Tuesday, March 28, 2006

MATH::

I'm off to downtown Los Altos to study study study math all day long! Read more about this on my math blog. Will it every stop raining? I know I should complain... but it's spring!!

Monday, March 27, 2006

NEW camera::

My dad just brought home my new Sony DSC-S600 digital camera! My dad got it today at the Sony store (he works at Sony) and he got a pretty good discount. He also got two 512 MB "Memory Sticks Duo Pro" whatever duo pro means... all I know about this is that it means that I can't use the many other just plain "memory sticks" that we have for our two identical Sony (owned by Sony, borrowed by my dad) video (and digital) cameras. Doesn't that suck?! And the "Memory Stick Duo Pro" doesn't seem to work in my Sony mouse that has a slot for a "Memory stick." Now, my dad got the duo pro ones WITH these adapter things that should work with the mouse... hmmm maybe because they're refubished means that they don't work?? Well, I think we'll continue to look into that. But I can hook up my camera and download pics from my NEW camera through USB, so that works.



These are two of the very first pics I took on my camera! I'm going to try and take regular pictures and see how that goes. ALSO, I'm definitely going to load up on pictures when I go to Chicago on WEDNESDAY!!! I'm so excited about going to see Rebecca (my German friend there for a student exchange program) and meet Erin (her host) and her friends! Very exciting... and my first flight alone (exciting//nerve-racking)! Fortunately, my mom (THANK YOU MOM!!) got me on the same flight that my brother is taking from Chicago (he's coming back from Indiana and stopping in Chicago airport). So, only one flight alone!

Even though I have a really really *cool* new toy (well, birthday gift, and my birthday is Dec. 5th : ) ) I still have a really really not cool precalc final on Wednesday morning! NO, wait. don't get me wrong, I love math!! Absolutely, love math. But I have to admit. I'm done with this class. Onto new adventures! But, I do realize that not everything is fun all the time and I'm definitely planning on sticking to this because I really want a good grade in this class, and I have a good chance of getting it (if I study!!!!!!!!).

bye : )

Friday, March 24, 2006

A leader of my Girl Scout troop sent this out to everyone through our Yahoo group. I'm so annoyed with this and at the same time I'm glad that I'm not in that pool of high school (girl) students that has to fight and do everything they can do and more to get into college now.


March 23, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
To All the Girls I've Rejected
By JENNIFER DELAHUNTY BRITZ
Gambier, Ohio

A FEW days ago I watched my daughter Madalyn open a thin envelope from
one of the five colleges to which she had applied. "Why?" was what she
was obviously asking herself as she handed me the letter saying she was
waitlisted.

Why, indeed? She had taken the toughest courses in her high school and
had done well, sat through several Saturday mornings taking SAT's and
the like, participated in the requisite number of extracurricular
activities, written a heartfelt and well-phrased essay and even taken
the extra step of touring the campus.

She had not, however, been named a National Merit finalist, dug a well
for a village in Africa, or climbed to the top of Mount Rainier. She is
a smart, well-meaning, hard-working teenage girl, but in this day and
age of swollen applicant pools that are decidedly female, that wasn't
enough. The fat acceptance envelope is simply more elusive for today's
accomplished young women.

I know this well. At my own college these days, we have three applicants
for every one we can admit. Just three years ago, it was two to one.
Though Kenyon was a men's college until 1969, more than 55 percent of
our applicants are female, a proportion that is steadily increasing. My
staff and I carefully read these young women's essays about their
passion for poetry, their desire to discover vaccines and their
conviction that they can make the world a better place.

I was once one of those girls applying to college, but that was 30 years
ago, when applying to college was only a tad more difficult than signing
up for a membership at the Y. Today, it's a complicated and prolonged
dance that begins early, and for young women, there is little margin for
error: A grade of C in Algebra II/Trig? Off to the waitlist you go.
Rest assured that admissions officers are not cavalier in making their
decisions. Last week, the 10 officers at my college sat around a table,
12 hours every day, deliberating the applications of hundreds of
talented young men and women. While gulping down coffee and poring over
statistics, we heard about a young woman from Kentucky we were not yet
ready to admit outright. She was the leader/ president/ editor/ captain/
lead actress in every activity in her school. She had taken six advanced
placement courses and had been selected for a prestigious state
leadership program. In her free time, this whirlwind of achievement had
accumulated more than 300 hours of community service in four different
organizations.

Few of us sitting around the table were as talented and as directed at
age 17 as this young woman. Unfortunately, her test scores and grade
point average placed her in the middle of our pool. We had to have a
debate before we decided to swallow the middling scores and write
"admit" next to her name.

Had she been a male applicant, there would have been little, if any,
hesitation to admit. The reality is that because young men are rarer,
they're more valued applicants. Today, two-thirds of colleges and
universities report that they get more female than male applicants, and
more than 56 percent of undergraduates nationwide are women.
Demographers predict that by 2009, only 42 percent of all baccalaureate
degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men.

We have told today's young women that the world is their oyster; the
problem is, so many of them believed us that the standards for admission
to today's most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men. How's
that for an unintended consequence of the women's liberation movement?
The elephant that looms large in the middle of the room is the
importance of gender balance. Should it trump the qualifications of
talented young female applicants? At those colleges that have reached
what the experts call a "tipping point," where 60 percent or more of
their enrolled students are female, you'll hear a hint of desperation in
the voices of admissions officers.

Beyond the availability of dance partners for the winter formal, gender
balance matters in ways both large and small on a residential college
campus. Once you become decidedly female in enrollment, fewer males and,
as it turns out, fewer females find your campus attractive.
What are the consequences of young men discovering that even if they do
less, they have more options? And what messages are we sending young
women that they must, nearly 25 years after the defeat of the Equal
Rights Amendment, be even more accomplished than men to gain admission
to the nation's top colleges? These are questions that admissions
officers like me grapple with.

In the meantime, I'm sending out waitlist and rejection letters for
nearly 3,000 students. Unfortunately, a majority of them will be female,
young women just like my daughter. I will linger over letters,
remembering individual students I've met, essays I loved,
accomplishments I've admired. I know all too well that parents will ache
when their talented daughters read the letters and will feel a bolt of
anger at the college admissions officers who didn't recognize how
special their daughters are.

Yes, of course, these talented young women will all find fine places to
attend college — Maddie has four acceptance letters in hand — but it
doesn't dilute the disappointment they will feel when they receive a
rejection or waitlist offer.

I admire the brilliant successes of our daughters. To parents and the
students getting thin envelopes, I apologize for the demographic realities.

Jennifer Delahunty Britz is the dean of admissions and financial aid at
Kenyon College.