Candid Student Reports

The following (emails) were written by members of the TIP Tapper program during the forth day of the first week. Some elements may have been removed for various reasons, but the text that remains is in the student's own words.

 
Our preliminary Stella model is rather complicated 
but very interesting.  The relations between fleas 
rats and humans is quite fasinating.  I hope our 
report is as fun as this project has been.

I also agree that this project has been very 
interesting thus far- hopefully, the final project 
will involve Stella also.


 Ben and Ryan
 

 
Today we used Stella a little more and made a 
Phosphorus model in Stella. We also started working 
on our project we picked as our subject "Attrition 
Rate of Students in a School." 
 
Today we started to really comprehend what we are 
doing. 


 Kevin and Alexander

 
STELLA is WUNDERBAR. Our new self-picked projects 
are admittedly tough, but they're really not that 
bad, and the project that we picked, Full-blown 
AIDS Epidemiology, is REALLY interesting. Our 
phosphorus flow model was, um... not that clean, 
but it was fun to make and STELLA has become our 
friend. I feel smart, YAY.


 Matt and Bev

 
We started today off by presenting what we had 
learned from the piles of garbage we had searched 
through during evening session last night.  We 
worked together to infer whatever we could about 
the various families whose trash it was.  We also 
used the STELLA program today to model the flow of 
phosphorus through a lake. After lunch, we worked 
with our partners to start on our project for 
Saturday.  Our particular team decided upon a model 
of the pharmacokinetic effect that kidney failure 
has on a drug.


 Madhu and Russell

 
Today we did two different models using Stella.  
In the morning, after reporting the results of our 
trash labs, everyone did the same model of 
phosphorus in a lake.  In the afternoon, we broke 
up into groups of two and started working on our 
projects for Saturday.  Our project is an 
epidemiology of Guinea Worm Disease in southern 
Sudan.  So far we've finished the basic modal and 
started looking stff up on the internet.

...I'm starting to like this class more, at least 
in the area of classwork alone. It's challenging, 
but for the most part interesting. Our project is 
going pretty well so far. I think we can get some 
more stuff of the internet and then do a good 
presentation Saturday.


 Harding and Natalie

 
This morning, we set up the model on STELLA.  We 
worked for a while, but the whole thing got so 
messy with the phosphorus going here and there that 
we had to start over.  We had no idea what we were 
doing.  But finally we got it, and we made a 
working (correctly) model.  For our report due on 
Saturday, we are doing a model on the Carbon Cycle.  
We just figured out how to set up the model and so 
tomorrow we are setting it up.  I hope it works.  
And we don't have to start over.  Today was not as 
easy as yesterday, but it was fun and we learned a 
lot, especially about organizing.  That's about it.  
We can't think of anything except percentages of 
carbon....


 Liz and Renee

 
Today went fairly well.  The first half of the day, 
we made a more complex STELLA model than we had 
made yesterday.  It was a model of phosphorus in a 
lake ecosystem.  It was kind of interesting and i 
liked using STELLA.  For the last half of the day,
we worked on our individual projects which we will 
present on saturday.  We chose river toxins.  It 
was confusing, but i think we are finally begging 
to understand what we should be doing!  I hope we 
can finish it all up tomorrow.


 Eric

 
Today we did alot with STELLA.  First, we made a 
model of phosphorus in a lake, which was pretty 
easy once the basic idea was figured out.  Then we 
choose a project with our partners.  We choose a 
project with toxins in a river.  It's been kind of 
hard, but I think we are getting it down.  Today 
has been good.


 Jason