In graduate school time passes like a blink of an eye, before you could realize what could have been done to make your life more worthwhile weeks may have gone by. At first I think it is ridiculous to count the timeline by weeks - lots of things can be done within a day, that what college life, or all schooling before it for that matter, told me - but this reckless assumption bummed me with not just one fiasco resulting from the poor management of time. Also the growth of intellectual maturity is much more latent than in any other period of school in graduate school in that I hardly realize it till I compare three conversations with Paul.

 

The first conversation took place in graduate school admission. Paul sent me his research profile - at that time I was trying the best to make something out of it - and I came to the conclusion that it's way beyond my scope of knowledge, although the ideas are really cool.

 

The second conversation occured when I arrived at Duke. When I met him again after a lab meeting I asked about the projects that he has been working on. This time he explained personally to me in his office - not like the last time when he sent me an email. Surprisingly, I got almost nothing out of that conversation - I had been in grad school for nearly a semester!

 

The third talk came more recently. Just a few days ago I talked with him regarding the summer rotation project that I may be working on. He mentioned this project a third time - in ever more detail - and as I was expecting only to understand 10% of what he said and planned to get the rest during the rotation, I was again shocked because I found the entire thing was so easy and straightforward. I immediately recognized the technical difficulty he had been struggling with and the significance of this work, althrough the enhanced understanding is very unlikely to be the consequences of my course work training. Maybe I should really thank Dr. Sherwood for this - it is the trust and attitude he showed me that maneuvered my stubborn habbit of reading, thinking and everything.

 

It is again amazing what a little think would do to your life. All the time when you lie on the bed and could not get to sleep you are revising your memories for intellectual maturity. You constantly think of the latent information that you can not possibly formulate or vocalize. And then you grow as a result of this type of sleeplessness. Intellectually. I had more than one of these nights. I even began to think of my future quests in academia. In reality things work out in a much more sophisticated fashion, but hey, never mind; we are doing the best we can to study ourselves.

 

Now that I am breathing and all in my academic life, the problem with my personal life persists. I am already 24 and yet there is no sign of meeting the significant other within quite a few years, at least in the way I have always presumed. Lots of my friends are getting married. Rushing into things is not my character, so I still, with my principles in mind, look for opportunities. Steve Jobs said this very clearly on the commencement ceremony at Stanford : Keep looking. Yes, that is exactly what I am going to do and probably what I should do.

 

So long, wrap it up for today.