Meme

So, it looks like I’m part of a blog-meme. I normally wouldn’t do this, but I have some time to kill what with all this flying I’m doing (visiting grad schools). So, here goes, slightly modified…

1. Link to the person who tagged you. Done.

2. List 7 a few random things currently on your mind.
- Where should I go for grad school? I have it narrowed down to a few institutions, each of which has its own particular strengths and weaknesses - in terms of the projects I’m very excited about, equipment/facilities, funding, location, the size of the groups, the intellectual culture, etc. The spreadsheet has them dead even to within uncertainty, which means that I’ll have to keep taking data…
- Some of the research groups I’m interested in joining are quite large. This is often cited as a disadvantage, since it could translate into less “face-time” with the advisor, although to be fair - isn’t the more relevant parameter the (postdoc + senior grad student)/new student ratio rather than the faculty/new student ratio?
- Research - just thinking through the details of a number of experiments and simulations that I’m working on. The annoying thing with all this traveling is that it really punches a hole in my productivity (as well as means I’ll be missing the first half of the APS March Meeting!); but then again, talking to all these fascinating people and finding out about all the cool work going on at these different places is invaluable.
- Another thing that traveling makes difficult is staying on top of the literature. I have several tens of papers waiting to be read, and while long flights are great for plowing through them, the rate at which the to-read list grows is impressive.
- I came across this interesting NYT book review on a recent book, Intern by Sandeep Jauhar. The gist is Scrubs-ian in nature - it’s the story of a medical intern trying to deal with the imperfections of day-to-day hospital culture, the meaning of life, etc. - but what really got me was his physics background (he has a Ph.D. from Berkeley) and the analogies he makes: “Life on the wards was like the plasmons I had studied in condensed matter physics… where individual electrons, moving randomly, coalesced into something greater than the sum of their parts. There was a sort of synchronized buzz. … In the midst of this collective excitation, I kept thinking, Why am I so lonely?” Alright, so it’s kind of a stretch, but still - it’s physics.

3. Tag more people at the end of your blog and link to theirs. I’ll suggest Rod, Sam and Travis.

4. Let the tagged people know by leaving a note on their site. Done.

~ by Sujit on March 10, 2008.