Back to the Bay

Goodbye, Philadelphia

This morning I woke up at nine (and this is after having finally gotten to bed at FIVE A.M.) I said goodbye to my roommates, who promised to keep in touch, and packed most of my things that I hadn't gotten around to (I mean... did a little bit of last minute packing). My suitcase was so full (and how is it possible that it was so much emptier coming here?) that my roommate and I both had to sit on it in order to zip it closed.

My cheesesteak

I turned in my keys outside the quad and met Mr. Hillyer and the rest of the cohort there. After many teary goodbyes to the friends we'd made, we took a shuttle to the airport. Since we had to leave the quad by eleven, but our plane wasn't until 5:30, we got to the airport six hours early and had a lot of time to kill. We found a restaurant near our gate and had brunch (brunner?) there. I had a Philly cheesesteak. We also played a round of Mr. Hillyer's game, Munchkins of Cthulhu,which killed a few hours and was really fun.

Airplane food--not as bad as it could be

Finally, we boarded the plane. After almost six hours of staring at clouds, we were finally home. We landed and came out the exact same gate we went in a month ago, and took a group photo there in our Penn sweatshirts. Then we met our parents at the baggage claim. After we'd said goodbye to each other and John (sniff sniff) we went home.

This last month was a unique experience for me, and I really enjoyed it. I'm glad to be back, but the last month in Philadelphia has changed me and the way I look at things.

Hard to say goodbye

Nostalgia

The Franklin dormitory meant only a foreign building to me. A castle-like structure with the frequent cockroaches. An area where students tend to reside in after class to finish up school work or take a break from a hectic day. 

But that was only how I felt when the program had just started. 

Sooner than expected, that foreign building became home. UPenn was home. And just like anytime when you're away from home, you get homesick. Heartbreak and nostalgia is already following me after recently arriving back in the Bay. 

I've never realized how beautiful Philly is at 6:00 in the morning until today. Probably because nothing looks beautiful at 6:00 AM. But today was special: it hosted the moment when our wonderful journey finally ended. Two of my friends, Annie and Prateek, were scheduled to leave on the 7:00 AM shuttle to the airport, so our small group of friends decided to get together at Starbucks and have one last meal with them. After many exchanges of hugs, we went to see them off, and that's when the chain reaction of depression began. 

It first started when the sky seem to transition into a dull gray and even began to rain at one point. Jordy joked about how rain was a good way to hide your tears, and it wasn't really helping the situation to be honest. Soon after everyone else boarded their buses for their trains, it was the time for my departure. Being one of the last few to leave Penn from my group of friends did give me an advantage to see them all off and wish them a safe flight, and I was more or less ready to leave. As I rushed into my dorm to grab my luggage and check out at the front of the Quad, I couldn't help but feel attached to my triple-room-dorm. It isn't the best place to live, but I had quite a lot of memories in there: from late night blogging to finishing up projects with friends. I had to stare around my room for a bit before leaving, and ended up meeting with the cohort outside. 

#Waka Flocka Group

We were all pretty exhausted from a long morning of good-byes on our ride to the airport, but Mr. Hillyer soon broke the desolate vibe when we went to Chickie's and Pete's for lunch. He also pulled out a game for us, and it was my first time playing Munchkins, but Mr. Hillyer decided to teach us all how to play. The intense game took up a lot of time that we had before our flight.

Being back in the Bay lets me realize how much that I have done and how far that I've went in terms of academics and personal growth. The program opened me up and allowed me to express my true colors, be all that I can be, and strive towards improving the person that I am.

I will never come across another experience such as this one, because nothing else can amount to my amazing summer well-spent in UPenn! 

The End?

Some of My Penn Friends!

Today was sadly the last day in Philly! I woke up early today to catch some of my friends before they  left to go to home. It was so hard saying goodbye to all my new friends at Penn. Even though we had been together for only 3 weeks, it felt like we knew each other for much longer than that. I hope to see them in the future and I wish them the best of luck in college

 

The Last Tastes of Philly

After saying my goodbyes, I packed up all my stuff which just means that I threw random stuff in my luggage and zipped it up in my bag. Putting our stuff in the shuttle, we drove to the Philly airport and ate at Chickie's and Pete's, our last Philadelphian meal. There we had their signature crabfries and a strange dish, a lobster cheese steak. To be honest, the cheese steak didn't really look like much. But when I tasted it, it was heavenly! To kill some time after brunch, we played the card game Munchkins at the restaurant which supposedly finishes in 1 hour, but we actually finished in 2 and a half hours. 

Welcome Home!

The plane ride was nice and I caught up with some sleep on the way to the SFO airport. Unfortunately, I didn't sit next to anyone new on the ride back, but I still talked with the Penn cohort on how the program was so amazing for them. After getting back home and unpacking my luggage, I relaxed and reflected on my experience at Penn. I'm so thankful for Don and John for helping make this trip possible and for my friends and teachers that I met at Penn for making this experience so worthwhile! This trip really opened my eyes to what college life was like, specifically in the East Coast. Though I left Penn and all my friends today, I won't forget them and I know that this isn't the end in my journey to discovering what college is like and best for me. It's only just the beginning and I hope that other people can share in this journey as I did or at least hear it from ILCers like myself. College life, get ready to be explored because we're going to have to tango pretty soon!

Day 20: A Chapter Concludes

Well, as I have dreaded since the beginning of this week, it is over. After three weeks of pure enlightenment and profound self-reflection, the end has finally arrived. No matter how much I may beg and wish that I were living in an illusion and that somehow time had not passed as rapid as it did , I know that I strongly lack the ability to do so. That regardless of how much I may want to stay, I know that I must go. However, the greatest emotional pain comes not from abandoning the life style with which I have grown so enamoured over the course of the last 3 weeks, but rather because of the individuals I have had the greatest pleasure of meeting and befriending. Without them, my experience at Penn would have been very different and each one has educated me in a multitude of different ways, which not only have provided me with different outlooks on the reality in which I live in, but also have caused me to mature as a person. 

Saying goodbye to two of my favorite RCs, Kelly and Jessica

Reflecting upon the influence others had on me while at the program; perhaps the greatest example is epitomized in the unity established between my RC group. To express how united we were, we escorted and assisted each one of of us out of the dormitories and to their pre-determined method of transportation. This process began bright and early at 4:00 AM and continued up until only one was left, at which point none of us could assist him. It is remarkable to think how much we have grouped together and how we have supported one another through every step of the way. My RC group in large part contributed to my overall happiness of the program, because I knew that even on my most stressful days, I had each of their support to lift me up. I will miss all of them dearly, but thankfully social media will allow all of us to stay connected so we can continue that sensation of unity and support. 

After taking my last few glimpses of the Quad as the cohort drove away I could not feel profoundly sad inside. For three weeks it had been my home away from home. It had been a hub for socialization as well as safe haven. To see it disappear into the background was greatly impacting, but I knew that soon I would be back in my true home.

For lunch/dinner, we grabbed a bite at Chickie's and Pete's. Being that it was my last day in Philadelphia, I decided to pay homage to the Philadelphian cuisine by ordering one final cheesesteak sandwich. It was great to eat as a cohort once more. It brought back many memories of when we first began our adventure almost a month ago. After eating, and being that we had plenty of time before our departure flight, we decided to play a game known as Munchkin Cthulhu, one of the items we had bought John for his birthday. It was fun playing as a cohort and having a time to just relax after three weeks of intensity. After someone had taken victory we headed over to our gate where we patiently awaited the boarding time. 

The plane ride, like many, was long, however, it did provide me a long time for reflection not just on the program, but also how I have changed as a person of the past three weeks. I began seeing a new person within me. An individual who no longer wanted to conform to being shy, but wanted to be extroverted. An individual who saw the world for how it truly was and wanted to speak out against it. An individual who not only had been given the tools to make changed, but also was confident in his ability to do so. 

Upon arriving back in San Francisco, I was bombarded with countless emotions. On one hand, I was happy to be home and to be in my natural climate (cold and not humid). However, the other part of me missed everything about Philadelphia, even the small nuisances such as the humidity. As I adjust back to being at home, I know that my experiences at Penn will always be with me. 



Final group photo of the trip! Back where it all began!

There's No Place Like Home

In the morning, I finished packing and said goodbye to Maayan. There were some roommate-y hugs and Maayan gave Julia and I letters about how nice it was to share a room with us. Soon, Maayan was gone, and Julia and I were left to make sad faces at each other while we finished throwing stuff into our bags. Somehow, Julia's suitcases shrank and her library—sorry, the few books that she brought—grew, so I ended up taking four of them in my backpack. We left our dorm just the way it was when we first came. It felt different now. When we came, the empty room was emotionlessly waiting for us to fill it, but now that we were leaving, it was forlornly longing for the mess we had once left in it, wanting us to come back. Maybe I'm misinterpreting it. I don't speak room. 

We got into a cab for the airport, checked our bags, and walked to find something to eat. We ended up going to a place called Chickie's and Pete's, which was definitely not a breakfast place, but by then it was late enough that we should be eating lunch. (I secretly wanted pancakes.) I got soup, and once we had all eaten, Mr. Hillyer took out a version of Munchkin, the game we had bought him for his birthday. He taught us how to play, and we ended up having the longest (it killed hours) and most intense (I think Julia will never forgive me for sabotaging her victory) game of Munchkin ever played. I'm definitely going to make my family play it sometime, it was really fun!

We made our way over to the gate, where we killed more time reading, listening to music, or in my case, filling out ILC forms so I wouldn't have to worry about them once I was home. 

We boarded the plane (all of us were in Row 18 except Julia, who was banished to Row 19) and took off. It was a long flight, and I was tired, so I slept for a few hours and filled out the Post-Mortem Questionnaire, a 160-question quiz about the ILC experience. It's not multiple-choice, so it took a long time. After about five hours, we were about to land.

The first thing I realized was that I missed the fog. The second was that our slow march back into the real world was speeding up. When we landed, we left the plane in the exact same gate we took off from a month ago. We took pictures, got our bags, and said our goodbyes in one big blur, and then I was in the car with my parents, heading home (my brother is in Santa Barbara, so he won't see me until tomorrow). Despite my exhaustion from travel, I found my energy warming up when my parents asked me about the experience. When we got home, I only spent a little while playing piano and eating pasta before I started my blog (even though I didn't spend long before I ended my night, my mom probably still has around fifty pictures of me stabbing pasta and putting it in my face...but I'm sure in her eyes, I was stabbing pasta and putting it in my face here for the first time in a month).

A month. A month can change everything. Leaving the class, leaving all of the people I might never see again, leaving Penn...it was heartbreaking. It's over. I know there are new experiences out there for me, but...nothing quite like this. I've been trying to think of anything that could have made Social Justice different for me, better maybe, but I don't think I would want it to change. I don't want different memories. I want mine.

A month can change everything. It did.

Goodbyes

Playing with Oobleck

This morning in physics the first thing we did was play with Oobleck... a whole swimming pool of it, thanks to the group studying non-Newtonian fluids. People ran, danced and jumped across it, and one person did a belly-flop on it (ouch... oobleck feels like any other solid when you apply pressure, and I don't see anyone trying to belly-flop on the ground). I wisely stayed out of the way so as not to get cornstarch all over my clothes for the rest of the day.

"It wasn't actually that intense."

Then we went back inside and started presentations. First were the four groups who still hadn't presented their exponential and Hershey Park experiments (my group included). Most had taken data on roller coasters... with varying levels of intensity. Then the interest group on High Energy Physics presented. They were a huge group, consisting of a third of the class. Their project had been on detecting cosmic rays.

Cosmic ray detectors

After lunch, we continued with presentations from the rest of the interest groups. First the group that had been making radio telescopes went. They had been working with James Aguirre--the man who came in the other day to talk about looking deeper into the cosmos by using larger wavelengths. The second group was the one working with a cloud chamber to detect muons. They had some interesting videos (and wow, well-timed) showing muons entering the cloud chamber and leaving glowing trails behind them. After that, my group went up and presented on quantum mechanics.

Our project had been taking data with single- and double-slits to show the wave-particle duality of light. Right after us the Franck-Hertz group presented on the quantum nature of atoms, which is related to the wavelength of the electrons (and the fact that they have a wavelength). Finally, the Oobleck group presented the theoretical aspect of their project, talking about the quantitative behaviors of non-Newtonian fluids.

Bill's not actually as surprised as he looks

After the presenters finished, Bill showed us a few really cool demos, and for the grand finale blew up a house (don't worry, just a house the size of a breadbox) with "lightning." It is really sad to think that the program is already over and I won't see Bill and Mary again. I will be staying in touch will Bill though, which is awesome. Unfortunately, the class had run so long that we didn't get out until almost 5:30, so we missed our meeting with John in the bookstore to get Penn sweatshirts. Andrew and I came back at 9:00 to get them, and Donna will meet John in the morning.

I can't believe we're leaving tomorrow already, and I'm sad to go, but I'll also be really glad to be home.

Bittersweet

The realization that today was the last day didn't hit me until the end of the day. It was just another routine morning at Penn:

Get ready for breakfast. 

Walk to breakfast in 1920's with friends.

Head towards class.

I am not that much of a sentimental person, but the fact that we we never going to be eating there together for breakfast and dinner ever again does make me feel sad, to say the least. Aside from missing friends, my grown attachment for my Physics class and teachers has never stopped growing, and seeing us walk away from each other was quite disappointing. 

Bill and his bubble-making machine

After several demonstrations on mindblowing physics, and our presentations on interest groups, I realized how much that I would be missing from this experience. Never again will we be able to see Bill Berner explode wooden house sculptures or ride on a cart powered by a fire extinguisher. Although our last day of class today was filled with laughs and amusement, it was also very sad for all of us as well. Mary showed us a PowerPoint that she put together about Bill and all that we've accomplished in class. Just to make sure that we won't forget what is already an unforgettable experience, each student received a flash drive with class memories saved inside them. 

After a few more of Bill's demonstrations, class was finally coming to an end. It was not easy to say goodbye to the people who've given me such an amazing summer experience here at UPenn. Bill, Craig, Mary, and everyone else who helped make this possible did not only teach me a bunch of amazing physics. They also taught me how to be passionate about what you love, that intelligence is not based off of a letter grade, and that perseverance and determination will always help you reach your goals. 

Group Picture with Bill Berner

After class ended, my friends and I decided to head to an Indian buffet for dinner and celebrate our last day together. We all gathered in the lounge after and played games throughout the night. Despite the fact that I will miss everything and everyone from this program, knowing that I will be leaving Penn in a couple of hours does not make me feel sad. These fantastic three weeks has impacted me in such a way that I am ready to return to California with a new and improved mindset!