The summer of 2008 shall henceforward be known as the ’summer of endless weddings.’ It seems that every long-term couple Jeremy and I are acquainted with are making things official this summer. We received actually received two wedding announcments on our anniversary. Very peculiar.
Today was wedding 3 of n. (So far n=4 but that number keeps rising in a disconcerting fashion…)
Weddings, as you might imagine, are not particularly easy for people with limited social skills. (For instance, me.) I’m doing pretty well if I can make it an hour or two at a party, or basically leave the house for some social reason once in a week or two. Sometimes when school is out I’m afraid that my car (which is always parked on the street) will be towed because people might think that it’s been abandoned there.
This afternoon, in perhaps the second hour of wedding 3, just as I was wondering if there was a corner I might slip off to just to observe the crowd and escape the small talk and chit chat and the incessant feeling of “christ-I-haven’t-worn-a-dress-in-months-where-do-I-put-my-hands”… just about then, the Bride dragged me aside and presented me to a greying, bespectacled fellow with a slightly distracted air.
“Patricia,” she said, “I’d like you to meet Jack, an old friend of my father.”
I was at a loss. I must have mumbled something or other, proffered my hand, et cetera. But then she said:
“He has a Ph.D in Physics. Jack, this is Patricia. She’s just finishing up her math degree.”
After that we talked for two hours about cryptography, Fourier transforms, the NSA, spherical chickens in vacuums, the peculiarities of engineers, old school computer science, slashdot, and all kinds of other things. It was wonderful. Knowing that he had a physics degree immediately put me at ease. I know that no matter how odd I am, it’s very likely that he’s seen someone quite a lot odder, and if anything, he’s used to weird people who don’t know where to put their hands or stand properly in shoes with heels. A truly pleasant encounter, but it underscored something that’s been much on my mind lately.
Sometimes I feel as though sciencey people are just a completely different species — how is that I can barely manage the sloppiest stabs at small talk with so-called normal people, but can talk for hours with math nerds? In my math classes, I sometimes crack jokes. Sometimes, people laugh at them! In many of my other classes, I rarely speak at all.
I can talk for two hours about math with a perfect stranger, but I can’t eke out twenty lousy seconds with the mother of the groom. Consider this lovely exchange:
I think I may actually have said to her, “Oh! Hello! I should have met you at the rehersal dinner last night, I think. But I didn’t go. I wasn’t there. I had to buy shoes.” (Here she opens her mouth, but no sounds emerges. I flounder on…)
“Yes, these shoes. The ones I’m wearing now. Of course you’re now obliged to look at them because I mentioned it. I had to buy them yesterday during the rehearsal dinner because my car is missing a headlight.”
Meh.
So, it turns out that the scholarship I got last year, the one that’s allowed me to take on a full courseload these last few semesters, well, its grant has not been renewed by the NSF.
Which is really funny, because they told me that the grant was definitely, definitely being renewed, and that the scholarship would likely be quite a lot bigger this next year.
They want me to join the fast-track master’s program at my university, which comes with a (very small, but bigger than my old scholarship) stipend, but I’m not sure I want to get my master’s here, because it seems as though it would be harder to get into a Ph.D program at a different university after that, and I hadn’t really planned on getting my Ph.D at my undergrad school.
To top it all off, I have to decide pretty much now, whether or not I wish to apply for this master’s program.
I have no idea at this point what I should do.
And my adviser, whose advice I would normally seek during this time of uncertainty, is out of town.
He: “Now, Kolmogorov-Smirnov. But later tonight? Just Smirnoff.”
I: “You know, you really shouldn’t drink and derive.”
He: “Nah, I’m not driving.”
I: “No, no, no. Don’t drink and derive.”
He: “…”
…
I: “You’ve gotta know your limits.”
(I’ve waited so, so long to work that into an actual conversation.)
One of the main reasons that I update this silly blog even as often as I do is because if I fall out of the loop for too long I start getting worried voicemails from my parents.
“Tricia? Are you alright? You haven’t updated your blog in eight days!”
The joys of the information age. It’s actually sort of convenient because they can keep track of what I’m up to, reassure themselves that I haven’t yet died of scurvy due to vending-machine-food induced malnutrition; that my corpse is not, indeed not, slowly dessicating in the rarely-frequented mathematics section of the Mervyn H. Sterne library and that I haven’t yet dropped out of school to join a traveling troupe of mimes called “The Voice that Never Speaks.”
And I don’t have to worry so much that I don’t call often enough. Wait. Is mother’s day coming up again? Crikey.
(Hi mom!)
So yeah, the next few weeks are going to be hellish what with the end of the semester and all. Since when does the semester end in late april, anyway? Whose idea was that? Meh.
Posting will be sparse(er) until things settle down on the school front. Until then!
+ My car wouldn’t start yesterday, so my spouse had to drive me into the campus at godawful o’clock this morning on his way to work.
+ Skipped Modern Algebra to work on Advanced Calculus, even though I really ought to be working harder in Modern for various reasons.
+ Then skipped lunch to work on Advanced Calculus. “Lunch” consisted of cheese-its from the vending machine.
+ I won the coin toss to present a proof in Advanced Calculus, but my proof was flawed and I tasted the bitterness of defeat.
+ Still feeling disheartened about the my proof, I am now having a hard time scraping up the will to apply myself to my quaternions, even though I have to meet with my prof tomorrow morning at a bit past godawful o’clock to discuss this week’s assignments.
+ I seek solace in the pastoral(ish) views beyond the window of the study lounge, and the first thing I notice is a dead mockingbird.
Fail, fail, fail!
I know I shouldn’t be too upset that I got bloodied on my proof; every person in the class, without exception, has experienced that joy multiple times. I am so careful, though, that I’ve only botched a proof in this class once before, over the last two semesters. I know that learning to fail gracefully is a very important part of learning to succeed in any capacity, especially in math; that never risking failure is almost certainly a path to mediocrity…but knowing this doesn’t really make the experience much easier.
Oh well…quaternions.
It’s actually a dead brown thrasher, but brown thrashers are in the same family as mockingbirds and a dead mockingbird sounds so much more…I don’t know…literary.
Some top search phrases for March, in no particular order…
+ Macgyver+ “Faces of Math”
+ Kraken
So it’s a throwaway post, but I do have finals in three weeks, and the math subject GRE in less than two. If anyone needs me I’ll be snorting no-doz off the backs of toilets. (Not really, but “snorting no-doz” comes up with surprising frequency among my search phrases. Don’t try it at home, kids…)
Also, I think my modern algebra textbook is toying with me:
When I started this blog some years ago, I wrote a post about how the “math trailer” was being demolished and a new “math edifice of overwhelming glory” was being constructed in its place. This squat building wasn’t actually where the math department was located, but most math classes were held there, since there aren’t that many large classrooms in the department’s proper domain.
Well, the building constructed in its place has finally been more or less completed. (It’s called Heritage Hall for what it’s worth. I’m trying to figure out how a University founded in the 60’s can have much in the way of Heritage, but whatever…)
This may seem dull, and to most it probably is, but to me this is really exciting because this building is right across the street from the math department and it has study lounges.
Better yet, it never really seems to close, although eventually they turn most of the lights off, but this is a small obstacle in the scheme of things.
Normally I couldn’t study in a place like this — the chatter of students on their cell phones, the droning of distant lectures, the sound of the elevator cheerfully announcing whether it is ascending or descending, all of this would drive me mad.
But the jackhammer headphones have saved the day! They are working fantastically. I am no longer shackled to the library and its restrictive hours.
Yesterday I studied from 7:00 pm to 10:30 pm in my new digs (the library closes at a measley 5 pm on Saturdays), partaking of the wonderfully powerful wireless signal (the router is literally right over my head). A few times I have stayed until 1 or 2 in the morning, and never has late night studying seemed so sweet. The lounges are glass-walled on two sides, so even while I’m striving with my mathematics I’m actually exposed to a little sunlight, or the lovely sights of the city illuminated at night.
It’s nearly enough to make me weep with gratitude. The fact that I’m so excited about having a new place to study is a little frightening, but for now I’m too happy to scrutinize this very much.
I’ll be taking the math subject GRE in about two weeks. I also have to decide just where I want them to send the results.
I suppose I ought to talk to my adviser about all of this, once I have the results back. Then she can give me an idea about which sort of schools I have a reasonable chance of being accepted to, which schools have a small, but non-zero chance of accepting me, and which schools are pretty solidly out of my reach.
But, of course, I have to decide what I actually want to do, first.
I know I’m interested in applied math, but that’s about as specific as saying I want to run away and join the circus.
Underneath all of this, I feel as though I ought to be responding to some sort of calling, as though everyone expects me to choose the field that I am unequivocally drawn to. But I don’t even know what’s really out there yet, let alone what I want to study for the rest of my life.
Honestly, I’m not sure I buy all of this semi-divine calling stuff anyway. I have a strong feeling that most people end up in whatever field they study due, in large part, to chance; that it might really all boil down to “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
I’m really tempted to poll the people in my advanced calculus class; to ask them how they ended up majoring in math.
I suspect that most of the answers will be similar to mine: I always loved botany, but the school I started out in didn’t offer a botany major, or even a biology major. Barring that, I thought I might like to be a teacher, like my mom, but they didn’t offer an education major either, so I chose math because it seemed challenging and I’d always sort of liked it. I fell in love with math somewhere along the way, but I could just as easily be studying English literature or the French language.