Finals Season

Finals season is upon me. This year, I have to work on Electrodynamics, Math Methods, and Quantum Mechanics. The situation isn’t entirely terrible because two of them were take home exams. However, the Quantum professor specifically said that there would be no final, but then gave out a final ‘homework’ with problems that were clearly handwritten, exactly like all of his exam problems and none of his homework problems. *_*

Math methods was also a take home. There was a problem about complex analysis that wasn’t too bad and another about group theory that was short, but a little tricky. Longer were the problems about perturbation theory and curvature. I’m not sure if I got them right, but I did a pretty decent job. Finally, there was a relatively easy perturbation theory problem about the weak gauge and when perturbation theory ceases to work for it. All in all, it wasn’t bad and I’ve already gotten it turned in.

The quantum still has to get finished, but I have that on the backburner. For the moment, I’m more obsessed with solving and memorizing problems for one of Dr. M’s legendary E&M exams. The usual routine is that he gives out a bunch of homework problems during the semester, some of which are starred and some unstarred. The starred problems are mandatory, but some of the unstarred ones will be on the exams. Ultimately, you have to do all of the problems at some point if you want to do alright. The system is tough and leads to some panicking towards the end of the semester, but the good thing about it is that you get a great review by the time things are all said and done with.

Other things I’ve been juggling lately:

I’ve started doing a little work with Dr. L’s group as part of a Summer Project. They’re going to have me doing some programming and simulations about neutrinos for the mTC detector. It’s pretty cool and I’m really happy to get a chance to work with this group, although I don’t know if I’ll still be working with them longterm.

Anna has also been absorbing plenty of my attention. We hung out both Friday and Saturday last weekend. Friday was awesome because Elan and I went with her to the campus theatre after TGs and saw Dr. Jill Tarter speak about her work spearheading SETI. It was awesome, especially considering we smoked a little bit earlier. Saturday, we hung out then had breakfast and split up until meeting again later. The evening plan was a double date with Anna’s friend Sharoni and her friend Andy. Honestly, I wasn’t a huge fan of the two of them. Maybe I was a bit paranoid because I smoked a little earlier in the day, but we ordered really expensive food (which made me uncomfortable – I don’t spend much money these days :/ ) and we talked about things that I have a hard time identifying with (e.g. how lame it *was* to have a tiny dorm room with a microwave and mini-fridge). It also didn’t help that everyone dressed nicely except me and I felt a bit out of place at the restaurant.

Ah, the life of a grad student. I understand the poverty, but it really shouldn’t be as bad as it is here at UH. I’ll complain more about that later, I guess. The upside is that poverty really puts an interesting perspective on life. Granted, I have a phone and a computer (bought with savings I had before I ran out of money here), but I live pretty humbly these days. I have only been out to one movie since I moved here, I rarely go to bars or restaurants unless I’m with Anna, and I eat a lot more ramen and pasta than I used to. Times have changed I suppose.