June 4th
Thursday morning we all went in and the first thing was to see who was in which group for the projects. Almost everyone got their first choice which was good. One of the guys who got his second choice decided Wednesday night that he actually wanted his second choice more than his first choice so it worked out! I got my first choice-“The Energy of Graphs and Matrices”. I think it is kind of funny that this ended up as my first choice and the project I got because my mom kept saying that this was the name of my project when people asked because it was the only project she saw the title of, even though there were four choices. A lot of people wanted the project I put as my first choice so we ended up with 4 people in our group, me, Kate, Amalia and Duy. Amalia and Duy are international students and are funded by their universities not the NSF like the rest of us. It is a big group so it will be interesting to see how things go. We decided to all look at the same question for a few days and see how it goes. I think we will need to split up into groups of two but we will see. We got some packets to read and some other packets with useful information that will help make our lives a lot easier. I think it is going to be a fun project and I think we will be able to come to some good conclusions. In the morning after we got our groups, we went outside and took a REU & LURE group picture. The LURE students are Central Michigan University students who work with professors for two summers on projects, there are 6 of them- 3 rising sophomores and 3 rising juniors. Also, my group got an intro to a math software called Maple that will be helpful for our project. In the afternoon we started coming up with ideas and then decided we needed to take a step back and make a database with a bunch of information so that when we come up with a conjecture it will be a lot easier to check if our idea is solid instead of having to do all the calculation when you have a million thoughts racing through your mind. So we split up the work and plan to make a spreadsheet Monday.

Oh, so after I found out I got my first choice project I was pretty excited but it didn’t stop there. Dr. Narayan, who is in charge of the program and also my project, said that there are bikes we could have for the summer if we wanted! I was so excited!! A couple people had bikes they brought and I was thinking how nice it would be to have a bike as well! So before I went back to eat lunch, one of the guys and I went and found where we could get bikes and excitedly road our bikes home. My bike is purple and it is by no means a great bike but it gets me from point A to point B, and a lot faster than walking. The bike came with a lock too which was great.

A bunch of people got bikes in the afternoon and we found out where a nice little beach/river was and took a trip there. The water was freezing! I didn’t swim but a couple people did and there were a bunch of people tubing already! I want to go tubing when it warms up, I would prefer not to freeze!

June 5th
We had to get up early! We left at 7:15 for Mackinac Island. We took the 10:30 ferry to the island and had free time until 4 when we met up as a group for dinner at an Irish restaurant and pub-although they didn’t seem to have many Irish dishes on the menu. The weather was amazing!!! We were all worried because during the week it was forecasted to rain and be chilly but it turned out to be a great day! It rained for the last half hour or so but other than that is was nice and sunny! I forgot to bring sunscreen with me so my nose got burnt. Oops. Originally some of us had planned to rent bikes and bike around the island. Then we saw it cost $7 an hour and that was too steep for most people. I would have gone for it but no one else really wanted to so we just walked. Of course that meant we didn’t go around the island since it is 8 miles around and we didn’t have that much time. We went into the visitor’s center and decided to walk to Arch Rock which was only about a mile away. I enjoyed the walk, especially the part that was through the woods! After we saw the cool rock, we were all starving so we headed back to town and got a quick lunch since we were going to have dinner in about 3 hours. Since Mackinac Island is famous for fudge, we decided to look into it. There are a TON of fudge shops on the main street by where the ferry came in. So we went into probably 10 different shops and sampled fudge as we made our way down the street. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon! We keep walking and were going to try to find the Grand Hotel but never made it; it was further than we thought it would be. Instead we sat at a beach for awhile, played on a playground and then headed back to make our fudge purchases before we had to meet for early dinner. I know I didn’t see much of the island but it was still an enjoyable day. It is hard going places with a group, especially when no one really knew what they wanted to see. The group did split up but I ended up with a fairly large group. I should have looked up more about Mackinac Island before I went and had an idea of what to do. After successfully purchasing our fudge, a half pound slice of chocolate peanut butter fudge for me, we made our way to the restaurant and order. Of course, they were out of the item I wanted-darn! Oh well, I chose a different item instead. An interesting fact is that there are no vehicles allowed on Mackinac Island instead they have a lot of horse drawn carriages. We ducked in and out of a few tourist shops as we waited to take the 6:00 ferry back to Mackinaw City. After a 2.5 hour car ride we were back in Mount Pleasant.

I can’t believe the first week is over!