Riddle Me This

In my research job today, I had to go to another lab in order to run tests. I ended up being there most of the day.One perk of this was being able to talk to other students, as the other lab’s group is much larger than my own. One of these students is here on the same program as myself, and as we were collecting our data, we talked about a great many things.

Somehow, the topic of riddles came up today, and we spent the afternoon trying to out-clever each other with creative riddles. This was much easier for him than for me, as his mind was very good at making connections that were not immediately obvious to me. I did manage to stump him with one riddle, which goes as follows.

A man is exactly 5 years younger than his older brother to the day. One day, his brother dies. Exactly five years to the day after that happens, the man himself dies. At the time of the brother’s death, who was older?

If you think this riddle is easy, great for you. Please comment if you can solve it.

– Gavin

Graduate School Is a Cutthroat Place, Oh Wait…

My research internship this summer at Georgia Tech has taught me a number of things. While the knowledge that I am discovering through the research is somewhat interesting, I have learned much more from the overall experience.

My job has had components of both academia and entrepreneurship, and from what I have seen, both are filled with people trying to further themselves above all else. I have grown to despise both the money-seeking greed of the hypothetical investor from my startup-pitch workshops, and the obsessive paper-churning nature of the academic researcher. I have fallen into the path of the later, as my mentors constantly ask for results but have never given me a clear set of goals to shoot for. I feel that no one that I have encountered here really cares about other people, unless they are advancing their own position.

This puts me in an interesting position, as I want to go on to have a career as a college professor. This requires me to attend a graduate school like Georgia Tech about a year from now. I need to be careful to choose a school and a mentor who are interested in learning for learning’s sake, and not in simply getting another paper out at the expense of their own students. I also want to focus more on teaching than on research, as I want to avoid being assimilated by the politics of research academia. I also feel that my gift lies more toward interpreting knowledge, and not toward collecting it. We shall see about that…

– Gavin

No Answers, Only Questions That I Do Not Understand

I really wish there was a more direct way to get thoughts out of my head onto this blog than typing them in on a keyboard. In order to utilize a keyboard, I need to be able to phrase my thoughts in understandable language. This in turn requires me to fully understand my own thoughts, something which I often just cannot do.

At the same time I feel that it is probably a good thing that I do not have my brain hooked up to a computer. If I simply had to think a thought for it to appear here, this blog would be both confusing and potentially unfriendly to viewers. If I cannot understand my thoughts, how can my readers? If I do not like my thoughts, why should I subject them on those around me?

The reason I am blogging about this today is that I have been musing on who I am as a person lately. I ask myself questions about my life that I cannot answer, and my attempts to answer these questions leave me hopelessly bewildered. I cannot write about the specifics, because I cannot even begin to comprehend those specifics. Because of this, I can only blog about the state which my mind is in at this moment, and not what it is thinking about.

– Gavin

On Conversations

I have found that it is very interesting to talk to people. It does not really matter what is talked about, just the fact that the conversation happens is the most interesting part.

Conversations require a great many things to happen. First, Person A needs to have the desire to communicate with Person B. Second, A needs to think of what to say to B. Third, A needs to get the attention of B. Fourth, A needs to actually speak to B. Fifth, B needs to comprehend what A has said. Sixth, B needs to decide to respond to A. Seventh, B needs to chose a response to A. Eighth, B needs to respond to A. Ninth, A needs to comprehend what B has said. Tenth, A has to decide to respond to B, and so on and so forth…

This all happens very fast, sometimes in seconds. The ability to exchange information with anybody who passes by is one of the greatest gifts that we have been given by our Creator, and yet we often forget about it. I have had some interesting conversations in my 20-plus years of life, and I almost never stop to think what a wonder it is that I am even having the conversation at all. Even the need I have for conversation goes unnoticed by me much of the time, but I occasionally realize after I talk to someone, especially a stranger, how much I need people to talk to. We not only have the gift of communication, but we have it for good reason.

– Gavin

Thought Creation Issues

I am unaware whether this is normal or not, but I have days where my mind refuses to think new thoughts. Instead, it simply replay’s things overland over that I have seen, heard, or imagined. It endlessly loops though the same old thoughts, without regard to whether or not I really want to think them again.

Part of this derives from my brain’s desire to input and organize every single thought I have ever had in memorable, ordered patterns. Sometimes, I can even remember insanely long strings of utterly meaningless information that I made up for fun years ago with no effort whatsoever. While this can be somewhat amusing on occasion, it can be downright irritating at times.

Another phenomena to consider is the fact that my mind races along at an incredibly fast pace every waking moment of my day. It does not slow down when I go to relax. If anything, it speeds up. I find myself with this unstoppable need to think about something, even when I want to think about nothing. I sometimes cannot even fall asleep at night because my train of thought has too much momentum to be stopped.

When combined with some of my less-significant personality quirks, these two oddities seem to produce a sort of “Filler Material” for my brain to think about when it is moving to quickly to come up with new thoughts. This especially tends to happen when I am worn out. However, this “Thought Loop” sometimes occurs when I am actually trying to do something very mentally intensive. It feels as if the “Record Thought” switch in my is temporarily jammed, and I am drowned in recycled thoughts of times past. I actually had a much more interesting and original thought today that I was planning on blogging about, but this problem got in the way, and left me with with nothing but old thought running circles in my head.

– Gavin

Why Do I Exist Now?

I am 20 years old, but I do not really feel like that is my age. I feel I do not worry about many of the things a typical 20-year-old worries about. At times I feel like a mid-teenager (14-17), especially when it comes to how I interact with others. I don’t really understand interpersonal relationships, and I can’t manage to hold on to my friends. At the same time, I feel like I am closer to 30 years old. Essentially all of the people I have befriended since coming to Atlanta are at least five years older than me, and I get annoyed by the antics and attitudes of most college-aged kids. I also feel like the way I think about life seems more like the way that I imagine an older person would.

To add to the confusion, I feel out of place in today’s society. I really do not like the connectedness of modern life, and I really wish that life was simpler than it is today. I also fell like I would have loved to grow up when my grandparents were kids, without the unnecessary distractions that have plagued my life.

I also get irritated with the way that my brain works. I do not really like how I overanalyze everything, like I am doing for you right now. I do not like how my mind wanders when I am trying to get things done, and how my mental fantasies often overwhelm my day-to-day life. I wish it were possible to forget things more easily, because my overly-organized brain organizes everything, all the time. It just tires me how much I think, and how often it feels like I do nothing but think all day long.

I realize that I can change none of these things as age-change pills are a complete myth,  time travel has not been invented yet, and I really do not want a lobotomy at any point in the foreseeable future. I get that God has given me all these things at this particular time for some reason, but I have not the slightest clue what that is. I really don’t get why I even exist right now. I suppose God may show me in time, but the state of not knowing is hard to bear.

– Gavin