Wined and Dined

When I last left off, I had finally arrived in Pittsburgh after my seven-hour flying ordeal jaunt through the stratosphere. It was now about noon, six and a half hours before our first scheduled event. I stayed in the hotel for awhile, then decided I didn’t have four more hours of internet surfing in me and went outside to explore.

I passed by, among other things, a large dinosaur and Carnegie Mellon itself before arriving at Schenley Park. Schenley Park is a park named after Mary Schenley. There are jogging paths, trails, creek-ish bits, bridges, lots of trees, and no cars. Some of the many bridges were constructed by the Works Progress Administration in 1939. I determined this using my extensive US History II knowledge and analysis of a rock sample (or see picture below). I wandered around for awhile enjoying the low people to trees ratio, then headed back toward Carnegie Mellon and the hotel.

Back at the hotel, I caught up on email and the latest happenings regarding senior design, then promptly fell asleep. When I woke up, it was 6:30, ten minutes after the meet and greet in the hotel lobby and time for dinner. I stumbled, drunk-like, into the hotel restaurant and proceeded to get more drunk-like on a glass of unremarkable chardonnay (the cake for dessert was good through). We met our fellow visiting students and some of the grad students and professors, then sat through a presentation on Why Pittsburgh is a Great City.

The next morning, we had more presentations about ChemE at Carnegie Mellon and each of the research areas, which lasted for over three hours. After lunch and a poster session, we were brought to the ChemE building for lab tours and faculty meetings. As the story goes, the ChemE building was built with its floors slanting so that in case the school didn’t work out, the building could be converted into a factory, with the uneven floors allowing gravity to transport materials. In any case, the school did work out, so the ChemEs occupy one giant ramp.

Panther Hollow Run in Schenley Park (I think)

Before the faculty meetings, we were shown the labs. The interesting thing about the lab space at Carnegie Mellon is that it’s divided up not by professor but by research area. Each research area has a large shared lab space and each grad student has bench space, but the major equipment is communal.

Next was one of the main events of our trip: professor meetings. Five of them, in a row. We met professors, heard about research, talked about our experiences and interests, asked questions, and generally tried to seem intelligent. It was a good experience, if a slightly exhausting one. Dinner was served at PNC Park, and while the Pirates are an inferior team to a certain other Boston team named after colored footwear, it was pretty cool to be in a Major League Ballpark. The actual food, however, bizarrely consisted entirely of different kinds of pasta. While my cooking repertoire consists almost entirely of variations on pasta, I would have expected something more from a catered event.

View of the city from Carnegie Mellon

Following the PNC Park pasta-fest, we were taken bowling, but I left before things got too crazy. The next day we had breakfast, a trolley tour, then I explored the Cathedral of Learning with some of the other prospective students before being driven to the airport. The plane rides back to Ithaca were downright uneventful compared to what I had experienced two days prior. I made it back to Ithaca by 11 that night, got picked up by my roommate, and prepared for three days of classes before I would be travelling again.