Wednesday, November 15, 2006
13:40 (approx.)
My blogging has been down somewhat since I started graduate school. This is rather opposite to what I would have expected, given that I have two full days every week without class to attend. And yet, what did I do with my free day today?
I went to the library at 9:30 AM. After descending the three floors to the Invisible Bunker (It looks like a cubicle...but I'd feel safe there in the event of a nuclear war.) I picked up my reading from the reserve shelf. Today's volume? The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 5. Yes...this surprisingly expensive volume was included, in its entirety, on my Science in the Modern World reading course. And so, with that combination of bravery and stupidity that so often characterizes my academic adventures, I started reading, vowing that I would not leave the library until I had read all 650 pages of physical science goodness.
33 articles, 2 sandwiches, 1 dining hall cookie obtained the previous evening, and 1 extremely dead battery in my MP3 player later, I returned the book to the shelf having taken notes and read the whole thing. I will wholeheartedly admit, as I will to my professor should he ask, that a few of the articles were beyond me. Due to my lack of mathematical training, for example, I lost some of the nuance in the article on the history of the function. But I tried to read and follow it as best I could. And I took notes so that I can get confused all over again when we discuss it on Friday.
The downside of all this productive activity, aside from malnourishment, an even paler skin tone, and sharing the same exercise regimen as a common gastropod, was the time expenditure. I arrived, as mentioned earlier, at 9:30 AM. I departed the library at approximately 11:10 PM. For those keeping score at home that is approximately 13 hours and 40 minutes, more than half of a full day spent at the library, the longest I've ever spent since arriving at graduate school. (I'm not sure about my undergraduate career...there were a few days during my senior essay when I might have nearly gotten there.) If I had really wanted to push myself, I could have probably gone another 20 minutes and made it an even 14 hours, but I wasn't aiming to be a hero. I just wanted to get my work done.
Which gets back to my point about my lack of blog activity. Because unlike the old days at Underwood, when I almost always would have an exciting story to relate regarding administrative incompetence or student weirdness, now my days are rather mundane. What did I do today? I read 650 pages on the history of chemistry, physics, mathematics, environmental science, computer science, astronomy, and thermodynamics.
And that's pretty much it.
My blogging has been down somewhat since I started graduate school. This is rather opposite to what I would have expected, given that I have two full days every week without class to attend. And yet, what did I do with my free day today?
I went to the library at 9:30 AM. After descending the three floors to the Invisible Bunker (It looks like a cubicle...but I'd feel safe there in the event of a nuclear war.) I picked up my reading from the reserve shelf. Today's volume? The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 5. Yes...this surprisingly expensive volume was included, in its entirety, on my Science in the Modern World reading course. And so, with that combination of bravery and stupidity that so often characterizes my academic adventures, I started reading, vowing that I would not leave the library until I had read all 650 pages of physical science goodness.
33 articles, 2 sandwiches, 1 dining hall cookie obtained the previous evening, and 1 extremely dead battery in my MP3 player later, I returned the book to the shelf having taken notes and read the whole thing. I will wholeheartedly admit, as I will to my professor should he ask, that a few of the articles were beyond me. Due to my lack of mathematical training, for example, I lost some of the nuance in the article on the history of the function. But I tried to read and follow it as best I could. And I took notes so that I can get confused all over again when we discuss it on Friday.
The downside of all this productive activity, aside from malnourishment, an even paler skin tone, and sharing the same exercise regimen as a common gastropod, was the time expenditure. I arrived, as mentioned earlier, at 9:30 AM. I departed the library at approximately 11:10 PM. For those keeping score at home that is approximately 13 hours and 40 minutes, more than half of a full day spent at the library, the longest I've ever spent since arriving at graduate school. (I'm not sure about my undergraduate career...there were a few days during my senior essay when I might have nearly gotten there.) If I had really wanted to push myself, I could have probably gone another 20 minutes and made it an even 14 hours, but I wasn't aiming to be a hero. I just wanted to get my work done.
Which gets back to my point about my lack of blog activity. Because unlike the old days at Underwood, when I almost always would have an exciting story to relate regarding administrative incompetence or student weirdness, now my days are rather mundane. What did I do today? I read 650 pages on the history of chemistry, physics, mathematics, environmental science, computer science, astronomy, and thermodynamics.
And that's pretty much it.
