He knows how to lighten the mood. My other teaches are interesting, but he’s downright funny. If only I knew his name. I should get on that.

“The two hardest courses you’ll ever take are Freshman English and Freshman Calculus. Freshman English because if you don’t right well, then people will make fun of you behind your back, and nobody wants that, you have to learn to be a good writer, know your grammar and all that.

“And Freshman Calculus, well, I had a student once who went off and got a job working for some big company, General Motors or General Electric, something like that. When they hire people, if the person got an A in Freshman Calculus, they let them name their salary. Great deal, right? Sounds pretty good!

“He named his George.”

Priceless, right? I love learning Calc from this guy, even if I don’t understand it all yet. More practice, more work, and I’ll have everything down. Exams aren’t far off - next week, in fact!

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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!

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.

AP Studio Art has been tough for me this year, with all of my other classes and goings-on to deal with. Luckily, the breadth section of the exam was pretty simple, because I had already finished most of that section in prior years. For those unfamiliar with AP Studio Art, each student is required to produce 24 pieces - 12 in a “breadth” section, where anything goes, and 12 in a more specific “concentration” section, where students must pick a single topic and produce twelve works about that topic.

This is my breadth section. I am taking the AP Art exam for 2D Design, which includes digital works such as those produced in photoshop. Therefore, you will find that much of the art in my portfolio is digitally produced, or dramatically altered from its original form. You’ll also find some traditional works.

It’s this extension for Firefox that… well, let’s you enter a blog post from anywhere in firefox. And it’s quite nice. Hopefully this post will work.

Now, back to studying AP’s with me. And finishing artwork, yadda yadda. You shall see soon an influx of about twenty pieces coming in for no apparent reason this week. In addition, to test out my spiffy new headset, I have recorded myself singing Stand By Me. The verdict? I need to figure out how to lower the sensitivity on the headset, because doing it in Windows sure didn’t help.

Listen to Stand By Me. Woo!

With only about one month left, I can spend more time on this blog while simultaneously preparing for the AP tests that will decide what credits I get t the start of college. They’ll save me a bunch of money - but I’m determined to repeat freshman-year Physics so that I can better understand the material, specifically Electricity and Magnetism, which seems to just completely escape me this year - and I mean completely .

Nevertheless, things are going well, and I have some good art to show for it. I’ll upload my entire concentration when it’s finished up in the next few weeks, so you won’t get to see that now. Actually, right now, I’m really focusing on Zelda Universe and its revamp. The designer really needs to send me the site’s new logo so that the template can at least look less like a sketch. However, I have faith that this layout will be incredible when it’s done. Not that it’s not incredible now, but y’know… it can always get better! Always. And it’s jaw-droppingly awesome at the moment - just missing a logo.

Also on the site-end of things, Zelda Wiki.org is looking to expand - and it’s finally moving more out of my hands and into the hands of who I’d like to call "owners", people who I give total site access to including FTP and whatnot. Right now I’m attempting to negotiate with some sites, and hopefully make the collaborative coalition even stronger. Even if it doesn’t add mountains of activity to the site, in the end we look like a more collaborative wiki - and that makes all of our sites look good too. And we all love to look good, don’t we?

It’s not all about looking good, of course. There is a strong message sent with Zelda Wiki, and it’s a collaborative spirit that the internet doesn’t get often enough. It’s a collaborative spirit based on love of being a webmaster and being a gamer, and wanting to share your knowledge with everybody while spurring within your users the need to share their knowledge in the same way. And when you accomplish that, the project simply explodes - and it’s mind-boggling how amazing the content your users come with is.

So, as we wind the school year down, you’ll be seeing more from more. More art, more ZU, more ZW.org, more writing, more everything. Because I’ll have free time. And I guarantee I’ll be bored.

The first half of January has been particularly exciting for me, and a lot of it relates to Zelda Universe, and will soon relate to Zelda Wiki.org. December was a booming month, and January is only bringing us closer to the revamps I’d like to see happen at both sites less than halfway through the year. ZU’s revamp is going to be far more profound than ZW.org’s, which will really only consist of some changes and a new community portal. However, the ultimate goal is to streamline everything - and bring ZU back to the top (or the top of itself; it really still is the top Zelda site).

In this time, I’ve found some really neat things to do with Wordpress, which ZU will be switching over to from Joomla!. Joomla is one hell of a clunky backend system, and although it produces functional results, these are often sluggish and buggy. In fact, just about everything about Joomla! is buggy, and with version 1.5 I expect nothing less. I expect more bloat and more clutter and higher loading times for us poor sites that use Joomla!. That is why Wordpress will be manipulated to become the dream CMS, the backend system that ZU really needs. The entire staff is disguisted by the complicated and buggy Joomla; Wordpress is simple. You install, give it some plugins, and enjoy. That’s it. Nothing fancy.

I’ve sent out a request on SitePoint for a person to make the new layout. This is, as well, a big step forward into getting things done for Zelda Universe. I’ve gotten some good responses too, from talented graphic artists. I’m excited - I hope talented people continue to contact me! If I find the person with the perfect style, ZU’s next look will truly be something to gawk at. It is in my head, and I really would love to see somebody get it in digital files. (I was going to say “on paper,” but forgot this is the internet and not a REAL journal.)

Blah blah school blah blah blah. I’m in college, I can’t very much go “w00t” about anything school-related anymore. Especially high school, which feels rather expired. Granted, I still need to do well to remain in Lehigh, but it still feels… expired. I’ve mostly been working on ZU and ZW.org. I think it’ll be that way for quite a while. 

If any of you have been wondering why I’ve been gone for the last few weeks, it’s due to the increased workload at school, and the increased pressure that comes as college acceptance (and rejection) letters roll by. But now that Christmas vacation is upon us, I can sit down and write, and talk, etc etc…

I applied early decision to Lehigh University’s Integrated Business and Engineering Honors Program. Today, I am happy to announce that I have been accepted into this program. Throughout this five-year experience, I will earn both a degree in business and in mechanical engineering.

As far as I know, only 50 students are accepted into this program. I’m so happy that I could faint! I’ve already done a ton of stuff in regards to Lehigh - even beyond joining the Facebook groups etc and meeting a ton of my future classmates. I’ve gotten my Lehigh account and e-mail (j.rappaport [at] lehigh.edu) which redirect to my blog [at] tje.net email anyway, but I also get to view the Lehigh calendars and such, which is great because they can sync with iCal.

Now that college business is sorted out and I no longer need to apply anywhere else, I can focus on the more fun things in life. So, here we go It’s Christmas break! Furthermore, it’s Christmas break and I’m entirely free of work because I’m already in college! My God, what a blessig. Truly, truly avacation I can and will enjoy… I’m going to Florida (Del Rey, specifically, which I just found ou but should have known all along) to visit my grandmother, also the biggest fan of my novels ;). I know I’ll have a great time - last year was a blast and brought home some really amazing photos. I can only expect that this year will be the same, especially since I have my kickass Nikon D80 to get the job done this time

I’m saving up for a good macro lens before I go to college. That and two Macs - an iMac and a Macbook Pro, ending up at about $6500, possibly less with the Lehigh student discount, which I’ll check out soon now that I have my account set up.

Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone! (And if you’re Jewish, well, I’m sorry your holiday is over. It’s over for me, too :P)