Sarah Phillips

Hard At Work!

My officemate Vipuli took a couple of photos of me working at my amazingly messy desk yesterday! :D  It has been a really busy week.  I have to admit that I am really glad that it is Friday!

Upset

I am exceedingly upset.  Every day since Spring has arrived here in this part of Virginia, I have enjoyed watching several little patches of bluets that were growing in the shade among the moss nearby to the bunch of offices known as Trailer City here at Jefferson Lab (as you may have guessed, the offices are located in a bunch of trailers).  The bluets were visible from the path that I walked along every day as I wandered from my car to my office in Cebaf Center.  Two days ago, I photographed some of them, since they were so lovely.

However, yesterday I was extremely upset to discover that someone has dug them all up!  Every little patch is gone, leaving only a little scooped-out area between the emerald moss.  This sort of behaviour always annoys me.  Why do people assume that if a flower is growing outside of an obvious garden, it is available to be taken?  Do they assume that no one else enjoys them and so the flowers belong to them?  This sort of theft in public gardens is frowned upon, so why would anyone feel that it is acceptable to steal wildflowers?

So, in memory of the flowers, I am posting my photos here.  I am trying to soothe my annoyance with the thought that at least they will not be mowed now, but why on earth the groundskeepers would mow a section with no grass at all, only moss, is beyond me.   I just hope that whoever stole them from the enjoyment of the community actually takes care of them.

Special Day

Today is my brother's birthday!  Happy Birthday, Matt!  :)

Seminar Went Well!

Yesterday I did posted an entry about the talk I was giving at the graduate student pizza seminar today.  I was pretty nervous about it.

Happily though, it went really well!  I had a pretty large crowd for the graduate student pizza seminar, a full room with people standing in the back.  I had lots of really good questions.  The question sessions in talks like this usually make me nervous, but I felt good about this one and pretty confident once I got going.  I had been worried about what level to present the talk to, but I think that I hit it just about right.  After the talk, I had quite a few graduate students from other halls and experiments tell me how much they loved my talk.  They were excited about it because they said that they keep hearing about an experiment named G0, but that this is the first actual information that they had been able to see about it.  They were quite interested in the experiment and were very interested in seeing the final results now that they had a better understanding of the experiment.  Quite a few people wanted to know about the results that we unblinded a week-and-a-half ago at our collaboration meeting, so I told them that there would be a seminar in a month or so at Jefferson Lab to present the final results.  That was met with much enthusiasm!

As an aside, it was also nice to know that I am not the only graduate student who gets so engrossed in her work that she forgets that there are lots of other things going on at the lab! :D   I am glad that I could give a nice overview of my experiment to these other people and get them interested in what I am working on.

All in all, I think that it went very well and was well received.  I am glad that it is done!  :)

Muskrat or Other Large Rodent?

Two days ago I posted an entry with some photographs of the muskrats that play in the grass outside of my office window.  Jeremy left a comment wondering if the plump little rodent that is featured in the pictures is actually a muskrat or a woodchuck (also called groundhogs).  I can see one frolicking around in the sunshine and nibbling on the grass outside of my window right now, actually.

The rodent in my pictures is a muskrat (ondatra zibethica).  What you cannot really see in the photographs is that the hole he is half-standing in is full of water.  In the first photograph, you can see that he looks a bit shiny; that is because he is all wet!  If the resolution was a bit better, you would see that in all the photographs.  The ones outside my window are all shiny, and I can see the water splash as they jump in and out of the hole.  There are several birds that are bathing in that muddy water too (which seems counter-productive somehow).  The muskrats here can be seen in the water-filled ditches all around the lab, but you never see them in the fields far away from water.  (This picture of a muskrat was borrowed from the Wildlife in Connecticut Informational Series website, which is the link above).   Woodchucks (Marmota monax) don't generally swim around in the ditches (although they can swim), and are often seen in the fields here.

Another thing that you cannot see in these photos, but I can see here at the lab, is the animal's tail.  They have tails that look like the tail of a giant rat: scaled, hairless, and a bit flattened, like in the drawing above.  Their tails are about a foot long.  Woodchucks have really short, bushy tails that are only about 6 inches long.  (This photograph of a woodchuck was borrowed from the Hinterland Who's Who website, linked above.)

Here is a website with some interesting woodchuck facts!  And here is another website about everything muskrat-related!

I took a couple of photos of the ones outside right now, but you cannot see their tails.  The water in the hole is vaguely visible, though.

If one of the ones outside happens to be in a position where I can see his tail, and stays still long enough to get a picture, I will post a photograph!  I almost got a picture a few minutes ago, but them someone walked by and scared him, so he zipped back into the hole.  They run very quickly, so it may be a challenge.

Any way you look at it, they are both large, furry rodents!

Talking Tomorrow!

So, tomorrow at noon I am giving the graduate student pizza seminar at Jefferson Lab.  Of course, I am talking about my thesis experiment, G0, which is cool.  What is not so cool is that I am somewhat more stressed about it than I thought that I would be.  I tend to get somewhat stressed and nervous about this sort of thing anyway, so I don't know why I am surprised that I an anxious now, but oh well!

I am also anxious about whether I chose the right level at which to pitch the presentation.  The talk is supposed to be for the graduate students here at the lab, and since I figure that most graduate students are similar to me and get so engrossed by their own work that they forget that there are other experiments even going on, I tried to make the talk a general overview of the experiment: the theory and ideas behind it, the hardware to make the measurement, and the analysis. I hope that I accomplished this goal, and did not make it too general.  I suppose that it is at places like this pizza seminar where one learns this skill.

I am sure that it will go quite well.  My talks tend to go pretty well, so if this one follows the trend, it will be fine.

I have learned a great truth in doing this talk: never, ever do your slides too far in advance.  My talk was originally scheduled for last week, but was then moved due to technical difficulties with the emails that were send out (or that were thought to be sent out) with the announcement.  I was pretty happy about it, actually, since I was rather burned out after all the work leading up to the collaboration meeting, and I had reached the point where I just could not think about G0 for at least a few days.  However, I ended up completely re-writing my talk over this last week!  I kept thinking, "Hmmm, I did not really like this slide anyway, maybe I should fix it now that I have the time...." or "Maybe I should talk about this bit instead of that bit..." or whatever, and so ended up reworking the whole thing.  I am confident that it is a better talk now though, and that is what counts. 

We will see how it goes!  :)

Muskrat Sighting!

Looking out of my office window right now, I can see a plump little muskrat nibbling away on the grass of the lawn.  Unlike Caolionn, I have no chance of a close encounter, since I can see them playing in the grass right outside of my window on sunny days and have no need to be chased by one in the attempt to see it. :)  Sadly, my camera does not really have the capacity to photograph the muskrat very well at this distance through my office window, but if you see the brown lump in the photographs, that's the muskrat!

Second Floor of the Wren Building

This post is about the second-floor rooms of the Wren Building, and it will pretty much finish off my photographs that I have taken of that historic building on the campus of William and Mary.

The second floor of the building was where all the faculty and administration lived during the Colonial period (the students lived on the third floor).  This hallway, called the Gallery, would have been a gathering place back then.  Today, it has the portraits of fifteen of the twenty-five presidents of the College displayed on the walls.

The other room on the second floor that is open to the public is the Blue Room (not a very imaginative name, to be sure, but a nice one nevertheless).  This room was the administrative seat of the College back in the Colonial period, where all the important meetings were held and important documents like the College charter were kept.  The room is still used today by students defending their doctoral dissertations.   

On the wall flanking the fireplace are portraits of Bishop Henry Compton, the first Chancellor of the College, and George Washington, the first American Chancellor.  The position of chancellor is an honorary position appointed by the College's Board of Visitors for a seven-year term.  On the opposite wall is a portrait of Margaret, the Lady Thatcher, who was Chancellor when I arrived at the College in 2000.  She was the first female Chancellor of William and Mary and the first British one since the Revolutionary War.  The present Chancellor is Dr. Henry Kissinger.

That covers all the rooms that are open to the public in the Wren Building at the College of William and Mary.  Maybe another day I will post more pictures of the campus and all the lovely things there, but for today, I will close with a photograph of the back of the Wren building.

Inside the Wren Building: First Floor

Yesterday, I posted an entry that talked about the Wren Building in College Yard at the College of William and Mary, where I am a graduate student.  Today, I am going to post some pictures that I have taken of the first-floor rooms of the Wren Building.

When the College of William and Mary was chartered in 1693, it actually consisted of three different schools: a classical grammar school (all pre-collegiate coursework), a school of philosophy (the collegiate curriculum), and a divinity school (for Anglican priests).  The grammar school taught the privileged sons of the gentry the important subjects of the day: Latin, Greek, mathematics, penmanship, and the Church of England catechism.  The boys were all in the age range of twelve to fifteen, and were expected to grow up to be leaders in their communities.  The big box in the first photograph is the master's box, and the benches with the desks are for the students.  On the wall above the desks hangs the Jefferson-Fry Map of the Most Inhabited Part of Virginia, from 1751.  In the second picture, you can see one of the smaller boxes where the assistants to the master would have stood (there are two in the room; the other is in the opposite corner).  Over the fireplace hangs Dr. Jon Mitchell's Map of the British and French Dominions in North America, first published in 1755.  This map really does its best to downplay the French territorial claims!  The room is pretty austere, and I imagine that it must have been really chilly there in the wintertime.

During "the good old days" in the colonial period, all the students and the faculty lived and worked within the Wren Building, since that was the entire College.  The Great Hall served as the dining hall as well as the room for large gatherings and lectures.  The General Assembly of Virginia even met in the Great Hall a couple of times in the colonial period.  They met here once while the Capitol building was being built and once after the Capitol building burned down.  In this century, the Great Hall is used for special events, lectures, and recitals.  There are portraits on the walls of lots of people: the founders of the College (King William III and Queen Mary II of England), the College's first president (the Reverend James Blair), and of the three US Presidents who were educated at William and Mary (James Monroe, John Tyler, and Thomas Jefferson).  The portrait hanging over the fireplace is of Queen Anne of England, who was nice enough to provide money for the rebuilding of the College after a fire in 1705.  There is also a bust of Thomas Jefferson in the room that was a gift from the French government in 1949 to the College as a sign of friendship and gratitude after World War II. 

The Wren Building also contains the Chapel.  The Chapel was added to the main building in 1732, and was designed to look like the chapels in other British colleges.  In the colonial period, the College had close ties with the Church of England, and the students attended daily prayer services and other formal gatherings in this room.  After the Revolutionary War, the College became a private institution, and had an informal relationship with the American Episcopalian Church through the 1800's.  William and Mary became a state institution in 1906, and has no official religious affiliation, but the Chapel is used by the campus ministries of many faiths, as well as being used for weddings, memorial services, and honor society inductions for Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest honor society in America, which was founded at the College in 1776.  The organ is from the mid-1700's, and is played frequently for visitors.

There is a piazza on the back of the building, and from there one can look out over the old sections of campus and the Sunken Garden.  When this building was built, the College had about 100 students.  Now the College has around 6000 undergraduates and 2000 graduate students.  On the walls of the piazza are plaques that list important alumni (George Washington was the College Chancellor for ten years) and important firsts of the College (it was the first college to have an elective system of courses and the first college to be a university, both in 1779).  The keyholes on the doors in this building are impressive; they are two inches long!  I took a picture because I was so impressed with the huge brass keys.

Well, that is all for the first floor of the Wren Building.  Maybe tomorrow I will post photographs of the second floor rooms!

The Sir Christopher Wren Building at the College of William and Mary

I have been thinking about doing a series of posts where I talk about different places and aspects of the College of William and Mary, so I have decided that today is a good day to start talking about the college that I am attending.  I also feel that today is a pretty-picture sort of day, so I think I will have a sort of visual tour here in this post.

I have decided to start with the historic end of campus, at the Sir Christopher Wren Building and the other buildings in the College Yard.  The Wren Building sits in the historic college yard, flanked by two other buildings: the Brafferton, and the President's House.  The Brafferton was built in 1723 with funds endowed from the estate of Sir Robert Boyle (and here is another link about him) to house the College's Indian School, where Native American boys were taught reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Today, the offices of the president and the provost are in this building.   I have placed a photo of this building on the right.

The President's House was built in 1732, and every president of the College has used the residence.  In 1781, British troops occupied the area, and General Cornwallis used it as his headquarters.  It was damaged by a fire after French officers occupied it after the siege of Yorktown, so King Louis XVI of France provided funds for repairs.   I have put a photo of the President's House on the left, which I took from the direction that most people first see it when they walk over from Colonial Williamsburg.  I love that tree in the foreground with the bench in front of it.  The limbs curve and arch in such a graceful way!

Both of these buildings, and the Wren Building were restored to how they looked in the 18th century as part of the restoration of the colonial parts of Williamsburg by Rockefeller in the late 1920's.

Here is a photograph of the Wren Building.  The cannon that you can see in the photograph of the front of the Wren Building was captured from the British in the Revolutionary War.  The statue in the yard is of Lord Botetourt, who was a royal governor of the Virginia colony, and a friend to the College.  During the celebration for the President Sullivan last week (the president of the College, who is retiring from the presidency this summer), some creative person tied a bunch of balloons to his outstretched hand and scroll, so he looked like a balloon vendor! 

The Sir Christopher Wren Building is the oldest college building in the United States.  It is also the oldest of the restored public buildings in Williamsburg!  Construction on it started in 1695, before the city was even founded.  It is named for the famous British architect Sir Christopher Wren, to whom the design of the building is attributed.  The building has survived three major fires, and two wars (the Revolutionary War and the Civil War).  Classes are still held in the building, and there are also faculty offices in it. 

In my next installment about the College of William and Mary, I'll post some photographs of the inside of the Wren Building.