Tag Archive for 'graduate school'

Well Behind

Published
by
Nicole
on 5/7/2008
in Journal
. 0 Comments

I think I’m now approaching the milestone of being two whole months behind on blog updates for important (to me, anyway) events like trips, concerts, and fun events. There really aren’t any good excuses to offer for this except that these last couple months have been rough for me. Getting through each day is filled with challenges enough that, by the end, all I want to do is curl up in a little ball.

I’ve still managed to find the energy to consume some media here and there, naturally. After I asked for Sandman suggestions, I went ahead and used a 25% off coupon to order Absolute Sandman Vol. 1 from B&N. I might have stretched it out over five days? Joe’s had to put up with me raving about it, and I’ve gone and gotten Stephanie into it, too. Am currently avoiding ordering Vol. 2 thanks to recent medical expenses, which leaves me waiting desperately for the fiend who checked out “Season of Mists” from the public library to return it. The book was due May 2nd. Are we at the removal-of-body-parts penalty stage yet?

For reasons that still baffle and confuse me, I didn’t hook my Nintendo Wii back up to my television after returning from Cleveland. (Wait. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this here since I’m so far behind: I bought a Wii in New York City. No, I don’t regret it.) Part of it was knowing that I’d have to take it apart again in mid-May when my landlord kicks me out for two weekends and lets strangers live with my stuff. Knowing this, I have instead relocated the Wii to Joe’s apartment, and, at Steph’s urging, started playing Twilight Princess there. I’ve never played a Zelda game before, but I’m enjoying myself so far. I’m always a fan of waving my Wii remote like a sword. (Really. I’m a child, and I know it.)

Classes have wrapped up here, and we’ve transitioned into finals. For the first time in, oh, I don’t know when, I have no finals, no projects, nothing. Except a very large pile of grading that will come my way, oh, next Monday. Luckily, I’ve become rather efficient at grading quickly.

That’s probably enough large blocks of text for you all to stare at for the moment. Suffice it to say that, regardless of what’s going on, I’m still alive.

Downs And Ups

Published
by
Nicole
on 4/3/2008
in Journal
. 0 Comments

I had an absolutely horrible day at work today–the sort that ended with me lying on the floor laughing the desperate and hopeless laugh of one who’s doing her best not to break into tears. This state was vastly improved when my sister, Stephanie, Joe, and I got some sushi at Miyake and then walked to Madeline’s for drinks and dessert. (Madeline’s Peach Mixed Berry Crisp is so, so amazing–as are pretty much all of the desserts there.) We followed it up with a trip to Steph’s place for some Smash Brothers Brawl and Mario Party 4 on her Wii. There’s nothing like socializing with friends to improve an awful day.

And, to top it all off, I got home to my midterm TA evaluations, which indicate that my students are pleased with me. They rated me between good and excellent on all counts! It’s good to know that someone thinks I’m doing my job well.

Tomorrow’s forecast: more unpleasantries followed by dressing up and dancing the night away at Grad Ball.

Project 22 - 17 January - 8 February 2008

Published
by
Nicole
on 2/10/2008
in Journal and Project 22
. 5 Comments

No, actually, I have not forgotten about Project 22. It’s just been busy the last few weeks and I’ve only just gotten together quite a few make-up photos for days that went past without appropriate photographic records. It’s shameful, I know. In any case, here they all are, starting with… Continue reading ‘Project 22 - 17 January - 8 February 2008′

Project 22 - 1 - 16 January 2008

Published
by
Nicole
on 1/17/2008
in Journal and Project 22
. 1 Comment

Now that quals are over and done with–yay, again!–it’s time to catch up on some of those things I’ve been putting off in the meantime. Which means that it’s time for a ridiculous gigantic Project 22 update. Definitely not recommended for dial-up viewers.
Continue reading ‘Project 22 - 1 - 16 January 2008′

Good News, Everyone!

Published
by
Nicole
on 1/17/2008
in Journal and memorable
. 4 Comments

I passed!

The deliberations must have been pretty quick, too, because I got the news from my advisor almost twenty minutes before he was supposed to find out.

Q: Round 2

Published
by
Nicole
on 1/15/2008
in Journal and memorable
. 4 Comments

Well, that time has rolled around again. I’ve been assigned a new committee for my second shot at the qualifying exam. Tomorrow I pick up the problem I’ll be presenting on, so today is my last day to get any useful studying done.

Strangely, I have not done much studying. I don’t think that it’s because I don’t feel like I need to study; I think it has more to do with keeping my anxieties under control. If I spend too much time looking at notes, I will freak out about everything I can’t reproduce off the top of my head. Last time it was my anxiety that killed my performance. I’m hoping this time around that the confidence in my own research abilities that I’ve gained in the past seven months will keep me calm enough that I can reason things out as I know I would in a less stressful situation.

It’s probably also useful that my committee this time is made up of professors I am less intimidated by. And that I got an A+ this past semester in the course taught by one of them. And that I had a great presentation at APS a couple of months ago. This exam is just supposed to demonstrate that I know what I need to know to be a good researcher. I am already a good researcher.

I can do this.

The Lab Hates Me

Published
by
Nicole
on 8/17/2007
in Journal
. 4 Comments

So, I’m currently not on my advisor’s good side because I haven’t yet gotten the data that he wants, and, as he never ceases to remind me–as though I’m not painfully aware of the fact already myself–classes are starting next week and there’s not a lot of time for getting that data between now and November. Wednesday’s attempt to get the experiment done was foiled by the Ultimately Inconsiderate Labmates and the disgusting biohazard they left growing, dying, and rotting underneath their rig. We located them and, with the power of the facilities manager behind us, made them clean the mess up. Unfortunately, it took them most of the day, and there wasn’t enough time left in the day to do the experiment.

Thursday was eaten up by the gigantic lab meeting in which I got berated by my advisor in front of our entire lab group as well as another professor and some of his students.

So, needless to say, I was pretty desperate to get in the lab and get some data this morning, even if it wasn’t with our fancy $1000 probe (which, I discovered on Wednesday, actually has resolution problems that our straight, homemade probes don’t have). Steph got in, and we headed over to the lab, set up the probe calibration, and got started. Then the stand that we have to use to yaw the probe during the calibration broke. I can turn the knob that controls the angle all I want, but that doesn’t mean that the angle will change. Okay, whatever. I manhandle the stand into each of the positions we need; we record the data, get our constants, and set everything up for the experiment.

We fly through the data collection at our first location, then move the probe, turn the tunnel back on and get ready for the next one. Except the computer freezes. Nothing extraneous is open; only what we need to take data. Yet the computer cannot switch between open windows. In fact, it can’t handle us moving the cursor. Time for a forced restart, we think. And another. Throw some disk checks in there for good measure. I’m getting frantic. I slog through uninstalling a bunch of programs we don’t need. Finally, I manage to knock out a bunch of that junk that could be running in the background and get it started on a virus scan. We go to lunch.

When I return, the virus scan has run for over an hour but found nothing. Also, it’s frozen. I force yet another shut down and turn the computer on again. This time, when it boots, I tell it to restart, hoping that this will clear whatever weirdness might be lurking in the registers. The computer comes back on, and it cooperates. I call Stephanie back and we fly through a dozen probe positions. Things are looking up. Maybe we’ll even get done in time for the TGIF at the Big Red Barn.

And then, the computer locks up again. We manage to restart it without forcing a shut down. We get another data point. But it locks up before we can take a second one. Now funny lines are appearing at the top of the monitor. Time for another forced restart, and another set of data gets recorded before the computer locks up. Restart. I start another virus scan, which helpfully ends after less than 9 minutes when the computer locks up yet again.

Well, guess what. I got data at fifteen locations, professor. The data is safely stored on the E:/ drive–and it’s the C:/ drive that seems to be failing–but I can’t tell you a damn thing about it because the computer won’t possibly run for long enough to process said data files, and it’s the only one that has the code to process the batch files. But the data’s been taken. Also, I declare it the weekend now. Oh, and, by the way, can we get me a new workstation?

The Awesome, Awesome Life of a Researcher

Published
by
Nicole
on 12/15/2006
in Journal
. 3 Comments

Since turning in my last final, life has gotten so much better that it’s almost unreal. Yesterday Stephanie and I started work in the lab. Things have been a bit haphazard in terms of what order we should do things in, but, for the most part, it’s a lot of fun. Our advisor sticks his head in the lab every couple hours or so between meetings, but we are primarily working under Sathya, who is the only other grad student in the lab. He’s finishing up his thesis at the moment and is essentially sticking around long enough to train us.

Yesterday, we started out by getting an overview of how to take data in the big Upson tunnel, which is about a meter squared in cross-section. It’s the first tunnel I’ve seen with wooden walls. The sides have portholes along them for data collection, and every surface is covered in thick foam and aluminum foil from the days when a great deal of temperature work was done in the tunnel.

Yesterday began with an attempt to construct a hotwire anemometer probe. The important thing to know about a hotwire is that it involves a wire that’s about 3 microns in diameter. This means that, in order to clean and solder and etch a new wire onto a probe, one has to use a microscope. So we were busy using sandpaper under a microscope yesterday, which, let me tell you, is a truly bizarre feeling. Unfortunately, one of the cleaning chemicals that we needed was missing, so we couldn’t finish building our own probe. Instead we calibrated a ready-made one.

After work last night, Joe and I had a “double-date” with Stephanie and Eric for Mexican and margaritas. It was lovely, and, boy, was I ready for some relaxing fun like that. Also, margaritas = yummy.

Having done the calibration yesterday, however, we could spend today actually taking measurements in the wind tunnel’s boundary layer. It’s a pretty repetitive process, of course, but the fact that we get to crawl inside the wind tunnel to change the probe position qualifies as pretty awesome. I always said that I was going to grad school so that I could play in wind tunnels. Guess I just didn’t realize how literally I would take that.

Today’s good vibes have also included lunch with our advisor and buy one, get one free on fresh baked goods at the Duffield Cafe. Since today is the last day of finals, they’re running specials to get rid of food without having to throw it away once all the undergrads are gone. This means that Sathya and I came back to the lab with a stack of goodies, most of which were desserts. Oh, yes, I love my lab already.

There are some painters that have been in and out of here a few times today, and I had to ask them not to leave the door to the lab open while we have the wind tunnel on because it disrupts our experiment. At which point the painters asked, “Yeah, uh, are we going to get sucked into there if we walk past?” as they stood next to the exhaust. No, guys. Feel that breeze coming out of the wind tunnel? You’re definitely not going to get sucked in. I assured them that it was perfectly safe to walk past, we just didn’t want the air flow in the room to be disrupted. But then they wanted to know if they would get sucked out the window by passing the exhaust. Oh. Dear. Lord. p.s. My lab partner is the prettiest most awesome wonderful and modest person evar! (says me, Nicole, yep, no one else writing in here but me. nicole. you know the one.)

I’M IN UR BLOG! EDITING UR ENTRIES!

(All italics are courtesy of Stephanie. Who is crazy. In a good way.)

End In Sight?

Published
by
Nicole
on 11/7/2006
in Journal
. 1 Comment

I am experiencing immense relief now having just finished up the last of the essays for my NSF fellowship application. I quite like my personal essay (in which I discuss my career goals, ha ha!) and I feel like I did a nice job of demonstrating my understanding in my research proposal essay (which at least reads like an academic text, only more understandable). I probably feel weakest about my previous research essay, but I suspect that that is more a matter of feeling like I was cramming two very significant projects into two very small pages.

Fingers crossed. I may get to press the “Submit” button by tomorrow instead of waiting until Thursday. That would make me extraordinarily happy because I can then focus my attention on that classwork stuff people expect me to complete.

As you can tell by my silence on here, grad school has me hopping right now.

On the very bright side, B will be here in ten days, and, in two weeks, I get to drive home for Thanksgiving.

Also on the bright side, the Thai red curry chicken we made for dinner last night was amazing. And easy.