2011 in Review

In January, I published this post on my blag detailing my hopes and goals for the year 2011.  I'm glad to report that I had a much better 2011 than 2010.  Pretty much every goal or hope that I listed in that post manifested itself.  I didn't find an internship despite the supposed prevalence of geotechnical lab work, but I think I'll make it, somehow.  I also only saw 4 football games in person, but again, I think I'll live.  My 2011 included:

• Receiving funding and enrolling in a master of science program at Oregon State.
• Beginning coursework toward that master's degree.
• Moving to Corvallis, Oregon and living 1,300 miles away from my parents. (Honestly, it's kind of tragic even being back for the holiday break.)
• Acquiring a 2011 Mitsubishi Lancer with 000002 miles on it.
• Turning 23.  This has pretty much been my favorite age so far.
• Being the 1% for Halloween.
• Seeing 4 college football games in person.  
• Seeing BYU play and win in Corvallis.
• Getting a new cell phone.  The old one crapped out maybe a month after that post and my parents got me a new one.  A dumbphone, of course.

With a new year comes new hopes and goals.  Unlike last year, I have a good idea of what my future holds.  I'll be continuing coursework and starting research toward my master's degree.  For 2012, I want to make significant strides in my research, not spend more than two weeks at a time in my parents' house, and see more football games.  In addition to the Oregon State games for the coming year, I'm thinking about heading to Provo for the BYU season opener against Wazzu and/or making a road trip to Boise to see the Cougars take on the Broncos on the Smurf Turf.  I'm thinking that the Mayans just ran out of room on their calendar; 2012 is going to be a good year.

Grad School Lessons, Take 1

In addition to teaching me about important technical skills like geotechnical lab work, foundation engineering, and structural seismic design, my first term of grad school has taught me some important life lessons.  Here's a quick summary of each, in no particular order:

• Check out the neighborhood before moving in.  Seriously, if 3/4 of your prospective neighbors speak little or no English, it might be worth it to pay twice as much to live twice as far away from campus.  Here's hoping that my car is still there when I come back from winter break.
• Don't trust other people to do your work.  In two of my classes this term, the homework was assigned as group assignments.  Suffice it to say, I found out why I always did my homework by myself during my undergrad years.  My grades in the two group classes were significantly lower than the one that had individual assignments.  It would have involved a lot more work to do the homework myself, but I think I would have been more satisfied with the results at the end of the term.
• Sometimes you're the dog and sometimes you're the hydrant.  In the seismic design final, I was the hydrant.  Dr. Miller feels that he wants his seismic design classes to learn the codes that govern design of structures.  This would all be well and good if he actually showed his seismic design classes how to use the code.  He told us what was coming, but we were still woefully unprepared because there was little teaching of the code and no assignments based thereon.
• Most people love alcohol more than life itself.  In grad school, most everyone is over 21 and is fully capable of consuming alcohol at any given social event.  Most everyone also exercises this right to the degree that they're pushing the limit of being too impaired to drive, but generally chooses to drive anyway.  I'm seriously thinking about upping the insurance on my car... assuming it's still there at the end of the break.
• People drive like they're impaired even with no help from alcohol.  Everyone in Corvallis drives 20 mph regardless of what the speed limit is.  I don't think the cops even bother setting up speed traps, it's not like they'd be good for anything.  The best one I've seen is a guy who changed his mind as to whether he wanted to turn at a particular intersection about 3 or 4 times and made a swerving half-lane-change for each one right in front of me.  In all fairness, it was right by fraternity row, which leads me to believe he was, indeed, impaired by alcohol.
• It can always get stupider.  I thought BYU CE's undergrad stupid seminar was stupid, then I became acquainted with Oregon State CE's graduate stupid seminar.
• Be grateful for what you have.  BYU's football team had at least a 10-win season every year that I was a student there, and stands a good chance of doing it again this year.  I got used to going to a school with a winning football team and it's kind of tragic that my current school's football team is arguably the worst in its conference. 
• My grades are always lower fall term/semester.  Speaking of football, when several hours of your Saturday are taken up by awesome football action both live and on the TV, it's hard to get any work done.  Winter and spring terms should be easier on my GPA.  Though, next fall I'm going to really need to focus and get it done.

Well, that's pretty much all I've got for now.  I've listed this as 'Take 1' because I assume that I'll have other lessons that I'll learn as grad school progresses. In the mean time, I think this should be sufficient.

Ten Virtuous Ladies

In Sunday School this last weekend, the instructor focused mostly on the first thirteen verses of Matthew 25, more commonly known as the parable of the ten virgins.  If you're not familiar with the story, it goes a little something like this.  There were ten women betrothed to marry a man, and it was their wedding day.  As a side note, polygamy was socially accepted at Jesus' time, but few men could afford it.  I guess women have always been expensive... but I digress.  Five of these women brought their little clay lamps and brought extra fuel oil with them.  The other five didn't bring extra oil and had to go out and buy more. By the time these five got back, the wedding had already started and they had been locked out.

 

This parable is analogous to how well prepared the righteous are to receive Christ at his coming.  All of the women were suitable in the eyes of the man.  Would you really marry someone who you didn't like, even if could have more than one spouse?  So, all of these women were a part of God's kingdom on Earth.  Some just slacked off and weren't prepared when the time came.

Now, this parable is pretty cool, in and of itself, but I wouldn't post this if I didn't think I had something good to add to it.  As a geotechnical engineer, I'm more expert than your average person in just about all things dirt related.  Inasmuch as the lamps that these ladies had were made out of clay, I feel like I can offer some insights.

Individual particles of clay are long and thin and don't necessarily fit together into a uniform structure all that well.  When clay particles are deposited, they don't all lay flat.  Some of them end up standing up on end to a certain degree and creating relatively large voids in the soil structure.  This is called flocculation.  Because of the electrical nature of clays, the presence of salt ions increases the effect, making the soil more flocculated. In addition, clay particles often like to stick together in clumps called "packets" which, again, aren't necessarily uniform and create somewhat larger pores in the clay structure.

A uniform clay structure at the top with a flocculated clay structure in the middle. The bottom picture is a more macroscopic view of clay structure, giving more insight into its porous nature.

In somewhat recent geological history, the holy land and much of the middle east was covered by an ocean.  This is where the limestone that was used to construct the Pyramids of Giza came from.  Thus, many of the clay deposits in the holy land were deposited by oceans.  This gives these clay deposits high salt ion content and a relatively high degree of flocculation.

What it all comes down to is that the clay in Israel is highly porous.  The highly flocculated structure makes pores in the clay through which a fluid like water or oil can flow.  Even though the clay was kind of fired, it still retains these properties, for the most part.

Getting back to the parable of the ten virgins, the five women who didn't bring oil thought that they could make it through the time they had to wait with just the oil they had.  The Bible doesn't mention it specifically, but I think it's quite possible that they thought they could just put out their lamps and wait until they needed them again.  Because of the porous nature of clay in general, and especially the clay in Israel, the oil in their lamps leaked out and they did not have enough when they needed it.  In short, that's not how it works; these ladies still had to pay the piper for their lack of preparedness.

The moral of the story for our lives is that we need to carry extra oil with us, because we could run out unexpectedly.  If we are to be prepared for the Savior when He comes, we must keep more testimony of the gospel with us than we think we need. If you don't have enough with you, you may run out unexpectedly and not have enough time to go find some.  No one knows when He'll come specifically, so really, it's best to have plenty on you at all times.