ESAP Diary (week 3)

 Last week !

Day 16 (7/25/22)

Today was monday, back to normalcy. I woke up at like 8:15, ate breakfast at a dunkin' doughnuts along the way to lab, then worked on attaching our head to our body. I'm working on a big timelapse of all the work, where I'm aiming for 256x speed, which is straight crazy. Right now I converted all the clips to 64x speed, but I'm not sure if 256x speed will even show anything cool or will it just be flashes of random moments with no progression.

Here'a s fun fact: I didn't take a single photo today :D

So, enjoy your first ever day that's photoless. This will likely be very stale. The day was fairly stale, as I spent half of it in the lab.

ANYWAY, after the morning session, I went to the cafeteria to eat lunch where I ate fruits and eggs, then back to lab to play skribbl with some of the people in our class before class starts. It was really fun because I'm good at it, also, it's such a flawless and harmless party game. Except for how they just kick you if you start spamming. I feel like an initial warning would be appreciated more.

Anyway, class started and I didn't really pay attention and was doing my own thing. I attached the hand to my body, then the feet to my body. This process takes SO LONG, because you have to match up the right amount of edge loops, which creates so many discrepancies in the shaping. After that, it was 5:00 PM. That's how time consuming this stuff is.

So I ate dinner (bagel sandwich and fries because I miss fries) at the cafeteria, then headed back to lab from 6-8. I ended up staying until 9:15 to catch up and do the clothes (the professor was already doing the clothes during the afternoon but I was behind and still doing the attaching). I did take some breaks uploading clips for the timelapse and also cubing. 

So yeah, I headed back and did your typical vibe stuff along with some work.

What a boring post! This has to be a record. I'll try to bounce back tomorrow. I need to remind myself to take pictures.

Day 17 (7/26/22)

Hi! Today was Tuesday, and I actually brought my own breakfast to the lab to eat.

Two tangerines, yogurt, granola bar, spoon, napkin.

The morning session was pretty chill, I made shoes on my character and called it a day. Then, we headed to lunch where I toasted a bagel and put ham, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and mayo on it. After that I couldn't resisted and got a cookie...two cookies.

I got back at the lab with an hour left in the lunch break so cubed to pass the time. 

During the afternoon session, the professor started going over everyone's models individually again for the second time, and he spends like 30 minutes on each person so it was pretty much just free time. I spent some time adjusting everything and adding some minor details to the clothes, but I really just cubed a lot of the time. Halfway through, I just had this random urge to walk outside and explore the rest of this building. Everytime, I walk into this building with a strict path in mind and go to my lab unaware of how big this building is.

Our building is both clean and messy. The halls and floors are all super clean, but the layout of the building is SO MESSY. There's just random intersections and random staircases in varying sizes scattered EVERYWHERE. It's so messy. You could get lost in there, I explored the thing for like 10 minutes just wandering around in there like I was in a maze.

So yeah, after the afternoon session I wasn't hungry so I went back to my dorm first. Along the way I stopped by a running store and was kinda fascinated by this:

It's like some flavored gel that gives you sodium so youre supposed to drink it while in a marathon or something. Idk but it looked cool.

After that, I went to the cafeteria right next to our dorm to eat dinner where I grabbed pizza for takeout. It wasn't that bad, but it wasn't stellar. 

To digress, my back has been kinda improving. Like I can feel my improvement like it was last time. This is just so unfortunate. I dont think I'll ever be consistent in working out for the next year. I literally can't even run. This is just sad. One day this will all be too much for me and it will affect me in deeper ways. For now, I can deal with it and how it's restricting my life.

ANYWAY, I just said that cuz normally I would've went to the gym. I feel so lazy and immobile spending days like this. Getting in the shower pretty much clean. Whatever. I spent the rest of the night making an instagram account to see how my pentapping videos perform on instagram reels. Here's the acc: https://www.instagram.com/inked.beats/. Along with that, I also did my laundry and watched youtube.

Day 18 (7/27/22)

Today I woke up at like 8, went to hill to eat some classic peach yogurt :3

In the morning session, I fixed some armor stuff and tried adding hair. I was like halfway done before we had to head out at 12:00 to some college meeting. Basically, the entire program sat in an auditorium and we were hypnotized to go to penn. It was literally a slideshow of why Penn is good, as if we haven't already made our own call on this because we've ltierally lived here for two weeks. For real tho, they did introduce their four schools which I didn't know about sadly, and now it's good to know. 

During the q&a this kid in my class (Alan) asked the most unintelligent question I've ever heard. He said "what constitutes a great engineer?"

My guy just solved MH370 with that brillian, insightful, thought-provoking question. A shivering cold chill swept the classroom after these words were uttered. You could just sense the "AHA!" moments as one by one, every student realized the true, deeper meaning behind such a sophisticated question. This was a live display of the California gold rush, as the accumulaton of "EUREKA!" settling in the classroom culminated to the significance of what makes a true, pure gold, of a question, like the one Alan shared. 



Anyway, after that was done, they released us, and next thing u know we have a SWARM OF pre-college students heading towards the Hill cafeteria. We practically assembled the prehistoric Mongolian army with this, and me and my roomates edged our way to the front of the march so that we wouldn't have to wait in an atrocious line. We opted to get takeout trays since literally like 200 kids were also here. That turned out to be a 5head play as it was pretty nice to eat in the lab.

During the afternoon session, the professor continued going over people's models, and hit mine at the very end, which was cool cuz I got it over with. 

After class, I went to a chipotle near my dorm and then ate it at my dorm. 

My plan was to head back to my lab at 7:30, stay there until 8:50, and then come back to attend a meeting at 9:15. I pretty much fulfilled that schedule spot on. I chilled at home and posted an instagram reel as I continue to try to go viral. Then, I headed to lab and recorded a timelapse, but somehow I got a frame of my penncard which has confidential information and a picture of myself, and I'm to lazy to edit that out. During lab, the TA's surprised us with paid cookies because we were at lab. We got to order our own, and I think each cookie cost like 2 dollars. It's not even that big. Such a scam.

I got a mint double chocolate and it was really good. But still not worthy of 2 dollars. Absolute robbery.

Anyway, I was actually pretty productive during lab, as I did a ton of work on the arms to make it point the right direction. Along the way, somehow maya just glitched and this happened:

literally saved the living daylight out of me. WHAT IS THIS. I just did ctrl z and it fixed it but thats crazy.

So yeah, after lab, I went back and was ready to brush my teeth and write this blog post at 12 AM, before I got a text from the group chat that we were having a smash tournament. I decided to check it out out of curiosity, and next thing you know I'm back in my room at 1:30 AM. So yeah, I'm not gonna get much sleep tonight. Oh well.

Day 19 (7/28/22)

Today was Thursday, and our model was due Friday at 2 AM, so today was essentially the last day we had to work on our model. I finished the arms and adjusted it so it looked natural this morning while he ran through more individuals.

For lunch, I stayed in my lab and ate the leftover chipotle from yesterday. Then, at 12 PM, one of the TA's took us to look at this maker's lab or whatever you call it. The way I interpret it is like a wellness center with 3d printers and laser printers and VR and all those type of tech stuff. It was very cool, here are the photos I took:

The guy touring us was an absolute alpha chad. He laser printed this guitar as one his first projects, rides around campus with a 3d printed mario turtle shell on his hoverboard, and had an NFC chip implanted into one hand to make payments. He said he got the kit off https://dangerousthings.com/ and then used a youtube tutorial to properly use the needle. Absolutely insane. Imagine if I told my parents I was doing this. I asked and there's not many downsides of the NFC chip, besides someone knocking you out and then scanning ur hand or something. Or, you injure that exact place where u put the chip in. Other than that, there aren't any consequences at airport security. You can see it in x-rays tho.

SO yeah, that was really eye-opening. It was a very cool experience, and a nice place to have if youre a college student. There's lots of chairs and meeting rooms everywhere, along with super cool 3d printers that students can use after being trained. The picture of that green thing around our heads is something we got for free there, where it reduces the strain on your ear from the mask by having that latch tug at the back of ur head instead of your ear. It's super useful for me personally because the masks I use are really tight. 

Anyway, in the afternoon, I added a tail and made adjustments to the shoes and other boring stuff. I was pretty much ready to submit at the end. 

So for dinner we went to hill and I got fries and unhealthy stuff because camp is ending soon. After, we headed back to lab, where most people were going to wrap up their project and submit it. Lab was 7:30 PM - 12:00 AM, so we got there a bit early. No worries tho, that's a perfect opportunity to squad up on zombs. 

The rest of the night was pretty fun. I wrapped up and submitted my model, then just reflected on everything. It was really all over. In a flash. So fast. Too fast.

The TA's bought dominos pizza for us for some random reason, prolly to get us motivated and happy for lab. Yea, other than that, we played a fun kahoot about the TAs at the end to kind of wrap up the day. Then, we walked back. There were three kids who opted to stay in the lab to continue working until 2 AM which was pretty crazy. 

SO yeah, I got back, showered, played rocket league, did other random stuff, then about to go to bed. I don't have to wake up early next morning so I'm not in a rush to sleep too early. 

Day 20 (7/29/22)

I am writing this on 8/6/22.

What happened? I was packing on thsi night and completely forgot about writing a blog post.

Then, the next day, I had a ton of flying to do so I forgot. 

Then, I started marching band at home, and forgor.

Here are the pictures I took from this last day:

Graduation ceremony in the lab. Mochi donuts are very good!

Day 21 (7/30/22)

Took a train to the airport at around 11 AM, my flight was at 7 PM, so I did college apps stuff at the airport while I was waiting.

Then I had a layover at salt lake city, and I landed at around 11:30 PM in San Francisco this day :) time zone worked backwards this time

Conclusions

It's been a week since this crazy camp. I'm settled back home, BUT MAN THAT WAS AN EXPERIENCE. It was just so fun, and I learned what it's like to be independent. I learned so many things about life in general through this trip and being alone. I miss my TAs a lot, we definitely had a special bond. To James, Jerry, and Michael, I had so much fun with you guys, it was so crazy. Finally, to my roomates, thank you for everything. We played zombs a little too much but that's what made it so fun. You guys were very very unique, I won't forget you guys. Simon was so funny, Andy was so nice, and Kevin was fun to mess around with. Man this was such a special trip. I learned so much.

Lyric(s) of the Post:

"The truth will echo"

Echo - Christina Grimmie