Adventures Elsewhere: Grad School Adventures

a) I haven't posted here in a while.
b) Mainly, it's because I think most people who read this blog I chat with frequently in person.
c) But, one of my best friends just moved to India for a time and sometimes I forget to tell her things, so this may help keep her up to date :)
d) And to serve as a reminder of what I've been through when the evenings begin to stretch out as I spend inordinate amounts of time on grad school work.

So.

Grad school. It's only been a week and a half - only ~ 258.5 weeks to go. Wow.

Before it all began, I was so excited, nervous, and just ready to start. It was a somewhat surreal process leading up to grad school; I honestly don't know exactly when I decided to go to grad school, I just started applying. And then I just kept moving forward with the process, praying the whole time, and always feeling that I was stepping in the right direction. Some school doors were opened, some schools said 'no', but I surprisingly found my place at the University of Washington (go Huskies!)

I initially only applied to the UW for my mom and dad's sake - I don't know if they ever expressly said as much, but I knew that staying nearer to my hometown would be appreciated :) I, for one, have been itching to leave Washington for as long as I've had a choice, but I keep finding my way back to Seattle. I've fallen in love with Seattle as a city and it's hard to imagine living anywhere else now. As great as U Maryland, Rensselear Polytech, and Georgia Tech were as schools, Seattle rocks. And as a bonus - I get to live with 5 amazing ladies in an incredible home. We're still sorting everything out (aka I have work on my tidiness), but I'm so blessed to live in an encouraging community!

I was so nervous to start coursework, mainly because I had a feeling this my courses were going to significantly more challenging than undergrad and I don't yet know the rules of grad school homework - how much aid with a prof give you? how much is appropriate to ask for? And, with moving schools, I've lost my support group of students in my courses at SPU. After 4 years of almost every single class together, we'd finally become comfortable really working with each other on homework and figuring most things out on our own. I also know my strengths lean more in the conceptual side and less on the mathematics, so I was/am, frankly, terrified about the level of math I'm going to need to know to get through the next five years. One my biggest undergrad regrets is not figuring out early on that I should really really do a math minor if I wanted to have a good technical background for grad school. A Clothing and Textiles minor was enjoyable - I did learn very useful skills and feel my technical level has exponentially increased - I don't think it was the best choice. Oh well, it's in the past now. I guess I'm just going to take the advice of my high school math teacher and when I don't know a concept, I'll go check a book out of the library. or look it up online. or call my engineering friend in NY with a desperate plea for aid....

And yes, coursework is turning out to be difficult, but I'm being forced to learn better time management. I picked up the course pack for my core class about a week before classes started and started thumbing through it. Ten pages in, I found the first homework. and freaked out. Even though I've had quantum mechanics, I knew it had been too long since I attempted any sort of quantum, so I started on my homework a week before classes even began. Yep, I'm that much of a nerd. Seven library books later, my desk is overflowing, but I have been re-learning quantum. I'm still not entirely refreshed on the topics, but I got enough read and worked out that I feel fine about HW #1....kinda.

Okay, this post is getting a bit long - I'll put a break in here and write more later :)