Enjoy every moment of it

When we very young we look up at our seniors and want to grow up sooner. In college we can't wait to get out there and start working and earning. Always waiting to grow, and get out there from our protective cocoons. I am in a stage where I should be out but have formed another cocoon to keep me where I am and all I can say to those wanting to grow up is - wait, stop, enjoy the moment you are in school and college. We seem to have a delusion that stepping out on our own gives us freedom but those carefree days are the more free than what you get living on your own and tending to your own needs.
A friend of mine who came to visit me at the lab said when she saw all the undergrads walking around she wanted to go up to them, shake them and say "enjoy every moment of this!"
Perhaps not everyone feels this way though, perhaps its just those of us who have to grow up but don't want who keep clutching at the past memories.

Order and Chaos

My little menagerie sit guarding over my desk. Its a little cluttered they think; I agree. Its mostly chaos, perhaps something resembling the aftermath of a mini tornado or hurricane. But there is order in this chaos. I can reach out and grab whatever I need and I mostly know where everything is. Try as I might tidiness is not something that comes easily to me. I attempt to put everything into neat piles every so often but its back to the usual mess the very next day.
I have another desk, free of my personalization and a little abandoned. That earns me the title of being "quite a neat person" from my boss. Everyone else disagrees; they have seen my first desk.

Time

Time feels like its slowly slipping away. There are so many things still left undone. Will it be too late to them? Is there something else that will need to be done when I finish what I am doing now such that I can't do what I have planned? Whether it is the surroundings (of being in a university and not the "real world") or just my perception of things, I don't feel old. Things like family, responsibilities seem like an abstract concept. However things are rapidly changing around me. People graduate and leave, people talk about what to after graduate, people get married, have kids even - are they all grown up even though they are my age? Two more years seems like such a long time but then again it seems like only yesterday that I started and that was more than two years ago too, so would I be graduating tomorrow. I look forward to it in some sense of getting it all over and done with, moving on with life, to have some accomplishment, maybe even a better pay! But then again I don't seem to have much to graduate with, and the question what next that I haven't even figured out an answer to. Perhaps its just the feeling that while I am standing still, everyone I have know seem to be moving around rapidly - it is dizzying in a sense.

So what do you do?

I am really starting to fear this questions from acquaintances. Generally you meet or get in touch with someone after a long time or are introduced to someone new and the topic inevitably turns to what you do. While its relatively easy to answer those also in research (who generally don't pursue after the generic questions) it gets difficult to answer those who are not.

This is usually how such a conversation with me would progress...
Person - "So what do you do?"
Me - *thinks oh no* "Umm research..."
Person -" oh "- *pause* - "so you are studying?"
Me - "well both study and work actually"
Person - "oh - what do you do for your work?"
Me - "Umm research..."
Person - "Oh on what area?"
Me - *tries the simple approach but with two possible responses - neither works!* - a) "electrical engineering etc" b) " magnetics etc"
Person in response to b) - " But you are in electrical department?" *description of research has to follow*
Person in response to either - "oh that sounds interesting. What is your research/thesis topic?"
Me - *interesting - really?? - oh no* "long name on thesis topic with unitelligible sounding words"
Person who got response a) at this juncture - "That doesn't sound like electrical engineering"
At this point I would really wish the person was no longer interested but some still persist.
Person - *blank look* "ok ... what do you do for it - can you explain some of it?"
Me - *Must I? I don't understand half of it* - "ummm .... let me see.... " * proceeds to some sort of description of work*
Person - "That sounds interesting" *changes topic*
Me - *sigh - now couldn't we have stopped at the first "interesting"?*

I know its nice to have people interested in what you do...but in this situation it does put me in an awkward position of not being able to state a profession and be instantly understood on what it is I do.

That stupid feeling...

I've never felt more stupid than these days after I started doing my PhD. Some one asks questions about my work and I don't know the answer or I have all this data that just don't make sense and I don't know why. When something goes wrong most of the time I don't know why - I even don't know when it goes right!
Well I'm glad to know I'm not alone and this feeling of stupidity is not necessary a bad thing. Came across this article recently The importance of stupidity in scientific research from here. The last paragraph puts things in perspective:

"Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries."

In Memoriam

Writer Arthur C Clarke dies at 90
I'm dedicating this post to one of the greatest science fiction authors of all time and brilliant visionary. He not only wrote some great books he also conceptualized geostationary satellites and predicted space travel. His books bring the wonders of futuristic space travel, communications and other technology to the common man. It is incredible to think that we have now realized some of these things that he wrote about as science "fiction".
On a personal note there is some pride in that he chose to live in Sri Lanka my home country. Sadly I had never personally met him but I know many others including my father who have played table tennis with him. As for his books they were among the first books I graduated to after leaving behind the "enid blytons" and they were the ones who first inspired my love for science fiction and even science as subject. They shall always remain among my favourite.

As he said on his 90th birthday ""I want to be remembered most as a writer. I want to entertain readers and hopefully stretch their imaginations as well. "If I have given you delight in all that I have done, let me lie quiet in that night, which shall be yours anon." ; He has most definetely accomplished that.

A bit of my own medicine

Had a chance to TA for a class when my sup was out of town, and while most of the others do TA regularly this was a first for me. I had an insight (?) into being on the other side of that table in the tutorial room.

First off one of the tutorials was at 9am; from my own habits I knew this wasn't going to be a full class nevertheless I waited till 9.20 before starting and and still had some one waltz in at 9.50!? Same thing happened for the afternoon class. I should have know such a person didn't care much for the tutorial but yet I decided to ask them the answer to one of the questions - and surprise - they didn't do it.

All this didn't bother me until at one of the questions a student worked out the solution on the board and one of the steps was y = 1/x^n, dy/dx = -n/x^n+1. After it was completed some of the students looked a little confused and when asked what the problem was they asked me how the differential came about! Granted this wasn't a maths class but it was a class of engineers!! and its one of the more simpler differentials. Oh well I guess I shouldn't have been surprised later when some couldn't identify that 2 sets of equations with 2 unknowns could be solved simultaneously.
On a positive note there were some gems in the class too who enthusiastically (or at least it seemed compared to the rest) answered the questions and asked some good questions back.

I found myself wondering at the end of it all were me and my friends/classmates like this too? Thinking back in all honesty I'd have to say yes - we did skip classes or walk in late and asked some pretty obvious questions from our tutors. Now I need not imagine how frustrated they must have felt - but if you did this all the time semester after semester do you become slowly unsensitized I wonder.