It’s a funny thing, to watch people and things, events, fade into the past.  In everything that has happened, everything turned out better than expected.  The most integral part of being human is forgiveness.  Where would I be if I hadn’t forgiven you?  Certainly not here.

And in all, what was there to be angry about, really?  You helped shape my understanding of respect, love, forgiveness, acceptance, and moving forward, moving on.  And where are we now?  Well, you’re still here…there… but not like you were before.  Somewhere along the line, I put you behind me and I have grown forth from it.  Not so long from now, I will be gone.  I will be someplace new, living the dream I’ve had for myself since it all began.  In everything, you couldn’t change that.  You now join the unfaithful, the naysayers, the selfish, the users, the inflictors, the roadblocks, the careless, the misunderstanding that I have left behind already.  And though you try to recapture what you wanted to believe was there and never was, I am obstinate.

You are static on the wire.  I hear pieces of you coming through but I am not hearing everything.  The parts that I’m making out paint you in a bad light.  Your accented features are not the best part of you.  I don’t care what the best part of you is anymore.  It doesn’t matter because you took advantage of the best parts of me.  Maybe you’ve changed.  Maybe you’re the same.  Maybe I don’t want to bother to find out.  My signal is loud and clear to me.

I hear your voice in fragments calling.  Static on the wire if you’re still gone.  You’re still gone.

In case it wasn’t painfully obvious from the lack of vowels in my last name, I am of Polish descent.  I mean, straight up, golumbki for breakfast Polish.  I’m the product of people who stepped off a boat in the early 1900s.  There are words that I love to eat that I can’t even SPELL because they’re so Polish.  Throw some random consonants in a row, and you’ve just named at least three of my cousins.  Let’s try it:  Rzczynski.  I haven’t talked to him in at least a year!

Here’s the thing about being the product of Polish + Polish and some stuff:  almost all of it is Eastern European and almost all of my ancestral countries of descent laugh at me when I try on shirts at the store.  I don’t know how much you know about the way Polish girls are built, but, to put it nicely, I have the shoulders of a 300 pound, 6’5″ football player.  Buying dresses is truly an event for me, considering that my waist is a size 4 and my shoulders are, no joke, size 10.  For those of you (men) who don’t know how dresses are cut, let me explain it this way:  I can’t zip a dress up once it hits the small of my back because my shoulders just sit there and laugh at me.  They are wide.  No, not just wide…I have a WINGSPAN, guys.  Wearing certain cuts of shirts make me look like a linebacker.  To make matters worse, I am 5’8″, meaning that when I can find a shirt that fits my shoulders, it hits me in a weird spot on my torso or the sleeves don’t hit my wrist properly because most shirts are cut for an average height woman.  Average height is 5’4″.   I have worn men’s shirts that fit me better than women’s because the shoulders are cut wider…like mine!

Creating the appropriate silhouette is a big deal for me, though I am still in college kid mode in which my clothing selection goes like this:  Is it clean and is it cold outside?  If the answer to the first is yes, I’m probably putting it on.  If the answer to the second is yes, I’m adding a hoodie.  I fully intend to remedy this situation and put together some working people outfits as soon as I start work, but until then, it’s college kid heaven in my closet.  So my silhouette often looks like that of a cardboard cutout.  When your main curves are your hips and your shoulders, finding the right pants to balance your lower body is key.  Skinny jeans?  No, sir!  I will look like a triangle, not to mention that I would be surprised if they reached my ankles and didn’t slide halfway up my shin when I sit down, since most women are several inches shorter than I and they don’t sell “long” pants everywhere.  Or, more accurately, places that I can currently afford.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy shopping for clothes as much as the next girl, but I have to design my aesthetic a little differently.  I don’t just have shoulders, I have pierogi shoulders.  My skin tone is known as “high school cafeteria fluorescent overhead lighting.”  I am Eastern European in every way that a person can physically look like a large land mass region.

But it’s totally okay, because I get to enjoy awesome food like pierogi, chruściki, and other delicious things I can pronounce and you probably have to Google.

I saw a post on Facebook today that said “You can never be just friends with someone you used to love because a tiny part of you will always love them.”  I don’t believe this on both accounts:  you can absolutely be friends with someone you used to love with the right amount of elapsed time and you won’t always necessarily “love” them.  With each instance of romantic love, the definition of what love is altered.  My idea of love at 19 is nowhere even remotely close to my idea of love presently at (almost) 24.  Since my experience of it and definition of it has changed, I no longer feel what I did when I loved at 19, therefore, that definition is obsolete.  I no longer have romantic love for that person because the concept has changed and that idea at 19 is no longer representative of what love is to me.  Please note that I am referring specifically to romantic love here.  The love I experience for people as friends is completely different and feels completely different.  And I have a select few friends that I am so close to that I have no problem saying “I love you” to and I don’t worry that they might misconstrue it because I know they understand the difference and I know that when I do say it, I mean it because they are amazing friends.

To say that someone is friends with someone they used to romantically love requires some clarification as well.  There are the kind of friends you would hang out and watch movies with and then there are the kind of friends you would risk your life for to save theirs.  It has been my experience, albeit with rather limited frequency, that becoming any level of friends with someone post-love takes a lot of time and evaluation of that person’s meaning, position, and importance in your life.  It’s not always positive and not always negative.  Things just change.  People mature.  Situations fade into the past.  The removal of rose colored glasses can reveal people for what they truly are.  This is an absolutely necessary part of growing up and I am much wiser for having experienced it in quite different circumstances.

So, can people really never be friends with someone they used to love because some piece will always love them?  No, not in my book.  Some people belong in the past.  Some have just moved on, changed, and redefined.  I know I have.  There is nothing wrong with changing the way you view love, I think it’s absolutely necessary to evolve your idea of it until you are happy maintaining the important ideas of it for extended periods of time.

Love is a complicated thing.  Love is a simple thing.

I have been tutoring since my freshman year both math and physics, and I have come across a very curious phenomenon.  My session with one of my students this evening really got me thinking.

Having grown up with two older brothers, I was never afraid to do things that were typically male dominated.  Rather, I did what I wanted and didn’t consider whether or not it was a male dominated field.  I play the drums.  I majored in physics.  I like hockey.  However, having been a tutor for so long, I have noticed that about 80% of my students are female.

Now, I’ve considered that the female students call me because they feel more comfortable learning from another female.  But why is that?  An overwhelming majority of my female students are not doing as poorly as they think they are.  They understand 90% of the subject and just need a little tweaking, which happens to everyone regardless of gender.  Why do they feel more comfortable talking to a girl tutor?

Because they have been conditioned to believe that math and science are fields in which males excel and females are expected to do poorly or fail.  Having gone through a physics major and math minor, I can speak first hand to this.  The general attitude of the males in the classes are of automatic superiority.  It wasn’t until I crushed the other grades in particle physics did the male grad students in the class start asking me for help.  This is only because I was probably the curve killer on the midterm.  Why didn’t they ask to study together to begin with?  They asked my good friend whom I always studied with for that class for help, but not me.  Clearly, they assumed he was doing well and I was struggling.  I ended up scoring much higher than he did in the class (that does not speak to his intelligence, however, he had subjects he was much stronger in).  But they assumed he would be better to help them than me.

My female students come to me with a complete lack of confidence in themselves, even though most of them are not too far off of the mark.  More than anything, I find myself telling them “Yes, this is correct.  You’re doing this right,” than actually reconstructing their learning model.  Of course, to help them get to 100%, I do reconstruct it in my own way, which both genders have said is much easier to understand.  I believe the majority of the problem with all of my students is that their teachers are not teaching down to the baseline, they assume everyone can make connections and assumptions simply because they’ve been doing math so long, it’s obvious to them.  My students are either brand new at this or haven’t taken math or physics in years.  My technique is to teach from the absolute ground up.  This works very well, but my male students seem to come to me with an inherent confidence that my female students don’t have.  Even though my male students have generally been an entire grade average below the females when the first come to me.

This implies two things:  That males, in general, either assume they will understand better because males are more dominant in these fields, or just don’t care about their grade until it is make or break time.  The females usually come to me with C to B averages.  Almost all of them believe they are doing far worse than they really are.  Perhaps they seek help earlier because they believe that a C in a calc class must be terrible, since the men must be getting As.  Maybe they feel as though they cannot let the grade slip even slightly because they will be looked down upon by the men.  I don’t know, from what I recall, physics and upper level math (if you’ve ever seen tensor math, you know why we cry) were difficult for EVERYBODY, not any gender specifically.  My female students see my help more as a confidence booster than concrete help, since most of them aren’t really far off to begin with.  Of course, they need tweaking.  Of course, teaching the baseline and building helps them.  But they generally are striving for the A instead of the C or B, whereas my male students are praying to God they pass.

Now, I don’t have an extremely large sample size, maybe 15-20 and these statements are sweeping generalizations.  Certainly I have had male students who have a B and want that A.  Certainly I have had female students who just want to pass.  But, in general, my female students view themselves in a far more negative light in regard to math and science than the males.  My student today, female, explained to me that she thinks in math and her brain enjoys and processes math and physics better than history and English.  She knows that these subjects are her forte, yet she still asked for my help.  Honestly, she did not need it.  She maybe needed about 15 minutes of basic concept explanations that her teacher skipped and assumed everyone could figure out on their own.  These are first time scientists and mathematicians (mathemagicians, am I right?), they are counting on these teachers to give them the basics.  As much as it helps me financially, these students should not have to seek outside help to understand basic concepts.  They should be taught first, solidified in math, not skipped over in favor of math.

I have absolutely enjoyed teaching every one of my students.  Having lived what they’re living, I know how important it is to start with the bare bones and build up.  I enjoy helping others understand the things I love, perhaps that is why I have had such a high success rate.  I teach because I want them to learn and enjoy learning.  There is nothing better than watching my students get excited because they finally understand.  It builds their confidence.  But almost all of them have been more impressed with me than I feel is warranted.  They seem very impressed by my physics degree and math minor.  Would they be this impressed if I were male?  I will probably never know.

Teaching women math and science is not just teaching them concepts and math.  It is teaching them that they are just as capable as the men, some even more.  Getting them interested in it is not about showing them what cool things they can do with it, that comes by itself and with the confidence of showing them that they CAN do it.  Everyone can benefit from this method of teaching.

Science and math aren’t about gender.  They’re about discovery.  There is absolutely no gender limitations on discovery.  We need to start teaching that way.

Hello, I’ve waited here for you everlong.

To think, here I am, finally, after waiting for what seems like forever.  I have always found that I find exactly what I need when I don’t realize I am looking.  Certainly, this was no exception.  The most wonderful things can grow out of the smallest of ideas, the smallest chance.  In a period of not even really knowing what it was that I was seeking, I found the perfect solution.  Years in the making?  Perhaps.  It doesn’t matter.

Life has a funny way of working itself out.  Some things are too big to be coincidence, I think.  A series of little things that add into the perfect storm.  Of all of the ways this could have gone, I have found myself heading to the one place I never knew I’d find exactly what I never knew I was seeking in the first place.  Any sooner and I wouldn’t have understood why this is absolutely perfect.  Any later and I would have never looked back.

There is a long way to go, certainly.  But I always knew this day would come and I always knew it would be absolutely worth the wait.  I didn’t know when it would be — months, years from now.  Decades.  But I knew that it was a long time coming and there’s a long way I must be going.  But every piece of this journey has taught me more than I could have ever learned in school.

When something is right, it falls into place.  We took a difficult path in getting here.  All of us.  Everyone who lived this with me.  Everyone who watched, helped, laughed, followed, and hoped with me.  This is the culmination but this is far, far from the end.  With this trajectory, I doubt there ever will be.

Hello, I’ve waited here for you everlong.

I have always been an inquisitive person. I have always asked “why,” “how,” and more importantly, “why not?” But I never considered myself a scientist until the first day of my undergraduate thermal physics class when my professor looked at the class and asked us “What is energy?”

Two years and a bachelor of science degree in physics later, I still don’t have an answer. When you really think about it, ( mc)^2 and ½ m(v^2 ) just don’t seem to cut it anymore. What is it, really? My professor asked “is it green goopy stuff?” I believe energy is one step further. I believe that energy is faith.

Some people say that science disproves God. Does God exist? I don’t know, but science certainly doesn’t disprove the idea that a creator might. And the fact is that these constants, equations, physical laws and theories exist, but when it comes down to it, we still don’t know what the smallest particle is, we still don’t know why some things are the way they are. More importantly than answering whether or not a creator exists, science has inspired me to look beyond textbooks and journals and to understand that there are things greater than me, than Earth, than the universe out there. And that we may never know what the smallest subatomic particle is, we may never really understand gravity, the Big Bang, but…we can take comfort in knowing that there are things bigger than us, bigger than what we know and understand. Have faith in the idea that even though we don’t know why things are the way they are, somehow it all works perfectly to keep us in orbit, to keep us upright, to keep us asking questions that will lead us to the answers we seek, in one capacity or another. To keep asking, “What is energy?”

Above all tensors, rhos, alphas, dels, ad charms, science has faith that an answer can be found. Science isn’t in favor of God and isn’t protesting against. Science just is. The answer that’s perfect for you can be found through physics, through chemistry, through biology, math, genetics. You just gotta have a little faith in science and find the science in faith.

To anyone who think that it’s easy to have a love for shoes, I say FAH!

Summer has passed, and I now feel that I can talk about my experience with sandals without cringing.  I began the summer by wearing what are called thong sandals, but most people just refer to them as “flip-flops.”  Now, men would never understand the issue with said flip-flops, but women everywhere know that they’re a terrible invention.  Why?  Because the thong part, where you slide your feet in, cuts the top of your feet open, that’s why.  They irritate your feet and you either get blisters, cuts, or both.  And since it’s summer, your feet get sweaty and the cuts sting and it’s just a terrible situation all in the name of fashion.

I decided to eliminate this issue after a particularly nasty flip-flop incident in which my feet were cut open to the point of bleeding and then required topical antibiotics and band-aids.  I bought Crocs.  I bought slip on Crocs for $50.  And I LOVED THEM.  I loved them like no other shoe I had previously loved before.

Now, as much as I loved the Crocs, they’re terrible.  Be warned, as no one warned me.  Crocs are made of plastic and foam.  These are the opposite of organic materials.  Now, in the summer, you’re already sweaty.  Well, these lovely, non-breathable materials make your feet sweat even more than they already are.  I should mention here that my Crocs were slip on sandals and had a bit of a platform.  WHAT A STUPID IDEA.  My feet sweat and made my sandals slippery.  Do you know what happens when your feet are slippery on a platform?  That’s right, you fall off your shoes.

Now, it is as comical in real life as it sounds.  I would slip off one side of my sandals and they would, essentially, be sideways attached to my foot with the slip in part of the sandal all sideways and whatnot on my foot as well.  It looked, and let me stress this, ridiculous.  Also, hilarious.

However, you can see where falling off your shoes may cause some problems.  I was on vacation in Florida and while walking along a dock to board a boat to go on the gator tour, my friend Liz said to me “Please do not fall off of your shoes and into this water because I am not going in to save you.”  And it was a legitimate concern.  I am from New York.  We don’t have gators here.  We have snowbanks.  They do not live near docks that are four feet wide with no railings.  They do not eat you if you fall off of your shoes on said dock, lose your balance, and fall into the water.

I didn’t fall off of my shoes into the water at that point, but I fell off of them several more times during that sticky mess that was Florida.  And I was not exempt from the embarrassment in New York, either.  Throughout the summer, I looked ridiculous on those shoes at least once a week, at the MINIMUM.  Only now, in the fall, do I feel as though enough time has passed where I can laugh at the fact that a grown adult woman literally fell off of her slippery sandals.  Go ahead, laugh.  It’s funny.

All in all, I would say that I still love the Crocs, I probably won’t use them when it’s really sticky and humid outside anymore.  And if you’re going to get Crocs, get the ones that look like MaryJanes (not just because they share my name, but because they cover your entire foot) or the thong sandals that are not two inches above the ground.  Save yourself from falling off your shoes like I did.

In the days surrounding the planning of my future, I realized I did not have the time for you like I did before.  And as much as I tried, on that plane, I could not recapture you in the way I had wanted.  You were lost somewhere in the in-flight magazines and people-watching.  You were lost in shuttles, interviews, paperwork.  Hope.

And when everything worked out, you just weren’t the same.  And on the road, you weren’t the same.  You were there, but you were different.  Disconnected from what you used to mean to me.  And instead of trying to force that once again, I, for the first time since this started, let you fade into the past.  I lived without you even though you were right there.  Disconnected and different.  There, but different.  I can’t say I liked the feeling, but that is what life is.

Sitting in a hotel room, I sought you again.  And you were still not the same.  Where had our affair left us?  Love has brought us here.  Brought us to this disjointed place of memory.

I stopped seeking the feeling of the past and I let you slide away.  I knew that we would never be separated and whenever I felt it again, I could seek you once more.  And because of you, I stopped to think.  The white guidelines and the exit signs served only as reminders and I thought about you.  I thought about how I knew you were something special, the most perfect complement to everything that I was living and feeling.  About how my interest in you led me to places I wouldn’t have found without you.  You kept me on track even when I didn’t know what track I would be taking until moments before I embarked.  And what you said, it wasn’t a lie.  Things change.  That’s all, things just change.  My interest in you led me to this place.  You and I, we make a wonderful team.  Perfect.

And on that road, love, I reconnected with you in the middle of the night.  A few other cars.  You made the scenery beautiful.  I found you on the road.  I found you once again.

I have taken away your name here.  I have made you anthropomorphic.  I have made you vague and in that, I gave you the feeling back.  Rather, you gave it back to me.  I made you vague and I made you mine again.  I found you.

I was watching Jeopardy! today and these people managed to answer questions about old, dead Italian writers, sports teams, expo locations, and locales in California, but when it came to the category of “ballistics,” I noticed something quite interesting.

The first question referred to what the origin of the word “ballistics” means.  Now, you don’t even need to know the origin language to think about it logically and come up with a decent response.  What is ballistics?  Projectiles.  What do we do with projectiles?  A few answers would be acceptable here in the thought process:  possibly to launch, to throw.  Do you know what they came up with?  To hit.  That…that is not the same, guys, LOGICALLY THINK ABOUT WHAT A PROJECTILE IS!

Second question:  This is the two word term for the speed of a projectile after it has left the barrel, measured in feet per second.  First of all, speed is a scalar, so it wasn’t EXACTLY worded correctly, but for the sake of the question without giving away the answer with an extra free scoop of ice cream, I will let it slide.  Let’s think about this.  What are synonyms for a barrel?  You know that first one I come up with is?  Muzzle.  Speed in any direction…velocity.  Muzzle velocity.  Do you know what they came up with?  Nothing.  Nobody even bothered to buzz in.

The next question was about some court case using ballistic forensics, so nobody cared, and of course, they got it right.  The $1000 question?  The name of the type of energy a bullet has, the conversion of chemical energy into this.  Now, this, I think, is a basic physical concept that you learn in high school.  Kinetic energy.  The energy of things in motion.  This is important, guys, because this is everywhere, all the time.  This would be a good concept to understand, since it is what makes the world that most of us see function.  Aaaaaaand what did they say?  Nothing.  Not a word.  No buzzing in.  Nothing.

Why is it that these “smart” people, who can rattle off answers about old dead people like they’re going out of style, failed to even buzz in in regard to a question about a very basic concept that is what powers all life and what is the result of powered life?  Shouldn’t things like kinetic energy and velocity be things so basic and obvious and necessary to understanding life and the world that everyone should know them so well they don’t even have to stop and think about it?  They can just insert them into logical thought progressions without hesitation because they know what they are?

We learn a lot of things in school, a lot of things we can say we know.  Some about old, dead writers.  Some about expo locations.  Californian deserts.  But in relation to the things we understand…they almost seem inconsequential if we don’t even have a grasp on basic world concepts.

I just found this interesting.  What we know and what we understand are not the same.  Perhaps schools should focus more on making people understand rather than making students know facts to regurgitate on tests.  This isn’t about performance numbers every June, this is about performance in logical thought throughout life.  Teaching for understanding is not teaching for fact.  The distinction between the two is important.

And that’s a fact.

I haven not written in quite some time.  This can mostly be attributed to end of semester items, end of undergraduate career whatnots.  I have spent the entirety of my college career waiting for these moments, these last days, a time when I would finally be seeing the culmination of all of my efforts, finally have the degrees I put so much into.

A lot of people say they don’t want to leave college, don’t want to leave all of their friends.  I am in no way saddened by the rapid approach of the end of my undergraduate career.  Friends I have made here, real friends, will never be anything less, I do not fear losing contact because I will make the effort.  I have changed so much from the time I was 18, but so has everyone else.  I feel as though I have done the most growing during this past year.  Exactly one year ago today, there is no way I could have ever imagined myself here, in this place.  I am content with the way my life is progressing, and moreover, I am ready, eager, and willing to achieve the next part of my education and undertake the next stage in my life.  I am not the kid I was when I got here, I am not the kid I was last year.

It is not so much that I am ready to leave UAlbany, but that I am ready to move forward.  I have a great sense of gratitude and respect for the lessons I have learned throughout my academic career here at UAlbany.  I have met some of the most influential people in my life here.  I have developed an interest and respect for cultures I never would have learned of otherwise.

My parents came this weekend to move the majority of my things back home.  There are only a few things left, things I can easily fit into my trunk when I leave after my physics department graduation.  To most people on this campus, to most who will live here after me, this will just be a room in an on-campus apartment.  And though I have called this campus home for my entire undergraduate career, it is not so much about the institution itself as the meaning you find in the experiences here.  I see that many of my classmates have taken very little from their experiences, preferring to take their college experiences for granted.  I believe that undergraduate careers are 50% academics and 50% life experiences, each being as equally important as the other.

Everybody’s college experience is different.  This brief reflection on mine is just a snippet of what I feel I have truly learned here.  UAlbany was the best decision I ever made, even if I made some terrible ones while here.  I do believe that is called life.  I do believe this is where I have learned the most about it.