I like the smell of rain in warm weather. Even though I'm stuck in a desert and it's the middle of January, it feels like the first real day of spring back home/East/Midwest.

Today, I feel like I am that random character from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link:

http://math.arizona.edu/~emcevoy/error-erica.jpg

Today really is my lucky day!! I had an incredible 2 hour meeting with two people I've wanted to be my advisors for a few months now (they've been out of town in Europe since April), and I am really pumped because it was a great meeting! We not only have many overlapping interests, but similar philosophies about the roles of math, physics, and astronomy, and the timing really seemed perfect. (They are both looking for a new grad student to do the things I am really psyched about -- i.e., accretion disks, MHD, and fluid dynamics). I got the impression that they are both very friendly, supportive, and encouraging, and genuinely want their students to really succeed in their field. BUT... with this, they seem to have very high expectations. And, like usual, I have self doubts about how talented I really am. So I'm a bit aprehensive, but really looking forward to working on accretion disks! w00t

As a way to fill in the boredom I usually associate with summers, I've been exercising & going to the gym again. I forgot how great it feels post-workout. I've mostly been doing an hour of fast walking followed by some weights, and have slooowly but surely adding on small bursts of jogging into the walking routine.

I don't recall ever being a runner. I have vague memories of being a fairly fast sprinter until 3rd or 4th grade, but once I put on extra weight in 5th grade (thank you local-cheap-neighborhood-hamburger-restaurant-with-awesome-video-game-arcade-back-in-1991), running was either a chore or just plain impossible to sustain for long. I was always that fat kid who could power-hit homeruns easily in softball, but took forever to run the bases. But I have hope -- if only because my dad (whom I've inherited my body type from) trained himself to be a successful distance runner for a few years when he was in his 50s, and he used to be just like me. So I think I can do it. I'd love to learn how to build up to run a half-marathon, that would be so cool.

At this point, I'm trying to get used to the intensity. I notice my limitations on how long/far I can jog now are mostly psychological, which is really weird -- once I become aware of how much time has past, I immediately get tired and stop. Sometimes, just knowing that the end to a song is coming up will tire me out. But if I hear a song that really pumps me up and can distract me mentally, I can go for longer stretches of time without noticing a thing.

I just hope I can sustain this walking/jogging routine once the semester starts!!!

So it's been a while since I've posted, and another semester is already midway. I survived my Radiative Transfer class last semester, and was pleasantly surprised to find out I ended up doing better than the rest of the Planetary Students (probably because of the heavy math and coding content), so that made up for my lack of knowledge of atmospheres theory from the beginning of the semester.

I'm happier this semester, in terms of classes. I decided to spend some time finding a research adviser who actually does cool stuff that I'm interested in doing, and as such, am taking 3 classes now so I can finish my course requirement earlier than later. I decided that it was time that I tackled my great fear of chemistry, and am now taking a Chemistry of the Solar System class that is a LOT of work. It's a TON of chem, P-chem, and thermo, all areas I've been weak in and avoiding for 10 years. But ironically, this is my most enjoyable class -- I feel like I'm really learning a lot, despite it being a somewhat heavy time commitment, but it feels good to no longer cower in fear when people talk about dissociative recombination, phase diagrams, partial pressures, etc. It's actually really really cool material, and it's scary to think that I've been considering going into a math modeling aspect of this field. !!! Who ever would have thought, after all those years of my swearing off chemistry! My other classes (graduate E&M in Physics dept. and "Theoretical Astrophysics" in Astronomy) have been OK -- they're challenging at least, which has been keeping me engaged.

So now the only big thing going on is finding a research adviser. I have to admit, I really haven't done much looking. Or rather, I've looked around a lot, but have been too afraid to meet with professors and ask them "Would you like a PhD student? I'm looking for a dissertation topic." I feel like they are often impressed with me when they look at my resume and the whole "I'm from MIT" thing, but that I always eventually disappoint them in the end by how slow and dumb I really am. So that keeps me from asking; which is a dumb thing, I know. I do know that I will have to find an adviser, and soon, if I want to find any RA funding for the summer or this fall.

So that's that.

OMG, OMG, OMG

Please, someone, tear my eyes out and relieve me of this horrible existence!

Astronomers have the WORST, THE ABSOLUTE FUCKING WORST, notation!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG!!! I am having a seizure just considering the magnitude of the stupidity of how things are done. OMG!!!

I want to leave the field of astronomy. As awesome as the conecepts are, there are so many fucking loopholes to jump through, unnecessary steps to crunch massive upon massive amounts of data, and so little science gets done at the end of the day. And to top it all, the science is so unexact, it's ridiculous. OY!!!!

My Atmospheric Radiative Transfer class is such ass. I think the modeling and math behind the theory is actually really cool, but doing atmospheric calculations is AWFUL. And boring; who the hell cares about the column abundance in a very small region of Uranus? Oy. Oy. Oy.

Why is it so hard all of a sudden in grad school to find something cool to do? I had no problem at MIT finding cool things to do -- it was overwhelming, and I had so many ideas and I wanted to do everything. All that is gone here, it's just all grunge, or uninteresting problems, and barely any cool classes. What happened?

Well, the semester has been keeping me busy, apparently. However, when I think back to what I managed to accomplish during this "busy" semester, it hardly seems like anything at all, and that's really been bringing me down lately.

I've learned that lecturing 4x/week and grading 2 psets/week for 35 people (i.e., being a "TA", which is really more of a "T" here) has been a lot more time consuming than I imagined. But after the first few weeks, I've managed to minimize the amount of time I need to spend on it, and usually get my things done in the mornings from 8-9:45am (since I teach at 10am). I seem to be doing a very good job with the teaching aspect, which is more or less of what I expected from myself.

My math class (Dynamical Systems) has been pretty boring & uneventful & not time consuming in the least. I began the semester with starting the psets the morning they were due and scoring perfects on them; but then as I got more tired in the semester, I started handing them incomplete. We've only had a handful of relatively short, and not overly challenging, problems, and so that class has been consuming a minimal portion of my time. I'm disappointed in myself for not pushing through, since I think the class would have been an easy 'A' if only I started things earlier and were better able to concentrate.

My Planetary Science class (Radiative Transfer) is a mixed bag. We didn't have class for like, 6 weeks, and that was heaven. But during the remaining weeks, we have a pset due each week and they are LONG and hard in the what-they-hell-are-they-talking-about-OMG-the-units-and-abuse-of-notation! sense.

And then, in-between all of that, there's been research. Or really, should I say, the lack thereof. I think my research project has really been getting me down. I honestly don't have any work done -- everything up until this point has been reading papers, and desperately trying to understand what the hell is going on. I think the problem I am working on is very cool, in the abstract philosophical sense, but when it comes to working out the details, I am really stumped and have no idea what's going on. I even don't think I have a clear picture yet of the entire "big picture" and what it is I'm really trying to do! Right now, I need to get some dude's Fortran code and essentially change some parameters and re-run it to simulate an SED for a circumstellar disk with an embedded planet. Simple in concept, but I'm already overwhelmed by just LOOKING at the code itself!

It doesn't help that my advisor is constantly out of town for this conference or that; and it also doesn't help that he's not an expert in this subfield and hasn't been able to answer my detailed questions; but he did find me a postdoc who knows EXACTLY what's going on. But the thing is, I feel SO DUMB during our meetings -- she's been an official "Astronomer" since undergrad, and thus is fluent with all the jargon and techniques. And once she heard that I'm a "2nd year", she gets the idea that this is going to be my dissertation project and that I have all the background for this project. And so she's consistently like, 8 steps ahead of me; what takes her minutes to think about takes me hours and hours and more hours of talking with Nick (who is somehow more knowledgeable in this subfield than I am!)

I'm feeling down. I feel like my project has defeated me. I can't understand what's going on. I want RA funding for next semester, but the helpful-postdoc is leaving next semester, so who will be around to help me with this project? Perhaps this was a poor project to pick with my current advisor (who has RA $$$, BTW). And that depresses me. Because Jonathan doesn't do a lot more research that i'm interested in (he does a lot of planetary atmospheric work, which I'm not interested in at all).

I think I'm starting to realize why my few grad. student friends back at MIT would be gloomy so often. They would be gloomy, as opposed to that hectic-stressed-out feeling undergrads get.

Well, 1.5 weeks until the semester ends, and hopefully there'll be some time to relax and think things through.

Wow. I feel like I've impressed myself, after some (very unexpected) news today.

I found out that only 3 people passed the quals this summer, and the remaining 5 failed. Whoa. That was totally unexpected.

In some ways, I kinda feel like they might have made a mistake or clearly made an exam that was unfair (and happened to mostly test things that I was good at). Seriously, I was the lazy ass this past year of the group, and I was the whiner and complainer about how things were different here; always critical of what I wasn't learning; and how I hated that everything was just "theorem-proof" and the lack of applications in ANY math class; and I felt like I was the only one talking about switching departments and really thinking that this field was totally wrong for me. I stopped caring about my math classes during the spring semester, and even got a C in numerical methods because I didn't feel like finishing 2 projects, and I flopped the final by not studying for it. There were a number of students among me that were diligent, always did their homework, paid attention in class, etc. And I was jealous of them because they seemed to be enjoying what they were doing, and acted like everything was great. And I was the opposite kid in the class. I gave a LOT of thought about switching fields and starting over again, and pretty much decided that failing quals was a confirmation of my being in the wrong department.

And I think its ironic that so few of those people passed, and I somehow did. And also disturbing, because I think what gave me the edge on the exam is not what I learned this past year, but more of all the random things I learned over 6 years at MIT. And also a little about the thinking-on-your-feet kick-your-ass test questions -- I apparently learned something by getting my ass kicked by Course 8 exams over and over again for 6 painful years.

I feel that if the qual were more like years past, that my passing would have been more questionable.

I feel like MIT taught me how to think, and how to be a problem solver when you've never seen anything like it. And I feel like Arizona isn't teaching me how to think at all; rather, they just show us the right answer, but never satisfactorally explain HOW to obtain solutions to difficult problems (except in very limited simple & classic examples).
There is a distinct lack of "open-endedness" in both the projects and assignments I get here, and I find that very frustrating.

I still miss MIT and Cambridge so much. And I think this experience just adds to my appreciation of my experience there.

Well, I passed quals! This is great because I no longer have to take required classes again -- only a handful of electives and my search for a dissertation topic and advisor with RA $$$.

Today was the first day of class, and I like my schedule. 2 classes (both "fun" and more my type of stuff -- Dynamical Systems for my math elective, and Galaxy Dynamics for my non-math-elective). I'm teaching College Algebra to a group of 35 non-science freshman, which is going to be a new challenge. Today's class went okay, and what was interesting was that I think I got students engaged because of my personality & enthusiasm for math and not neccesarily because of the clarity of my explanations. My goal is to have as many passing students as possible, since this seems to be a common problem with freshman who take this class.

I'm currently in search of a research advisor, and need to start doing some serious thinking about which research field I want to travel down to. I'm inclined to do research in Planetary Dynamics, especially since they have a great appreciation and use for Applied Math folks, but well, there isn't much else in Planetary that intrigues me! I like the physics & math behind Planetary dynamics, and that's about it. Ironically, when I look at non-math courses to take, its the courses in the Physics and the Astronomy dept. that are most intriguing, even though I don't see anything promising in them as research for me. Hmmmm...

I'm also, somehow, becoming way more social this year than I was all last year! Having supportive and fun office mates helps a lot, and I'm looking foward to going to a few fitness/Pilates classes with some, and choir with others. I enjoy having a busy schedule, but not because I have too many classes; I enjoy a business of different types of activities (teaching, taking classes, exercise, singing, etc.)

I think having taken quals and passed them unloaded a lot of unseen stress. I feel a lot more positive now about my experience here, and only hope that I'll find an advisor and field that is fulfilling. It's a relief to be done with life-like-an-undergraduate, and back on track with what I consider to be "real" grad school -- research, research, colloquia, and few classes!

Maybe I'm finally adjusting to the area and life in Tucson. I think I will always prefer to live in a city like Boston, New York, Chicago or Vancouver, but its better to no longer feel the need to leave ASAP.

Well, its the day before quals start. I have 4 hours of the exam tomorrow morning, and another 4 hours on Friday morning. I'm all studied out, and will be very glad when the exams are over. Ironically, I haven't experienced much panic or anxiety about these exams. It may be because I've devoted many entire days (12+ hours/day) to studying, and feel as prepared as I'll ever be. On the other hand, I think I'm coming to terms with and have accepted that if I end up not passing quals, that it won't be the end of the world. On the contrary, I don't think I would really mind if I had to leave; since I've been battling with this "wanting to do something different and significant" idea for many months, it makes failing quals a bit more attractive.

I've spent a good deal of time thinking of what I'd do if I had an excuse to leave Arizona. I don't want to take the exams again in January (you get 2 tries to pass before being kicked out). I think I'd just move back home to Chicago in January, and find a real job for a while. I'd like to do some combination of a money/finance/economics job that pays a lot of $$, and some kinds of Math & Physics teaching; and I'd start learning some foreign languages at a community college on the side, and learn how to play piano. Or, I'd go back to Northwestern and ask them if they'll accept me again, and switch fields to high-energy Astrophysics. A big part of me wants to move back to Boston, or to New York City, and work there, but Nick will be in Milwaukee and my family in Chicago, and so in other ways it makes more sense to stay near the Chicago area. It would also be nice to re-forge closeness with good friends i've had there before moving away to IMSA and MIT.

Another thing I'd really love to do is the JET program. Or something like it. I'm DYING to visit/live-in Japan!! And to teach there would be even cooler! Or to live in England for a few years -- London would be very exciting!

So in many ways, the alternatives to graduate school in Arizona are even more attractive!

But alas, before any of that may happen, I have some tests to take first. I won't find out until August 18th (almost 2 weeks later) what the results will be, but in the meantime, I'm really looking forward to getting my SNES back and to discovering how good a game Chrono Trigger is! :)

I've been wanting a change of pace for sometime now.

It's kind of funny, because I think I've been living a life on default. I've had this idea of being a professor since high school, when I was finally surrounded by academics. I wanted to stand out of the crowd around me, and aspiring to be a professor seemed the best way to do so. My entire college career was oriented on one thing: get the best grades possible in the hardest classes so I'd get into a killer PhD program and be set for life on being a professor. I only did things that came easiest to me (applied math) and inspired the most passion about (astrophysics).

But lately, I've been questioning this "life on default" thing. In many senses, graduate school life is going well: I'm actually enjoying studying for my quals this summer and having fun doing problems; I've really loved the teaching I've done thus far; I've loved almost all the research projects I've ever done (especially those in astrophysics). All are signs telling me that being a professor may be a well-suited career. But there are many other aspects about graduate school, and academia in general, that I don't like.

For instance, I don't like the competition to stay in academia. I don't like that level of stress hanging over my head everyday, pushing me to publish paper after paper after paper just to have some schools consider me. I don't like the idea of giving so much of myself for many years and run a risk of not securing a career at all (and if I do, it won't be until i'm in my 40s, likely). There are many, many times where I want to have a job that allows me to develop my own life and not focus it almost entirely on work. I want to be able to choose a city to live in and then get the job that suites me. I also can't stand the loneliness/solitary nature of the work I've been doing; I yearn to work with other good, motivated people again. As a professor in my kinds of fields, the work is almost entirely solitary; there is little collaboration and sense of teamwork involved. There is also the issue of money -- I want a job that pays enough so that I can maintain a happy lifestyle without having to worry about money. I want to be able to pay my bills and student loans, and still put a good chunk away to save for a house, a car, retirement, and future kids. And I want a different quality of lifestyle than the one I've been living recently.

I want to live abroad and do something exciting and make a lot of money. I want to live in a big, bustling city, where I can go out my door and walk down the street and have hundreds of options of things to do in front of me. I want to live somewhere where a car isn't necessary. I want to experience a different culture. I want to eat different food and adopt a new way of living for a while. I want to spend time learning more languages. I want a job that is intellectually challenging, but still fun, and still affords time away from work to enjoy a life of my own. Or, I'd like a job in a big city (like New York) that requires me to travel to other countries for weeks at a time. I want to do something really significant and I want it to affect people's lives.

I've been questioning whether the graduate school track is taking me where I want to go. I often find myself saying that completing grad. school and getting a PhD will create more opportunities for me -- but what if I'm not interested in the opportunities created for someone with a Math PhD? What if I don't want to be labeled as a "mathematician" and be limited to jobs that people think are good only for them?

Oy! Too many questions!

So, after swearing off RPG games as a child, I decided to give Final Fantasy VI
a try on my SNES this summer at the suggestion of my boyfriend, a growing
addiction to the soundtrack, and claims that it is possibly the best
video-game/RPG ever made.

After finishing a rough 1st year of grad. school, I decided a foray into FFVI
immediately after finals and well before quals this summer to give ample time
to play. Nick (the boyfriend) comes for a visit, and instead of going to
Mexico like planned for a week's vacation, we ended up being addicted to FFVI
and pretty much hardly left the apartment during his visit the entire week.

The following week, I play alone (Nick flies back to boston) and, due to the
110-deg. AZ weather and the greatness of the game, I don't leave my apartment
(or the game) for an entire week.

Finally, its now week 3, I'm visiting Boston /Nick and brought the SNES and FFVI
with me. Many more hours of gaming is done, and finally, after 75 hours worth
of saved gaming, I just finished all the sidequests and got all of the powerful
weapons and went on to beat the final boss (Kefka). More than excited and dying
to watch this famous ending, I go into Kefka's lair and beat almost all the
minor bosses and am about to beat Kefka. At that point, Nick's roomate
saunters in and ACCIDENTALLY TOUCHES/BUMPS THE SNES, WHICH THEN TURNS OFF.
UPON RESTARTING, I FIND THAT ALL SAVED GAMES HAVE BEEN ERASED.
_ERASED_!!!!!!!!!!

75 fucking hours erased!!! I gave 3 weeks of my life and blood to that game!!
3 weeks of my life - GONE!! And when all I had left to do was beat was the
final boss which was supposed to be easy!!!!! No ending! No Kefka! No
ending-finale-music!!! No gratification! Gone! All gone!!

It almost feels like I just had a miscarriage. God must hate me.

Why?????????????????????????




Does anyone know of a .mpg or movie file on the web that is of the FFVI ending? I will forever be haunted by the music and cry until I see it, because I don't think I can get the motivation to start over again before quals this August.

Incidentally, I'll be in Boston for about the next 2 weeks (until June 12th or so), so if you're in town (lerta or lokie!) send me an email (ericam@alum) and we should meet up! Maybe we can talk about the ending to FFVI too. ;)

As a kid, I swore off RPG games. "They're too long; they're boring! Too complicated. Whoever heard of a video game with _role-playing_ battles?! It's not Zelda, so fuck that shit!" The only RPG I ever got into was Earthbound, and some even question weather its an RPG or not.

But I've finally learned the wonder that is Final Fantasy (VI to be exact).

So after finals week, Nick flies into Tucson for a week and we rent a car to go someplace cool (like Mexico, or Phoenix, or Kitt Peak, etc.) However, the SNES was already busted out (out 1 hour after my last final, in fact), and I agreed to try playing FFVI (Nick's favorite game of alltime) and started to actually like it. 2 days go by, we're still inside playing roughly 12 hours a day. Literally, it was play FFVI, eat, more FFVI, snack, sleep, wakeup, FFVI, eat, etc. Put in an occasional shower and trips to the mailbox. An entire week goes by, the car remains unused, no trips to anywhere except to grab dinner around Tucson, and our asses are back on the couch playing/watching FFVI nonstop. That pretty much summarizes Nick's entire visit.

I'm actually sore from sitting on the couch for so long!! My back aches.

At any rate, I've never played a single game for so long. It rocks. It's like a toilet for my head; the head gets so constipated from school that it needs to take a big dump at the beginning of summer, and the dumping bowl is FFVI. It feels soooo good to not do anything but play. Its been so long. *happy sighs of relief*

I'm actually going back to Boston/Cambridge for 1.5 weeks, which will be good because I haven't left my apartment in almost a week. Even after Nick flew back to Boston, I continued the FFVI-eat-sleep-FFVI routine, and am thoroughly on a funky schedule. Hell, I'm FORCING myself to do something else right now (like write in this LJ) so I feel like a better, more well-rounded, person. However, I'm nearing the end of FFVI (just finishing all the side-quests now) and it doesn't look like I'll finish by my flight tomorrow, so the SNES & FFVI are being packed into my luggage. Does this make me a shady person? I should be living up the city life in Boston & New York and seeing old friends and eating good food, not staying at Nick's or Mike's place playing video games. Oy! But what a great game!

I wonder what the probability is of me playing & finishing the remaining FF games this summer, while still having enough time to study for quals? (Aug. 3rd & 4th)

Well, spring break is here! Despite the ridiculous amounts of tasks/projects/stuff that's been checked off of my whiteboard "to-do" list this week, there remains 1 already mildly overdue assignment (a paper for our Stellar Evolution simulations), and its amazing how difficult it is to just check off that last little thing! It's not hard work; its just putting our presentation into writing, and most of its done. Somehow, once work gets viewed as "boring" or "grungy", it tends to get put off. Funny how that works!

So life has been going more smoothly here. I no longer have family dying left and right (*crosses fingers*), unlike last semester, which has been very nice. The classes somehow got easier this semester & mildly more interesting. I've started doing research (yay!), although I'm not sure if differential geometry is really my thing; but at least I have a good advisor for this project. I'm doing a lot of traveling this semester (Seattle/Vancouver trip this week; Denver ski trip end of March; Boston trip in April; home to Chicago in May for step-sister's confirmation; best friend's wedding in June), which is keeping me sane in the desert, woohoo! As much as I love to blow my $$ on clothing and other material things from shopping, I've really needed to save up in order to pay travel expenses. I've discovered the wonderful hobby of "sell all your shit on ebay and make some extra cash"; it not only helps me get rid of most of the shit I have lying around that's never used, but its nice to have extra at the end of the month. Apparently, I've become the local ebay "expert" and have set up a few people with accounts and tips on selling their crap. Good times, good times.

So I bought this dress last week, and I need to look good in it by June 24th. My best friend is getting married then, and I'm her Maid of Honor. I'd rather be the Maid of Honor instead of the Maid of Flab, or even Old Maid. So I've been attempting work outs everyday for ~30 min. of either DDR or the gym for the past few weeks. The workouts seem to shape my calves, quads and butt/hips, but I'll be damned if that belly is ever going to get smaller! My body now looks like my mother's body (skinner legs; wider middle), and she's 30 years older than I am! Past experiments with dieting and exercise have shown me that the only way I can get my belly fat to decrease is by watching the types and amounts of food I eat. Right now, I'm still eating junk often enough (although I don't know if I should classify "Pan Asian Cuisine" as "junk" if I only eat the steamed rice with chicken/beef/veggie/cat/dog/poor-animal/etc. dishes). But shit, its so hard to stop the coffee/espressos in the morning; and Little Ceasers' pizza just tastes so good and its so close and so cheap ($5!). How do you get over a caffeine addiction? (I try to drink black tea instead of coffee, but sometimes that just isn't enough). And a pizza addiction?

I've finally gotten around to reading Ender's Game (after being told to do so for the past 5 years, and almost hanged for not) and really enjoyed it. I've enjoyed it so much, that I read it again. And then again. And then another time. And hell, it's open next to me right now. So now Ender's Game has officially joined the small list of books that I pretty much only read these days (and obsessively at that). The collection now consists of: LOTR and related Middle-Earth-Tales book; Harry Potter; Contact; Ender's Game. This is a sad collection, as I find it hard to pick up a book these days and not get quickly bored with it if I don't know that its supposed to be "good." Any recommendations?

Well, I think a nap is in order now, and then that damned paper again. It's probably better to just to bite the bullet and get it quickly out of the way just so its no longer over my head. But damn, that apathy and distraction are more powerful than my will is right now. Those pesky suckers.

What do you do when you've spent 4 years of your life solely working towards getting into the best graduate school program possible that does what you want to
do, and then during your 1st semester there, you distinctly dislike the program and the people and the policies and the enviornment more and more and more until you can't bear it anymore, and you no longer care about failing your required classes (all of which you are not enjoying) and just want to quit and go home, but have no plan?

Shite (again!), it's been a while!

So a lot of shit happened since I last posted. I finished my M.S. thesis (hooray!), and overall, it was a less horrific experience than finishing the S.B. one. My advisor was pleased with it, and thinks there's a paper in there to publish, which is great!! Hopefully, he's not full of crap like I sometimes think. ;) I left Boston and moved to Arizona in mid-August and started grad school in Applied Math. My mom sold the house my brother and I grew up in Chicago, and lives out in the suburbs now. My relatives are getting old! (Uncle got cancer and isn't doing too well) 24th birthday came and went fairly uneventfully. Things seem to be moving along! Smoothly too, at that.

Grad school here has been good, but damn, keeping me busy. 1st years just take shitloads of math classes and this applied-math-lab fluids
course and take their quals at the end of the 1st summer, so it's a lot like being an undergrad again at MIT. People here are quite a bit
more mellowed out than at MIT, but there are so many students who look ridiculously uniform, and Christian! My god, there are so many Christian groups here. And blonde sorority girls (and many who you can tell died their hair blond). It's soooooo different from MIT. The Applied Math dept. here is great, but I think there are too many 1st years who are full of themselves and trying to prove something to everyone they see. In fact, almost all of the friends I've made are from outside the department. 3 of my classes are somewhat challenging but altogether do-able (Solar Astrophysics, Numerical Linear Algebra, and the Methods of App. Math courses), but Analysis is kicking my ASS! Shit that class is hard as fuck. It's funny too, because it's a mix of topics from many pure math fields (analysis, measure theory, topology, algebra, complex analysis, etc.) that are important topics in applied math, and you can totally tell who's a pure math person and who's applied by what they say is hard about the class. A purist will be like "that class was great! except for the weird applied math stuff." and an applied person will be like "that class sucked! the only thing that made it bearable were the applied math parts." Yeah, the applied math done here is very similar to the kinds of research done at Applied math at MIT, except here they treat things more rigorously and from a more theoretical standpoint, whereas my experience with MIT's dept. was that it was approached from a more physics/engineer/intuitive approach. So that's taking some getting used to, since I don't have much experience in formalizing problems and understanding long long proofs of seemingly-simple ideas.

Arizona is decent. It's hot here, but oh so different from boston or Chicago. It's dry, which makes a 100 degree day oh so more bearable. You don't sweat as much, but you do just feel hot a lot. The classrooms are SO COLD from air conditioning, so the temperature gradient at the beginning and end of classes takes some getting used to. The first few weeks here was difficult because it was REALLY hot in mid-August (110 most days and more humid). The people are generally nice and very approachable. My roommate is pretty cool (she's an undergrad in Chemical Engineering) and I get rides from her to campus in the mornings. There are very few night-owls on campus, and in fact, the campus is bustling with students only from about 8am-4pm, and then it's pretty quiet after that, which is strange (especially considering the campus is huge - 30,000 students!) There are a lot more "'normal" people around here. It's really skewed my definition of what "normal" is now for a student (an MIT undergrad certainly is not "normal"!!) I've made a couple of friends here, mostly through study groups, but we have fun. One of them is a Japanese girl named Tamaki, and she has the greatest stapler! It's shaped like a bone and it even has a name -- "Mr. Bone" !! I think she's on a similar wavelength as I am, and likes weird people too (maybe because she grew up in Japan!) and it's nice to have someone to talk to whenever. There's this other guy in the math dept. that weirded me out a few times because he'd flirt with me and i'd run into him many times - and he's 37!!! He'd want to do homework together even though we don't have any classes together, either. What's with this "attracting old guys" thing?? After Dhanesh, I've had my fill! :b I do have the another great math teacher who's kind of hot (although he doesn't compare to Plamen in the hotness scale, lol!) He's French, totally laid back and weird and funny, does nonlinear dynamics and fluids, and in his early-to-mid 30s. He's got kids though (they're so cute!) that he speaks to them in French (ooh, what a fantastic sounding language!), but he has this really hot wife (French too!); so that's made class a weee bit more interesting; although I have to say that the crush is fairly mild compared to any past crazy crush i've had. What's so attractive about math post-docs and young profs??! pppbbbthh!

So that's my life, roughly, the past few weeks. A lot of work, and keeping busy, and less on the crazy stories! Actually, that's not altogether true. Next time I'll post about the seedy guy that wanted to walk me to my car (which I don't have), and then tried following me home from the grocery store. What a freak. But tha'tll be for next time!

Shite, it's been a while since I last updated this.

So life is going good and fairly smoothly (although really busy!) this spring. I decided to go to U Arizona for grad school, so I'll be moving to Tucson AZ sometime in August. (wooot! warm weather!) I think that life in the west (well, southwest) will be interesting. I've never spent time there or even visited until the Preview Weekend last spring for 3 days. I think it will do me some good! I'm also thinking of just "switching" to Planetary Science research instead of Astrophysics, if only because the math behind planetary dynamics is just way cooler! And Planetary people seem to like mathematicians a lot more than the Astrophysicsts do.

Before I go to AZ, I need to write and hand in an M.S. thesis. Officially, it's due in about 3 weeks from now, but there is a
chance that I may have the deadline extended until August before I move.

Addicitons are BAD -- discovering the wonder that is Harry Potter in book format in the midst of writing my thesis seems like a bad BAD idea!! But shit, Harry Potter's life seems so much more interesting to me right now than writing about the history of GRB satellites!

Yeah, one thing I discovered is that writing a thesis just to be able to graduate, knowing that I'll be moving to a sunny state in just a few months, is WAAAY more difficult than I thought it would be! :b

Okay, I'll write more again!

So this is a fairly annoying, yet somewhat amusing, situation that I'd like to describe and I'm curious to what people have to say about it. I've never quite been in a situation like this before, yet I can imagine that it must happen often enough so that others have experience in dealing with it. (To be honest, it may be better to not post this on a livejournal per se, but I'm really curious to see how other people deal with this kind of thing). So here goes:

You live at a house with ~ 20 people around your age and older (23 - 30 years old). This year, the house gets a new RA who is your age and someone you don't know too well, but she is a friend of some of your own friends. You haven't' quite meshed too well with her in the past, but you also don't know her that well either, so who's to judge?

So back to story -- you have a boyfriend and relationship is going good. Whenever you come home alone, RA talks to you on occasion when she bumps into you. However, when you come home with boyfriend, she becomes very animated and starts seeking the two of you out to talk, hang out, etc. What's annoying is that when the three of you hang out, she rarely looks at you during conversation and often just looks at boyfriend (and even answers you by looking at your boyfriend, as if he asked a question). Distractions happen ("oh, you don't need to go to bed now; let girlfriend go to sleep and you come play your favorite video game in my room instead"). Then the touching starts -- frequent hugs and longer embraces (hello and goodbye) to the boyfriend, kisses on the face, small touches on the arm and face, etc. It gets to the point that you start to feel uncomfortable bringing your boyfriend home because of her, and so you avoid going home regularly.

You've brought the issue up to boyfriend, but he disagreed that she was being flirtatious and thought you were being overly jealous. So you control it, and
learn to let it be an annoyance to deal with. But then, months later, boyfriend brings up the issue again and says that she could possibly be hitting on him, but thinks that she doesn't realize what she's doing. From your point of view, you of course disagree, and things still stand where they were before.

Sooo...what do you do?

So I have this vague feeling that I'm not really giving Arizona the consideration it deserves. Especially considering that when I went and visited last spring, I came back to MIT very excited about moving and going someplace else different for a while and doing something a little different, yet more interesting (applying my math knowledge to problems in Astrophysics and Planetary Science problems).

I think I can honestly say that there are 2-3 main things pulling me back right from going elsewhere right now:

1) The idea that I can somehow "do better" (that is, get into a "better" school for Astrophysics, or do better
on the Physics GRE, etc.)
2) Nick
2a) My thesis advisor
2b) The multitude of friendships & support I've made in the area during my time here
2c) City life and having changing seasons

As of now, I don't think I can pull off 1), unless I decide to delay grad. school even more. I think the only possible way I can make my application better is getting a better GRE Physics score (and after taking the damned test 4 times and studying for 2 years for it, I'm not sure about that possibility), and to publish some important paper with someone new. But yeah, all of that takes time....(and it would be nice to be done with graduate school and, ideally, starting a family by the time I'm 30).

2) So as ashamed as I am to admit it, it's really true. I don't think I'd have any qualms about moving to Arizona at this point if Nick and I weren't together. I often wonder if I should just make myself bite the bullet and adopt the attitude of "there are plenty of fish in the sea -- including the Arizona sea and the great beyond." Is it a bad idea to take any relationship seriously at this young age, when there's still so much left to do & experience ahead of me?

2a,b&c) Labeled as reasons a,b,c because I think these are all small things in comparison -- that those are the kinds of things that moving people just deal with because, well, that's a part of life and moving on!

Anyways, it's quite late right now and well past my bedtime! I need to post more funny stories and things on here soon.

Apparently, studying (extendedly) hardcore for the GRE Physics exam didn't change my score -- it made it worse than when I took it without studying! Somehow, this feels wrong to me.

*angst*

Now what am I going to do next year? I think the only school that may accept me now is Northwestern in IL. -- and do I
_really_ want to go there? I think I'm better off going to Arizona (since I've deferred them anyways).

Perhaps this is a sign telling me to leave Physics and do something else, like, Applied Math instead. Taking the Physics GRE 4 times and completely bombing it each time (even after hardcore studying!!) isn't a good sign. But then again, I also bombed the Math GRE Subject test even more -- and my Math GPA is WAAY higher than my Physics GPA (as well as taking harder Math classes and doing really well in them - !!) and it was always so easy for me. I am so confused. And angsty.

All I want is to get into a good PhD program in Astrophysics (or maybe Applied Math, but I'm not as excited about doing Math
as I am about studying stars) so I can continue studying stars after school as well. What the hell do I do about this?
Do I wait around even more (just like what I've been doing for the past 2 years) to make myself more marketable to graduate
schools? If so, what does one do? I've already took the extra semester of undergrad; and I've already done an M.S. program
in a related field; so what the hell??? I could be a research bum and just work like a normal person, but in a research enviornment....but then I'll be ancient and old when I finally do get my PhD! aaaaaaaaaa

I hate ambiguous futures. And I don't want to leave Boston, but damnit, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to. I hate ETS
with all of my heart. (and they took my money too, those vicious bastards)