mapping project complete!

Seabrook siren map proving gaps in audibility

Seabrook Siren Locations

Next Chapter

Thank you for reading my little blogs. I enjoyed passing on the few tips I picked up along the way over the last 6 years at Harvard’s Extension School. I can’t believe it is over for me as a student. I feel pleased, accomplished, tired and actually kind of sad that it is over. I wish all of you luck in your future endeavors.

I think after signing up for membership at the Harvard Club and updating my resume, I should spend time thanking those few people that have stood by patiently waiting for me to finish my Masters. I owe a debt of gratitude to my husband, my mother, and my friends – Krysten, Kim, Val, and Elizabeth. I look forward to spending more time with all of them.

Good-bye.

Notes to undergraduates scheduling classes for spring 2010

Photo Credit: John Flannery

If you have been following our student blogs you may have noticed a sharp decline in information posted in the last two weeks. Rest assured there is plenty happening on campus. Actually, because it is finals week, there is simply too much going on, everything has a dreaded deadline, and our grades and emotions hang in the balance, so excuse us for not posting all the excitement.

While the fall semester comes to an end, the new spring semester is just getting ready to kick off and it is already time to register for Spring classes. I have survived a few semesters now and would like to share some advice.

1. Avoid booking two classes to meet on the same day. While two classes following each other may seem convenient to attend, be aware that paper deadlines and exams will match up as well and you could end up writing 40 pages or taking two exams back to back. Whenever possible book just one class for a given day; that will give you at least 24 hours to eat, shower, study and refresh your brain for the next challenge.
2. Take classes that accomplish multiple requirements at once. As an undergraduate you have to complete a series of requirements, some classes in Science, Social Science, Humanities, Quantitative Reasoning, Moral Reasoning, Language, and Writing Intensive, a portion of which need to be either Harvard Professor classes and/or Upper Level classes. The ALB degree course search tool makes it easy to find courses that will accomplish three at once. For example, the class “Mind, Brain, Health, Education: The Sciences of Learning” is a Social Science, Harvard Professor, and Upper Level course all in one. The sooner you accomplish the required courses the sooner you are free to take all the other random courses that interest you.
3. Use the online course evaluation sheet to make sure you are taking all the courses you need to graduate. I have heard more than once from students who forgot about a single course requirement and then had to wait another semester or even a year to graduate. To see your credits earned and what you have remaining to accomplish, login to the extension website, choose “Degree and Certificate Programs” then “Academic Progress Reports” and finally “Course Evaluation Sheet.”
4. Get the best advice; make an appointment with your advisor. Today I shed a few tears as I poured my heart out about my stresses and wild future goals to my amazing advisor Suzanne Spreadbury. She listened, smiled, gave me a tissue and gave me all the answers I needed to feel confident about my next semester and life in general. Life is full of advisors but it’s not often that you will have the opportunity to speak with a professional advisor; go and get some good advice, there are still plenty of tissues in the box

In Bostonian slang I wish you “wicked-good” results on your finals and see you on the other side of the rainbow! Winter break, family, food, and New Year’s resolutions! Oh and don’t forget to read all the course books for next semester ahead of time. The reading is often listed in the course syllabus posted online.

Who knew?

Who knew that a quick tidy-up, in honor of Thanksgiving, would actually help clear the air and the mind? I use my kitchen table as a desk most of the time–around this point in a semester, it is so piled with books and papers, arranged in “piler” order (as opposed to “filer”). . . long story short, I was obliged to clear off the table for the holiday meal: Voila, a side-effect was the clearing of my mind, which has helped me to organize my thoughts and press on with my final research paper with a bit more clarity. I went so far as to tidy the bathroom and the living room, which I had despaired of accomplishing for weeks to come. Not a thoroughgoing affair–just enough to give one the sense of having regrouped a bit. I wonder if anyone else has a secret coping mechanism for this time of the semester, when effort and concentration are so essential?

Worm farmer, now or later

Studying environmental management makes me acutely aware of the trouble us humans cause on earth, messing up just about everything we can get our hands on. BUT there is one thing we cannot mess up; our bodies continue to be biodegradable. Worms and millions of other little critters are just waiting to dine on us when we finally expire. While the junk we bought and built will go on polluting for centuries, at least our bodies — with the exception of breast implants, knee replacements, and other medical gadgets — will go back to the soil to feed the earth and join the beautiful cycle of life.

I have grown to love worms. Rather than feeding on me though, right now they are feeding on my garbage, the food, compost that I would otherwise throw in the trash bin. Generally speaking, in the US 60% of our waste is recyclable, 30% is compostable and just 10% is true waste. We Americans throw out an average of 4.5 pounds of garbage a day, and 3 pounds of that wet heavy garbage is actually compostable, great high quality worm food.

A well maintained worm composting bin can be kept inside your home and will not smell. When you lift the lid you will smell only dark rich earthy soil. You won’t have just worms in your bin, after a short time other critters grow in there too, making up a complex food web that will rapidly decompose your food and even fiber, like shredded junk mail.

Feeding my worms junk mail and other printed fiber has raised an issue. After a year of feeding them this fifty-fifty mix of food and fiber the composting bin now has a thick layer of beautiful rich black soil. I was planning to start growing some herbs in a small indoor garden and I realized today that my soil may be super rich in organic matter but it may also have some heavy metals used in the inks on the paper I fed the worms. Case in point, nature grew all the food I ate and the remaining peels and skins are compostable, then when we humans try to make something as simple as paper we just disgrace a perfect system with all our technology.

Well, from now on I feed my worms only what I would enjoy eating. Because one day I will eat the herbs and plants I grow in their pure soil. And when I finally “buy the farm”, the worm farm in the ground that is, and the worms come to dine on me, instead of tasting like junk mail I will taste like fresh herbs.

If you are thinking to start a composting bin at home, simply search the web for the key words “worm bin” or “vermicomposting” and if you need further advice just send me your questions in the comments field below.

An Implacable Force Brooding over an Inscrutable Intention

. . . is how I feel these days (with apologies to Joseph Conrad) about certain tasks undone, like cleaning the bathroom, which likely won’t be done for some weeks to come. In the throes of final-paper researching, writing, and wandering the labyrinthine tunnels of Widener. And in the midst of this glorious process one still must keep up with weekly course projects–times like these make me understand the concept of a task expanding or contracting, like a gas, to fill the volume of the span of time available in which to complete it. Quotidian tasks, however, get the short shrift; they seem to dissipate or stagnate. I daydream occasionally now about sorting through the mail that’s accumulated or maybe cleaning the kitchen floor.

Final Project is interesting and hopefully legal

If you read my last update, you know I am working on a GIS project about the Emergency Planning Zone for the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant.  I think it is possible that I may be the reason that Seabrook tested its alarm system today, which is the second test it has performed in about 30 years!  Check out my recording of the alarm…..be forewarned it is loud….never mind wordpress won’t let me upload a .wav file for security reasons…if you are interested I am happy to email it directly to you.  I was told by a classmate last week that I am probably red-flagged for researching this subject and am probably considered a social engineer by security experts for writing many emails like this (Professor Bradner would be so proud!):

“ Hello, I am working on a school project for Geographic Information Systems and have attached an aspect of my project, which shows and analyzes the locations of the 121 sirens for the Seabrook EPZ. I have been driving around recording the locations since they are in plain view alongside roadways. By driving on every road in part in this area I have found 27 sirens, which I have determined lat and long using google earth and then added their XY coordinates to ArcMap. Once in ArcMap I have placed a .7 mile buffer around each point to pin point areas where I might be successful in finding the next point thus lowering the number of roads to check. Eventually, I will use the unbuffered areas to show potential areas that the sirens cannot be heard.

Can you help point me in the right direction? I was hoping you could provide me with the location for the sirens I cannot find in Seabrook. I have found 2 sirens, SB07 located on Route 1 and SB06 located on Route 107 near Master McGraths. I know there is one on Route 1A that is visible from Brown’s parking lot, I just don’t know its name. Any help would be really appreciated. Thank you! Lilli Gilligan”

I am really obsessed about finding these sirens now because my interest is peaked due to the unwillingness of the following organizations to share this information: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Seabrook Power Plant, Florida Power and Light who own Seabrook, FEMA, E911, and the Department of Homeland Security.  Why the unwillingness?  They are sirens alongside the roadways where I live!  I have just sent emails to many of the Police Departments in this area and am keeping my fingers crossed, since although driving around for this info is fun it is very time consuming. And the semester is nearing an end.  Hopefully I will be able to collect all the data points needed for a thorough analysis for my last project.

I probably should have picked a topic about the expansion of WalMart or Starbucks over the last 20 years, but this just seemed so much more compelling to me.  I hope I don’t get into trouble……. find3and9part2

Patrick Blanc LIVE

Online classes are great. You can sit at home in your underwear, eating warm apple pie and soaking up your education. Wait, pause for a second, I need another slice of pie.  This works beautifully for classes, but not all campus events are taped, and for those which are not you will have to find some pants and get yourself to school.

To be invited to some of the extracurricular events that are worth getting out of bed for, I highly recommend joining the Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) newsletter email list. Just below the logo at the top left of the main page of the website you will see “sign up for newsletter” inside the blue bar. The Harvard Museum of Natural History is another event list you want to be on; their newsletter sign-up is on the lower left side of the main page. You don’t even have to wait for an invite from the museum, the next chance you get, go feast your eyes on the insanely beautiful exhibitions. The glass flowers exhibition will have you questioning your vision; hundreds of perfect looking flowers all made entirely of glass. And that’s just a warm up for the thousands of exquisitely preserved and presented works of Mother Nature, animals so perfect, so spectacular it will have your head spinning.

If you have yet to see a guest lecture live on campus, here is one recent example and why it is worth making the trip. On Nov 3^rd, the superstar French botanist, Patrick Blanc flew from an ongoing project in Korea to have a meeting with a potential client in New York City and then where could he go next that could compete with such sensational jet setting destinations? Harvard University, of course! And a big “Thank You” to the great people of the Graduate School of Design who made his visit possible. At some events it’s hard to know who the speaker is; which one in the crowd of strangers is that amazing person we have all come to see? Patrick Blanc solved that problem by rocking his electric green hair, spotted green silken shirt, and matching green leather shoes—it is a marker of success when you can parade your inner-self and make a great living doing it.

Blanc proceeded to live up to and beyond the high bar set by his chic appearance. He presented stunning imagery of the nature inspired techniques he had invented for installing, on completely vertical urban walls, hundreds of species of plants in a harmoniously mesh of lush living green, akin to a scene from the deep Amazon jungle. His art began as a child when he learned that he could hang the roots of potted plants into his aquarium to form a symbiotic relationship. He laughs at the randomness with which his work finally caught on after years of going unnoticed, and suddenly launched him into his current superstardom. Another testament to his success, his latest project bid is for a company in the United Arab Emirates, which will likely be, in classic Dubai fashion, the biggest and best man made living wall on the entire planet, covering an arch between two skyscrapers. This awesome plan bares the ingenious mark of Patrick Blanc; the entire vertical forest would be watered solely by the air conditioning condensation, a by-product of the year-round cooling needed for the buildings. This condensation, which would otherwise be wasted, evaporated into thin air, could instead feed thousands of living plants and the minds and spirits of all that behold it. See his work here: www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com

Because Mihoko and I both came from an art background, when we had this infusion of inspiration from Patrick Blanc’s presentation, we responded by making art of our own. Pictured above are the necklace and necktie designs we fabricated and wore last Friday to the Undergraduate Degree Programs Candidate and Faculty Reception.

Who’s lecture, online or live, has inspired you, and what did you do with the energy? Please share your stories in the comments field below.

Huge thanks to photojournalist Jake Belcher for capturing and sharing his great photos.

Intelligent casual

I am looking forward to attending the reception this Friday for new ALM candidates and alumni of the program. A curious coda to the invitation card I received noted the following: “Dress: smart casual.”

While I have heard of the equally vexing “business casual,” I had never heard a reference to the “smart” kind of casual. A quick Google search reveals that I am hopelessly out of touch with such things–”smart casual” has been around a while. What is it exactly? What sort of “smart” are we talking about–brainy? crisp? impertinently clever?

The Oxford online OED actually has an entry: “A. adj. Designating or characteristic of (a style of) dress which is informal yet smart, esp. smart enough to conform to a particular dress code”

. . . which puzzled me a bit, because the meaning of “smart” in this colloquial context seems imprecise and on the obscure side; and the definition being dependent on “a particular dress code” seems to pass the responsibility for defining the phrase to some entity other than the OED. But, interestingly, the entry shows precedents of uses of the phrase, the earliest from 1945.

However, I don’t believe I will fret too much about my wardrobe, such as it is. I doubt if Dean Schopf will thrust a microphone in our faces as we arrive and demand to know “who are we wearing.”

In any case, I hope to see all of you smartly casual fellow ALM candidates and alums there. I’ll have my bells on.

Mid-Semester Status Report

procrastination can take many forms…..cleaning the house, working out, making dinner, writing your blog…….

Sorry for missing you the last few weeks.  It was necessary for my success in taking my last exam and developing my final “Final Project” idea to avoid any form of procrastination available to me.  As you can see from my definition of procrastination that not only have I avoided writing to this blog, but I have eaten a lot of take out, gained a million pounds from my dedication to the mind as opposed to the body, and let the house chores fall by the wayside.

I am happy to report that I have completed the exam although not the perfect score I was hoping for, but I do have an excuse for that.  The exam was required to be done on the computers in our class room at the Computer Center.  And as luck would have it, my computer and my computer only crashed!  I lost 15 minutes to this event.  The professor didn’t think it was a big deal.  She commented that I should be more concerned about learning than getting a perfect score.  “You are too focused on the score,” she said!  At this stage of the game I let the comment slide, whereas in semesters past I would have obsessed about it.  I guess I am mellowing in my last semester.

As for my project idea, I have decided on a project that will probably land me on the FBI watch-list because I have been combing the Internet for information about the nuclear power plant in my area.  I plan on determining the traffic bottlenecks and best escape routes during a nuclear event at this facility.  I live within the 10 mile Emergency Planning Zone so we are sent information annually.  The information is a set of maps showing where buses will pick you up.  I always thought, “You are kidding right?  If the nuclear plant experiences a leak I am not waiting around for a bus.  I plan on hopping in my car and speeding out of here.”  So in the next 7 weeks I will determine the perfect escape plan.  Hopefully, the Nuclear Regulatory Authority doesn’t track me down before I am able to present my GIS Project.

Exeter Escape Routes on Buses