Fall semester in review

The good, the bad, and the ugly (on fall semester academics):

Good

1. No one's kicked me out of graduate school yet, so I've still got them all fooled.
2. I found myself more than capable of handling my coursework; frequently it felt downright easy.
3. I had a great statistics class, learned some things, and did significant work on an interesting project.
4. I've got a great labmate, and also a great cohort of first year students to muddle along with.
5. Heard some really interesting and exciting talks given by various visiting seminar speakers
6. Attended a neat, small conference and met some interesting people
7. Gave my first lecture (~3 hours long, and technically at a graduate level!)

Bad

1. I made no progress on writing up papers for either my undergraduate project (since August), or the project I completed prior to graduate school as a technician working with my advisor (and presented on at ESA in August). This is kind of inexcusable, since both of them are pretty much sitting around, results in hand, and crying out to be written up and published.
2. My courses frequently felt too easy. My typical response to this is to get frustrated with the subject, unmotivated and rather apathetic. This didn't matter when the course in question was "Technical Theater" or some other course for my liberal arts undergrad degree. This matters a lot, and is harmful, when the course in question is directly related to my field of study for my graduate work. I spent a lot of time feeling frustrated that classes were too easy and I knew too much for them, and simultaneously feeling extremely overwhelmed about how much I don't know about my field, etc. Again, this didn't help much when it came to me getting stuff done. Something I need to rise above.
3. Part way through the semester, I realized that I was attending far too many seminars because I felt obligated to do so, rather than because their content matter was interesting to me (there are a lot of seminars that happen at a university this big). Then, as a result, about halfway through the seminar my attention would wander, however caffienated I was, and I'd spend the next 30+ minutes with open, glazed over eyes, staring into space in the general direction of the speaker. In at least one instance, this unproductive stupor carried over into the rest of the afternoon following the seminar, and in my attempt to get home I took the wrong bus twice before it all wore off.
4. Not enough critical (= useful) self evaluation and too much self criticism. I just sort of worked at whatever was on the top of my vaguely defined to-do pile, hoping stuff would get done, and drifting along, with the tensions mentioned above. I need to intentionally and constructively review my work and my progress towards defined goals on a regular basis and try to discipline myself more. If I can make myself do it, this will be much more useful and productive than maintaining a constant, diffuse, critical feeling of being inadequate.

Ugly

1. Deciding that because my classes felt too easy all semester long, I'd pick out very very challenging topics/projects/analyses for my various final projects and finally challenge myself. Challenging yourself is good. Challenging yourself on 3 different fronts simultaneously under a 2 week deadline is ugly.
2. As my (more assertive) lab mate has observed and pointed out to me, I don't tell people 'no' often enough. I like being helpful, and am very loyal to my friends, but I need to set boundaries for myself so that I don't let these traits, and the interactions that result from them, consume all of my time and energy. I'm sure this is something I will face in the future when (if??? long story) I get a TA position, but there the official nature of my position will help me draw a line. With friends, fellow students, etc, it's a lot harder for me to say no. As I have fewer classes this semester, it'll help, as there will be fewer classmates asking for help. It's not my job to teach them - that's the professor's job (at one point this semester, the prof for one of my classes was very busy, and referred a few students to me to get questions answered. This is ok when I am established and know what I'm doing, but this past semester it became a significant time sink when I really need to be getting my own act together). I also need to place some restrictions on what sorts of collaborations I engage in. I have some ideas on this, but it's a topic for another post.

Summary

Fall semester was far from a disaster, there are a lot of good things going here, and I learned some stuff. I didn't accomplish a lot of what I wanted to, but I have some ideas why, and on how to do better this Spring. I've got some good friends, have handled living in a city and being more independent than ever. I haven't been kicked out, and I haven't lost my enthusiasm for the things I do.

Next blog post: Goals for 2010/New Year's resolutions.

Cool graph

Check it out:

That there is science Theo-style.

10 Points if you can tell me what this is a graph of. Hint: it's not archaeological... (leave a comment)

Self-cooking Turkeys and the perils of extrapolation

In a jovial mood over Thanksgiving, as my mother attempted to figure out how long to cook our 18 lb bird, I came up with the following graph:

Basically, Joy of Cooking recommends different lengths of cooking time per pound your turkey weighs. They give three increments based on a range of total bird weight, as as the bird gets larger, the length of time per pound decreases. Amused at the thought of this, I did a little extrapolation, and determined that if we get a ~32 pound turkey next year, according to the Joy of Cooking, it should cook itself!!! (if we can ever get it to defrost)

Oops.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche

What dreams do come.

I had a dream last night, the first one that I've remembered clearly on waking in a very long time. I was in a house, with quite a few members of my extended family. I had the feeling that it was my parents' house, but it wasn't one that they've ever owned while I was alive. There was a fire place, with a fire burning in it - one of those that has glass on two sides so you can see through into a different room. Everyone was sort of dressed in dark clothes and it was rather dark in the house, but for the fire place. They were all getting ready to leave the house, to go to a funeral, my grandmother's funeral. Except my grandmother and my grandfather were both there, getting ready to go with everyone else. I was walking up the stairs into the main part of the house, getting ready to go along with everyone else, but then I was told that someone had to stay behind and watch the fire in the fireplace, because it was important that it stay lit. And it fell to me, since apparently "I wasn't all that involved in keeping up with the family anyways". So I stayed there and watched the fire burn and everyone else left.

So that was the dream. I'm generally not much into dream analysis or anything, but damn, there's a lot in that one that hits kind of close to home in some discomforting ways.

Grad school update

After that last rather introspective post, here are some more up-beat particulars on life :-)

Made it through my first sets of classes. I think I'm going to like the graduate school deal - classes are more predominantly based on a "learn it yourself based on your own interests" with "teachers as facilitators" philosophies, which I really like/prefer. And, 9 credits is hardly a killer load.

I still haven't been able to settle into a regular schedule yet, due to a partial week last week, a long weekend, fighting with a sinus infection (boo), and now, prepping to leave for a small, several day conference, starting mid-day tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it quite a bit, although I wish I wasn't sick, and that I'd been able to prepare better for it before hand.

Still only slowly getting to know other students and people in the area; there are some good people around. Probably I should be patient.

Annnnd, I made an awesome pizza for dinner! almost close enough to my fav. italian pizza to ring familiar taste buds.

Theo out.

Meaningless words

I think this is the second time in my life this has happened to me, and I don't really understand how it happens, or if there is (or should be), any cure. About all I can do is document the phenomenon itself.

One of the fundamental gifts of our species is language, allowing us to communicate ideas and most importantly aspects of ourselves, our identities to each other. Language relies heavily on symbolism - a word, an image, a sound or a gesture is given meaning when two or more people recognize it as a true symbol of some action, thing, or relationship. For language to be a successful means of communication, it is essential for both parties to believe that a certain symbol truly stands for this one other thing. In other words, to communicate, at a certain level we have to trust that what someone is saying to us really means what we think it means.

If this linguistic code of honor is broken by lies, and by the twisting of words and phrases to mean something other than they were originally intended to mean, the ability to communicate through language begins to decay. The words themselves are still there, but their meaning(s) are lost, either because we no longer believe in their meaning, or we stop listening to their message. (Humanities flash-back: An old Greek Dude named Thucydides documents this phenomenon, and attributes the rapid collapse of an entire society to its effects).

What can happen to ancient Greek societies can also happen at smaller scales to friendships. It happened to me first several years ago, when in a bewildering couple of days I went from having what I thought was a really good friendship with someone, to the point where this person barely, and begrudgingly will even recognize my existence. I still don't understand how things went the way that they did, but somehow, my friend decided that I saw all human relationships as a game and friendships as an intellectual, but not emotional, connection. (not at all how I see myself). Somehow that also got entwined with a deep mistrust in anything I said. After that, I could see a good friendship going down the tubes, and I had no way of even trying to save it, because anything I said was mistrusted; my words were rendered meaningless. Pushed over the cliff, and no way back up.

I haven't really thought about this in quite some time; I couldn't explain it, I couldn't understand it, and it hurt, so I put it away.

But I'm slowly realizing that a similar thing is developing in another of my friendships, where our interactions have grown almost formulaic. Pretty much any response on either side is predictable. Conversations inevitably feature the same topics. Each person shares the same frustrations and challenges, and gets the same, expected, customary responses. It's not that the words are being deemed as lies (so far as I know), but if you know what will be said to something before you even ask it, then it's really easy to stop listening to the words, and to let the meaning behind the words leech away, until only brittle skeletons of meaning remain. If communication, and hence language, is the glue that binds people together in friendships, and this language gets a severe case of osteoporosis, what's left of the friendship?

I don't know what to think here. This is certainly not the case with even a large majority of my friendships, but I think it is very real, and occurs most commonly with very close friends, the ones I communicate with practically daily. Is it just the result of too much communication cheapening the value of words? Wear and tear due to over use? Is there any panacea for this weakness, or is it the case that the only solution to an unavoidable conclusion is to let the dissolution occur?

Right now I'm frustrated and tempted to think that I should make my excuses, shove off, and be content in later times with good memories from earlier days.