I know I said I was going to quit MT, but its an addictive habit which I think I’ll indulge myself in more, until I have enough skill and knowledge to roll my own (i.e, never).
I finished my last final at around 1, and since then, I’ve been trying to figure how best to spend my time. I should have gone to work, seeing as how I missed it earlier (due to a paper and another final), and I didn’t let them know ahead of time. But, I figure I can spend tomorrow working off all of my requisite 6 hours a week. Mostly I haven’t gone in because I checked my email yesterday and found the agonizing decision I’ve been trying to make– whether or not to continue working with this chemistry group for the next semester– has been taken out my hands. When next I go in, I need to have the decision. Here’s the thing: I like the people, I like the money, I don’t like the research (partly just because I don’t have the background to understand it, and partly because I find chemistry interesting in small doses only, and partly because so far the research has been nothing but grind, seal, heat, repeat, and partly …. ), and I feel incredibly grateful to have been offered this opportunity. I feel quiting, which is what it would be, would be signalling to the professor that he chose the wrong guy to try to recruit (and he did, but still), and maybe make it seem like I am ungrateful. Essentially, then, it is a question of face. Do I save it? Or do I move on, and find the next mind expanding opportunity? I think the decision is already made– it’s now a matter of gaining the courage to speak it, and finding the words with with to speak.
Speaking of the next mind expanding opportunity, I need to speak to Dr. Barr, the engineering department chair (or something close enough to it to confuse me), about proctoring in the class I just finished: Numerical Methods for Engineers. I would love that opportunity: 8 hours a week of nothing but grading math papers, and or answering questions. I am totally down with that. I have a friend who’s proctoring it right now, and he just camps out in the Engineering Computing Center for about 2 hours every morning. What a convenient job! I need to apply though … thing is, I don’t want to until I get my hair cut. Can’t look like a bum when you go asking for a job, right?
Oh, one of the ways I have found to spend my suddenly freed time just fell upon me in the library. After checking out the laptop I’m using right now, I descended to the second floor (my fav: where the computer, math,and physics books are– all in one conveniently dense neighborhood) and looked around for a private space to indulge in the joys of an HTTPSed wireless internet connection (nothing more need be said). None were available, but I did stumble across some interesting looking books on Relativity (one of them *the* “Relativity” by Einstein himself), all of which look reasonably accessible to me. So that’s what I’m going to spend my time doing, if I can ever pull myself together enough to focus on reading.
I see a certain analogy here: for me, relativity is to physics as analysis is to math. I desire to understand both concepts, and both are crucial to understanding the corresponding sciences, but despite checking out the whole shelves of books related to them over the courses of my two years here, I have yet to make any serious headway in learning them. What does that say about me? Probably that I’m overreaching my bounds, have unrealistic aspirations, and tend to neglect what I need to be doing to do what I merely want to be doing, and am majoring in the wrong area. But didn’t I already know all that?
