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Archive for grad life/MIT
May 7, 2007 at 6:49 pm · Filed under grad life/MIT
I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly sensitive person; I don’t get offended easily, and I usually roll really well with bar jokes, so it’s strange that I questioned a few times this week whether or not I was being too sensitive to things.
The most recent episode involved an email sent out to announce a campus-wide event. There’s a lot of back story that I won’t go into, but essentially the email was coming from a group with a history of tension with the event’s organizing committee, the latter of which I was a member. I read a strong antagonistic tone, expressed in a passive aggressive way, in the email, so I voiced my concerns to the organization committee. Only one person agreed with me in taking offense, which prompted me to ask if I was being overly sensitive, especially when one dissenting email started out with “Well, maybe I’m too insensitive … ”
Or maybe it’s back to the perpetual problem of reading too intonation in emails/IMs that aren’t actually present.
March 21, 2007 at 6:44 pm · Filed under grad life/MIT
- Seemingly endless supply of Poland Spring water: free (to me)
- iPod nano to keep me company at 2am when most everyone else has gone home: $250
- Bottle of beer from the guy down the hall’s lab fridge stock: priceless
I went to sleep last night at 4am, mulling over how best to loop through a set of data in Matlab so that every cell that is undefined can be replaced with something intelligently informative. I woke up this morning dreaming about matrices. Life can be really pathetic sometimes.
March 9, 2007 at 4:06 pm · Filed under grad life/MIT
Riding the campus shuttle back to lab this afternoon, a couple came on and sat down right behind me. Here’s a snippet of the conversation I overheard. Everything was said in complete seriousness …
girl: I don’t even know if I can get into MIT again, or even if I want to stay here. I’m thinking Berkeley.
guy: something about working that I didn’t catch
girl: you’re stupid
(at this point, my ears perked up and I started eavesdropping. Hey, if they wanted a private conversation, they shouldn’t have been talking as loudly as they were on a shuttle)
guy: a bunch of technical details about dropping/adding classes
girl: right now, I plan to get a B in XX class
guy: so you think you’ll get an A in all your other classes?
girl: well, I have to. I need a higher GPA to get into grad school
(pause … pause)
girl: really, I just want a higher GPA than you
(a few minutes later…)
guy: so where are you getting off the shuttle?
girl: god, at XX stop. why do you need to ask me that?
guy: are you going over to XX building then?
girl: no, geez, I need to go to YY building first. Are you going to YY building first?
guy: i don’t know
girl: god, shut up
guy: no, you shut up
And then I got up to get off at XX stop, and both of them got off together after me. What a healthy relationship.
March 1, 2007 at 12:43 am · Filed under grad life/MIT
My record over the last month or so has been about an entry a week, which is probably on the lower end of my frequency of posting. Partly, I haven’t had much to tell (non-anonymously); partly, I actually don’t have anything interesting running through my head; and partly I just haven’t had time because I need a simpler life in general.
After that big presentation on Valentine’s Day, I really thought that I would have some time to myself. That, and I thought I would be able to sustain the drive/momentum coming off of the past month and a half of research, which has actually been pretty incredible. Basically, neither one of these thoughts ever materialized.
Let’s use a hypothetical example with some numbers. Let’s quantify the school/academic work I have at 100, and let’s quantify the extracurricular stuff at an equivalent 100, bringing the total amount of work I have to 200. I picked these numbers because the truth is that each portion can easily be 100% of my work, and I would still have my hands full, so the two portions combined create 200% of work I am able to actually reasonably do in a week.
In any given week, I get done 60 units of extracurriculars, and 20-50 units of school work. I don’t usually work at max capacity, and I generally do more extra stuff than school stuff. The past month and a half, the numbers have been more like 30 units of extra stuff and 80 units of school stuff. A couple of weeks before my presentation, those numbers suddenly jumped up to 80 units and 100 units, meaning that I was working at 80% over capacity. This also meant that actually, the busier I got with school, I actually did more of both school and extras, despite having less time.
I also stayed at lab until midnight almost every night, but that’s besides the point. Ever since the presentation, the numbers are around 90 units of extra, 10 of school. As in, I’ve done almost nothing school-related, but done almost all of my responsibilities in the extra stuff. I kinda had an awakening of some sort and actually decided to step up and be a good GSC Vice President, not be a half-assed GRT, follow up with friends and family (though I still try not to talk to my parents too much) … in general be a more responsible person and actually shoulder the stuff I said I would do instead of just making a big showy talk of it. In this process, I realized that I need to simplify my life.
When I can spend 100% of my time working on extracurriculars and still be working full 8-hour days, something is wrong with my life. I realized that I can make a profession out of answering emails. Besides meetings, I send emails. Most everything gets resolved over email, so that’s nice, but I basically spend 1-5 hours a day in meetings (depends on the day), and the rest of the time on email. I feel exhausted because I haven’t wasted any time, but I feel inadequate and irresponsible still because I am a student after all, and I’ve done nothing to contribute to my degree.
I’ve really thought about 1 or 2 relatively small things I can do after my term of GSC VP is over at the end of April, and I think my life will be a lot simpler after that.
February 23, 2007 at 2:02 pm · Filed under grad life/MIT
Have you ever had a class with an obviously older student who’s always attentive, takes excessive notes, and attends every single class? They’re usually spotted with a wedding ring of some sort, and they get their homework done two days before it’s due? I think I may be turning into that student. After 4 years of skipping classes and sleeping through class and typing emails on my computer during class at UVA, and after 3 years of grad school where the first year of classes was spent involuntarily skipping class because inevitably I overslept my alarm and always being lost in class because I wouldn’t read beforehand or because I wouldn’t follow up on the classes I did miss … after all of that, for once, I actually feel on top of my Linear Algebra class.
I realized this during class today when, typical of undergrads on a Friday morning, about half the class was missing from lecture. I looked around and saw that not only was I taking notes on graph paper, but I was also writing incessantly and filled up an entire page to complement the professor’s one chalkboard (which translated to about 2 matrices and 2 lines of text on the papers of those students sitting around me). This was augmented by the fact that I actually read the textbook for 45 minutes before class to make up for Wednesday’s class (which I actually missed).
Anyways, when I looked around me and saw all the relatively blank notebooks compared to my entire page scribbled with writing was when I stopped and thought, “wow, I have become THAT student.”
February 7, 2007 at 1:53 pm · Filed under grad life/MIT
As things pick up in my real life, my blog life dies. Normally, that’s a bad thing, to no longer have a life; it comes with all kinds of connotations of being anti-social, awkward, unfriendly, etc. etc. But somehow, I’m not sure a dying blog life is such a bad thing. It may mean that I am actually doing productive things rather than procrastinating via blogging.
Anyway, it’s been a while since I’ve taken an actual class, so upon walking into my Linear Algebra class this morning, I felt rather lost. Nevermind that everyone else in the room was 5-6 years younger than me (and way more stylish, at least the girls). I wasn’t sure how to take notes; I couldn’t write straight on my paper, and I wondered why I ever got to love taking notes on unlined paper. At one point, I turned around and realized that one of my Freshmen was sitting behind me, in the same class. And here I am, a grad student, taking remedial Linear Algebra.
The lecturer was interesting; had this almost cute Eastern European accent. I say “almost cute” because when I first arrived in the room, I thought he was a grad student conducting lectures, and honestly, my first thought was, “Wow, he’s pretty young looking. And kinda cute, if I were into the tall, lanky, Eastern European type.” As the class progressed, I decided that he really wasn’t cute at all, and perhaps I was just initially blinded by the shock of his youth.
I’ll just leave you with something he said in class:
Usually, we think of the matrix ruling us. But in this class, we will rule the matrix.
There were some isolated chuckles in the auditorium of 50 or so.
January 24, 2007 at 4:39 pm · Filed under grad life/MIT
Guess what I spotted today? You know those little white-background sticker decals that people put on their cars?They usually have an abbreviation of a place on them. I first saw them when I was in Europe; cars had decals like “GB” or “CH”. I think the trend started there, but got perpetuated in the US by OBX.
Anyway, today, I saw a decal like that on a car, except … it said “C++”.
Go figure, that we’re at MIT.
January 16, 2007 at 1:31 am · Filed under grad life/MIT
A few days ago, I was in a bathroom in building 8, and saw a sign next to the soap dispenser that said that suppliers like foamy soap better because on average, you need 30-40% less soap than liquid soap to do the same job. Plus, foamy soap needs less water to make the same amount of bubbles, thereby saving water, too.
The bathroom in building 56 (my lab floor) recently installed some new soap and paper towel dispensers, along with a sign welcoming suggestions and comments regarding the new equipment because the janitorial staff is trying things/vendors out. The new soap dispenser dispenses foamy soap, so I wrote an email to the address supplied by the sign:
“I like the foamy soap!!”
January 14, 2007 at 1:16 am · Filed under grad life/MIT, hobbies
As luck would have it, the winter I decide to get a season pass is the winter that New England gets no snow. It’s the middle of January, and Killington reported lows in the upper-20s today. The summit was toasty and balmy, and my helmet made me roast, but the important thing is that I wore a helmet. I didn’t wear a helmet last weekend, and I hit my head twice. You would think that me of all people would know the importance of wearing a helmet… But then again, you would think I’d never go near a slope again, but there I was.
This weekend, I wore my helmet, and I didn’t hit my head once. Such is Murphy’s Law. I did drop my helmet in the parking lot before we ever took off in the car, resulting in some fresh scratches on the top. Speaking of the car, I drove the whole way to and from Killington, and the drive reminded me of how much I actually love to drive. The serenity of the roads, the smoothness of the banked turns on the highways, the shifting left and then right, the finding of kindred spirits who join in the rhythm with you … such are the joys of highway driving.
January 10, 2007 at 2:32 am · Filed under grad life/MIT
I woke up this morning and really craved a shower. Most days I have to drag myself out of bed, but this morning, all I could think about was the lovely water I would get in the shower. Well, it turned out that I didn’t have any hot water. I turned the knob all the way to the hottest setting possible, made some turtles cry with how long I let the water run perpetually thinking that the water just needs some warming up… no luck, no hot water.
Then I remembered getting a note about there being bathroom renovations next door, but wouldn’t you think I would get a notice about there not being any hot water, either? I was really pissed off; just my luck: the one day I really actually crave a shower, there’s no hot water. My first thought was, well, at least I have facial cleanser. My second thought was, crap, that’s still in the suitcase that I haven’t unpacked because I’m one lazy bum.
So I pulled my hair back and grumpily went to school. I thought about emailing the building manager, to tell him that I had no hot water. But in the end, I didn’t do it because I was too ashamed of my dirty, messy apartment. I didn’t want him to come into my apartment to fix the water and see the mess.
I endured through the day and went to the gym, the first time in a long time. I’m not going to lie; the majority of my motivation to go was for the shower. At the end of a few laps in the pool, I got the shower I had been wanting since this morning, and let me tell you, the water pressure was perfect and delicious. When I got home, the hot water was back, and I didn’t even have to do anything.
The good that came of this? I realized that they change the pool lanes to the long way during January, and if I show up at 9pm at night, I’m guaranteed my own lane because there’s hardly anybody there. Sweet.
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