I’m safely back from California, as of 1:30 this afternoon. In short, the interview went pretty well, but I didn’t sleep or eat nearly enough. Now I’m playing catchup, with a midterm today and two on Thursday. I’d love to write more about the whole experience, but it’s taken me almost 15 minutes to write this; I’m completely exhausted.

Tidbit for the moment, though, is that we got to experience some… “interesting” yaw effects on our descent into San Jose. I’m not going to claim to be some super-experienced flier or anything, but that was without doubt the roughest landing I’ve ever had. I’m fine with turbulence that bounces the plane up and down (pitch, Kevin says), and the kind that tips the wings side to side (roll). The kind I was not much familiar with and am not a huge fan of, is turbulence that screws with yaw, which involves the nose of the plane being pushed left or right so that it no longer points in the direction the plane is travelling. Kind of like fishtailing a car, but in an airplane, way up above the ground. Reference this video of an extreme example by Boeing and Airbus test pilots that Kevin found for me. So that was a little nervous. Other than that though, all the flights went well, and I enjoyed them very much, despite having to study on a couple of them.