Introductions

Right. So now the task of posting to the blog falls to me.

Initially, I planned on writing a little introductory blurb about who I am, but most of the people reading this already know me. Those who don't have possibly looked at the group website recently and noticed some strange kid with a d_z^2 orbital on his left arm and a bunch of holes in his ears. It's really a shame you can't see the rest of my arm in that picture. Ehrenfest's theorem is on it! Kieron has asked me a few times to upload a full picture of the entire thing. I gotta jump on that. Also yes; my username/pseudonym for this blog is a quantum mechanics joke. Get used to it. The puns will only get worse from here on out.

 Being in the Burke Group is a pretty surreal thing. I'm only four months into graduate school and my name is already on a manuscript with Kieron's. As a scrappy theoretical chemist who started out his academic life on the mean streets of Piscataway, NJ (which, incidentally, aren't so mean), I have to pinch myself at times to remind myself I'm working with the guy who has that functional named after him in Gaussian.

Anyway, after just submitting an NSF proposal only hours ago, I'm not really in the mood for waxing poetically about the existential questions one runs into in graduate school. I'll save that for another entry. Maybe I'll do a debrief of my experiences NSFing next post.

 Cheers.