‘Tis Done!

I am done!

I had my final presentations for my summer research position today. There was a huge amount of work that I put into these presentations this week, and it payed off big time. Both the powerpoint and poster sessions went fabulously well, and I feel that I did the best I possibly could have.

I also got to discuss my entire impression of the research experience in a debriefing with my supervising graduate student. He was very thorough with his questions, and I feel I was able to convey both the good and the bad of my summer experience to him. I am very thankful that he took the time to do it.

Now, I begin packing for my return flight…

– Gavin

I Really Want to Go Home

My summer research job is dragging out to the very end. My mentors allowed me very little time to produce a research poster and presentation, and I have been spending most of the waking hours of the past two days getting these up to snuff. It is the most exhausting days I have ever had in a research position, and it has been taking its toll on me. I am both mentally and physically drained now, and both my sleep and meal schedules are way out of whack.

I truly cannot wait for Friday, when I fly back home to Ohio. I will miss Atlanta, and the personal freedom I have had here, butI will be incredibly relieved and happy to step foot inside my family’s house. I will have nothing to do for a few days, before I start studying for the GRE, and it will be absolutely wonderful. I get to see my whole family together for the first time since March, so that will make it an all around wonderful time.

– Gavin

Stress vs. Simplicity

As is the case almost anytime the word stress makes it into my post’s title, I am very stressed at the moment. I have been working at a frantic pace to finish up presentations and posters for my summer research project, and I am just a mess right now.

Upon getting home much later than I would have liked to, I realized I was starving. It was very late though, and I did not think eating a large sandwich would be a good idea. So instead I had warm tortilla chips with peanut butter, and relished in the simplicity of it for a few minutes. After that, it was back to more stress.

– Gavin

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

My Problem Just Solved Itself

I will admit that yesterday’s post was a bit of a rant. I was incredibly frustrated at the time due to the fact that a change in plans at work had kept me there until after 8:00 pm. The change was a very abrupt demand, and I felt that I did not have enough time to fulfill it before my summer job was over.

As so many things often do, the problem sorted itself out today. The plan involved a research test that ended up requiring being too unsafe to perform in our lab due to the chemicals involved. This changed our plans to working with the members of another lab, resulting in far less time spent on tests, as well as fewer tests than either my original plan or the mandated plan that I was given yesterday. It was a win-win scenario, and it taught me to not get so mad at changes in the research plan.

– 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 Music Tuesday

I admittedly had a rough day today. I did not sleep incredibly well last night due to a headache. I got to work at 9 am, and I didn’t leave until 7 pm. None of my experiments went well, and I was battling research problems all day. None of these things ruined my day. What did ruin my day was the fact that it was a Tuesday, and there was absolutely no new music whatsoever.

Before going any further, I will admit that I probably will sound like a spoiled little child by the end of this post, but I will risk it anyway. Ever since I downloaded Spotify in January 2013, I have always looked forward to Tuesdays. Tuesdays brought with them the fabled “New Music Tuesday”, which in turn brought many new and unique albums and tracks by some of my favorite artists. Sometimes, there was nothing of consequence, but other days, I could hit the jackpot with a wonderful new album or two and spend hours soaking in brand new tunes. It was always nice to have a surprise in the middle of the week to look forward to, as I rarely looked ahead at future releases, and was never really ready for what could possibly be unleashed on any given Tuesday.

This week though, all my expectations were shattered in the worst way possible. As I always have done on Tuesdays, I first looked through all my starred artists to se if anything new had arrived. For the first time since last September, no artist had anything new whatsoever. This surprised me somewhat, but I was not completely shocked yet as many artists had recently released albums, and were thus unlikely to have new material anytime soon. I then looked at the new releases page, and saw last week’s releases. I was thoroughly confused by now, but assuming Spotify was just having technical difficulties, I went to look at the internet.

And then my worst fears (musically speaking) materialized. There was no “New Music Tuesday”, and there would never be another one, ever. I read that this was in an effort to stop music piracy, and to make it easier for international releases. But these people didn’t even seem to consider that their plan would ruin my day, not to mention millions of other people’s days as well. Congratulations music industry, you just managed to take away the only routine mid-week joy that I had left away, and of all days you had to move it to Friday? What sane person looks for new music on a Friday? Friday is when films release, people take weekend trips, and I sleep. I do not need new music to get me through the weekend, I need it to get me through the week. Now, thanks to your unfeeling desire to reel in as much money for yourselves as possible, I have no music for this week. I go to bed after a long hard day with no new tunes dancing through my head because you moved your day for new music from the American day to the international day. You didn’t even warn me. I am throughly put out at you.

I will admit that I am old-fashioned. I even buy all of the music I like enough to own on CDs. However, that is no excuse for you to move “New Music Tuesday” to Friday. If I ever self release any music, I am absolutely sure it will not be on a Friday because of this outrage.

– Gavin

Stress and Deadlines

Research can be quite frustrating at times. I am quite stressed out at the moment, as I have a progress update presentation on Wednesday. Not only is the presentation proving unusually difficult to put together what I have found already, but I am also struggling due to the fact that it needs to include a brief summary of what I intend to do in order to finish the project.

At this point, I am unsure what I can actually accomplish before my program ends in just over three weeks. The past few weeks have uncovered quite a few new variables that need to be accounted for, adding to the already lengthy list of tests that need to still be performed. There also have been several other people that have needed to use the equipment that my tests require, resulting in a reduced availability of testing time for me. All these things are pressuring me, telling me that I need to somehow find a way to begin wrapping up tests and consolidating information. The truth though, is that I really have no clue how I am supposed to do that.

And so the stress builds…

– Gavin

The Irony of It All

If you have been around a chemist or chemical engineer for long enough, you will probably hear the term “DI water” mentioned at least once. This term stands for distilled deionized water, which essentially means really, really pure water. It is used when working with chemicals as it will not contaminate solutions with minerals or other impurities.

Today, my lab ran out of DI water, and I was the lucky one selected to go get more. I had to walk to another building carrying an empty jug. It was raining when I went, and the irony of the situation hit me. I was walking through rain in order to get water.

This is the sort of thing which only happens when you work in a lab with chemicals: your water has to be “special”, even when there is water everywhere. It reminds me of a play on the old sailor’s story. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to use for my experiments.

– Gavin

The Atlanta Heat

There is a reason that people call Atlanta “Hotlanta”, it is incredibly hot all of the time. It has been in the mid-90’s all week, and it feels even hotter than that due to the humidity. Even at night, it is still in the high-70’s or low-80’s. It feels like I jumped from early spring into the hottest part of August, and it isn’t even the end of June yet. This heat could be nice if I was vacationing in it, but as I have to live in it day in and day out it is grueling.

To make matters worse, my research job mandates that I wear jeans in the lab, as I am working with chemicals. Near the beginning of the summer I tried walking to work a few times, but I have since given up, as I feel like I melt in the heat if I am outside for very long.

The heat has made me incredibly thankful for two things: rain and air-conditioning. Rain is the best thing ever in Atlanta, because it flushes the humidity out of the air and makes everything a tolerable temperature for an hour or two. In addition, if it were not for air-conditioning, I would suffer endlessly in the heat. I do know now that I could not live this far south, at least during summer.

– Gavin