Damn that's pathetic.
11/18: I guess I was still in a bit of shock. I don't really remember what we did that day. Oh yeah, we went to roller derby that night and Jon and Casey were incessantly pestering me about what exactly went wrong during the prelim.
11/19: Hike up Finger Rock. We got lost off the trail and ended up having to squeeze between cacti to find the trail again. We probably ended up not even getting half way up. Still fun though, and good to get out and hike around. It was bloody hot that day too.
11/20: Talked to a few people at work about what happened with the prelim. Just kind of went through the motions.
11/21: Tiffany got the good news that she got the summer job in Alaska that she really wanted. Great news in fact and helped me feel a lot better.
11/22: Flew back home to San Jose and had lunch/dinner with my family and Tiffany's family together at Pasta Pomodoro. Tiff's family then went north to Sebastopol to spend Thanksgiving with their relatives.
11/23: Thanksgiving! It was great as usual with the relatives on my Dad's side coming over for turkey and stuff. We watched Cars that night too. Good movie that one.
11/24: Christmas tree hunting in the Santa Cruz mountains in the morning, then some studying in the afternoon. Tiff and her parents came down from Sebastopol to spend the night with Jayme before an early Saturday morning flight to Denver.
11/25: Hanging out with Jayme and Nelson and studying.
11/26: Watch the Niners lose to the Rams in the morning, then go on a misbegotten hike on a trail that never really existed in the first place in the mud and pouring rain. It was fun in spite of all that, however! And beautiful scenery too.
11/27: Study in the morning, then go and hang out with Jayme and Nelson at their apartment in the afternoon. Dominated Jayme (the supposed "expert") in Dr. Mario. No rematch necessary I think! ;P Flew back to Tucson and arrived at home around midnight.
11/28: More studying. Class. Grocery shopping.
11/29: More studying. Cooking. Attempted to thaw a 3 lb roast in the fridge for a few hours, but the damn thing was still frozen by dinner time so we'll have to do it tonight (Thursday night).
11/30: Good news about the revised version of my paper -- the referee had a much better opinion of it now. This makes sense, since we basically altered the entire paper to align with the referee's comments. I dropped off my car for maintenance this morning. Oil change, tire rotation, basic inspection.
No better way to start off than with the melodramatic, eh?
As you may have already heard, I did not pass the oral prelim today. Now that that's out of the way, time to get on to the important stuff. The real question, one that I have never seriously raised until now, is do I really want to do astronomy for the rest of my life? Up till now, it simply hasn't been an issue, because I've always basically ignored the things about it that I don't like in favor of things about it that I do like. For instance, I have always been keenly aware of the fact that I do not dread going in to work everyday, something that I think a fair number of people can't say. An alternative way of saying this is that I don't look forward to Fridays or weekends in the same way that a person who is unhappy with their job might.
That notion, combined with the fact that I just think astronomy is cool, has always been enough for me to blot out the things about it that I don't like. But that simply isn't the case anymore. I think my main concern at this point is what fraction of my life will it consume to be a successful astronomer. I'm simply unwilling to sacrifice too much of my life for work. But the evidence lately is that I'm not doing enough work to succeed. I haven't gotten any fellowships since I started applying for them a few years ago, the one paper I submitted recently received a very poor review, and now I've not-passed the oral prelim, an exam which *everyone* passes.
I used to think it'd be great to be a professor, and that I'd find some way to have time to do great research, spend time with my family, and have other activities in life. But I'm less sure about that than I ever have been. Not only that, but I'm also more sure than I ever have been that spending time with my family and having other activities in my life is very important to me. When I look at most of the faculty in our department, it's clear to me that they are stretched thin by their obligations, some to the point of breaking (the divorce rate in the department seems to be quite high). Is that really the kind of life I want to have for myself?
Now, you could say 'well, you don't have to be a professor, you could be a staff astronomer or something, somebody who wouldn't have as much responsibilities as a full professor'. That's true to a certain extent, but in that case you are a 'soft money' employee, in the sense that you are dependent on grant money to pay your salary. You'll end up spending much of your time writing grant proposals, since so few are given out that it's essentially a crapshoot who wins the money. This then means that you have to work extra time to get the same amount of research done. I also used to think, "well, if you aren't doing good enough work then you shouldn't be getting paid anyway." But the problem with that is you can be doing good work and not get rewarded for it, simply because you aren't doing enough good work. There's a post-doc in our department who I work with a lot, and he has this white board with all the projects he's involved in. There must be at least 20 projects listed on there. It's crazy! I work on one or two projects at a time and that's enough to keep my occupied.
So it sounds like the basic problem is there simply isn't enough money around for everybody to be happy. This drives a situation where only the hardest working people get the money, so to stay in the field you have to be one of the hardest working people. Is this really something I want to be involved in? I don't know.
I think, however, that I will be in a much better position to know soon, soon being within the next few years. I'm switching advisors to someone who is extremely different than my old one, in the sense that the new advisor will most likely push me harder than the old one, so if I find that I am encountering the same difficulties I am now, then that would suggest that astronomy may not be for me.
This isn't the sort of thing I ever really anticipated writing, but then I didn't anticipate failing an exam that nobody fails.
First, there is a stench in our kitchen that until last night we believed to be due to a dead animal lying behind the stove. This morning, however, we pulled the stove back and found nothing, except for an ugly looking mess of liquids and moldy shit on the floor between the stove and a little cabinet thing to its left. So we used this bleach solution to clean the stuff, but the smell doesn't seem to have gone away. It's hard to tell though, because now the dead animal smell is competing with the bleach smell. So, here I am at work, studying for the prelim while at the same time wishing that the smell magically goes away by the time I get back home.
Second, this is the first post title that begins with a V. It's actually harder than you think to start a title with V. It's only going to get harder from here, with X being the next letter.
It's been a rough week so far. I hope my practice prelim today with grads and post-docs goes well.
Well, before I start, let me just say that we had a fantastic party last night at our house. Unfortunately, Cal also just lost to Arizona in football, damn! So I'm a bit demoralized right now, but the main point really is that we had a great party last night. In fact, it was so great that it had to be broken up by the cops. People were dancing to music that happened to be playing really loudly, loud enough in fact for the neighbors to call the police and complain. Thankfully, the cop who showed up was reasonably nice about it. Also, the people who were at the party were very cool about going inside and closing the windows/doors so that it wasn't so loud. We also turned the music down, which probably helped a lot.
The party was the end-of-ultimate-league party that happens at the end of each season, so there were a lot of frisbee people. I gotta say that I'm really impressed with the frisbee people. They know how to have a good time without being assholes in the process, and I really think there's something to be said for that.
This party was also the first time I've ever tapped a keg. It turns out that tapping a keg is a rather easy thing to do, in case you're wondering. We also had beer pong at the party, which went really well. It could have been a disaster if somebody hadn't suggested putting a tarp over the table, because there was spilled beer all over the place. Fortunately, we were well-prepared. We still had to mop the floors today, but it didn't take too long.
At the end of the day: two thumbs down for Cal football but two enthusiastic thumbs way up for last night's party!
The democrats took the House (no surprise) and the Senate (big surprise) on Tuesday. And then yesterday Rumsfeld resigned! all we need now is for Bush and Cheney to follow suit, and then Nancy Pelosi will be our president! That would be awesome.
Tuesday night Tiff and I went over to Ben's house for an unusual Cigar and Bloody Mary Night, as the focus of the evening was on the elections, diverting the conversation from the typical tired and uncreative themes to the far more interesting election results. It was definitely an exciting night, as when we first arrived around 8:30 it looked like the Republicans were strong favorites to take the Senate, but by 10:30 the situation had reversed.
I don't know the Virginian candidates at all, but I did watch a debate between Conrad Burns and Jon Tester, and I have to say that Burns looked like the type of candidate that should be extinct! Tester, on the other hand, looked like a motivated and qualified politician, exactly the type of person that we need in Washington. Go Tester!
I haven't been doing a very good job lately with my blog. As I just posted last night about things that happened in the past, I thought I'd post about things that will happen in the future. Tomorrow there'll be another global climate change talk that we'll probably go to, then on Friday we're going to host the end-of-season party for league. There should be some good beer pong action that night. In almost two weeks I'll be taking my oral prelim exam and hopefully passing. This week I'll be working on my presentation, then I'll most likely give a practice prelim talk a week from today. Typically, students don't fail this exam so I'm not too worried about it. But I'm sure I'll be nervous as hell the closer it gets to November 17.
Tiff and I watched the procession of living people dressing up like dead people and parading through the streets of Tucson tonight. It was a blast, man. Some of the costumes/floats were really cool looking and there were just tons of people all over. We also saw a lot of anti-war signs recognizing not just the number of Americans dead as a result of Our Great Leader's bungled idiocy, but also the number of dead Iraqi civilians. The finale of the event included fire dancing, people attached to balloons jumping up and down like they were on the moon, and a gigantic crane first carrying a number of people upside down, then a huge bowl-like object that was lit on fire and exploded in a bright ball of flame three stories up in the air. It was really a cool event. We both decided to dress up next year and participate in it, not just watch it. It'll be even better doing it that way.
I have a bunch of pictures from our Halloween party and other stuff that I'd like to post online, but I'm hoping to use Picasa to do it and so far all it does is cause a system crash.