That’s right. I built me a car, and drove myself back to my house. Actually, that’s a lie. I built a robot to drive the car I built, and then had THAT drive me back to my house. Sorry if I misled you, there.

Drexel was a wonderful experience, and I made so many friends, and also made a journal, which I am technically forbidden to post here as it contains material that can and probably will be patented and published later on. However, feel free to look at the still-growing Mentorship Gallery I have posted online. Now that I’m home, I can probably upload all of my photos, and hopefully they’ll all be nice and developed this time around (digitally developed with Lightroom, God bless that application).

I will say this, however: My project was funded by NASA, and was developed around an entirely new idea involving non-thermal atmospheric pressure plasmas that nobody, not even the people in our lab, had attempted before. Which seemed kind of silly, because the idea made so much sense and seemed so simple. But, as simple as it was, it was incredibly important the the development of what will eventually become a project with no limitations, just plasma – helpful, helpful plasma. I’ll reveal more about it as time goes on; I don’t want to disrupt some delicate balance by saying what we did here before it’s published.

I will also say that the journal I created, which very much resembles my Van De Graaff Generator project journal, will be aiding the undergraduate student who is picking up where I and my partner, Denise, left off. Denise and I never really “left off” – we finished what we had to do and everything surrounding it – but rather, because the project can expand so much, there was enough room for a newcomer to enter into the field and expand our research and develop on our designs and experiments. It is up to my mentor, Greg Fridman, and my journal, to teach him exactly what we did and how we did it.

Although I’m sad to have left all 35 of my new best friends, I can safely and confidently say that the lack of drama is relaxing. No more sleepless nights (staying up until 2am = sleepless, folks), no more broken and repaired friendships, no more laughing with the people you love about the silly things you did that you loved doing even more…

Damnit, I’m missing it already! A big cheers to the Summer Mentorship Crew of 2007. May your Facebook pages live on and on, as long as you do, and may your telephones always ring when I end up calling you to say hello.

In the meantime, I will be reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, having just finished The Kite Runner. I was stunned by the first one, and aim to be shocked by the second. Ah, it’s good to be back and able to read.

Oh, and by the way, I achieved my expected scores on the two AP tests I took: A 5 on AP Lang, and a 4 on AP Physics. Go me!