{"id":3193,"date":"2008-12-03T08:57:59","date_gmt":"2008-12-03T08:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/12\/03\/hey-to-uganda\/"},"modified":"2008-12-03T08:57:59","modified_gmt":"2008-12-03T08:57:59","slug":"hey-to-uganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/12\/03\/hey-to-uganda\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey to Uganda"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of our 2008 Physics majors is currently in Uganda, working at a clinic\/ school in a place called Ddegaya (Google doesn’t recognize it, but it’s somewhere around here<\/a>). He’s there as part of a program started by the college last year, which sent eight students abroad to work in impoverished areas, and then come back to campus next spring and talk about their experiences. As part of this, he’s keeping a blog<\/a>, because it’s all about blogs these days.<\/p>\n

Steve’s a great guy, and from all reports appears to be doing well and doing good. His most recent post<\/a> calls me out, though:<\/p>\n

\n

I love the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College. It is a tight-knit group and I’m pretty sure that the only person who has the combination of know-how and want to put my blog on RSS feed is a recent graduate of the department. One of the trials the department puts you through between leisurely summer research, horrendous, time consuming lab courses, department luncheons organized by the department problem fixer, Colleen Palleschi, and weekly department talks that the faculty can’t stay awake in is “student talks.” They will do anything in their power to have you talk in front of people and we are all the better for it.<\/p>\n

But we all feared them for one reason. A seven foot giant in the department named Chad Orzel usually attends these talks and occasionally raises his hand. He has been known to use single words in the place of long sentences, which left Bilal and I to pretend to understand his explanations far too many times. “Man, this secretary was giving me such a hard time about our grant proposal.” “So, umm, so, Ogothemetric proshabadasher,” he would reply and giggle to himself (All physics professors begin sentences with the word “so”). Bilal and I would then back away slowly faking a chuckle.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It goes on in that vein for a little while (you have to scroll down to the end to see the whole thing). I object a little to the big words thing– I don’t use big words indiscriminately– but it’s mostly accurate, and all in good fun.<\/p>\n

And I’ll get even when he asks for grad school recommendations…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(Obligatory disclaimer: No, I won’t really write him bad recommendations. I don’t think I was one of his references when he applied last year, but his would be a really easy recommendation to write, and I’d be happy to do it. And he actually ran the text of that post by me before posting it, which tells you something.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of our 2008 Physics majors is currently in Uganda, working at a clinic\/ school in a place called Ddegaya (Google doesn’t recognize it, but it’s somewhere around here). He’s there as part of a program started by the college last year, which sent eight students abroad to work in impoverished areas, and then come… Continue reading Hey to Uganda<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}