Fall Quarter: A Post Mortem

Holy moly; finals week on the quarter system is way different than finals week on semesters.

These past seven days have been a maelstrom of crappy sleep, strained eyes, frozen mathematica notebooks, and far too much caffeine. Balancing studying for my own finals with massive amounts of grading and proofreading (of course we'd get proofs back on Tuesday) was tricky, but now it's over and I can breathe.

At least, of course, until the winter quarter starts. But until then, I am going to bask in the success of having a quarter of grad school under my belt. There were times where all seemed lost, but looking back on it all, I think I've set my self up well for what's to come.

Happy holidays.

Aaaand Exhale

After ordering my bagel from the coffee cart, I figured I'd have enough time to upload all of the constituent parts of our revised manuscript before it was done being toasted. Boy was I wrong.

After uploading the raw TeX file and the .bbl, I got kicked out of the upload form. Oh well, no problem, right? I log back in and am told that my revised manuscript is submitted pending approval of the compiled draft. Oh dear.

So at this point, it's after midday on the west coast which means it's almost time to go home on the east coast which is where the editorial office is. I ring them up but there's no answer. Did I mention today was the deadline to upload our revisions?

At this point, my bagel is cold and soggy, I've been sitting on the ground for almost a half hour, and I'm starting to lose it. I finally get a human on the phone and they inform me that the figures I uploaded weren't jiving with the TeX compiler they have. No one knows why I can't upload things anymore, but we get the necessary files in over email and get the revised manuscript approved. Phew.

Now that the paper is truly out of our hands, I feel relief but I also miss the project already. Classes are going to really infringe on research time next quarter, and I suppose that the finality of getting the revision in makes me realize that I'm going to miss the madness one inevitably has to deal with when doing science.

Anywho, I hope the editor enjoys our revisions. I really like our paper and think it's gonna be a hit.

Cheers.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hopefully, none of you will be near your computers and won't see this post. If you are toiling away on this holiday like me though, make sure to take a break at some point for some turkey or something pumpkin flavored.

Cheers.

The Tao of Being a Burkie

Our group is really weird. The science we do is pretty unique, the way we talk about that science is even more unique, and the methods by which we interact with each other is also quite particular. It's nice; it gives our group a personality.

All of this can be difficult at first to adjust to, but I think that ultimately, being particular lets us be efficient because we all sort of know what to expect when receiving stuff from one another. In this spirit (I think), Kieron has started to roll out his Tao's of the Burke Group. These one page TeX files are a way to catalogue all the particulars of everyday interactions within the group. They include things like how to TeX, how to blog, how to send emails, and how to make pretty plots in mathematica.

I think it'll be tricky at first to populate the BGarch with helpful Taos and that a lot of things will have to be edited and changed but, overall, the idea seems like a solid way of initiating new Burkies and old Burkies alike to our way of doing things.

Cheers.

NSF: Not Sure if Funded

Assuming my references get their letters in on time, my application for the 2015 NSF GRFP is complete. It might be a strange strain of Stockholm Syndrome, but I almost miss the process of writing and editing and writing and editing and drowning in self-doubt and editing...

Unearthing stuff from undergrad was pretty entertaining, but the actual writing was my favorite part. It was incredibly difficult, even frustrating at times, but it felt good to be creating something from scratch. The process also reminded me of one of my favorite aspects of our group; we care about writing.

That said, there are a few things from this experience I want to remember, so I'm recording them here. Hopefully they'll be useful to others, particularly new people if they happen to creep backwards in time through the Burke Blog.

1. Think it's too early to start? You're probably a week late from when you should've started.
2. If you're really stuck or don't know how to improve, just rewrite the whole dang thing (or if that's unfeasible, a big chunk). Justin suggested this and I used it a few times with good results
3. Let non-Burkies (non-scientists for bonus points) read your writing. The science has to make sense, but the story needs to make even more sense. Speaking of which,
4. Pick a story you want to tell and tell it. If you have to write a personal statement, don't just blabber on about yourself. Center the piece on something you think is interesting. This is true of science stuff too.
5. Give letter writers as much time as possible to write their letter for you. They might wait till the last minute, but let them make that decision; don't make it for them.
6. Print out things before you click submit. Read the thing out loud. Seeing typos is harder than you might expect.
7. For sciency stuff, find textbooks and papers and see how experts talk about what you're going to talk about. There is usually a dialect already in existence and sticking to it will make you sound more competent. It also saves you the trouble of trying to explain stuff you may not really understand on your own.
8. Don't be unnecessarily wordy. You aren't being impressive, you're wasting time and space. In the same vein, tighten everything once you've "finished" what you're writing. Often, parts of sentences can be rephrased to be more concise or removed altogether.
9. Drink coffee. A lot.
10. To quote Lori, "Know when to walk away." If the thing is due in 2 hours. You should probably stop adding to it make sure there aren't any tpyos.

Cheers.

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.

The Last Blog Post

Dear Diary,

And so it is.  That was my blogging adventure. 

Looking back, I'm not entirely sure what I was trying to write about on this one.  Now someone else gets to try and figure out what exactly should be going on here.  To my successor, I give you this commemorative photograph since I've never actually shown myself on this blog:

Now I have a whole bunch of time to devote to my various duties.  ITensor needs a documenting and papers need writing.  I'll miss you, Diary.  Tah-tah.