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March 29, 2007
Changing Priorities
Well, I think I'm mostly recovered from my spring break missions/relief trip to Louisiana. It took most of last week to feel like I could get back in the swing of things, but I finally did. Somehow it still managed to be a bit of a hectic week. This week has been too. I guess it's just that time of year, spring semesters, particularly after spring break, always seem to be insanely busy.
One issue that kind of came to a head was me getting to a breaking point with my math class (Numerical PDEs). On the way back from and shortly after the Katrina trip, I realized that some of my priorities needed to be changed; I couldn't do everything, and some things were far more important, including some things I've been neglecting somewhat of late. So on the way back from New Orleans, renewed thoughts of dropping the class popped back in my head, after me successfully having tamped them down since late January or so. Those thoughts really crystallized during the lecture last Tuesday. I was so lost in a sea of abstract math, and there was a big assignment due on Thursday that I hadn't even started, and everything was starting to pile up so much that I felt more and more sure as the lecture went on that I had to do something about it. So I resolved to drop the class, so that I could, a) devote most of my time to my thesis and finishing up the research for it, and b) have some down time to use in relaxation or any of those other endeavors I'd like to spend a bit more time on. So on Wednesday of last week I went to talk with Qiang Du about my situation, that I couldn't keep spending 20-30 hrs on each assignment, that I desperately needed that time for research. He totally understood, and hoped I'd stick with the class, reiterating the grading policy he stated on the first day, that even if we turn in a blank page with our name on it for some homework or whatever, we get at least an 8/10 on it. So now that he's basically said it's okay, and essentially asked me to stay in the class and just take lecture notes, if that's all I have time for, I figure I may as well, and get out of the class whatever I can pick up. Any work on the assignments that I put in will be limited to no more than 2-5 hours, because I simply don't have the time to do more than that anymore. To make a long story short, removing the math class from my list of worries and anxieties has already been a huge relief, and freed up my mind and attitude tremendously.
As for the research front, I've resumed making some progress again. Most notably, I finally started writing my M.S. thesis on Friday. It's such a huge, daunting task that merely getting started was a huge mental obstacle for me. Considering it basically has to be done by the end of May, though, means that it's sufficiently last-minute for me to feel pressured and actually be more motivated to get stuff done. I'm working on the intro/background/lit review chapter first, as that is really needing to be quite comprehensive and thorough. My original goal was to have a draft of that first chapter to my advisors by Friday afternoon, but it might spill into the weekend or early next week because I have so much to cover. If I can manage to make tomorrow extra-productive I might have it done before trivia, which would be awesome. Then I've got to pause the writing to take some time to figure out how to do the rest of the actual research that I need to do, and get that rolling. So I guess considering I only have two months to have a complete draft of my thesis all together, if there are periods of time that are lacking in bloggish activity, it's a pretty safe bet that my thesis is to blame.
The annual Graduate Exhibition was on Sunday. It's basically a giant research poster session, with over 200 grad students from all departments at Penn State coming together and competing for prizes for the best research posters/presentations. Six of us in Meteo entered, making us almost half of the 16 entrants in the math/physical sciences category (there was also arts/humanities, engineering, and biological/life sciences), yet none of us got one of the top three places. Even though our category was the smallest, it was still fishy that we had only one person at each place, while other categories had as many as eight people in third, four in second and two in first. There's no way that eight people actually tied, although if that did happen then there's a problem in the evaluations/judging. 
And if they took winners based on percentage of the number of entrants in the category, then it should have been advertised that way, and the awards called something other than "1st Place," "2nd Place," and "3rd Place." To me, that terminology implies one person with each prize, or at most a tie with one or two other people. It's not bothersome to me that none of us won, just that the standards didn't appear to be the same from category to category with regards to awards. At any rate, it was still a good experience to go through the process of boiling my research down to what could fit onto a 3' x 4' poster, and then having to explain it to judges and other interested passers-by that weren't necessarily of a science background. I at least thought my three or four judgings went well. And then at the awards ceremony, they had encore performances from two of the winners from the music exhibition on Friday, including one guy who had an amazing piece on marimba. I've never seen the marimba played like that, I was quite impressed.
I've also been spending some time in the evenings this week practicing piano again. After basically a month off, I'm slotted to play both services (9am & 10:30am) this week for Palm Sunday at church. All five songs that were picked are new to me, and two or three of them I haven't even heard before, so it's been a bit of a challenge to learn them. After this Sunday the next time I'm scheduled is the last Sunday in April.
Spring has definitely sprung around here. On Tuesday it seemed like we completely bypassed spring for summer, in fact, as it was a bit muggy and up around 80 degrees, with a bunch of little intermittent popcorn thunderstorms rolling through. We've been back to more spring-like temps the last few days though, but I'm still stubbornly wearing shorts, even when it's only 32 degrees for my walk into campus.
The meteo department banquet was last night at the Atherton Hotel, and I thought it went really well. The food was excellent, and the speaker, Dr. Roger Wakimoto from NCAR, was quite engaging (he also gave an excellent colloquium talk this afternoon about bow echoes). It was also fun to see everyone all dressed up.
I really should start saving money sometime soon here if I want to go to Australia for 2-3 weeks in summer 2008. I'm really wanting to make that happen, actually. And I might have a travel buddy lined up too. My cousin Jonathan said the other day he'd love to going down there too, that'd be awesome to travel around the Land Down Under with him! We've been talking for a couple years about trying to arrange a family reunion in Australia, so the two of us going would at least be a mini-reunion. And then we could scout the area for parks with suitable picnic/barbie areas for the big reunion in the future, which would entail another trip to Aus! I'm liking this idea more and more already!
Posted by Jared at March 29, 2007 07:23 PM