the houses and the community as a whole. The whole week made me very excited for my recruitment duties in January.

Posted in 2012-13, Lindsay Schommer '13 | Comments Off on New Student Orientation

Perks of Work

Posted on August 16, 2012 by vgupta

This week has been very interesting and unexpected at work. First, I had to cancel one of my projects because I simply didn’t have the time or capacity to complete it in two weeks. And instead of being upset, my manager switched my project and gave me a budget to get someone else to do my work for me. Wait what? I’m an intern and I get to tell someone else what to do? I like that. So basically I got to hire another survey company to send out my original survey to a population of 500 people. This involved a very long and tiring process, but hey if it means I don’t have to go find 500 people I am all for it. First, I worked with a survey question designer who told me how to make my survey questions crystal clear, and unbiased, she even offered suggestions for more questions. Then, I worked with a survey company that specializes in surveying the youth, these people made all the edits to the questions that were asked by my team, which meant that instead of me going in and making like a 100 revisions to my questionaire, these guys did it for me! Yesterday, after much back and forth editing we finally sent my survey out, and within the first night we already have 183 responses! Next week on Monday I will have 500 people hopefully, and then I get to do some real work, and analyze all the data for my final project, which I will probably present on Friday, and then I will get on a plane and go back to school concluding my summer internship…gosh it all happened so fast!

Now, another perk I got this week was that by some miracle my blog on Intel’s blog hosting site was apparently one of the most read last week, and as a reward they are giving me free movie tickets. Again, I like this, and it is another indication that what I like the most about marketing is presenting, and blogging.

Posted in Vishakha Gupta '14 | Comments Off on Perks of Work

Thank You Letters and asking for Recomendations

Posted on August 8, 2012 by vgupta

I am almost done with my internship at Intel. It is that time when I am starting to think about who the people are that have truly helped me along the way, the people I have interacted with, and the people who have provided guidance along the way, these are the people for whom I have planned out my Thank You letters. I think that one of my biggest challenges at work was meeting and connecting with people. Although I did attempt to push myself in this respect I did not get a chance to make nearly as many contacts as I would have liked, I think that the next time I get an opportunity like this, from the begginning I will make it a goal to meet as many people as possible. 

In these next few weeks, while I send out an even larger survey, and do a last report I will also be writing out my Thank You notes, and asking my manager, and others for recommendations. I think that while it would be great to get recommendations from everyone, it is best to ask those people who could probably give you a very good reccomendation, and for me that is just one or two people who have really gotten a chance to know me these past two months. I am going to be asking for two types of reccomendations, Linked In recomendations and paper ones. As for my own thank-you’s I think I will handwrite cards for the people who I am in close contact with and email others who have helped me along the way. I recently submitted my intention to reapply next year, and I hope to leave a positive impression so that this is a likely possibility.

What I learned about myself from this internship, is that my favorite things to do were to present and to write for the blogs at Intel. While the research aspect was also interesting, it was not my favorite, I’d much rather be the one on the floor presenting the product, and figuring out what the problems are, designing surveys and analyzing results than reading paper after paper and looking for answers. In light of this realization I mid-way through my internship applied to write both this blog, and for an online magazine, my first article for the magazine came out this week, and I will be posting one article a month for the next four months. These entries will be more personal, and geared towards everyone who is finding their path in their 20s, my article is about learning to dress like an adult,  if you want to check out my article, you can click on the link http://life2pointoh.com/2012/08/dressing-like-a-grown-up/.

Posted in Vishakha Gupta '14 | Comments Off on Thank You Letters and asking for Recomendations

England trip!

Posted on August 8, 2012 by eschyberg

Where to even begin? England was gorgeous, although rainy, and the time went by so fast. Aside from the research, I saw some fabulous medieval castles and churches, Virginia Woolf’s house, many historical sites that are somewhat of a blur, Standen, a perfectly preserved Philip Webb Arts and Crafts house, the city of Oxford, and so much lovely countryside.

When I did focus on the research, my first stop took me to the Centre for Fine Print Research in the city of Bristol. There I met with researcher/professor/artist Sarah Bodman, whose professional and personal interest in fine presses was invaluable. She is a firm believer in the physical book, and it was neat to hear her perspective on my generation’s interest in fine presses and books, especially in comparison with my own observations of the US.

After Bristol, I had the chance to visit Dennis Hall of the Inky Parrot Press and Paul Nash of the Strawberry Press. Both of these were great examples of English fine presses. Paul Nash’s personal library of fine press books is staggering, and after having the freedom to look through it at random, I felt like I hardly even needed to go to a museum to see fine press books! He let me peruse his modest collection of Kelmscott, Doves, and Ashendene Press ephemera, and I could have spent weeks browsing the shelves of his library. I discovered a new favorite press on his shelves: Loyd Haberly’s Seven Acres Press. In the style of the Doves Press, many of his books are characterized by the first letter of the page extending down the whole side of the page, like this:  But his books are unique in their bold reds and green and blues. I also saw impressive examples of the Corvinus Press, run by an English Viscount in the 30s and 40s. In Oxford, Paul Nash runs the Bodleian Library’s printing workshops, and his knowledge of the history of each printing press and set of type there is overwhelming. I had the chance to see the workshop and some of the pieces that come out of it.  Finally, I braved the tube in London and went to the Victoria & Albert Museum, which, aside from vast art and design collections, holds the National Art Library, two beautiful rooms reminiscent of the NY Public Library. After registering for a reader ticket, I requested 7 books to look at. I tried to find the most modern fine press books the library had, because the majority of the books I had seen so far in England were not from the last few decades, so I was interested to see a little of how English fine presses have developed recently. After looking at the chosen examples, I must say I prefer the older books; I didn’t find much that was exciting or innovative in the newest examples. I also roamed through the V&A to see a few medieval manuscripts on display, which were fascinating.

England was wonderful overall, and I can’t wait to go back in just a few months for studying abroad at Oxford!

Posted in Elisabeth Schyberg '14 | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on England trip!