All 1 entries tagged Today

A super good day

Today was a super good day. Although I did not see five red cars in a row, I have been very lucky in not being run over by buses whilst trying to stop them to let me on. In relation to that, my average bus waiting time this week might even be less than a minute. But about the super good day.

I was on time for my lecture (1). "Lecture?" you say. Aye. Whilst everyone is happily enjoying graduation and the complementary fancy lunches and or dinners with parents, I'm stuck in the zero degree maths lecture theatre, enjoying a Graduate Summer School.

Now, don't get me wrong, for this is fun. We got a notepad at the start of the week and every morning we fill it with notes on turbulence and stochastics and dynamical systems and then add some more notes in the afternoon that will help us understand what we learned earlier. Despite more than half of the information being way over my head (at this moment), it is possibly the best learning experience I've had. Ever.

It doesn't end after the example classes (the ones in the afternoon), as we have actually got reading time scheduled in as well. Great idea for hardly any of the attending postgrads and professors seem to be able to absorb that much information in a day. Unfortunately, my reading time has consumed my spare time in the evening, which brings me to the next happy moment.

I finished my poster (2). My very first postgrad presentation of the project I'm working on. It's not very impressive but it's a start. And I already discussed my work with someone before I even put it up! The ruddy thing was nearly going to be the last nail, as indeed I spent all the time I'd left this week on rewriting our article to fit the information to a poster, just like some of the others that were already there. Then yesterday it turns out nearly all posters presentations I've seen have too much text and I had to cut mine even shorter. Thankfully I was raised not too far from the Neanderthal so I managed, though it did take me an extra day refining the edges.

All the time I spent working so hard in the department this week must have changed my aura, for behold, someone actually asked me for advice (3). And I think I actually did help. Like I helped Ali when some website broke and she had to fix it so I told her to just // the line that was dodgy (but don't tell anyone!). And I was actually interested in his project – not that I'm usually not interested in other people's work, but usually those other people are pure maths postgrads and even with all the good will in the world I can't find a way to understand their work. This guy was working on an applied maths problem. Hurrah!

And then there was new Scrubs (4). And it was good. There was also strudel which was good. I really enjoyed The Curious Incident by the way, though it's not as challenging as I hoped it would be.

: 13 Jul 2006 23:55 |  Tags: Maths PhD Today Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem