Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Out of the Chrysalis: Week 1 Day 3

Delicious lunch on the
pristine main quad
The beginning of class today proceeded in the usual way with a lecture/ discussion about important figures and concepts in psychology (mainly Piaget and his stage theory) and our homework article about the reality of infants' understanding of object permanence and other physical principles in their world. Fascinating as always. For lunch, rather than the dining hall, I decided to walk to a restaurant called Medici for a milkshake (I had the special, Banana Pudding, and it was mind-blowingly delicious) and a veggie wrap. I took my lunch to go and ate it on the grass of the main quad to watch the bustle of people outside on a nice day. It was exactly the relaxing thing I needed after interacting with so many new people all the time! I also found a caterpillar, which was super cool.
Caterpillar!

After lunch, our class took a tour of the Regenstein Library. My favorite parts were the music library in the basement of the Mansueto bubble, where they keep old CD's, records, cassettes, and other. as well as listening equipment, and the restoration facility where old manuscripts are maintained and preserved. Our tour guide, Paul Belloni, was a pleasure to learn from and taught us so much about how to find scholarly information. I felt like every paper I had ever researched before in my life was inadequate. In comparison to the minimal resources that people have easy, free access to outside of academia, a university library system provides an incredible collection of research and other resources right at your fingertips. I think that this trip really made me appreciate the advantages and wealth of information that college provides.

Double rainbow all the way! (complete with
lightening!)
After class I joined RA Shannon and a small group of other students to go on my first off campus trip since my arrival at UChicago. Our destination was the Chicago Cultural Center, where the main new exhibit was a project by Paul Catanese called 'visible from space.' It included pieces in many different mediums related to his work with drones in space. I was really excited about the concept, but the exhibit itself was a little to abstract for me to really access it. The trip to the museum was still amazing, though, since there were so many other exhibits to see and such incredible architecture in the building. Even more exciting was our experience after the cultural center when we decided to try and visit the bean in Millennium park before heading home. It started storming so hard that they wouldn't let us near the bean because, strange as this may sound, large metal objects are not best when lightening and large amounts of water are involved. We all got soaked on the way home, but this was my first experience with having lightening literally directly overhead and it was kind of exciting. Plus, on the ride back, we saw a double rainbow with occasional flashes of lightening in front of it. How cool is that?! Overall this was a jam-packed day and I feel like my experience expanded in so many ways.  
    
My favorite pieces at the cultural center, oil paintings of the moon
Cultural center ceiling design

4 comments:

  1. Double rainbow! Lucky you :-) what a fantastic time it sounds like you are having. So many amazing experiences. Thanks for sharing.

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  2. Every day gets more full than the day before. Lucky you, although luck has nothing to do with it. Love the vigor and wildness of summer storms. Hugs and kisses

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    2. William. Every day absolutely gets more full from the day before. The days are getting so full. Just yesterday I myself learned some fun facts. Did you know all dolphins are lesbian? Neither did I! That is why NPR is so liberal.

      Best wishes,
      Mr. Leonard

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