Week 8: Bonn

After a long trip in Hamburg, we had a stressful week of tests back in Bonn! We had several tests, and on Tuesday I got really sick! I had my first experience at a Germany physician office, and it was interesting to say the least! I was told I had a flu-like virus and was sent home to take tylenol! I am 91% sure I contracted corona! I had a fever for several days, and had the worst headache of my life! I spent the weekend resting, and my sweet host mom made me schnitzel each night I was sick! I rested during the weekend, and waited for my mom to arrive for spring break!

Week 16: Finals

Man this week was not fun. I had 3 exams spaced out from Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Due to the Enmodes presentation taking up literally all my time every single day last week, I felt I had next to no time in order to prepare for these exams. It was a huge time crunch and required me to wakeup 7am every day and sleep past midnight every night. I sacrificed so much of my sleep and self care time in order to condense the semester's worth of information into the 1-2 days I had for each exam. By the time the week was over I felt I had lost sanity. Studying for next weeks upcoming finals was not even a thought in my mind. All I wanted to do was sleep and do anything other than school. I am proud of myself for dedicating myself to effectively studying every single day all day. Thats not a feat most college kids can do so thats a win, regardless if my exam scores reflected that.

Week 15: Enmodes Presentation

This week was craaaaazy. Since I mentioned how unprepared we were last week for this presentation, we really had to crunch a lot of work in so little time. I think we did a good job of distributing the work equally between us but we all still worked on the project for the entire week from 10am-midnight. I primarily worked on the animations and let me tell you that was THE WORST. The human model that we were ale to obtain in order to demonstrate our device was so annoying. The joints would never move in the way I would want. Sometimes they moved in completely random ways that wasnt even close to what I had anticipated. Moving a leg or forearm would result in the entire body collapsing like a crushed can of soda. Even if the body positions didn't mess up, the actual animation was often clunky or moved oddly and I would have to keep redoing it. By the time I was finished with my initial set of animations I had already been so over with working on this portion of the project. YET I HAD TO DO 3 MORE SEPARATE TRIALS OF ANIMATIONS AFTER OUR PROFESSORS REVIEWED THEM. While I appreciated the feedback to make it look more smooth and professional, I did not like having to completely restart in order to correct a small sketch plane that was visible in the animation or something similar. I could not simply reopen my previous animations as upon saving them, the body assembly became completely destroyed and unusable. In the end the work was worth it as I felt we had given a very good explanation and impressed the Enmodes Team

Week 14

It was a normal week of classes. It's getting hard to write stuff for this blog as the days are so mundane that the week blends together so uniformly. There isn't too much that stands out or is special to recognize of happening this week. To me, it just feels like I'm auto-piloting through school. Not to say im progressing through my day with little care, but rather I'm so in the routine of doing this it doesnt require a higher level of thinking to accomplish my work for school. It can be easy to lose motivation at times, or makeup an excuse to putoff work, but I've tried to stay pretty consistent in treating my schoolwork as a job. The Enmodes project is ramping up and the reality that we would be presenting next week had not actually hit me until this week. While I think our project is good, I dont believe it to be anywhere near as ready and that worries me.

Week 13

I emphasized reconnecting with my friends this week. Last week had made me remember how much I had missed them, especially the ones from my hometown I am not able to visit due to the shelter in place. It was nice to get back into touch with them and catch up. I noticed that most people are pretty much in the same boat: being bummed and bored and getting lonely as the weeks progressed. So I think they appreciated reaching out to them. I was also able to set up zoom calls and facetimes with a few different groups of friends and actually know what was going on in each others lives during this time. I also made more of an effort to spend more time outside my room and more with my sister and dad. In addition, I planned to see my mom more so overall this week was more enjoyable than the last week from being bored in my room alone.

Week 12: France Trip

This week was pretty bumming as most people on the program were reminded that we would have been experiencing Paris during this time. Instead of sitting ontop the Eiffel, I have just been confined inside my room not really doing anything. I have been content with staying home for the most part but this week got to me and made me miss my friends immensely. Since Quarantine has ended, Ive tried to spend more time with my family which has been nice. I had missed them and im grateful I have the time to be with them versus me being gone at college like I usually am. I have also been studying outside more often as Im trying to stay outside my room since that can get very depressing.

Week 11: 2nd Week of Quarantine

The first week of quarantine had flown by as nothing too eventful happened. I would rotate between watching TV, exercising, reading, and playing video games the hours, I was awake. Since every day was more or less the same, they kind of melded together. I wasn’t necessarily bored though. I loved playing video games and was able to have a ton of fun with some of my oldest friends who I had not spoken to since leaving to study abroad. Although I spent most of my time in my room, I would have to occasionally have to come to the kitchen to warm up food. The few times my family did see me they would try to rationalize that I’m probably healthy and what I’m doing is extreme. I didn’t really listen to them, explaining that I could be asymptomatic and how they are all high risk as my sister has been a smoker for most of her life and my father has high blood pressure and overall poor immune system due to his older age. Well this is only temporary; everyone just has to hang in there and be patient.