Astronauts and Aerial Artists

Tonight I experienced one of the most incredible mixes of science and art. At an event hosted by the Seattle Science Center, part of their Science Luminaries Series, I experienced one of the most incredible evenings of art and science.

The evening was hosted by the Museum of Flight, in their new Space space - where the shuttle trainer will be arriving next weekend in the Supper Guppy!!! - which is an incredible building. I loved the giant images of the Milky Way and other beautiful parts of space spread across the walls in giant mural form.

First to speak was Pinky Nelson, who was an astronaut, is an astronomer, and works at WWU. He began with a compelling story about his flights on the shuttle and how he was one of 6 (I think that was the number) astronauts to fly solo in an untethered chair outside the ISS. First off - flying untethered would terrify me. Secondly, his mission was to catch a satellite IN THE MIDDLE OF SPACE. And guess what? An engineer made a mistake and gave a measurement for a vital pin as 1" longer than the actual. Thus he could not grab the satellite with the grapple he had and eventually tried gripping with with his hand via the solar panel - scary idea, as the edges could have cut through his gloves and he'd be dead faster than fast :/ I found some of the footage he showed us - I got chills watching it - click here to start at the appropriate spot. Also, he loves the Hubble. Which makes him close to my favorite astronaut, however I met one that worked on the last Hubble servicing mission, and so Pinky can't rate quite as high :)

I still want to get one of the Hubble Huggers patches...

They integrated the art really well into the program, as next came a couple from the Seattle Opera, performing a piece from Rachel Portman's The Little Prince, based off the book by the same title (which, incidentally, I own in French and English. Children's books are great for learning new languages!) Though there were no costumes and the scene was just verbally set for us and then the excerpts were sung, it was still powerful. My favorite line came when the pilot was describing his emotions when flying: I hold the stars in the palm of my hand. It was just captivating. Here is a clip with more than what we heard, the part that was performed is just the very beginning of the clip, before the pilot is asked to draw a sheep:

Then Dr. Bonnie Dunbar shared her story, which is eerily similar to mine: hailing from a small ranch in south east Washington (in the same area code as my grandparents!), she actually did her undergrad and PhD in my department at the UW - Materials Science and Engineering. I knew this about her, as we have lots of pictures from her and of her and of the space shuttle, all signed by her, hanging in our conference room. We even have a teeny tiny WA state flag flown with her on one of her missions. Granted, though our backgrounds are similar, our futures are likely vastly different. I'm not entirely sure I'd want to be an astronaut. I did run up and shake her hand during the intermission, as well as get a slightly awkward photo with her, but it's so hard to know what to say when you meet someone in an event like this. I really wanted to ask her about her experiences as a woman in the sciences, if she has any family of her own, etc, but I wanted to respect her time and the others waiting to shake her hand. It was really important to me that the little girl behind me meet her and hopefully be a bit more inspired to pursue a STEM career. I may still email her at her Boeing address and maybe I'll get a response, but in the meantime, please enjoy the awkward levels of this picture:

You can't really tell from this pic, but I'm definitely rocking both my NASA meatball and Zero-G pins on the lapel. I'm probably breaking some rule about wearing too many pins, but I love them both so much! 

Post-intermission, the event transitioned into private space access, appropriate, seeing as WA has a number of companies working towards creating vehicles to ferry passengers to low earth orbit and beyond. Chris Lewicki, of Planetary Resources, gave a brief introduction to asteroids and why his company wants to try to access one - I mainly understood that there are SO MANY asteroids!!!

The next section was incredible - there's apparently an aerial arts school in West Seattle (where a person moves around high above the ground utilizing two strips of silk fabric), and they had a few performers come out and perform two pieces, Weightlessness and Space. The first piece featured a woman dressed in a bodysuit, painted in a way that reminded me a 'warrior princesses'. While her piece and ability was amazing to watch, it seemed kind of flashy, as she would grin at the audience and kind of 'show off' in a way. The second artist, however, was leagues more enaging. Not only was she dressed in a highly stylized, faux-astronaut suit, she wore a white helmet to complete the look, and her movements really evoked the idea of space. While her piece had just as many amazing moves as the first one, she really slowed down her movements, remaining still in a position for a number of seconds and included shapes that reminded me of someone gazing with wonder at the universe or crammed in a small exploration capsule. She also didn't show off as much, but was very much into creating this idea that she was in space, looking across the vast black spaces and exploring the area around her. It was a phenomenal combination of strength, grace, and trust in a piece of silk. (Materials note: I think that silk is considered the strongest natural fiber, as it is the only natural fiber that is in filament form, which means the long strands can be aligned to increase the material's strength.)

Beautiful. 

I also couldn't help but be a bit envious of their upper body strength. I'm working on strengthening my arm and back muscles through rock climbing, but I still can't do a single pull-up :/

The evening ended with Mark Sirangleo, of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, talking about some of the cool NASA missions his company has contracted for, including the Mars Science Laboratory, and about the new crew vehicle they are developing based on some old Russian/NASA designs - it looks pretty sweet! He was showing an animation about the MSL's landing and frankly, I'm terrified. It just doesn't look like it's supposed to work and apparently they haven't tested all the parts together because it was too big!!! While trying to find the video he showed, I stumbled upon this terrifying video: 

I know I'll watch the landing live if I'm awake, but gah! I hope it works!!

And that was it! 2 hours of some of most inspiring space, science, and art I've seen a long while. I wish whoever is reading this could have experienced this event. I was simply blown away with the evening and I really hope the Science Center continues to increase access to the sciences for adults, not just kids. I would love, love, love to see something like the Cal Acadamy's Nightlife at the science center, even if only once a month!

excitement vs. math

remember when I was really excited about my solar cell class??

yeah, that was after day 1. My feelings have rapidly u-turned, as illustrated by this graph I drew on my phone:

I'm currently on hour 7ish of working on the homework assignment, and have yet to answer even a single part of one of the two problems assigned. I apparently don't understand anything about lasers, flux, blackbody radiation, solar cells, etc and both my textbook and the internet are not helping. at all. Also, I'm pretty sure that I'm the only person in the class who used excel to do the last homework.....I never had to learn any sort of higher-level math program (MatLab, Mathematica, etc) in college. Learning one of those programs is on my list of things to do, soon.

And thanks to the holiday on Monday, I don't even think I'll be able to meet with my prof to discuss the homework. also, I lost my husky card yesterday which made Friday not a fantastic day at all, excluding the time spent rock climbing. That was fun, but since I lost my husky card, I can't go climbing again tomorrow, as was my plan.

At least today is Saturday.

is this real life?

I just looked at my calendar - I'm flying on 7 planes between now and Christmas day. 

I'm going to be in Seattle for a grand total of 4 more days before December 25th. 

Tonight, I'm thankful that I'm getting paid to go to graduate school and that my profs don't believe in in-class finals :)

Tomorrow, I head to Albuquerque, Monday I'm giving my 'how to apply for graduate school' presentation to the students at NMSU and speaking on a panel about my NASA internship experiences. Apparently it is going to be cold in Albuquerque....hopefully no snow though!

Tues-Thursday are going to be crazy days. don't expect to hear from me. don't worry, I didn't fall off the face of the earth, I'm just going to be hiding in different spaces cramming everything in for my advisor (final + paper + presentation). 

But then Friday I'm going to NYC! and Boston! To visit these fantastic people:

Yay!

And since my sol-gel class is finishing with a take-home final, a paper, and 'presentation' (but we just send our prof our slides, we don't actually present.....) I'm going to stay in NYC until Thursday!

Everything gets turned in Friday morning and then I'm DONE for the quarter! Hopefully I'm alive enough to go ice skating with my roommates and friends that evening......

And finally, Saturday I'm getting on another plane to Palm Springs with my family + family friends for a whole week of SUN. I am so excited to see the sun. So. Excited. I think I've forgotten what it looks like.....

(solar flares are cool)

{diversity in science}

This Sunday, I'm flying out to Albuquerque, NM (good thing I don't actually live there, I would never ever spell that town correctly without spell checker....) to give a 'how to apply to graduate school' presentation to underrepresented STEM students at New Mexico Sate University. I gave a similar talk to the NASA MUST program students at our symposium this past summer and was asked by my program coordinators to give a similar talk at NMSU. (If you or someone you know is applying for grad school, you can check out my handout here - any feedback is greatly appreciated :) )

Preparing for this presentation has made me notice the diversity present in my department and in my group. Compared to what I saw at my undergraduate university, the UW is seems much more diverse. SPU felt much less diverse, though apparently we're up to ~25 % minority students in the newest incoming class. My little group of 3 BS Chem students were all Caucasian and all our profs were Caucasian (and only one was female).

Now, in my MSE department, I'm surrounded by people of all backgrounds, nationalities, cultures, etc. In my windowless office, there are five of us - me, one kind of really awkward caucasian guy, two asian females and one asian male (I'm not sure where exactly they are from). In my group, where my PI is from India, there are three Chinese guys, one Iranian guy, one Indian guy, and one caucasian guy (well, two if you could the senior undergrad who just joined our group this week). Though, I must say, there is still a large number of caucasian males.

In a strange way, the diversity present in my department at the UW is divisive. I don't see much reconciliation between people of different backgrounds, even with the commonality of science. (But, maybe I shouldn't expect much reconciliation at all apart from Christ?)

though it wasn't consciously intentional, the other grad students I have begun to become better friends with are all caucasian. the large number of chinese students (I think - could be another asian nationality, I'm really bad at being able to tell them apart.) typically tend to group together, speak their native language, and not mix with the other grad students. Even in our lab group I've noticed this, even though it could be partially due to the fact that all the Chinese students are working on closely related projects.

I've tried to imagine how I would interact with other students if I was the visiting student and didn't speak the national language. I'm sure that I would probably feel most comfortable with other American students, but I should hope that I would not exclusively interact with them. I suspect that going to Sweden one of these summers will be a bit different experience than if I were to go to an Asian country - even though their national language is not english, Swedes are pretty white :)

Should we be satisfied with the current drive for 'just' increasing the number of diverse students in our schools and communities? how do we interact with each other well, learning from our differences, celebrating our respective cultures and build collaborations? I want to become a more global scientist, and right now, to me that means learning work with people of all backgrounds and cultures. So far, I'm afraid I've not been too successful, and I'm not sure how to change that.

but for now, I should go back to studying for my one in-class final next week. it's all about symmetry. I can break down the pretty Hungarian needlework below to a variety of symmetry elements....

women in science.

As I've mentioned before, there are very few women in my MSE department here at the UW, which just follows the general trend in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

After reading The Disappearing Spoon, (a really good book - I highly recommend it!) I was slightly encouraged about the current status of females in STEM - in the recent past, women did all the work and their male counterparts got all the credit. (This is not a story confined to science, I'm sure.) At least, now women can author papers and are recognized for their work!

However, from all the lecture's I've attended, from the books that I have read, and from my own experiences, I still don't see women as a whole fully supported in STEM. (disclaimer - even though I'm the only women in my research group, I don't perceive any difference in the way I am supported by my advisor.) I don't know what it is going to take to change the fundamental cultural belief that women aren't as capable in the sciences as their male counterparts, just as I don't know what needs to happen to change the perception of scientists as a whole. (I do have some stories to share about my experiences thus far as a female scientist, but I'll save those for another post, this one is already kind of long....) I may be the lone voice here, but sometimes I get frustrated that scientists are presented so one-dimensionally as people who stereotypically lack social skills and don't dress well. I've already ranted about this on my other blog, so I won't repeat it here, but if you're interested, you can read it here.

Someday, I'd like to create a documentary about women in science. I'm sure it's probably been done before, but I'd like to create an exciting, yet holistic, picture of female scientists, not just reproducing the stereotypical perceptions of women in STEM. Recently, I saw a clip for First Robotics filled with celebrities encouraging students to participate in the robotics competition and to pursue science/engineering/math as a career. There was only one female - Miley Cyrus. (I don't have anything against her, but I feel like the editor didn't cut her sections well.) Even the famous scientists they highlighted through the clip were all male. Sure, Albert Einstein was a genius and, arguably, modern science would not be where it is today without his work, but  without the female scientists throughout history, we wouldn't know the structure of DNA or fundamentals of radiation.

{Rosalind Franklin - fundamental DNA structure work via x-ray crystallography}

{Marie Currie - fundamental knowledge of how radiation occurs}

(though I'm sure that if you're reading my blog, you already know about these women :) )

more recently recognized women: 

{Françoise Barré-Sinoussi - fundamental HIV research; Nobel prize 2008}

{Barbara Liskov - (first female US PhD in Computer Science; object-orientated programing}

I did find this video - but let's be real, what was more exciting/inspiring: the video on women in science or the one  with celebs for FIRST? And that was the best looking video I quickly found on YouTube....

So. What can I do now? How can we get more women in STEM? I'm still not sure, but I'm going to do my best to encourage and support every female I work with. I'm headed to NM in a week and a half to give a presentation to underrepresented students in STEM - hopefully my story can encourage them to continue STEM careers.

I've also picked up Right Stuff, Wrong Sex recently from the library, all about the first female astronaut candidate. I can't read it until break, but I'm looking forward to reading it. I'm also on the hunt for other books/media on women in science - so if you have any suggestions, let me know!

(on an slightly unrelated note - I changed my blog theme - what do you think?)

engineering school

according to my good friend Hannah, engineers become engineers to escape writing lots of papers.

apparently, this is not true in my program this quarter. I'm sitting here, in the Suzzallo library, staring down three intense reports that have to be done before the end of the quarter.

Thanks to the SPU/liberal arts/UScholars, I don't mind writing, but I'm not enjoying this paper. I am digging through literature that is older than my grandparents and reading 'reports' that really should be books. (I mean, when has anyone published a 86 page literature paper??!)

I did come across this gem in a footnote about the marcasite form of FeS2:

"I  was prepared  to  have  quantitative  analyses made,  but  our  best professional
analysts  (including  Miss  Mary  G.  Keyes  and  the  new laboratory  for  rock  ahalyses
in  charge  of  Dr.  Grout  of  the  University  of  Minnesota)  declined  to  make  them,
pleading  inadequate  equipment  for  sulfide  analyses. Where  can one obtain  reliable
sulfide analyses? My  own  experience with  the  routine  commercial  analyst  is that  he
cannot  be  relied  upon  for  scientific  work."

I'm also enjoying the fact that this paper is all about politely telling the world that the previous analysis of marcasite by Huggins is wrong and he just got lucky that his mis-labeled axes (is it bad that I had to look up the plural of 'axis'?) actually kind of worked.....

back to the paper.

(somedays I'm thankful we don't see sun everyday in Seattle. too bad today is not one of those days.)

awkward

This morning, I almost had a super awkward experience with one the guy who sits in the desk next me. Instead it was only kind of awkward:

It was before 10am, and as usual, I was the only one in the office. I was really really really tired this morning. My cup of tea got me through the 7:30am bus ride, hour prep for my meeting with my advisor, and finally through said meeting, but I was fading fast post-meeting. So, I figured since I'd be the only one in the office for a bit, I curled up on my chair, which is decently wide, and closed my eyes for ~6 minutes.

unfortunately, my legs like to fall asleep quickly when curled up, and so I decided to move to nap under my desk for 10 minutes.

I only needed a 10 minute power nap.

So, here I was, crawling under my desk, which is decently spacious, and just settling into my nap when I hear the lock turning in my office door.

uh oh. apparently my office-mate decided to show up to school this morning.....
(this is guy who thus far has only ever said "Oh! I didn't know you were that tall!" to me a few weeks ago - he hasn't been in the office very frequently lately)

as quickly and gracefully as I could, I reached for my computer power cord and pretended that I had to be on my hands and knees, completely under my desk, to get it plugged in. Fortunately for me me, the plugins are inconveniently located under my desk in the far corner....but it was already plugged in.....so I pretended that I had just finished plugging it in....

second sentence he ever said to me: "Are you alright?"
"yep, yep" just plugging in my laptop"
third sentence: "there's a strip cord over here you can use if you want."
"it's okay, I've got it figured out, thanks!"
(besides - who knows when I might need that excuse again?)

I crawled out from under my desk and started working again. no nap today.

I'm 99% sure he bought my story.

-----------

tomorrow's a day 'off', but I find this quite appropriate:

you know I'm going to be in tomorrow by 8:30am. 

....seminars....

One part of grad school I did not expect was the number seminars I have to attend. I'm just shy of three weeks in and I've already listened to 6 seminars and have one more to go this week. (this week is unusual, mainly because my sol-gel class has morphed into guest seminars for both classes this week, so I going to 4 seminars). and last week, I went to a seminar outside of school, as I finally made it one of Seattle's Science Cafes.

This summer, I could go to just one or roughly four different seminars a week, and they usually had cookies aft wards :) I enjoy going to seminars, and as uninteresting as the titles may sound, I've found that I usually find something intriguing in each one. That doesn't always mean that I actually understand much of what is being discussed, but I try to pay close attention...promise.

Anyways, one of our seminars was actually pretty pertinent to what I am planning on researching - solar cells! This professor from the University of Illinois (who is taking a sabbatical in Oregon??) researches something called CIGS - they are a specific type of solar material that is made of Copper, Indium, Gallium, and Selenide (I think) and are becoming more promising with increased efficiencies and lower manufacturing costs. However, I am not a super big fan of the device because it still uses both CdS for an absorber layer, which is toxic (though he did say that should a house burn these panels on the roof, the vapor was not concentrated enough to be toxic) and the cells rely on indium, an element which, to the best of my knowledge, is only available in China. And I heard that recently China's been increasing prices of certain metals, and though I'm not sure if indium is one of them, I wouldn't be surprised. I think every current solar cell uses it in some form. The only major point I disagreed with his assertion that we should only focus on efficiency of the cells and that going for a cheaper, but less efficient material was a good problem for 'academia' but not really commercially feasible. Maybe it's just because that's what my thesis focuses on, and I'm a bit biased, but I think that using a cheaper, less toxic, easier to manufacture material can be a good tradeoff with a decreased efficiency. But we'll see. Ask me again in 5 years how I feel about that :)

Today's substitute sol-gel seminar was barely related to sol-gel processing (actually, I can't really figure a connection) but really interesting. It focused on a new idea for storage of energy generated from solar cells - splitting water. Since solar cells only work during the daylight hours, what happens when you need electricity at night? You can produce more electricity during the day than you use, but if you can't store it, then you lose it. One of my favorite companies, A123 Systems in MI, has developed a more efficient battery that can possibly 'stabilize the grid', basically store excess power and meter it out when needed. But this prof was discussing how if we split water into it's respective H2 and O2 components, then later on we could recombine them and get energy out when they form H2O again. Yes, you'll lose some energy to splitting the original water, but not as much as if you lost all the excess energy by not trying to store it. They are even working on developing solar cells of sorts that can sit in a clear bucket of water and just by absorbing light can power reactions that split water. To cool! Here is a sweet video he showed us, the bubbles on the front are O2 and the ones on the back are H2. There are no wires, no membranes, no nothing besides this complicated, layered metal.

Isn't it pretty?!

The other seminars - not so interesting. I may have found a new technique that will be helpful in determining charge carrier mobility (basically, how far can an electron or electron hole move in my material) but it also looks like a complicated set up :/

One seminar had lots of cool pictures because they were causing supramolecular structures to self-assemble in monolayers - randomly dispersed pieces of a puzzle come together in an ordered/patterned fashion by themselves. And they make really cool SEM pictures:

(the green overlays are the molecule outlines)

All I could think about during the lecture was how they would look really incredible blown up really large or shrunk to a small pattern and used in a dress....like these atomic bomb images were used:

(Christopher Kane's 2010 Resort Collection)

I just calculated that I'm required to go at least 90 seminars so that I can finish my degree. Oh boy.

thoughts, thoughts.

As I was driving over the pass to my hometown today, I had a whole bunch of blog post ideas run through my mind, but in classic form, now that I sit down, I can't really remember them all. Oh well.

Today is Friday. I spent the last two solid days working on one homework assignment. Like 24+ hours on it. Maybe a few projects during undergrad took longer than that, but never in two super-concentrated days. And never just one nine-question homework. The older students warned us that this course would be heavy on the work, but I was not expecting this. I think the extended length of time required was due to the book's extremely concise way of explaining complicated concepts and lack of examples (not good for a visual learner like me). I seriously sat and worked on a jump the book took in the sole example problem for two hours - I just could not figure out where they got the values they were substituting in. My lack of a math background is coming back to get me - the geometry (a course I never actually took) on one problem caused #7 to take me 2+ hours - yikes. I don't know where my prof got his 4-6 hour time required for homework statistic, apparently not from his students....oh well, at least I get to think about crystal structures that produce fluorescent crystals:

{white light}

{UV Light}

But, since I was able to press through most of my homework (I'm still going to have to go back over it Sunday), today was a wonderful day of brain-resting. No more complicated thought than what I tea I needed to pick out at the Asian market - I scored some sweet Tie Kuan Yin and a High Mountain oolong. You've never quite know what you're getting at this market, as you can't smell any of the tea beforehand, nor can I read any of the characters besides the names which, thankfully, are in English. But, my tolerance for 'dirt tea' (how I describe the oolong I picked up last time I was there) has gone way up, so I assume I can drink any oolong I purchase there. So far, the High Mountain was much darker than I expected, at the TeaCup it's a pretty light oolong, but the batch I got was pretty dark. It still tasted good, just more like a Tie Kuan Yin...maybe I just accidentally opened the wrong box??

Side note: I'm finding that as much as I love my electronics and am trying to do everything in the 'cloud' (dropbox is fantastic!), I have yet to find a good replacement for a simple weekly planner that I physically write in. There is just something about actually writing that so far, I've been unable to duplicate electronically....but do any of my friends want to write me an app??? :D or know of a great electronic weekly planner that mimics this?

This week's been kind of slow outside of the marathon hw days; after my group meeting Saturday (more about that later), I had to still write a draft of my technical proposal for my fellowships to submit to my advisor by Monday afternoon, so that took all of Sunday and Monday - it's still surprising to me how long it takes for me write 1000 words that construct a comprehensive yet concise description of my research! And I still haven't heard back yet....I'm kind of dreading this happening:

However, he has been traveling to a conference at the Fetzer Institute, so I guess I can't expect too quick of a response, even though he did say that generally he can read more while he is traveling....I already know that I need to edit/re-structure my draft, so that's on the docket for tomorrow. (anybody feel like peer editing?) Anyways, the Fetzer Institute is a relatively newly funded non-profit that seeks to look at love and forgiveness from a variety of perspectives, including engineering. Some guy named Fetzer passed away and left oodles of money to form this institute, with the sole instructions that whatever they do has to be focused around those themes. They are not a body that accepts grant applications, they just decide to give people money to promote the work they are already involved in. My advisor promised more information once he gets back, I'm interested in hearing where they decided to give money! I'm also interested in watching how this institute develops it's work in the world, because, as far as I can tell, they are a non-religious body. Or maybe an all-religions body, as I think the Dalai Lama and another well-known-guy-whose-name-I-can't-remember are co-hosting their giant conference in a monastery in Italy next year (apparently, before this conference, the chapel they are holding the conference in has never been opened outside of a papal visit). I'm not saying that you can't do work that benefits others apart from Christ, but it looks different, and, I'd posit, maybe not as wholly beneficial as working towards both spiritual and physical wellbeing simultaneously. Thoughts, anyone?

In a year, it will be good to re-read this when I am so frustrated at an experiment (I'm sure it'll happen eventually) that working on homework for 24+ hours will be remembered with fondness.....

Learning to Swim

Grad school quickly is settling into a routine, and I'm finding that I'm busier than I expected to be (not that I should be surprised, but it's been a load of work for only the first couple weeks)

Typically, I've been arriving at school by ~8:30 am every morning. Having four roommates who all have to go to work by 8 or 8:30 helps motivate me to get up. And it's nice to not rush once I'm at school, I can usually get some tea in me before class, which helps wake me up :) (I don't think it's the caffeine, just drinking something warm wakes me up) It's takes me a few minutes to get put together after biking in to school with my bike gear on, but I'm reasonably ready to go by 9 am. I only have one real class each day, but they take up basically all of each morning. (except fridays. I wasn't supposed to have class friday, but one prof decided to make up the days he was missing by holding a 1hr session every Friday morning. Fun.) Apparently, it's normal for my other prof to just keep lecturing past the time our course is supposed to end, as he needs to cancel courses later on in the quarter. He lectures anywhere from 15-30 minutes over the usual course time. While that is not the longest time in the world, for some reason, I just get restless. It could be because the course is just before lunch or the fact that all we do is sit in the dark, scrambling to write everything down our prof is writing on the overhead projector.

Yes. Overhead projector. Apparently the UW still has one of those in almost every room on campus. And  people use them all the time! You have to check out and bring the digital projectors yourself to many classrooms. It's just a funny switch from SPU, where we were apparently down to two overhead projectors on campus. I had one prof from the history department who brought an overhead with him to class frequently :)

My other two classes are just seminars, where I go and listen to a lecture/talk for an hour and then there is a Q&A session afterwards. Really low key, but I'm not gonna lie - sitting and paying even a moderate amount of attention when the topic is nothing I'm really interested in (microfabrication of structures for stem cell cultures?!) is quite difficult. Today's topic: Supramolecular Self-assembly at Surfaces....yeah. May not be the most engaging....

And apparently I missed the memo about grad students not normally getting in to school at 8:30 am, as I'm finding that I'm usually one of the first people there, if not the first. I guess I'm used to it from this summer, where no one came into work before 9 am either... I'm finding that I have more of a 'work' mentality about grad school than a 'school' mentality; it probably helps that I'm am commuting by bike each day, leaving significantly before my class' start time and that I have an 'office'.

This is my desk/office. it includes all the essentials: climbing gear, a couple changes of clothing, a computer (you can't really see it up on top o the books), rain jacket, travel mug and teabags. Currently drinking 'super' Irish breakfast, English breakfast, china oolong, and what I call 'dirt tea' because if you just smell it, it kinda smells like dirt. Kind of tastes like it too, but it grows on you....drinking through 100 teabags will force you to like it. I don't actually know the name beyond 'organic oolong' because the packaging is all in some form of Chinese....

My office is also really really quiet - there are only five of us in the room and frequently I'm the only one here. I'm contemplating trying to move to another one, but it may be complicated (changing keys, making my officemates feel weird, etc. but as I don't really ever see them, I'm not too worried about that...) I may just wait til the quarter break and then see about switching, we'll see. 

I've surprised myself with amount of focus and work I've been able to get done while at school - usually I couldn't do homework on campus at SPU because I got so distracted by people and other commitments. But now I get can things done and by the time 4pm rolls around, I'm exhausted and so ready to go home. Hopefully, I can keep this momentum going, it lessens the amount I have to do back at home. 

----

and you should watch this: 

I laughed so hard I almost cried.

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 :)

{my office}

(http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1427)

also - trying out a new theme, not 100% sure I like the bright text on dark backgrounds - let me know if you love/hate it

HP

No, not Harry Potter. Honors Project.

(Basically a mini-dissertation that I don't have to defend)

I finally got around to looking at the projects in the library.

Mine will soon be residing with the other 420-ish projects. Wow. That's a lot of UScholars!

I'm also off the UW tomorrow to check out their MSE program! They have a PhD in nanotech that I'm interested in, so hopefully I'll get a good look at that program.

Off to visit graduate schools!

Over the course of the next month I will be visiting four different graduate schools:

Georgia Tech
UW
Rice
U Maryland

While I'm not sure how I feel about spending that much time in a plane, I am excited to meet potential graduate school advisors and fellow students. This whole process has been one complicated and generally unguided process and I'm just glad to have been accepted to some schools. I don't have a top choice, or even a top three at this point, so don't ask, but I plan on having a sorted list by April 1st!

And then I shall determine where I will spend the next 5-6 years of my life. Wow. This PhD business is actually starting to feel real!!

On a related note, the jacket picture below is one that I had hoped to have completed by the time I left for GA. That is not going to happen - it's not even cut out yet. And, apparently, people don't usually wear suits to these interview shindigs, at least according to my friend James, who had been to three so far. I'll still start with wearing my jacket from H&M, but that gray sateen cotton garment can't even begin to compare to the beautiful green wool-cashmere blend material from England that I bought in the Philippines!