Back in the swing of things

Ok, so the post title is a rather corny reference to New Residence Hall (aka Swing Space or Sillispace). Anyway, now that the craziness of shopping period is over, I finally get a chance to sit down and write about all the cool stuff that's been going on even though we've only been back for two weeks!

First stop: Classes!
The above photo is PSYC 171b: Sex, Evolution and Human Nature with Prof. Santos...she's an awesome prof and the class is offered only once every three years, so you can imagine why so many people want to take it. We were moved twice, from Davies Auditorium (about 250 seats) to SSS 114 (where the photo was taken) and now we're in the Law School auditorium, where we finally seem to fit. It's not just the topic matter either - she specifically said the first day that the class was not all about sex, all about evolution, or all about human nature. Instead, it's more about how human nature is a product of evolution, more specifically how certain behaviors are the production of sexual reproduction strategies. It's been lots of fun so far - one of the few classes I've heard of where the professor gets applause at the end of every lecture, not just at the end of the semester.

Other classes I'm taking: Cell Biology, Physics 181 (electricity and magnetism), Directed Research with Prof. Santos, and this cool college seminar called Medicine, Molecules, and the Millennium with Dr. Irvin Modlin from the Yale Medical School. We've only had one meeting so far but it already looks like it'll be an awesome class, so keep an eye out for more updates in the future =)

The weather has also been kind of funky - over winter break it was around 70 degrees every day, but now it's just bitterly cold outside. We've gotten bits of snow here and there (as seen below) but so far it hasn't stuck around for more than 24 hours. This is both a good and a bad thing - today I almost slipped several times on icy patches but at least I'm not hiking around campus through six inches.

First weekend back was a lot of fun...Friday night I was a participant in the first ever Asian Idol competition, something I will probably never live down ^^; It was a lot of fun though, and a nice way to showcase that you don't have to be Asian to appreciate the various cultures. I don't have any photos, unfortunately (since I was on stage!), but apparently there's a video somewhere that I will have to see and perhaps post later...

Saturday night was just as cool - I went to my friend Axel's improv comedy show in the Davenport Theater. Axel is a member of the Purple Crayon (along with fellow PoS-er Ned) so for they came up with the idea of an "iPod shuffle" show where each scene would be inspired by songs from a random audience member's iPod. In the second half, they mixed this up even more by choosing 10 iPods and taking one song from each. The result: absolute hilarity! A few clips are below - you can see more on my Youtube account.




In the week to come: Grand re-opening of the Sillispace Buttery, a few panels about women in medicine and life after Yale, perhaps a few IMs, and of course the second full week of classes. Time to go read for MM&M!

Caplab 101

Since I've had to explain my research in Caplab multiple times to friends and family, I figured I should write a post about it (plus it's super-cool anyway).

To start, Professor Santos is an incredible mentor as well as an excellent teacher - Animal Cognition class last semester was really interesting and "Sex, Evolution, and Human Nature" this spring is awesome. It's such a popular class we that we've had to move twice (Davies -> SSS 114 -> Law School auditorium) to accomodate all the people who want to take it! She insists that all of us call her Laurie, which took a little getting used to at first, but now it's cool. As a PI (principal investigator) she doesn't get to spend much time with the capuchins running trials but she stays up to date on all the projects going on at the same time through weekly meetings.

Second cool thing: the monkeys! On campus we work with a group of capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) who all live together in a social colony. They get all sorts of toys to play with and lots of food - standard monkey chow plus fresh fruits and vegetables every day, even exotic stuff like pomegranate and coconut. They also get treats for finishing experiments, and each one seems to have a personal favorite: May Day really likes sunflower seeds, Felix really likes peanuts, etc. A few photos - I would post some of my own (like ones with the two babies!) except they're not officially approved...

Felix, the alpha male of the colony

May Day begging for food from Jill, her mother

Besides the capuchins, Caplabbers also get to work at a couple field sites: Myakka City, Florida has a lemur preserve, and Cayo Santiago is an island with about 1000 free-ranging rhesus macaques. People will go down for spring break, summer research, even a few for Thanksgiving break. A few more photos:

A family of macaques on Cayo Santiago

A red-ruffed lemur at Myakka

Third cool thing: the overall atmosphere of the lab is really chill. Lab meetings usually have one project presenting their work so far and getting comments from the rest of the groups. It's always helpful to hear other people's suggestions, especially when you've been thinking about one problem for too long and need a fresh perspective. We also have a system where doing chores to help keep the lab space clean earns "brownie points" with prizes at the end of every semester. That's how I ended up getting this little guy (the stuffed monkey, not the Santa hat) - he was promptly dubbed Nick-Nack because that monkey always seems to have his tongue sticking out...

Personally, I have found getting involved in research to be really easy. Since I was part of Perspectives in Science, I had guaranteed funding for last summer. I had already heard good things about Caplab from my freshman counselor Amy (Laurie was her senior thesis advisor), so it was just a matter of asking Laurie to sign the Perspectives form and off I went! In general it's pretty easy to get involved - some people take research for credit during the school year or just email professors whose work they find interesting and ask if they can volunteer.

Doing research in the summer was cool because a lot of my other PoS friends were around and we could concentrate on our work instead of having to juggle research with classes (which is a bit trickier but totally doable, based on my experience this past semester). We also got to plan a lot of fun events, like a picnic at the top of East Rock park, fireworks at Long Wharf for Independence Day, World Cup-watching parties, movie nights (Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest!), and of course a huge crepe/dessert night at my apartment.

Picnic at the top of East Rock!

For my independent project, Laurie helped me devise a procedure based on something she had published with grad student Jon Flombaum and additional lemur work (Note: link goes to a PDF file so you need Adobe Reader) to study what the capuchins understand about what someone else can visually perceive based on gaze cues. Working out the kinks and getting the monkeys to come in for trials took longer than expected, but we've recently finished acquiring all the data and this semester I'll be learning how to analyze that data as well as how to prepare a paper for submission to journals. I feel that I learned a lot from being involved in all aspects of the experiment from conception to completion, so in some ways I already have an idea of what graduate school would be like =D

Winter break week 2

I really liked this article: Happiness 101 - made me think a little about what I can change in my life to be a better, happier person =) And this article was just funny: Black Tie Optional

In other news, life has been pretty chill - lots of trips to the library/B&N to catch up on fun reading (I now appreciate my sister's love of Neil Gaiman books and I'm catching up on the Dune prequels before going on to the final volumes), learning how to cook (batter-fried portabella mushrooms last night were...interesting =P), some shopping with Mom (finally found a proper business suit), and generally enjoying the ridiculously warm weather. January temperatures around 70 degrees are just not normal, and while I appreciate the sunshine, I can't help but wonder what's going on with the global climate.

On a lighter note, it's been a lot of fun seeing many of my high school friends again, like at Meredith's New Year's Eve party, Alumni Day at South, lunches at Turning Point (awesome food!), and generally just around town. Going back to South to visit old teachers was a lot of fun too (we went and surprised all our siblings in the AP Calc class hehe), though it's kind of sad when some of them have retired already. Some photos:

Mere's NYE party: lots of people I haven't seen in years...

Samak and me at Turning Point

Six more days at home, then back to New Haven to start my fourth semester (eek!)...time to start Blue Book-ing! Hopefully I can get into one of those college seminars...

Dancing with Phoenix

We may not be as well known as YaleDancers or Rhythmic Blue, but being part of the Phoenix Dance Troupe is one of the most fun parts of my life at Yale.

Our main goal is to promote cross-cultural appreciation through dance - in our case, traditional Chinese dance. However, that doesn't mean you have to be Chinese to join! As a group, we're pretty low-key: rehearsal every Saturday for about an hour then additional rehearsals during the week for every dance, so your time committment can be as little or as much as you want. Most members come in with little to no previous experience - just ask these girls:

May ES '10, Shani SM '06 (Forestry '07), and Tanya CC '09

Once performances come around, though, we really get going. Besides our own spring show, we appear at events like the Cultural Connections talent show, the CASA cultural show, Kaleidoscope (the ISO cultural show), and at Bulldog Days. For anyone who wants to see videos, there are some from the spring show HERE, but I think you need a DivX player or something...

Emily BK '08, Zimo SY '07, and Betsy BK '09 performing a Daizu dance

Jolie's (JE '06) solo - her fan has extra silk, so it's like a ribbon too

2006 senior umbrella dance *sniff*

Another cool thing is that we're not just limited to Chinese dance - we also cover other countries with lesser-known dance traditions, like Tibet. This year we're hoping to branch out even further, creating fusion pieces like mixing hip-hop with a fan dance and setting it to Chinese pop music. One of our most popular pieces is the Mongolian bowl dance, where each person has three porcelain bowls on her head, even while spinning!

Tibetan dance

Mongolian bowl dance

As funny as it may sound, one of my favorite parts is the community service. Every fall and spring we run a dance workshop for CASPY (Chinese Adopted Siblings Program for Youth), which brings hundreds of adopted kids and their families to Yale for the day. Each kid gets a Yale student as a "Big Sib" and they go around to different culture-related activities like Origami, martial arts, and our workshop. Last fall we also performed at the Worthington Elementary School for their International Day celebration, and we might go back to do something for Chinese New Year.

Zimo with one of the CASPY kids

Isn't she adorable?!

At the end of the day though, we're just a group of girls (guys are welcome to join too!) who love having fun =D

Group photo before Spring Show '06

Welcome 2007!

Happy New Year, everyone! Resolutions: Um...get more sleep? I'd also like to get more exercise, though that shouldn't be a problem since Phoenix will be having more rehearsals to prepare for the spring show, plus I'll still be running up and down science hill hehe.

In other news, there's a new baby in Caplab! Thank goodness I ended up not writing about the capuchin colony hierarchy in my YSM article, otherwise I'd have to change it yet again =P

Chrissy's heading back to school tomorrow (poor kid) and some college ppl have already left, but I'm still around for another two weeks...I predict lots of library and B&N time. I'll hopefully get to see some more people before they go back to school since I probably won't be back in Mtown until summer and even then probably for only a few days...ah, the busy life of a college student.