Graduate school and the seasons

Another busy week: research trucking along despite the abnormally long wait times (~3-7 days) for my simulations on the DoE computers and our broken department cluster, as well as prepping to lead our final discussion on Ozone and the Montreal Protocol.

Yesterday a close friend of mine defended his PhD.  After having missed another friend's defense a month ago, this officially marks the first close friend to defend.  It's been 4+ years now, yet this really feels like the first serious moment in graduate school for me or anyone around me, which I find strange.  At the same time, in the past two and a half years, I still haven't had any friends leave town -- one left grad school but still works at MIT, and my two recently-graduating friends are both sticking around at least for a few months to do post-docs.

All of this means a continuation of the feeling of stagnancy that pervades the long slog of getting a PhD.  By that I mean that in the real world in your 20s and 30s, most people like me (i.e. without children) are changing jobs, traveling, moving, etc. etc., as are their friends around them.  Yet in my case, the opposite is true.  While one might think this should be cause for celebration to have such stability, but for myself, I've always liked change in the same way that I've always loved the seasons -- because without change, you lose the ability to appreciate how great things are.

In retrospect I feel that it's for this reason that the past couple of years have been good but not great. Without specific events to look forward to, and in particular without the motivating sense that your time window is closing -- whether it be to accomplish a research goal, to see the sights of a city, to party with a friend or group of friends, etc. -- too often people, knowing that there's always next weekend, are content not to take on new challenges and opportunities.

So tonight, I head out to my newly-graduated friend's place for a whiskey tasting -- the first time a friend is hosting a creative party in quite a while.  Here's a toast to what I can only hope is a celebration of Spring.

Parents visiting Boston

This weekend, my parents came to town to visit before my dad attends a conference on Monday morning.  As I dive into my fifth and possibly final year here at MIT, I'm quickly reaching that point that everyone reaches after spending several years living in a city -- the realization that you haven't actually seen almost any of the major sites in your own town.

Thus, I took the opportunity (as most do) to take my parents to those sites that I've most wanted to see.  Yesterday, after eating some uber-fresh oysters at Haymarket, we headed over to the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum.  Though undoubtedly a lovely and impressive collection of art and artifacts assembled neatly into a funky small space, the majority of it was Renaissance art, which I find utterly boring.  Bonus points, though, for the beautiful and enormous John Singer Sargent painting of flamenco dancers and musicians in Barcelona, "El Jaleo".

Next, we headed on to the JFK Museum out by UMass-Boston.  This is one of my favorite museums I've ever been to.  I realized I knew very little about JFK himself, and the massive collection of objects, notes, memorabilia, and particularly audio and video of his famous speeches were arranged impeccably.    I am now thoroughly inspired to read his book, "Profiles in Courage".

We then ended the night with dinner at Russell House Tavern followed by dessert at Finale.  Yum.

Today, we begain with coffee and pastries at Dwelltime (Yum), before driving out to Salem to spend the day learning about the history of the witch hysteria.  The town and historical activities felt a bit touristy -- there are three privately run Salem witch historical museums, not clear which is the "best" one and the National Parks Service folks were forbidden from sharing their opinions -- but overall it was a fun experience, helped out quite a bit by the perfect 72F and sunny weather.  At midday, we grabbed lobsters at the Lobster Shanty (yum) before heading over to the gorgeous harbor for an hour or so.

Finally, after returning home to check out the backyard garden, Laura joined us for dinner way out in East Boston at the Belle Isle Seafood shack.  And a wonderful shack it was, next to the road on the water, stuck in the middle of some crappy construction.  We each ordered a lobster roll, which must have contained around 4 lobsters' worth of meat. Our lobster rolls were supplemented nicely with a shared "lobster pie", which is simply a big pile of baked lobster meat, butter, and bread crumbs.  (Yum yum yum yum).

After this feast, I dropped off my parents at their hotel and headed back.  Seafood satisfaction.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Over the weekend, Laura and I went to Kendall theatre to check out an independent film, "Beasts of the Southern Wild".  The trailer portrayed the film as a seemingly pseudo-fantasy world in which a very young girl learns to survive on her own away from her father, but set in the backdrop of a world where large ancient beasts emerge from the melting polar ice caps and roam the land, causing havoc and destruction.

Ultimately the movie focused much more closely on the relationship between the father and daughter, but the environmental and societal undertones were quite remarkable.  As noted above, these beasts emerged from the melting ice -- a clear nod to global warming.  However, more intriguing was the society and geography surrounding the father and daughter: they were members of an outcast population, primarily minority, living in squalor on the swamps of a South-facing delta lying just beyond massive levees protecting the rest of society, and feasting regularly on a bounty of crawfish and other sea goodies.  Clearly, this was Katrina writ large.  As an added bonus, this outcast society took great pride in their land and their culture of love, joy, and connection with one another and with nature, in stark contrast to the robotic and monotonous lives of the people behind the levees, who are content to "plug themselves into the wall" to stay alive rather than let nature take its course.

All in all, it was a fascinating film replete with symbolism and adventure.  I came in expecting the whimsical journey of "Hugo" but instead was treated to a topsy-turvy ride with wild beasts grounded very firmly in modern reality.

A busy, busy week

My transition to earlier work days could not be better timed, as this past week was almost overwhelmingly exhausting, though massively productive as well.  Between listening to two basic statistics courses -- I want to learn this stuff well, and curiously these two courses, one undergrad and one grad, cover the same topics yet appear to be quite nicely complementary in terms of theory, application, and perspective --, TAing one (light) course, all the seminars (most of which I skipped), and my current frantic research pace, I was pretty mentally beaten down by the time Friday arrived.

Fortunately, the weekend has brought mild, sunny, gorgeous weather: the perfect environment in which to spend several hours replying to the 100+ emails that have piled up over the past 5 days :)

The joys of an earlier work day

As a graduate student, you have tremendous freedom to set your own work schedule.  This can be good and bad.

This summer, I decided that for the purposes of doing good research, it was beneficial for me to let myself get a normal amount of sleep -- i.e. don't wake up to an alarm.  This worked well (I think) for a while at least, as I came into work refreshed and ready to work.

However, the summer came and went much quicker than anticipated, and now looking back I realize that too often my work day wouldn't start until 11a or even noon, yet I wouldn't properly compensate for this by working additional hours at the end of the day.  There are simply too many evening activities that can come up (e.g. dinner, girlfriends) that interfere with the evening, along with the slow onset of depression that accompanies the natural seasonal cycle -- as July and August passed, the sun sets earlier and earlier.

Thus, to take control of this I decided last week to make a significant adjustment to my daily life schedule.  It's the start of the Fall semester, which means that in addition to research, I am also now TAing a class and sitting in on a couple of others.  So every day I woke up at 6am (with the added convenience that my girlfriend, a teacher, also begins her day at that time) and got myself to work by 730am.

It's only been one week, but needless to say it's feels like a huge improvement.  One thing that I value tremendously is that, when you start your day at 730am, by 5 or 6pm, you know that you've put in a long, hard day of work, which means you have no guilt about packing up, going home, and forgetting about work for the rest of the evening.  Knowing that you have a solid 3-4 hours where you can eat and enjoy life before bed is a wonderful feeling.

Perhaps more importantly, this shift restores a personal sense of adulthood and responsibility. Though it's fun to feel lucky that you don't have a real "job", the ambiguity of the bounds of the "grad school experience" can often leave one lacking a sense of professional identity.

And today, a Saturday, I feel for the first time like I actually earned a weekend of relaxation.  And a long one at that: after 4 consecutive days waking up at 6am, it turns out sleeping past 830a is quite difficult, even after going to bed at 2am. :)

Birthday pARTy

For my birthday on Saturday night, Laura and I hosted what was officially the most ambitious party idea I've ever had... by a mile.

Last summer I came up with the idea to host a party where all the guests are left free to make art.  This vision connects to everyone's childhood sense of unbridled creativity that is often squashed as you grow older, but at the same time also seeks to be classier and very much more Adult than your standard party where the top order is simply to drink.

With Laura moved into the upstairs apartment, we finally decided to put this idea into action, with the added bonus of a live fake-money auction for all of the art that everyone creates so that all the guests can go home with at least one piece of art of their own.

After two weeks of acquiring supplies from the Dollar Tree, Target, a girl on Craigslist, and the local high school, we spent all of Saturday setting up: workstations (tables, chairs, benches, an easel, etc.) both in our living room and kitchen as well as on our back porch (for painting), materials and media (paint, pencil, crayon, marker, charcoal, clay, collage, craft), and lighting (an array of household standing lamps, christmas lights, and clamped desk lamps from the CL girl).

Finally, from 7-11p, a group of ~15 people's imaginations went wild.  At 11pm, we gave out $100 in fake money (shrunken copies of real USD with the President's face replaced by my portrait) to each person and began the auction.  There had to have been at 15-20 items that at least a few folks were legitimately fighting for -- art pieces that people truly would like to see hung up on their walls.

I had high hopes that this would go well, but realistically the event exceeded all of my expectations. It was incredible to see the amount of truly unique and creative art that my friends -- all but one non-artists -- made in only 4 hours, a few of which could legitimately be found in a real art gallery.  Not to mention the simpler fact that, for most of us, this was the first time as artists since grade school 10+ years ago.

We will definitely be doing this again soon.  And this time, we have an incredible collection of art supplies ready to go.