I am officially finished with my summer classes! Physics is over, and I’m fairly happy about it. My professor was great for physics! His name is John Newport, and he’s a teacher at Carmel High School. What luck I had: he obtained his Ph.D. in theoretical/mathematical physics! I’m confident that I ended up with an A in the course, and I’m ready to move on.

This fall, I’m taking a lot of great subjects. I feel that I am going to start growing a lot academically. I’m officially going to be a year ahead in physics, starting my 300 level intermediate physics courses at the start of my sophomore year. I’m also going to be taking 2 math classes: linear algebra (matrix math for the non-math nerd), and differential equations (kind of like physical modeling with equations… it’s hard to explain). Aside from my math and physics courses, I will be taking an introductory course in philosophy, and a speech course.

Outside of courses, I have started a research project with one of the professors/physicists at IUPUI. His name is Yogesh Joglekar, and he’s been awesome to work under so far!

I’m still waiting to hear back about the Dean of Science scholarship. They’ve had a lot of trouble with organization and administration this summer, because they’re doing everything very differently this year. I don’t know when I’m supposed to expect to hear about that, but so far I’ve got $1500 dollars in scholarships for this fall. If I do get the Dean of Science scholarship, that will bring it up to $2750 in scholarships for the fall, bringing me to about 67% payed for this fall. Cross your fingers for me!

Sorry it’s been so long! I uploaded the demo that I recorded for my friend Mike’s band. We recorded them in the Spring. They turned out pretty nice.

We recorded the drums in a studio and then recorded the rest at Mike’s house. Lots of pretty guitar riffs and the music is quite relaxing! I hope you enjoy!

This summer has been going really well. School hasn’t been too bad, and I’m getting way ahead for this fall. My plans are getting really exciting. As of this fall, I will be about a year ahead as far as physics goes. I’m going to be in some fun math classes, as well, and I have been talking to a professor in the physics department about research.

I’m still waiting/hoping to hear back about the Dean of Science scholarship. It’s $2500 a year, so that’d be really nice! That would be $2000 a semester in scholarships I have so far which is a little over half of my tuition. Keep your fingers crossed!

Other exciting news… I’ll have been with Olivia for a year and a half on Saturday! Yay!

I hope everyone is having a great summer.

I have a new song up. It sounds very similar to that last one I recorded except a little darker. I’ve been using a lot of the same little guitar chords and I’ve been writing in the same key, lately, which is why they sound so similar.

I used a lot of different neat little things I’ve never used recording before. I put tons of distortion on the bass in the first part. I also used a “Bronzer” on the guitars in the middle of the song. It sounds really warm. And in the beginning and the middle-end I dual-tracked the guitars, one clean guitar with lots of delay and reverb, and the other with light distortion and tremolo. Tremolo is an effect that makes the volume go up and down… you’ll hear it in the beginning. It came together really nicely.

Enjoy!

This just in:

I got my letter tonight stating that I was a recipient of one of the awards for the Anna K. Suter scholarship that I mentioned in the last post. They award me $500, which isn’t a whole lot, but I am still very excited! This gets my name out there in the math department. And I’m allowed to apply for it each year.

Also, I edited the song a little bit. I took some advice that Jason Carr from the Bean Cup, a local coffee shop, gave me for the end of the song. I let the clean guitars in the end play over the heavy parts. Enjoy!