Calculus happened, as did so many other courses. Economics was for sure a bore, but we didn’t really do anything – so I suppose it has grounds to be a bore for now. Physics the same, though it seems I’m incredibly rusty and prone to getting questions incorrect as always. I’m sure I’ll get back into the swing of things, althogh I’m ashamed at some of the basic stuff I’m getting wrong. Perhaps it means I have a bad foundation. That makes this a good time to build up the foundation.

Calculus is about the infinitely small and large; thus my calculus professor saw fit to tell a story. In calculus, you can calculate the area of a three-dimensional solid with the use of integrals. You do this by chopping up the 3D solid into infinitely small “slices”.

“You can find the volume of a cube easy,” my professor said. “But what about irregular solids? Here, I’ll draw one.” He sticks his chalk on the board, and as he draws this curious shape, he speaks:

“So, this is a pretty irregular solid. Yes… a loaf of bread. Now, you sell bread by volume. So in order to sell bread, bakers used to dunk their loaves of bread into buckets of water and measure the water that was displaced. Naturally the bread got pretty soggy – that’s why European bread has such thick crust, to prevent it from getting soggy.

But then a man came along, by the name of Newton, and invented integral calculus. And what do we do to calculate the area of something? We chop it up into slices. And thus, sliced bread was invented.”

We all laughed.

I sit under the stars as I write this, comfortably in a chair beneath a tree, watching students pass me by in the sidewalk lights’ glow. There is a beautiful cobblestone walkway just ten feet away from me, and a magnificent engineering facility some two hundred feet behind, but you wouldn’t know it from looking, because it looks more like a castle. I suppose if Archimedes had to discover that the volume of a solid is equal to the amount of liquid it displaces, such a building would be the appropriate place to do so. I read here, I write here. I check out some of the many cute girls here (I’ve abandoned my quest to garner a girlfriend in one week, which is up tomorrow, in favor of exploring all of my options, to which there are many).

And still not a single sign of a party. I wonder where they all could be… because that would be how I’d meet someone, if I did. That, or look for a photography club. By the way, I’m working on a new short story… I’ll probably have it finished rather soon. Especially since my favorite month of the year is just around the corner.

Alright, so the first day of college was incredible – yes, it really was. I know I’m at home here at Lehigh. Everyone is nice, everyone seems to have the same goal in mind: to become a more intelligent person than you were when you arrived. And it seems like we’re already accomplishing that, but I’ll see how far it goes before some start breaking away from the fun and learning and run off to do less productive things. By the end of the day a lot of the students in my dorm seemed very interesting in running off to one of the many first-day parties off-campus to get drunk. Naturally, none of them had any connections in order to get off-campus, so their drinking fest seemed more like a childish dream than anything. And Lehigh is really cracking down on alcohol this year; they’re dreaming if they think they won’t get caught.

I do now have my schedule, though! Mty week isn’t as busy as I though – but I suspect there will be a lot of long-term assignments to take up my time. I never have to get up early, never earlier than 8am, which is a relief. Most of the time I don’t have to be awake until 9 or 10am, and there are hour breaks between my classes for lunch. Usually I’m out by 1pm, but Mondays and Fridays I have classes until 4pm due to my IBE Seminar and my Physics Lab courses.

There’s a LOT of enthusiasm here at a Lehigh, and I’m glad to be a part of it. Everyone’s really excited – not just in my dorm but all around. The choral department is especially friendly, and I know I’m going to fit right in as I did at Ridge. Dr. Sametz, or simply Doc (like we call possibly EVERY person on earth with their doctorate), is a wonderful man who I hope will fill Retz’s quite large shoes as a choral director. He was very impressed with my audition, and actually extended the audition to fuss around with me. There were four parts to the audition, but it seemed like he kind of just made stuff up as he wanted to. First, I sang the solo piece I brought – he played it INCREDIBLY fast… and INCREDIBLY slow at times. I was wondering where his sense of tempo was, and was hoping he didn’t think it was me being nervous and straying from the beats, because I was in no way nervous! After that, some range tests, after which his eyes lit up – he was pretty amazed at my range, which stemmed from the lower bass scales to the high Tenor I scales. I’d say I have a good three octave range, perhaps more.

Either way, he noticed that my higher notes were recently developed. After he asked how long ago I was able to sing high like that, I told him it was a development that began in the last year as I learned to control my voice better.

Then it was chord analysis. He played a chord of three notes, and asked me to identify the top note by singing it back. He Also asked me to sing the bottom note. But I transcribe music, so I’m really very adept at this skill of picking out notes from chords – he noticed, and started trying to mess with me. He played four-note chords. He played chords that didn’t make any harmonic sense – they sounded ridiculous. And when I got them all correct, he did something I don’t think he did for anyone else: Asked me to identify the middle note. Again, piece of cake. I did finally mess up on one by accidentally singing the bottom note, but I got the middle note a second later.

Sight reading was very easy. In fact, I was pretty sure I had even sang the piece before, but it could have been a similar classical piece. Either way, once it was all said and done he looked at me, laughed and smiled and said, “Yeah, you’re cool. You’re done here, you don’t have anything to worry about.”

And now I’m in the University Choir! (And soon the all-men’s Glee Club!) I’ll be off from now until Sunday at an alternate orientation – the Choral Retreat. It’s a choir boot camp… just like AMA. Woohoo!

After dark came the carnival, which I really only found fun because they had DDR. I swear, after yesterday I have legs of steel. I’m gonna be fit and skinny after my Lehigh adventure for sure. ;)

It’s time to refurbish this joint to match my newer, more collegiate self. In two days I move in at Lehigh University, and it’s about damn time I started making an effort to make this place the most collegiate place ever. That means I’m gonna redo my about page… and some other random stuff. Maybe add some nice pictures. Either way, some sprucing up and organization is gonna happen, because I’m totally packed and ready to get out of here. This house is cramping my style, word.

I think I’ll also add my course list to this place and use it as a reference for my college information. Perhaps my resume as well.

Let’s describe my college experience thus far: Great roommate, great choir director to look forward to, a great first semester lineup of classes, and a great honors program. A great campus and tons of spirit. I think I’m ready for a wonderful year!

Also, Lafayette is going down.

TWO DAYS!

I don’t think I’ve ever read as much on a single vacation as I have on this one. Cape May’s been fun so far, though I kind of wish we’d have gone to Atlantic City, which is more exciting and has more activities. I’m pretty sure we chose to go to Cape May only because our family overlooked Atlantic City’s existence. That said, it’s still quite fun and I’m glad we did this, seeing as college is about to begin and taking a break in any form is well appreciated and loved. I’ve finished two books here in Cape May over the course of a single day: Magic Knight Rayearth, a manga, and Blink, a wonderful psychology book by one of my favorite authors, Malcom Gladwell, who wrote The Tipping Point (which taught me basically everything I know about marketing).

Blink was as interesting as The Tipping Point was, but I don’t think it’ll end up being as life-changing. Whereas The Tipping Point taught me marketing strategies I never would have dreamed of that aided me in making the ZU relaunch a rousing success that not only met my expectations, but exceeded them and crashed our server, Blink has not taught me anything I did not already know. Rather, it’s made more interesting the way that our subconscious mind works. Blink is all about the subconscious mind and controlling our snap reactions and judgements. The most powerful and reasonable judgements always occur within a few seconds, which is why, say, a music instructor will know who has potential and who does not simply by hearing those first few notes.

It’s nothing surprising, but it’s interesting to know that you can control the way those judgements turn out and take advantage of them. the than that, Gladwell will need to pull something amazing off in his next book to outdo The Tipping Point. Blink, while profound in its own right, just didn’t make as much of a splash to me.

I’m looking forward to eating some saltwater taffy today, perhaps some fudge. I’m really ready to shove off and head to college. There are afew things I need to do first…

(…AlcoholEdu, my ID photo, packing, ZU’s brawl section…)

…but once they’re done, I’m set and ready to go. And go I shall. But back to Cape May.

I’m sure you’ll recall that a while back I transcribed the song Hide and Seek by artist Imogen Heap for my school’s A Cappella choir. While the motion to have us all sing it fell through when many members abandoned the project, the sheet music still stands as pretty flawless, a perfect match-up of the original Hide and Seek song. I’ve actually put the sheet music up on TJE and made it available for download. If you want the sheet music to Hide and Seek, just go to http://thejasoneffect.net/music/SheetMusic/Hide and Seek/ and download the pages.

However, Imogen Heap has now come out with another version of her popular song, aptly named “Hide and Seek 2.” Will I be transcribing it? No, but the song itself is a veritable confirmation that my transcription is highly accurate.

You see, Hide and Seek 2 is just a single vocal part, and a background harmony. it does eventually divide, but at its greatest dividend is it split only into three parts, and never reaches the tenacity of the notes that were hit in its more digitally altered cousin. I say this because Hide and Seek 2 does not rely nearly as much on digital effects as Hide and Seek did. Hide and Seek was, in effect, completely a Vox filter – I was pretty sure every part was played by Imogen herself, but with the pitches of her voice altered to be either extremely low or high. Which was why the choir had a bit of trouble performing my transcription – the notes were inhumanly high because they had been digitally altered to be so in the song.

But no more. Hide and Seek 2 lacks this type of alteration, forcing Imogen to sing within the one range she has. And, when you listen to it, you’ll find that it’s almost note-for-note accurate to my transcription of the Alto melody line. Some notes overlap with the Soprano part I wrote, but only because the melody dances around each part and Imogen had to combine them somehow.

On an unrelated note, the harmonies that DO exist are changed in Hide and Seek 2. The overall feel has gone from “strange digital mess” to “African tribal music”. All of the chords are now quite happy, moved to major keys.

Buy it from the iTunes music store – it’s in the album “Songs for Tibet.”

Yes, I’m proud of myself. ;)

Mobile blogging sounds like fun until you realize that you can’t type on the keyboard. Why can’t you? Because the app doesn’t offer a landscape mode. Man do I wish WordPress’s iPhone app would give me that.

I’ve finally been overrun with boredom. With Zelda news in short supply and we content ready to launch at Zelda Universe, it’s safe to say that after midweek I’ll be reduced to lounging around until college begins. And, as much as I would lie to hang out with old friends, you can only meet up with them so many times before it ends up that THEY are bored as well. Hopefully a nice BBQ (or what looks like will be a sushi party) will provide us all with a day of fun.

That said, summer is winding up quicker than I’d thought, mostly because college begins so damn early. I just ran out and got my supplies today, so woohoo for being prepared! I forgo to get a lot of things, so looks like I’ll be making another run to Staples.

As I pack and prepare, I think I’ll blog about my hopes for college, and for my future. It’ll be intereting to see the irony in my college experience – and for those who don’t know the meaning of the word irony, this sentence will make little sense.

On another subject, I’m thoroughly disappointed in Apple’s quality control. But more on that in a later post.

Tah tah for now.