Thursday, March 8th 2007
Waiting in Le Conte
At around 8:20 this morning I went to the third floor of Le Conte Hall. When I got there about 15 students were sitting on the floor waiting for 9:00. As time progressed the line I was in got longer, stretching from 368 east down the hallway all the way to the door to Old Le Conte. Among the 50 people I could see there was a GSI for Physics H7B holding office hours in one of the lines. What would bring all these people here this early in the morning? Why would I ditch my 8 AM class for the first time this semester?
Stephen Hawking
He is possibly the greatest living theoretical physicist. Hawking definitely has the best publicity of any physicist I know. He is also coming to campus next week.
Part of a new program, On the Same Page, the College of Letters & Science encourages incoming freshman to read good books. They sent a copy of Hawking’s A Briefer History of Time to incoming freshman. I wish they had this kind of program when I was a freshman, but knowing my luck I probably would have been unexcited by the author they found.
While the talk in Zellerbach is sold out, Hawking is giving a special talk about his life in physics just for Physics and Astronomy majors and faculty. I learned about this last night from the Physics majors email list.
There are three points I want to make:
1) Students who are truly interested in a field are out there and just need to be given opportunities.
2) Declaring your major has benefits. You get to do stuff open only to majors and get emails about work opportunities and internships.
3) Physics is awesome!
This makes me sick:
http://www.californiapatriot.org/magazine/images/full/will-you-be-our-valentine-19.jpg?1165446108
Comment by Valentine to Dubya — 3/8/2007 @ 9:44 am
Hear Hear! And I got there at 9:20 and the stack of tickets were awfully small. But I, too, got one!
Comment by pkahn — 3/8/2007 @ 10:14 am