[SccHarpGirl]

New blog time

I closed the previous blog about a year and a half ago, but decided that it was time to start over, both because I missed keeping in contact with all the wonderful people on CGR, but also because of the fine procrastination options it provides. Such as right now - I have homework in almost all my classes but I would rather be on CGR.

For those who don't know me, welcome! The boring bare facts are that my name is Noelle, I'm 21 years old from Issaquah, WA. I joined CGR as a sophomore in high school, and now I'm a senior at McGill University studying Operations Management and statistics (OM is my concentration and stats my minor, however I'm more passionate about statistics than operations management. Go figure). Religiously I'm a fairly observant Roman Catholic, putting me in the CGR minority. Politically I'm all over the map. I used to be fairly conservative, now I'm moderate with leanings in both directions. I guess you could say I'm "Canadian conservative".

I'm just coming off of what was a fantastic summer. I went home to Seattle, had a great internship experience working for a truck manufacturing company, my friends were around and we did lots of stuff together, I turned 21, went on vacation to the BVI, the final Harry Potter book came out, and all in all it flew by, and now I'm back (woot!).

Today nothing so interesting has happened. I have a crazy teacher. He always comes in 10-15 minutes late, and then he has trouble setting up the equipment, and waxes nostalgic about the punch card computer days. Magically, an hour and a half class is transformed into an hour class (no refunds available). It's an optimization/Operations Research class, so we (the class, all 7 of us), decided that we are not only going to take bets on his arrival time, we're going to track his tardiness and create a prediction model. There are many ways to learn!

Hope everyone has a teriffic day! Any funny stories are more than welcome.

Noelle

[SccHarpGirl]

I'm working on getting together some photos from the summer (yay!)

I thought I'd post this one before heading to class. I took it in New York this June.

It gives a totally new meaning to "pi(e) in the sky"

[SccHarpGirl]

Thursdays are my fun day - I have class 8:30-10:00 in the morning, and from 6:00-9:00 at night. I've slowly morphed into a morning person, so the 8:30 to 10:00 class isn't that bad, but the late night one is pretty much torture, even though I like the class, the teacher, and the subject matter.

Today was also career fair day-college search on steroids. I don't know why they schedule the big career fair for September. It seems kind of illogical as most people like me will be graduating in May. It wasn't terribly useful, as I don't think I want to stick around and work in Montreal after I graduate, but it was good to get a sense of the job market and it's always fun to dress up

Speaking of dressing up, I brought my "business wear" outfit up to mtl with me - my suit jacket and skirt. I totally forgot about shoes, so this morning as I'm headed out the door to my 8:30 class I think "oh, footwear..." and rummage through the closet, producing exactly 0 pairs of nice black shoes. I have sandals, tennis shoes, snow boots, and normal boots. Cringing, I decide to wear my pair of black boots that come up about to my calf. I hope no one will notice too much. People noticed, all right - I got compliments on my outfit - especially the pairing of the boots with the skirt - all day. I don't understand fashion.

I also demonstrated extraordinary spaciness, managing to lose my ID card and cellphone. Actually, I had left my ID card on Tuesday up in the computer science building, and I had to go retrieve it, and on the way, I left my cellphone in the management library. At least I haven't lost the keys to the apt yet. I guess that's for tomorrow.

For the start of this year at Bible Study we are wrapping up our looking at the four gospels by reading Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth. I think it will be a very interesting reflection and a good way to bring the four different gospel tales together; a nice way to finish off the unit. I'm glad to be back, but not living at Newman. I'm beginning to recapture a bit of what I felt my first year, where it was somewhere I could go to be affirmed in my faith and take a break from daily life. I'm glad for that.

This weekend (for I, as a business student, have a weekend that starts tomorrow!), i'm going to take it easy, do the householdy stuff and studying that's been neglected this hectic week, and go to LaRonde (the local Six Flags) on Saturday because my mental age is about 5.

Have a great night all

[hapa_angel]

Whooo! Noelle has a blogina nuevo! *subscribes*

Love the sky-Pi. Wish it actually looked more like the symbol, though.


Have fun at Six Flags.

[SccHarpGirl]

Rachel! How are you my lovely? I'm so sad I'm going to miss you and Art when you come up to Washington. Maybe I can devise some sort of urgent need to go home over that period of time *ponders*.

Today has been a truly excellent day so far. I slept in until 8:00 (normally I get up anywhere between 6:45 and 7:30), and then went at 10:30 to see my Regression prof because I had some questions about the hw. I ended up staying until 12:15 (and his office hours were only supposed to go until 11:00). He is very extroverted and ended up giving the three of us that were there academic advising advice and career advice, life advice, etc. It was hilarious. And I got my questions answered. He did not have to put in that extra time and effort, but the fact that he did really means a lot to the students. They can definitely tell if a prof cares about the class above and beyond it being "just a job". This is my hardest class and I'm just so glad I have a prof who doesn't treat me like I'm stupid when I go to office hours with questions, or that I'm wasting his time.

I then went by Newman for lunch which turned out to be free today (saving myself a whopping $2.50 - newman lunches are the best bang for buck in mtl), and a lot of people were there, so there was great conversation and excellent food. I even found out who a member of the McGill Space Elevator Team is and my sister Monica, who is super into that project, will be delighted to hear. Monica is super smart. She is on pace to get a full ride scholarship and wants to use it to attend MIT with the goal of going into aerospace engineering/joining the astronaut corps.

So for the rest of today, I have to go grocery shopping and clean up my place because I am determined to do my best to keep in clean on the not-so-busy days so if I let the cleaning slide on a few crazy days (such as yesterday...) it doesn't mount up and become unbearable. Then it's off to Cote de Neige to see Nathan and Kathryn's place, which should be fun. Hooray!

[SccHarpGirl]

Here are some photos of this summer!

Part 1: family photos!
#1: Me at Camlann Village (the Medieval village) shooting archery. Would you believe with my 2nd shot I almost got a bullseye? Beginner's luck, or natural archery talent? You tell me.
#2: Hiking in Grand Park, in Mt Rainier Natl park. This is now my desktop
#3: Me, same hike
#4: The clan at KW Family day. That's a T2000 in the background - interestingly they were one of the trucks we didn't produce (We made T660s, T800s, W900s, C500s, and the big offroaders).

[SccHarpGirl]

More photos

#1: My parents and I on my 21st B-day. They took me out to a nice restaurant.
#2: We had a table in a little private room overlooking Snoqualmie falls. It was super nice.
#3: another shot from KW family day: This is me playing the harp in the truck factory. I was playing Stairway to Heaven here (for some reason that's a popular request on the harp).

[SccHarpGirl]

MORE PHOTOS

My friends and I are goofballs.

#1: Being stylish before Harry Potter. As stylish as one can be while wearing plastic glow and the dark glasses.
#2: IT'S FINALLY HERE!
#3: The pirate pig!
#4: Stoplight llamas!

[SccHarpGirl]

And finally, the best pics for last! the trip photos!!!
We took something like 700 photos. More than these are up on my facebook if you want to see all the good stuff. I'll probably post more here as I go through dry photo spells too, LoL


#1: Monica and I demonstrate how to keep onself entertained on trains from New Jersey to New York.
#2: Flags fly from the top of Blackbeard's Castle in St Thomas, VI
#3: The view from our house on Jost Van Dyke in the morning.
#4: the beach! And yes, it was this empty most of the time.

[SccHarpGirl]

The last of the photos (For now...bwuhahaha)

#1: Dad trying to whack a coconut down from a tree with a rake. Might I add he was unsuccessful? I think this was the night I passed out...I didn't drink enough water that day and I was helping with the barbecue. Standing over the heat things just started spinning and next thing you know I woke up in a chair feeling sick and thirsty and incredibly disoriented...I had no idea where I was and everything was spinning and I asked "Where am I?" and my sister answered "In a chair" which didn't help me very much.

#2. Yours truly soaking up the sun. I was burned to a crispy fry but it faded to an excellent tan.

#3: The treasure caves off of Norman Island. Norman Island is cited by some as the basis of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. On the last day of our trip we went on an eco tour where we went snorkeling around different islands, and this was one of my favs. We actually got to snorkel inside of the caves, with the cool glow in the dark fish. Interesting fact: Treasure actually WAS discovered inside of one of those caves, awhile ago. Our tour guide was so awesome too...a really strong Christian, just a great guy and a wonderful guy who really cared about the area.

#4: Boarding the plane back to reality.

[Rainer.]

Thaatsalottapictures!

I was subscribed to your original blog. Hi Noelle.

[SccHarpGirl]

Hey, Jon! What's up?

And yes, it is a lot of pics. But it was a lot of time not blogging on CGR, too.

[2ManArmy]

NOELLE! Your profile says you are eighteen! I think it's time for an update.

[SccHarpGirl]

Lauren!! You're right...I did not realize that! That's funny How are you?

Today was my day I had earmarked for studying and I"m having ridiculous amounts of trouble focusing. I might go to the library just in order to get a change of scene to see if I do better. Ah well. It'll get done.

I've been thinking more and more about what I'm going to do next year when I graduate. Part of me says that the sensible thing to do is to find a good job and start working. The other part of me says that if I really want to do the kind of work I'm most interested in, I should go on to grad school. The problem is there's not really a clear best choice - there are large pros and cons to each option. Going to work means less debt, a chance to settle into a really interesting career without going through the hassle and expense of getting a master's, and if I did get a masters, bringing a wider knowledge base to the subject and possibily getting an employer to subsidize some of the costs. However I"m well aware that it's tough to go back to school once you stop - it's easy to say "I'll go back to school one day" but once you have a car (and car payment) and an apartment, possibly a significant other, things get way more complicated. Getting a masters right away not only ensures that undergrad knowledge is still fresh, but you don't have to worry about carving out the time later to go back to school.

I think that the current plan is to try and find work after I graduate and see what's out there. Then if I don't find any jobs I like that I'm qualified for with a bachelor's degree, I will spend the year working and also studying for whatever grad exams I have to take and writing applications to grad school.

For graduate school I think my #1 choice would be the statistics program at University of Auckland. As a New Zealand citizen I'm pretty sure that I could get resident tuition (and even if I can't right away, probably a year of living there and working and I could be eligible) and they have an amazing statistics program (If anyone's ever heard of the stats software R, it originated there). Plus, I've always wanted to go back there.

For working, I'd love to work in the airline industry. For one, it's a really great application of Operations management, plus a lot of stats analysis, and another, the travel perks rock. And I have friends all over the globe, and I'd love to be able to take a weekend and go to visit my friend in California, or Boston, without completely breaking my budget.

But who can say? May is a long way off and I'm praying for guidance in this area. I've lucked out so far - a lot of great stuff has sort of fallen into my lap and not always when I've expected it (McGill, the Kenworth internship, etc), so if I just keep doing the best I can working along, hopefully things will work out how they are supposed to. We shall see.

Back to homework!

[2ManArmy]

Hey Noelle. I read your latest post and I'll be praying for you to make a good decision. Our Lord really does take care of us! I'm in a similar boat, trying to figure out where to go from here and use my time wisely. School is so expensive so debt really can add up if you are going off of student loans.

Anyway, God love ya!

Lauren