Thoughts about graduate studies

This is a post I never published on September 19, 2010 at the start of graduate school, enjoy.

I have reached a tipping point of sanity. I am on the complex drug known only as a combination of neurotransmitters. My body is anticipating movement and exploration, while my mind lingers in stagnation and dread. The dread coming from assignments which are due in coming days and stagnation from a lack of outer world influence. I am feeling like a hermit might feel on tougher days. I am not wanting or reflecting self pity. I think my state is interesting, novel, and never before have I had such strong feelings of boredom. Always stretched thin my previous boredom used to be, now it is an over-sized lead weight on the fishing line of happiness. Furthermore, happiness, a feeling I have not experienced for quite some time. I have to write things out to feel at ease. This could be flawed, but these are the thoughts that roam my head. What would fix this my family, friends, and therapists will ask. What needs to be fixed I reply? but that would assume I want to live a life forever in sorrow and angst? Nay! I exercise the body, I exercise the mind, I do not put forth the effort I should or rather I do not put forth the effort I am able to put forth. What is life if only to be median. I know sharing may be the point. I have put this on myself. Ignoring invites to go places in an attempt to set aside time for catching up in classes, in decisions and in life. I don't think I can ever catch up with everything that I long to do and want to accomplish.
What is the border between personal and public? When should it stop. This time is priceless. How can I use it to it's fullest value?

Ph.D.s come from trees, trees do not come from Ph.D.s.

There has been a good amount time since I last wrote anything that wasn't related to work. Although, it seems anything worth doing requires at least some work. Quality suffers if the work input is low, and quantity suffers if the work input is either A, quickly exhausted, or B never put in to begin with.

Reaching a point where feelings of relaxation and settling in are common and present in copious amounts. Remaining poised and active is a completable goal that will require hardship, perseverance, tenacity, letting-go of habits, detaching from norms, giving to others, gratitude, appreciation, friendship and family support, and work, lots of hard work, some easy work, and a lot of busy work. Motivations are social, personal, physical, emotional, and spiritual blessings involving community support with emphasis on community outreach. Although both are viewed as measures of personal success, the latter also seems to be lacking and deficient resulting in poverty, lavishness, addiction, and crime. Preachy, melodramatic, demanding, passive-aggressive, and lazy. I am none of these things alone. Only at times. Being succinct and sequential is what is taught in school, but learned only by the wise. Ph.D.s come from trees, trees do not come from Ph.D.s. Our generation is somewhat backwards in our thinking. We have too much means and not enough thinking. In the 1920's quantum physics was in it's prime and Maxwell, Einstein, Heisenberg, Pauli, Planck, etc had the wits and mathematical foundation for understanding matter at a level much smaller and much larger than our own existence. Where fractions of a fraction of a fraction of an atomic nucleus interacts with itself like flint and stone, while we are larger our existence is not any greater. It is our timescale which deludes us. Like our concept of the united states as a democracy, we are easily deluded, we are indeed a public represented (republic) by a smaller group of well-paid, popular, and, for the most part, well-liked public (otherwise we wouldn't have voted them into office). How can we expect then our nation of all the unemployed, impoverished, employed and not well-liked people to be accurately represented? Vote them in to office!
Some may say, but they may want to blow up people and cause havoc, well then that opinion should be recognized and not ignored, for it will express itself in ways much more developed without responsible rebuke. Its only when you have forgotten the goal that you can accomplish it. Quotes that sound meaning.

Activity Heals

05/09/2011

Too inactive. The body finally yelled at me last night saying that I need to get off the ass and do something active. Instead I slept, but this morning there were some major problems. Sickly feelings commenced: stuffed sinuses, post nasal mucus drainage, headache, low energy. The physique I worked hard to maintain melted away in a month of physical inactivity. The difference between required exercise, which I get 4 miles of every day to and from work, and thoughtful exercise, which I haven’t had in a month, is healing power.

I came home from work early to get some rest. I lay down to sleep while the sun was shining and got a couple hours of sleep. I woke up with a headache and more congestion. The body lacked pizzazz. Rest was not all that is needed to kill this virus. After some push-ups and some sit-ups I felt better instantly, but I need more. Running outside, the sun was incredibly bright and I couldn’t help but squint painfully while striding towards sunshine and the local pond. The thoughts are muddled. The head pounding and the body a hundred pounds heavier than usual. I wasn’t sure running was the right thing to do, but it was harder than I imagined and it can’t hurt to get exercise and sunshine vitamin D. I gave up running after 10 minutes and began to walk; the mind too reluctant to continue coping with exhaustion. I walked for a while and observed people running, biking, and walking their dogs. I thought to myself, how do they already know how to stay healthy and energetic? how could I forget to exercise physically? Well, by not exercising I forgot how. I had a routine down during the less stressful parts of my first-year of graduate school, but how could I have neglected such an important thing: keeping the body alive!

Memories from high school gym class came into mind as I forced myself to run again. This jog would end again in another 10 minutes from deliberate resting. At this point, allegies kicked in as I deeply inhaled the pollen-filled air through the nose and exhaled through the mouth.  I started to sneeze and by sneezing the sinus developed a less viscous form of mucous which I began to spit out regularly.  The drinking fountain called my attention when I remembered what a friend said about drinking lots of water when getting over illness. I drank until I felt full of water, which was “a lot of water”.  I am reminded of a text-based online computer game where the basics of regenerating hitpoints, or life strength, involve drinking water until completely full.

The allergies were good; the body’s immune system was turning on like an engine which hadn’t been started in a month. I sputtered out old and caked-on oil lining the cylinder walls of the vibration-circulated lymphatic system. The increased heat generated from running broke less the solidified material lining the vascular, hepatic, and nephritic systems. It was impossible to tell any differences between the body and an engine at this point. Things were better, but the fruits of labor would come half an hour later when resting; ticking away on my laptop like hot exhaust components cooling on an warm engine.

I can’t help but comment on the running dialogue of the mind, seeing as how ridiculously awesome it can be. Observation: A girl running with her dog. She approaches and I look down out of reverence as she passes.  Just before she passes I see her dog staring at me. The dog was says, “don’t look at my girlfriend.” This is common especially with men. The man is usually telling me through his expression that I shouldn’t be looking at “his” girl. In fact, almost every day I have this bizarre encounter.  I do have an intense gaze. I look at things superficially, which I don’t like, but I force myself to do out of respect for people’s comfort.  Instead, absorbing and analyzing things, peoples, and environments interests me. There is nothing wrong with checking out the opposite sex and I wish I was more comfortable about it. We should overstep boundaries but being alert and healthy while doing so is key. Help me out here.

Diet, Work, and Exercise

Its definitely been a while since I have posted anything. I want to spend some time to say a few things. One thing is having to do with my diet, which has been a lot of meat and fat as of late. I was using working out everyday as a reason to gorge myself 3 times a day with restaurant bought meal or home cooking, but I am starting to take a turn towards vegetarianism. I plan on going to a Krishna gathering on Sunday to learn something about their diet. I know it won't be easy, and I'll need some weening off of meat much like an infant going off of breast milk. Ill be OK.

Another thing is having to do with water fasting, which I started as of 1pm today. Not much time I know, but I have already experienced many hunger pangs and involuntary thoughts about what to eat. Its actually pretty amazing how much stress the thoughts of eating can be for me and how much time I can spend deciding about food. This is maybe a good sign that its time to quit food for a time. Its an addiction like anything else. However, its been easy to ignore these gathering thoughts and move on in life. I'll have more to report tomorrow night after 24 hours.

Speaking of fat, tomorrow morning I am giving a science presentation to a group of 17 fifth graders and we will be playing with soap, oil, and water and exploring the atoms and concepts which make soap work for us.  It should be fun, this will be my third time visiting some fifth graders to show them how soap works and make dry ice smokey bubbles.

I have been spending a lot of my time in the laboratory, but with less actual work getting done. Therefore, I am going to start logging my time efficiency in hopes of improving it. Also, I am going to cut down the time spent at work to 5 hours per day in order to force me to be more efficient, then increase this number slowly while keeping the efficiency the same. I made an excel spreadsheet to record my progress through this week. Although, my work is not really well-defined, there are certainly things I can and can't log. Firstly, setting up and working up chemical syntheses or collecting, interpreting and reporting data are the 2 most important work items. Secondly, reading literature, writing email, and doing problem sets from class constitute the rest. Anything else will be considered a waste of time! Stay tuned.

As a last point, I'd like to get involved with Berkeley rock climbing and ropes courses.
 

Hollywood Hydrosilation

 Some background on this picture. I made this picture for my thesis advisor, the king of hydrosilation, T.Don Tilley using GIMP (graphic image manipulation program). Hydrosilation is a chemical transformation used in making many useful materials. for example, high-temperature rubber cooking wares like spatulas and pot holders, fish tank sealant, glues, computer chips, caulking, and silicones such as implants, non-volatile oils, and lubricants.  

I do so much work I don't even look at it

So, today I was feeling blah about being a graduate student. Particularly, I wasn't feeling very good about working in a chemistry laboratory. Smelling fumes all day and feeling quite unfruitful at synthesizing, purifying, isolating, and characterizing molecules. Unable to accept my current state, I struggled through the whole day, resisting nearly everything. However , I am slowly learning that I should let go of what i deem painful or irrelevant because it all pertains to the present, to what is, to my work. The funny, sad, and strange part is, I didn't feel good about work today, but I actually accomplished a lot. For example, I cleaned an entire rack of glassware left over from cleaning up the benches and hoods of a 4 person lab. I also submitted and categorized 8x4Liters of "spent/used" chemicals, normally referred to as waste, to college Environmental Health and Safety. I cleaned out glass fritted filters using concentrated Hydrochloric acid mixed with Sodium Hypochlorite (Clorox Bleach). Furthermore, I cleaned all my NMR sample tubes, read a paper on Hematite (Iron Oxide Fe2O3) Nanostructures coated on Titanium Silicide nanonets (TiSi), and set up a recrystallization of starting material which required a vast solubility screen in solvents like chloroform, bromoform, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), ethyl acetate, hexanes, acetone, benzene, toluene, and chlorobenzene. It turns out bromoform works the best, but I used chloroform instead since its cheaper and could work just as well. The point is, I need to walk into the fire, face the music, and accept the headache, otherwise life is hell. 

Ouroboros over the weekend

Half scales protected with Rubys and half synthetic carbon fiber. Ouroboros is a hybrid of two chemical worlds.

Here is after I added the ruby/amethyst breast shielding, scales and a segment of carbon fiber

This is after the scales were added ( a neat effect using gIMP Graphics Image Manipulation Program available free for Ubuntu Linux)

Here is the original that I sketched with graphite, I used a compass for the circles and used color pencils

From scenery to chivalry, spiritually and contentedly, one should be the change they want to see happen.

I like the discipline of contentedness, but it, like smoke, dissipates. Be wary of laziness, strive for working hard and moving quickly. Rest a lot to balance exhaustive work and play. Remember sleep is like the intake plenum for an engine and movement is like the exhaust plenum. With too much air an engine will run lean, overheat and slow down, so too will body and mind become chronically lazy after too much sleep. With too much fuel an engine will build up soot, lose torque, and gas mileage, so too can body and mind. Thus, constant monitoring of one's sleep and movements is necessary to get the best gas mileage.  Be irregular to maintain nimbleness yet exercise regularly. Analogies become pitfalls.    

The line between losing one's self and finding one's path is dashed and at times ambiguous. Life reduces to the present and yet exists for the future. The point is in satisfaction.