Commencement @ Rodent U.

Pictures from Minnesota & graduation weekend. Yes, I attended Commencement. No, I'm not "really" done. I'll bet that quite a few students aren't either. As long as you'll be done before December - you're really sure you'll be really done - you can go through the motions now. Or wait. Why wait? I was the only current industrial hygiene student.

My brother Sean & his son Ciaran attended, as did Grandma & Grandpa. So, starting with the most important:




Pete my research adviser & me.

I simply couldn't imagine him spiffed up in the academic regalia; normally he dresses like me. Unfortunately the other two IH profs weren't there. I was/am curious what they would have worn.

Mortar boards are sooooo dorky. The "hoods" are pretty, though hood is no doubt some archaic term that no longer reflects the design of the item, which does not and cannot go over one's head. The front/over color reflects the person's degree.
Blue = not smart enough to stop (Ph.D., regardless of field of study)
Pink = public health (either MPH or Dr.PH).

The faculty was pretty colorful taken en mass, due to the vast array of fields of study & granting universities. Unfortunately, the only picture I have is much too underexposed.

The part of the hood hanging in the back is lined with colors of the school granting the degree. If for some reason I ever need to wear this sort of get up again, I'll need to find another pink/gold-maroon one; they are rented, like a tux. I think it was a $100-ish fee for losing it. Don't lie to me - it's pink. You can call it 'salmon' if it makes you feel more elegant. Public Health is a recently recognized profession. Let's face it, we got hind teat after medicine, law, or theology.



Now ... when I actually finish writing my thesis sounds so impressive, as if I've actually started and have my oral exams sounds so dental ... now then there will be serious celebratory events at the Gopher household, albeit with just the 4 of us.




Greg, one of the first people I met at Rodent U., and one of the few of us in EnHS who did the mental-health 3-year tour of duty to the MPH.







The procession went from Coffmann Union over Washington Ave. to Northrup Auditorium. Picture is from over Washington Ave. The quadrangle here is the original campus. They all date to 1911-1914. It's a beautiful area. Northrup is behind the trees.



Jr.Gohper#2 getting into practice.




The boys' younger cousin came out for graduation weekend. They got a long fantastically.




Couldn't have the family visit without stopping at May Day Cafe, my favorite hangout.






Before


















After
I'll let you know how much I get for selling my hair.














Boys & their toys




Hey, Mom, will this apple juice make Apfelschorle?

Are you the gopher? (AIHce - Day +3)

last post read: ...second is David Michaels, author of Doubt Is Their Product. Damn, wish I had chosen his book to bring. Would it be toooo geeky to ask the Secretary of OSHA to autograph his book? Guess I'll never know.

Well, I do.

I'm standing in front of my poster, waiting for someone to ask me something about the fruit of the last 4 months of my life. Lo & behold, Dr. Michaels
(Hi, Dr. Michaels! I hope your trip home was nice.)
is chatting with the poster author next to me. As he wanders by, like Brownian motion, I take the opportunity and introduce myself, telling him that I am enjoying his book. It was something like:

Elizabeth: I'm enjoying your book.

Dr. M: something noncommittally bland, like 'thank you'.

Elizabeth: I hadn't realized you were the same person as the author. I wish I had brought it with me. Even if it would be soooooo geeky to ask the Director of OSHA to autograph his book.

At least he laughed. However, he then looked behind me at my poster. I had the microscopic terror that he was going to ask me something about it that I couldn't answer. He did ask, but it had nothing to do with differential mobility analyzers.

Dr. M: are you the gopher?

Elizabeth: smile, wave my hand nonchalantly at the U of M logo on my poster, and state, "Yes, I'm the only poster from the University of Minnesota this year."

Dr. M: no, not the poster. The blog.

huh?

Dr. M: the gopher blog?

uhhhhh

Elizabeth: yes, I have a blog, I guess I must be that gopher.


Apparently, like the fellow from DuPont who commented on my post about Teflon, Dr. Michaels has someone who regularly checks what people are saying about him. Needless to say, I promptly wondered what in the world I had written about him & hoped it was spelled right and wasn't professionally too embarrassing.


The rest of the day at the conference was ok. I went to the 'interesting investigations' hosted by US-OSHA. I was struck by how much an industrial hygienist needs to rely on her intuition. One audit was from a plating operation, where a maintenance worker - who wasn't considered to be a 'worker on the line' - had the highest exposure. He was included for the employee sampling only because the inspector thought 'oh, let's include him, too, it might be interesting to compare him to the other group'.

If you're in downtown Denver & need to eat:

Los Cabos, about 2 blocks NW from the Convention Center has really good Peruvian food. Fantastic citrusy cold fish salad and some melt-in-your-mouth beef dish.

Wild Bangkok has good Thai; I really wish I could remember the name of what I ate, because it was one of the few times I have taken so long to eat because I couldn't bring myself to rush through such good food. I'll have to ask the other fellow who ordered it as a favorite dish.

almost there

It's 9:26 p.m. CST
I am sitting in my lab listening to William Billings' music and some chronic buzzing that is coming from the larger of the two annoying air pumps.
I am on my last set of data. After this, I retreat to my desk and try to export the data into some coherent form.
Then another couple of hours before I can depart.
The light rail runs at 12:22 and 1:22.
Catching the 12:11 in front of Coffmann will get me to the Metrodome just in time to watch the 12:22 depart.
Last night, after discovering this amazing fact, I sat on the chilly platform and read Dr.Pete's NIOSH grant, which included the sentence:
This device, shown in Fig. 4, has just recently been completed and one member of my research team is working to evaluate its performance.
[translation: Elizabeth is sitting in the lab tonight listening to loud 18th century choral music and air pumps so that I can sit on her committee and approve her thesis so she gets out of my hair and takes the evil aerosol curse with her.]

I really want to be home and not here.
After tonight, though, there won't be any more data collection for a while. Thank God.

Laugh? Cry?

Today at the University of Minnesota Industrial Hygiene lab
we return to the on-going saga of our grad student's valiant efforts to get data.
We open on the scene of her meeting with her research adviser,
Dr.Pete:

meet with Pete - ok
missing peak in last experiment - just what we wanted
annoying peak at 0.7 still there - hmmm
check out experimental set up - looks ok
find wiggly thing that's not supposed to be wiggly - hmmm
find leak - good
correct leak
annoying peak at 0.7 gone - great
set up power source - good
turn power source on
power source "on" light lights up - yea!
power source makes the right ticking noises - good
fiddle with voltage regulator - looks right
loud pop - huh?
flash of white light at ammeter scale - wow, pretty lights
no more voltage
no more joy

Pete & I looked at each other and sighed ...


I'm now experiencing the joys of trying to get someone at the U's electronics shop to come fix my power source.

Maybe I'll go mattress shopping today. If it was an hour earlier, I might have called Mr.Gopher and suggested doing lunch.

I have nothing else to do in the lab until the power source gets fixed ...

I might as well laugh - it doesn't make my nose run afterwards.
.

I have data!

I have data!

It isn't what I expected. Nor what I want.

There's something wrong; hopefully with my set-up, and not experimental design. Like leaks into the instrument (please,please,please).

But ... what the hell?! ... I have data!!

My new co-worker, Ms.Ireland, has a very independent, motivated spouse. He wrote (his idea) to the manufacturer of our brand-new instrument. (btw, did I mention I get to use the brand-new whiz-bang instrument, and not the one connected to the 25-year old computer with 1992 software that doesn't work??). He asked if they had web-based tutorials, or a "Gizmo for Dummies", since his wife was working at "some laboratory" at the U.

The manufacturer wrote back: "Is she working for Dr. R's group? We just sold him one of those." uhhh. yes. So, they're coming out tomorrow afternoon to spend an hour with Ms.Ireland & me. Thankfully, I have data (perhaps even more thankfully data that isn't what I expected) to at least base our questions on.

Of course, considering how much we paid them for the thing (waaaaaay more than my car), and they're over in St. Paul ... I think the least customer service could do is drive 25 min. westward to our labs. :-)

I have data!!!

We Will Rock You

Mr. Gopher & I have tickets to the U2 concert here in June.

As it's on campus, there's finally been an immediate financial incentive - other than the cheap bus pass - to being a student.

>> rev. apparently it sold out in 2 hours when it went on general ticket sales.

Pics

Michael (far right) and a real giraffe













Model trains at the GAI German Day festival. The little hat you can barely see over the train next to the adult is Jr.Gopher#2. The o.d. bucket had on the left is Jr.Gopher #1. The grown-up in the picture & his wife were enchanted with the boys; especially since even our 2 year old #2 had no problem keeping his hands away from the trains. And Jr.Gopher#1 is just absolutely entranced - he could have spent the entire afternoon just watching the trains. Including the reproduction ICE (German express trains).










Apparently being 15 isn't much of a deterrent to Raven who has granted her approval to the front yard tree.




Specifically for Grandpa Bob: Jr.Gopher #1 wanted to show him this t-shirt from the Hopkins Fire Department.


















Other side of the fire dept. shirt



















The Golden Gophers in Toronto
why is it that the only good picture of the group is always the one which catches you doing something stupid? I hadn't even had much to drink.

What are they smoking?

I finally overcame my cowardice about my grades for this Spring semester. I was doing so poorly in my ventilation course in particular. I was at the "all I care is that I pass enough to not need to take it again (in 2 years the next time it's offered)". My lab course was a toss-up. If my profs decided to grade me based upon the knowledge/skills that are (I think) patently obvious I have (regardless of 1 supremely horrible lab report), I was pretty sure I'd pass. Well, I got a B and A, respectively. Mind you, for some insane reason, grad school requires an average of a B, and no grades less than a B-.

I assume Dr. Pete skewed my grade based upon my final project (which was already 30 or 40% of the grade). Fair enough, I know other professors whose philosophy is that the grade should reflect whether the student actually gets it all at the end of the semester, regardless of how poorly they did on other parts. I've no idea what Dr. Pete & Dr. Matt were smoking when they decided to give me an A in lab, but I'm just okay with that. Maybe Matt was in the glow of the Red Wings' recent wins...

just got an email from Dr. Lisa to all of the industrial hygiene students: "don't forget your passport when you go to the conference in Toronto so you can get back into the U.S."

.

Distance is Love

There is something distant about grading homework. I've been on both sides of the deal - one can dissociate from the student, and just look at her work. From the student's side, one turns in homework, waits (sometimes an awful damn long time), and then gets it back with a grade. There is no participation in the process beyond giving the prof. the work. This is even more pronounced with big classes, where you might even reasonably expect the professor doesn't even know who you are.

For my industrial ventilation course: It's not as though it's a large 300 person intro to chemistry course. There are 8 people in it. This is the 4th course I've had with Pete, and he's my research advisor. No hiding, here.


rewind 30 hours ....

My project was due at 5 p.m. I had 80% of it done and had to stop because I needed a software program to select a piece of machinery for the design. Oh, I needed sleep, too. I had everything set up, so that I could go to the lab, run the program, let it pick my machine, and then I could take the numbers and finish the calculations. Right? Because - of course - the damn software won't run on my Mac, and I can't figure out how to get VM ware to let it run on my Mac, either.

9:00
I go to the lab armed with the administrator's password for the one computer which has the program. Error. repeat. error. turn computer off. turn computer on. error.

9:30
Go to other computer in lab. Program installed. Great! Error. Repeat. Error. don't bother to reboot. Go on line. Find company. Try to download program directly from them onto the computer. After all, I have the password right? Somehow, the website thinks I down loaded it, but the computer spat in my face and tells me it wasn't actually downloaded.

10:00
Call Pete (Dr. Pete, not to be confused with my spouse Dr. Peter). Pete's not in his office. Go to the Sphere, keep writing the paper that goes with this project.

11:00
Pete's still not in his office. Keep writing paper. Keep staring at 15.51" w.g. in utter conviction that this is actually a bad number to have.

2:00
This time I walked upstairs to Pete's office. Thank god, he's there. I ask him what I should do, in the absence of the technical specs for this machine I need. I suggested that I could simply include the directions for picking the machine, then make one up, and continue. (my thought was that this should be the important points - I know how to pick the instrument, and then I know what to do with it once I have it).

Pete groans - this is of course merely the latest in an on-going saga wiht this software program and me. He says "well, why don't we just pick it now?" He has the program on his office computer.

He turns back to the computer. There is just something horrifying about the idea of standing behind your prof, looking over his shoulder, and giving him directions which prevents you from hiding the fact that you're an idiot.

After about 2 minutes, I simply cannot stop laughing. In utter mortification and embarrassment. Pete looks back over his shoulder and up at me, asking what's wrong. I answered

"It's one thing to turn in your homework and have your prof realize what an idiot you are. It's a completely different story to have to stand next to him and see him realize what an idiot you are."

4:47
Turned in project. We'll see how much of an idiot I am in a few weeks.

With a name like Dinkytown, do you wonder ...?

These are some seriously impressive photographs: from the riots Saturday night in Dinkytown (part of Minneapolis). “We understand celebrating spring, but it should not involve starting fires and breaking things,” Rinehart said.

What a nice break from studying. You start drinking at noon, are hammered by six, and nobody is wiser at the end of the night when flash grenades go off and your friends are together in being sprayed with chemical irritants. - editorial

Rewind to Morgantown. I was a student at West Virginia University from '83-87. The big wild party event each year was in Sunnyside (read: student ghetto) after the Pitt game. It went overboard into a riot '84 when we beat Penn State for the first time in 30 years. I had to walk through the area on the way back to my dorm. Walk through being the operative word. I and several other members of the WVU Marching Band left our uniforms on for the trek. A matter of personal safety. Those students were setting cars on fire. (the party goers, not the band :)

Michigan State University in '99 had so-called "riots" two years running, once after losing the NCAA basketball tourney, and the other after winning. That constituted overturning city police cars and setting them on fire.

There's a really interesting paper (2003) which references both WVU and U of Minn (there was a riot here in '03 after the men's hockey team's championship game).

• WVU - over 1120 street fires have occurred since 1997 related to sporting events (five times the national average). In 2002, the City of Morgantown incurred over $430,300 in property damage as a result of “street” arson.

• More than $250,000 in property damage occurred at Michigan State University following the March 27-28, 1999 riots that resulted in 132 arrests, including 71 MSU students.
  

I wish I'd ...

There's an ad for the Peace Corps on several of the bus stops around town, with the slogan "Means you'll never have to say I wish I'd ..." A post on the News Cut blog on MPR was The War on Parenthood about how pop culture claims we influence our children's eventual moral and character development.

I thought about this, and my immediate response was there are two major rules to parenting:

Recommendation 1: Do the best you can. What else can the world reasonably expect of you?

Recommendation 2: There is absolutely no way you can possibly control the actions or thoughts of another person (like your children). Don't bother trying.

If my children become self-sufficient men capable of loving others, and respecting and loving themselves, I will have succeeded as a mother. Anything else is icing on the cake of life.

Then I thought about it some more during my 15 minute break from the panic of turning in homework late. and later. and an exam due in a few days that I haven't started ...

This obsession with blaming me for anything wrong in the future with my kids is simply a left over of the eugenics "your children are born with their character already predestined, which is why you're so poor and I'm not".

The journalist did a series of interviews with college students (of all ages) at the smaller colleges in Minn. One of them gave up her dreams of being an artist because her parents said "you can't make any money at it".

I really want to believe that I will never tell my children they shouldn't bother to at least try. The next Steve Yzerman? Go for it. A professional portrait painter? go for it. The next president? You're nuts, but hey, go for it.

Will they actually make it? Maybe not. My brother, STFU&GBTW no doubt heard "there are too many people who all want that job, go do something that you can succeed at". You know what you should do? Go watch his name zooming by on the next James Cameron movie. Or Lord of the Rings. Or whatever it is he's doing.

I read an old Life article when I was about 12 or 13 about a physician somewhere in BFE Appalachia who did housecalls for the destitute (i.e., just about the whole area). I was so inspired. I decided that's what I wanted to do with my life. Not the Appalachia part, but the improving the quality of people's health part. I thought you had to be a doctor to do it. So, I decided to go to med school. (That, at least, generally gets parental emotional support.) After about 3 semesters in college, I realized there was no way in hell I would ever make it through med school. I was so disappointed that I couldn't pursue this career. I didn't know what else to do, so I figured I'd just finish what I started and be a chemist. I am quite certain I would have made a piss-poor doctor.

Fast forward 30 years ...

You know what I really really wanted, back in 1979? I wanted to go into Public Health. A field which doesn't require being a physician (one who deals with the individuals); I wanted the large-scale public aspect of it. Had I ever heard of it? No. Would I have done it then? Yes. Would people have supported my idea of going to some third world country to make their lives better? I'm pretty sure not.

Where am I in 2009? The University of Minnesota School of Public Health. I finally figured out what I wanted. Am I doing it? Nope. I'm sitting in the midst of a good school - (well, I really wanted Johns Hopkins which I would have done, had I not married Mr. Gopher) - with a good global public health infectious disease program. Now that's what I wanted to do with most of my life. Nope, I'm in the Environmental Health Science's Industrial Hygiene program. Most people wonder if I clean teeth.

I'm still stuck in the "I wish I'd ..." If I hadn't been married and forced to confront the reality of balancing my life with someone else? Hell, yes, I'd have popped over to Baltimore for a few years.

But, you know what? That beautiful piece of paper which will say University of Minnesota Masters of Public Health doesn't come with an expiration date. I know what I want. Perhaps one of these days I'll get it. And, unlike the kid nextdoor who idolizes Wayne Gretsky ... at least I'm not too old to pursue what was once my dream.

Cutting class

UNC v. MSU

“I do realize they have a cause. Well, we also have a cause, too,” [UNC's coach] said. “We want to win a national championship, period, the end. And if you would tell me that if Michigan State wins, it’s gonna satisfy the nation’s economy, then I’d say, ‘Hell, let’s stay poor for a little while longer.”’

My professor is cutting class short tonight. The alumnus of UNC told us last week that if the Tarheels made it to the finals (i.e., tonight), class would be short, so that he could make it home in time for the game. He's apparently going to drive to campus, rather than take the bus to make sure class is at least more than an hour.

One of the other students asked if we could also skip, if our alma mater made it to the finals. At this point, it was already down to 4 teams. None of us having attended them, it was sort of moot. My friend then asks permission for me to skip, having attended MSU. I - embarassed - said "I didn't graduate". At the same time Prof. says "it doesn't count unless you actually graduated". Too bad the Mountaineers blew it in the first round. Although, I also think if the Gophers had made it this far, he'd have been willing to let us cut out early. Not awfully likely that.

General Duty

Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety & Health Act, often referred to as the General Duty Clause, requires employers to:
furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.

This is my profession's mantra: "free from recognized hazards". Closing one's eyes fails to qualify as "I didn't see it".

Library Vigilante

Libraries get a better business in poor economic times - it's free & it's an easy way to hang out with your friends. However, it's also a place to be thoroughly annoying. I got up from my table (I'm in the middle of an exam) to dump a cup of cold coffee. Three steps away, a 6' teenaged boy comes around the end of the shelves doing Mach 2. My yelp of "hey!" was a cross between the simple shock of nearly getting run over combined with the (now well practiced) maternal condemnation. He managed to avoid hitting me.

It is amazing how fast your brain works...

In about 1 second, my brain processed:

there's a kid running at me
get out of the way
if I leave my right leg where it is, he'll trip and fall on his face
great idea
step left, leave right leg out

unfortunately, he managed to stop before he got past me.

I was really surprised afterward that I considered and actually tried to trip the little snot. It's the sort of thing one thinks of in retrospect, like "I wish I had said ..." or "I wish I had done ..."

Personally, .... "I wish I'd contemplated hip checking him. It probably would have succeeded."

Superhero Science

U. Minnesota professor of physics and author of The Physics of Superheroes served as a technical advisor on Watchmen:
"When I saw 'Iron Man,' I was one of very few people who got excited about the soldering," he said. "Robert Downey Jr. was using the same soldering tool I have in my lab to build his armor, and he was holding it correctly."

This started a discussion this afternoon with a couple of my classmates about the over-the-top safety-geek things we notice in movies: Bob the Builder's personal protective equipment, surgical masks in 24 where he ought to be using a supplied air respirator.

zipity do dah

95%

I'm done. Thank God.

in perspective

so, I really blew the first part of my final last night. Totally blew it. Great, so now I've got more pressure to study for this 2nd part, which is 20% of the grade. What to do?

Sit down w/ my grade & the class syllabus. What's my grade right now? How hard do I need to drive myself this morning & afternoon? Will I be able to get home to put up the Christmas tree, now that we have a functional tree stand?

Just to put things in perspective ... If I don't even take the exam, I'll get a C. This is not a passing grade, for grad school (B- is).

Just to put things in perspetive ... All I need to get a B- is 24%

By utter random chance, otherwise known as sheer dumb luck, I should be able to exceed this

ahhhh, the sound of stress departing

here we go again ...

far too many of my friends will simply shake their heads and say, ‘well it sounds like her’

Yesterday: jr.Gopher #2 is diagnosed with Pink Eye. trans: no day-care. trans: mama doesn’t get to study for her impending final exam. I realize that I can’t find my wallet, last seen day before.

Today: There was an amazing biohazard clean up in the bathroom. Taking jr.Gopher #1 to pre-school/kinderstube results in his teacher telling me that diarrhea caused by potentially microbiological causes (rather than diet) means he can’t stay. So much for spending the day studying the difference between case-control and cross-sectional study design, trying to remember which one can calculate quantitative causation.

Killing time while waiting for the store to open, where I had last seen my wallet, is no longer a matter of sitting in a coffee shop, due to the limited patience of my recently acquired companion. Ah, I think, I’ll just go to the McD’s on Hiawatha, since it has a play area, and I can still have a cup of joe.

Approaching the intersection of 54th and Chicago, a monster-sized gray mechanical object zooms into my peripheral vision, with just enough sub-conscious brain processing to realize it’s a car. I screamed. Subsequently, I had a salient personal experience to demonstrate the efficacy and purpose of seat belts to jr.Gopher. I also now have a bashed-in rear quarter panel. When did I call my insurance company and down-grade my insurance? Ummm, that would be last week. So much for the $400 savings this billing period.

I got lost en route to McD’s (I didn’t realize the Minnehaha Parkway went under Hiawatha). There was no longer really any reason to kill time, but as I had told jr.Gopher he could play there, we continue on. After all, what else did I have to do?

Did I mention that I have a final tomorrow? Did I mention that I haven’t had much time to study for it?

Of course, neither store which could have had my wallet has it. After a more thorough excavation of my room, I’ve concluded it isn’t at home, either.

Sure, I can go to the DMV and get a new license - at least I can get a piece of paper stating that I have one, pending its arrival. I can call the bank & credit card company to cancel the cards. I can get Mr.Gopher to get me cash. My bus pass is only valid until the 31st anyway. But .... my student ID? I need it to get into the student lounge, where I planed to spend all day today & tomorrow studying for my epidemiology final exam. And spend tomorrow evening actually taking the 3 hour exam.

Did I mention that I have a final tomorrow?

I need the ID card to get into my laboratory to actually do the research, too. That, however, is far less important. Do I think it is remotely feasible to replace my ID card in an hour or so today? ummm ... to put it bluntly ... no.

Tomorrow: Say a prayer I do well on this jinxed final. If I do well, I’ll get an A in the class, which should do wonders to balance the crappy grade I’m getting in one of my other classes. Sigh ... time to make lunch.

World Record

U. Minnesota decided to break the Guinness Book of World Records for ... the number of flu shots given out in one day, that being more than 3,721 as a goal. I just got mine (3:45 p.m.), and was informed that they passed their goal at noon.

After getting the flu in March, and having forgotten how sick you could be and still live ... I couldn't pass up a free one. Jr.Gopher#2 is the only remaining member who needs his. And since he got the flu last year, and didn't wind up in the hospital (as quite a few little kids were, with post-flu pneumonia) - his pediatrician ascribed his relatively short recovery time to having gotten vaccinated.

Update:
The U did, indeed, pass the previous record, reaching 11,538.

long way across the river

Today again I bicycled to campus. The bridge between the banks (the university straddles the river) is partially closed for repair/assessment. For some reason, the stability of the bridges around here got to be a big thing in the past year. The bridge upper deck has a covered central corridor - Yes, it's covered. When you need to walk to class in -10F weather, it's nice to have a windbreak.
- for pedestrians, with the outer edges for bikes. The whole thing spans the width of the 4-lane bridge.

I have no idea why it's okay to drive across the bridge, while I can't bike on it... One of the city buses must weigh far more than all of the bicyclists on the bridge at any given time.

I have to dismount & walk my bike across the river, which I discovered is a really, really long way. I never really noticed how wide the Mississippi is here.

The walls for the pedestrians' covered corridor are just cheap plywood. The interior of which are painted panels for the various student organizations, ranging from the Vedic Change Your Life to the University's marching band to Der Svenskaklubb. Some however, are amusing:

Queer Women: a flaming good time
CASH: Campus Atheists Skeptics & Humanists: the best damned group on campus
Heavy Metal: University Marching Band Flutes & Piccolos
University Physics Society: Is Carl Sagan your homeboy?