Week 1 - Lorelei

    Starting the PATHS UP Take Flight Program was exciting and nerve-wracking. Meeting new people always make me nervous, though I have seen some familiar faces. Everyone I have talked to seemed to be friendly and really smart. 

    I have not worked with a circuit board the looked like the one we were using for the program, usually I just have a piece of wood and light bulbs with a couple of wires and switches to make it. It is thrilling to learn new things I though I would never touch. 

    Wires, wires, wires. It stuck to me that some of them are male and female, which made absolute sense, actually, since we are talking about connection. When I was constructing the pedometer, well trying to, at least, I felt hopeless. I was thinking that maybe mine is defective, or maybe I broke it. Alas, Mr. Franklin helped me. He aligned the boards like a sandwiched and it snapped, which was surprising because I thought they were extremely fragile. I never thought to connect them like that. 

    I loved how Mr. Young presents. It's always humorous and has the good stuff we need to know for the program. Never once I felt sleepy during the discussion, and trust me
, I'm sleepy most of the time (anemic side effects, I guess lol!). As someone who has been clutching Python most of her life, C++ was a nightmare. All the extra characters and the inconsistent indents were bothering me. But it was pretty cool once I got the hang of it. I just keep on for
getting the functions and what they're called most of the time. 

    The Python introduction was pretty cool, though kind of advanced since we're already coding graphs which are not beginner friendly. But Mr. Young was kind to guide us through the process and also, the instructors let us explore. For someone who most of the time gets the cat killed, (this is a joke btw), I like that they still give us freedom to satisfy our curiosities. 

    Neuroengineering was super cool, though kind of scary too. When they said the I don't have pain receptors in my brain , or any sensory receptors for that matter, it kind of gave me a crisis. I had to process it for a little bit. It made me think about the mind and body crisis. Am I my brain? Am I just in a shell? If someone poked my brain, I wouldn't know? Scary stuff. The rest of the discussion still made sense but I kept on going back to the fact that I can not feel my brain, no matter how much I stimulate it. 

     Overall, I enjoyed the first week and is seriously dreading the end of the program. I made really good friends, and me and my project partner are enjoying as we're building our final project. Which we think will be awesome! 

Location: 6100 Main St, Houston, TX 77005, USA

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