So I got some weird news today. I had to fulfill a TB testing requirement for the admissions office at Northwestern, and I tested positive. Haha. It's still debatable whether it was a false positive reading or if I actually have TB bacteria in my body, but in order to satisfy admission requirements I have to go through some more tests and maybe a 9 month treatment. I had a chest x-ray following my PPD test, and I'm scheduled to go back on Friday. The good news is that I obviously don't have TB symptoms, so if I do have it, it's still inactive and I can't possibly infect other people. It just means I'm at risk of getting the disease sometime later in life. Anyway, everybody I've told thinks I'm dying or something, but I assure you I'm perfectly fine. I'm able to get the xray for free and the medication too if necessary, so I don't even have the expenses to worry about.
Yesterday I went to a picnic to meet the group members of the Mirkin lab. It was a beautiful day- sunny, no clouds in the sky, about 70 degrees. I spent 2 hours of my afternoon just meeting people in the lab, but still didn't even make a dent overall. So the lab has over 40 people, and I probably met 7 or 8 of them. I've got some work to do. I also went to a subgroup meeting for the biomaterials subgroup in the lab today, where I saw a few students present and had the opportunity to meet some more students. Lots of fun.
Since about 5 today I've been working on some homework for my Physics of Solids class. There are only 5 problems, but they've proven to be a bit mathematically challenging with all the integrations and such. Luckily, Eddie and I have the same classes at the moment so we can ask each other questions when we're having problems. Speaking of which, I need to get back to my homework, because I don't want to be working on it any more this week.
I hope everybody is doing well. If you have been anywhere abroad with me in the past year, you might want to strongly consider getting checked for TB. Later.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Friday, September 22, 2006
Baking fiend!
That's right. I spent my Friday night baking miscellaneous foods for future consumption. Eddie helped me make 4 handmade pizzas to freeze, and I also just rolled out 26 cinnamon rolls using 1/3 of Mom's metal muffin recipe. In addition, we started a pan of baked ziti which just needs to be thrown in the oven whenever we want to eat it. For one of the pizzas we also made a pesto sauce, and its topped with fresh tomatoes and garlic. The other three have fresh jalapenos, red onions, tomatoes, garlic, green pepper, and parsley on them. We actually cooked one of the other frozen pizzas we had made last week for dinner today, and it came out pretty well, though it stuck to the pizza stone. I guess we'll need to flour it or something next time, as the dough just sticks to it once it thaws out.
Tomorrow, I'm thinking about trying my hand at some more Indian food. We cooked channa and roti last week, and though the channa turned out well, let's just say that my roti sort of ended up like tortilla chips instead of flat bread. One of the MatSci students who lives in the building next door, Praneet, said he'd come over and help me make it. He was over here for a bit today and commented that he hadn't seen anyone cook by "following the rules" before and enjoyed watching Eddie and I scamper around in the kitchen.
Yesterday, I got a book in the mail that I orderd last week called Knowing by Michael Munowitz. Dr. Samulski at UNC had recommended it to me, so I took his advice and got the book. I've just gotten started (about 50 pages in), and so far it's been pretty decent. It's supposed to be a layman's explanation of the physics of everything, so it delves into things like gravitational force, electrostatic force, nuclear binding energies, space-time, quarks, strings, etc. I'm still not convinced that the layman could just pick it up and understand what's going on, but he does leave out all the equations and sticks to simply explanation, which is good. I'm also concurrently reading Carl Sagan's Cosmos, as I bought it for $1 with Joel in Myrtle Beach a few years ago and never read the whole thing. My hope is that these books will stimulate my line of thinking into the very nature of scientific investigation, and who knows, maybe even provide a basis for some of my fellowship essays that will be due ever so soon (starting November).
Having been away from homework for such a long time, I got a hankering for some intense academic exposure on Thursday night and dove into my first homework assignments in my Thermodynamics course and Differential Equations one. I must admit, I was quite a bit rusty in both subjects, having not thought of either subject for well over a year, so it took me several hours to finish my work, but I'm convinced that of what I've done I have all the correct answers. After I get my homework set for Quantum Mechanics on Monday, I can finish all my homework though Oct 6 and take some time to work on those fellowship applications. It's definitely a bit of a different approach to what I've been doing the past 3 years, but it will be nice to not have to rush to finish assignments the night before they are due. Plus, homework doesn't seem so bad when you're doing it at a time when it doesn't have to be finished the next day. I do find it strange that all the courses I'm taking include a homework component of roughly 35% of my grade, which was rarely the case in my undergraduate career.
Lastly, I got an email today saying that the cover article in the Carolina Arts and Sciences Magazine covering my trip to Guyana with Naman, Rez, and Ivana was finally published, and I'll be getting a few copies in the mail soon. They always post each magazine online, so I would imagine that in a week or so, I can post the link so everybody can read it and admire the pictures from the photo shoot we had last April. I've read the first draft of the article, so I'm anxious to see how the final version is.
Anyway, that's about it for now. I'll try to post something more after the end of the weekend. Take care everybody.
Tomorrow, I'm thinking about trying my hand at some more Indian food. We cooked channa and roti last week, and though the channa turned out well, let's just say that my roti sort of ended up like tortilla chips instead of flat bread. One of the MatSci students who lives in the building next door, Praneet, said he'd come over and help me make it. He was over here for a bit today and commented that he hadn't seen anyone cook by "following the rules" before and enjoyed watching Eddie and I scamper around in the kitchen.
Yesterday, I got a book in the mail that I orderd last week called Knowing by Michael Munowitz. Dr. Samulski at UNC had recommended it to me, so I took his advice and got the book. I've just gotten started (about 50 pages in), and so far it's been pretty decent. It's supposed to be a layman's explanation of the physics of everything, so it delves into things like gravitational force, electrostatic force, nuclear binding energies, space-time, quarks, strings, etc. I'm still not convinced that the layman could just pick it up and understand what's going on, but he does leave out all the equations and sticks to simply explanation, which is good. I'm also concurrently reading Carl Sagan's Cosmos, as I bought it for $1 with Joel in Myrtle Beach a few years ago and never read the whole thing. My hope is that these books will stimulate my line of thinking into the very nature of scientific investigation, and who knows, maybe even provide a basis for some of my fellowship essays that will be due ever so soon (starting November).
Having been away from homework for such a long time, I got a hankering for some intense academic exposure on Thursday night and dove into my first homework assignments in my Thermodynamics course and Differential Equations one. I must admit, I was quite a bit rusty in both subjects, having not thought of either subject for well over a year, so it took me several hours to finish my work, but I'm convinced that of what I've done I have all the correct answers. After I get my homework set for Quantum Mechanics on Monday, I can finish all my homework though Oct 6 and take some time to work on those fellowship applications. It's definitely a bit of a different approach to what I've been doing the past 3 years, but it will be nice to not have to rush to finish assignments the night before they are due. Plus, homework doesn't seem so bad when you're doing it at a time when it doesn't have to be finished the next day. I do find it strange that all the courses I'm taking include a homework component of roughly 35% of my grade, which was rarely the case in my undergraduate career.
Lastly, I got an email today saying that the cover article in the Carolina Arts and Sciences Magazine covering my trip to Guyana with Naman, Rez, and Ivana was finally published, and I'll be getting a few copies in the mail soon. They always post each magazine online, so I would imagine that in a week or so, I can post the link so everybody can read it and admire the pictures from the photo shoot we had last April. I've read the first draft of the article, so I'm anxious to see how the final version is.
Anyway, that's about it for now. I'll try to post something more after the end of the weekend. Take care everybody.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
First Day of Classes
So I've decided to keep a blog about my grad school experience up here in Evanston. Let's recap thus far what's been going on up here before classes have even started:
Sept 1- My first permanent day in Evanston. I flew up to O'Hare and Eddie (my roomate) picked me up at the airport. For the ensuing week, I did some serious cleaning, set up all the utilities that Eddie hadn't already set up, and explored Evanston a bit. I slept on an air mattress and lived out of a suitcase, but other than that, all was well.
Sept 9- Mom and Dad came to deliver all of my stuff from NC. They arrived around 10:30 am, and we had unloaded everything by noon, which I thought was pretty impressive. We went out for lunch at Chili's with Eddie, and for a few hours in the afternoon put away all of my random odds and ends. Mom and Dad were able to head out by 4 pm to drive all the way back down to Grandma's in Hope.
Sept 10- I flew out to San Francisco at 7:40 am for the American Chemical Society Meeting. Upon arrival, I caught a shuttle to the hotel and then the BART (Bay Area Regional Transit) to downtown San Francisco. I attended a few talks on bionanotechnology and met up with Larken, a postdoc from the DeSimone research group at UNC. We went to a reception for Dr. DeSimone honoring him for his entrepreneurial endeavors and later went out for Mexican food.
Sept 11- I presented a poster from 2:30-4:30 pm, after having met with Dr. Samulski and Larken and another postdoc from the DeSimone lab to discuss the final write-up of my honors thesis for submitting for publication. Later that night, I briefly attended the SciMix poster session/mixer and got a free shirt and Nalgene bottle before heading back to the aiport.
Sept 12-18- Orientation week for the Materials Science Department. During this time, we heard presentations from every faculty member about their research (roughly 35 professors), went over general department information, lab safety, etc. One day we had fire extinguisher training which was actually kind of fun, despite the rainy weather outside.
Sept 15- Along with about 11 of my classmates, I went out for pizza and a theater production referred to as Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. It consisted of a series of roughly 30 skits performed within 1 hour and were typically comical though occasionally dramatic skits. I had a great time, and it was nice to get to know my fellow students.
Sept 16- I caught up on cleaning and putting things away in my room, and later that night invited Andres and Joe over to watch True Lies and have dinner. They live in the apartment building next door to me and are also first year Materials Science students.
Sept 17- I went to the driving range with Kendra (another classmate, from Purdue) and we went to Steak N Shake afterward for some milkshakes.
Yesterday- Last day of orientation. I also attended a group meeting for the Mirkin group, which is currently my first pick for a research lab. Kendra, Joe, Andres, Eddie, and I watched The Life Aquatic later that night, and I got to sleep early for class the next day.
Today, I had my first two classes, which were coincidentally both my Materials Science ones. I'm taking two MatSci classes and two Applied Math classes. I really enjoyed the lectures, and am actually quite excited to get back into the swing of lectures and coursework. The rest of the day I spent pimping my palmpilot with new applications like a dictionary, map of Evanston, and pdf files of class notes so that I'll actually start using it more. I'm currently ripping music off my cds to put on my computer so I can have some variation in the music I have on my iPod shuffle.
I'm doing very well, and I love Evanston and Northwestern thus far. I'll love it even more once I get my first paycheck and am not scraping the bottom of my checking account. I got an email yesterday from someone at Kodak who was interested in my research on compound eyes at UNC, so maybe they'll be interested enough to fund the further development of my project, as I don't think the Boeing thing ever got straightened out. Anyway, I'll try to post weekly or biweekly, so check up on me every once in a while to see what I'm up to. Until later...
Sept 1- My first permanent day in Evanston. I flew up to O'Hare and Eddie (my roomate) picked me up at the airport. For the ensuing week, I did some serious cleaning, set up all the utilities that Eddie hadn't already set up, and explored Evanston a bit. I slept on an air mattress and lived out of a suitcase, but other than that, all was well.
Sept 9- Mom and Dad came to deliver all of my stuff from NC. They arrived around 10:30 am, and we had unloaded everything by noon, which I thought was pretty impressive. We went out for lunch at Chili's with Eddie, and for a few hours in the afternoon put away all of my random odds and ends. Mom and Dad were able to head out by 4 pm to drive all the way back down to Grandma's in Hope.
Sept 10- I flew out to San Francisco at 7:40 am for the American Chemical Society Meeting. Upon arrival, I caught a shuttle to the hotel and then the BART (Bay Area Regional Transit) to downtown San Francisco. I attended a few talks on bionanotechnology and met up with Larken, a postdoc from the DeSimone research group at UNC. We went to a reception for Dr. DeSimone honoring him for his entrepreneurial endeavors and later went out for Mexican food.
Sept 11- I presented a poster from 2:30-4:30 pm, after having met with Dr. Samulski and Larken and another postdoc from the DeSimone lab to discuss the final write-up of my honors thesis for submitting for publication. Later that night, I briefly attended the SciMix poster session/mixer and got a free shirt and Nalgene bottle before heading back to the aiport.
Sept 12-18- Orientation week for the Materials Science Department. During this time, we heard presentations from every faculty member about their research (roughly 35 professors), went over general department information, lab safety, etc. One day we had fire extinguisher training which was actually kind of fun, despite the rainy weather outside.
Sept 15- Along with about 11 of my classmates, I went out for pizza and a theater production referred to as Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. It consisted of a series of roughly 30 skits performed within 1 hour and were typically comical though occasionally dramatic skits. I had a great time, and it was nice to get to know my fellow students.
Sept 16- I caught up on cleaning and putting things away in my room, and later that night invited Andres and Joe over to watch True Lies and have dinner. They live in the apartment building next door to me and are also first year Materials Science students.
Sept 17- I went to the driving range with Kendra (another classmate, from Purdue) and we went to Steak N Shake afterward for some milkshakes.
Yesterday- Last day of orientation. I also attended a group meeting for the Mirkin group, which is currently my first pick for a research lab. Kendra, Joe, Andres, Eddie, and I watched The Life Aquatic later that night, and I got to sleep early for class the next day.
Today, I had my first two classes, which were coincidentally both my Materials Science ones. I'm taking two MatSci classes and two Applied Math classes. I really enjoyed the lectures, and am actually quite excited to get back into the swing of lectures and coursework. The rest of the day I spent pimping my palmpilot with new applications like a dictionary, map of Evanston, and pdf files of class notes so that I'll actually start using it more. I'm currently ripping music off my cds to put on my computer so I can have some variation in the music I have on my iPod shuffle.
I'm doing very well, and I love Evanston and Northwestern thus far. I'll love it even more once I get my first paycheck and am not scraping the bottom of my checking account. I got an email yesterday from someone at Kodak who was interested in my research on compound eyes at UNC, so maybe they'll be interested enough to fund the further development of my project, as I don't think the Boeing thing ever got straightened out. Anyway, I'll try to post weekly or biweekly, so check up on me every once in a while to see what I'm up to. Until later...
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