Wash. U.

Yesterday, I tooled around town - Good Will, Trader Joe's, the Shoelace Factory in the City Museum, Borders, Kolache Factory and WashU.

I graduated from Washington University in 2000. It's a really pretty campus. In this picture, you can see one of the main walkways. In the fall, the trees turn a bright yellow and blanket the ground in leaves.

I went by to see my college advisor, Ray Arvidson, and Margo, who keeps everything organized for him. Arvy is the chair of the Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPSc) department, one of the lead scientists on the Mars Rover missions, and a great guy. When I was in school, I worked in his lab, doing nerdy stuff like putting Lat/Long coordinates on satelitte images of Hawaii. I also built and maintained the website for our class using raw html. It was terribly basic, but I had fun.

He started an interdisciplinary environmental studies program. I was in the second class to participate in the program, which because of us, now lasts four years. The first years consists of studying the Ozarks and the Mojave Desert. The second year is the study of Hawaii. The third and fourth years consist of putting together a senior capstone experience. My class took it back to Hawaii. The current class has found something in Spain to study. The coolest part of the program is that everywhere you study, you get to visit. And you're with some of your best friends, because the students (10-20) in the program take about half of the same classes. My best friends from college were people in the program, and we've all gone off to do cool stuff.

The EPSc department has a new beautiful building, with planetary murals, rock and paleontology exhibits and a life-size replica of the Mars Spirit Rover. Margo gave me the tour of the building, including the room where they control the rover when JPL isn't. Cool, huh? (BMS, you'd love this stuff!)