conquering the world one oxymoron at a time
Archive for February, 2007
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 23, 2007 at 11:14 am · Filed under the internet
Every once in a while, there’s a link highlighted in red in the upper right corner of the gmail window that reads “New Features!”. I saw it this morning and clicked to see just what was new about gmail. I was taken to a page telling me that we can now get mail from other accounts on gmail.
This is rather baffling, because I’ve been checking other accounts mail on gmail since more than a year ago. So just what exactly is new? I’m confused.
February 17, 2007 at 4:02 am · Filed under daily grind
My MIA status for the past month or so can probably be attributed to my extreme levels of dedication to actually doing research for once. Did I magically find some kind of motivation? Well, sort of. We’re all required to give a department-wide seminar during the spring of our 3rd year, and mine fell on this past Wednesday, which incidentally was Valentine’s Day (did I need to remind anybody of this fact?).
The seminar isn’t really as scary as it sounds, but nevertheless, I worked up quite a sweat leading up to it (but it didn’t stop me from procrastinating … my last slides change was at 11:12am, and my presentation began at noon). In general, it was rather anti-climatic. It came, and 30 minutes later, it went, with no drums nor any fanfare. I also got lucky because the one professor famous for picking students apart was also magically absent from my seminar.
Which then brings me to Valentine’s Day. I thought about writing something about having an anti-Valentine’s day, but thought better of it because I didn’t want to come across as being bitter. I’m sure plenty of us hear great many mutterings about the stupidity of such a Hallmark-imposed holiday that you really didn’t want to read about it on my blog. Besides, I preferred sleeping to procrastination via blogging.
So in the end, all I have to offer is that this year, unlike most other years, I had no special feelings toward v-day. It really was just another day that also came and went with no fanfare. That was helped along by my boarding an overnight train to DC at 9:45pm on the evening of February 14. Even if I wanted to have make a big deal of it, I wouldn’t have been able to. So my Valentine’s day dinner consisted of some Bourbon chicken bought at the Amtrak station and shared with my handsome, and very much loved, GSC officers and one hot Latin grad student magazine editor.
I’ll be back to the real world sometime tomorrow when my plane lands in Boston and I subsequently end my email boycott. Then I will have a ball cleaning out the 250+ unread emails that have accumulated. Yummy.
February 11, 2007 at 7:39 pm · Filed under daily grind
Still being a proud South Carolinian, I never thought that the day would come when I would embrace Dunkin Donuts as a mirage in the desert. But indeed Dunkin has won me over, with its coffee.
Driving back from a day of snowboarding at Attitash, going down down a lonely road with its two-way traffic, fighting my eye lids, willing them to stay open, all I could think about was how I so very badly wanted a cup of coffee, and how happy I would be should I see a Dunkin Donuts.
All of a sudden, away in the distance, I spotted a rectangular lighted sign on the left side of the road, and it looked like it just might be what I had wished for. My passenger asked how I was feeling about the drive, and I said that I wanted a cup of coffee, but wait, wait, because i think I see something, but I don’t want to get my hopes up high … and lo and behold, there it was, the best Dunkin Donuts sign I have ever seen.
I have never been so happy to see the familiar white sign with red words (or is it orange?). A large styrofoam cup of coffee and a couple of U-turns to get back on the road later, I was as happy as I could be. Krispy Kreme just became a thing of the past, and I’m turning Bostonian.
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.
