Moods in December

Just the thinking of "December" brings happiness, excitement and peace to the lives of people, especially in States. The moment you ask Americans, they immerse in a deep well of joy whenever you discuss them about their December plans. The excitement of meeting friends, family members and what not! Loads of celebrations, shopping on a spree and eating exotic cuisines like anything.....

Today, I am sitting in starbucks, writing this down. I don't feel that usually crowded atmosphere around myself. People who came here, I believe, came just out of habit. I bought a muffin for my breakfast and it was $1.69. I gave him $2.19 and asked him to give $0.50 in return. He barista got confused and said "I am sorry, I didn't had coffee this morning". So I took my $0.19 back and let him give the change which usually he is accustomed to.

There is a window on my left side of my table which directly opens up on one of the major streets. I see a lot of students taking 28X (airport flyer route). Most of them are visiting their families, some on vacations after grueling semester that ended last week. Even people catching local buses are so excited as if they are going on a dream journey. All this makes me feel like I shouldn't be working at this time of year [:(]. I recently came to know that CMU has a really bad reputation of being one of the most stressful university in the nation (undergraduate studies). I was preparing for my exam with 3 other classmates in Hunt library last week and there was a student with CS major sitting next to our table preparing for his exam. We were there for almost 8 hours before we decided to go home and get some sleep. We went home at 4:00 in the morning and came back at 8:00 AM and saw that guy is still there maintaining his concentration. That's too much for an undergrad  I believe, I don't know how much more hours he put in before calling it done.

Also came to know that there is a fb page called "Overheard at CMU" which essentially consists of one-liners coming from the mouths of students. It's like, if I heard something cool, I can post it there. One of the ROFL lines that I came across - "I only give a certain number of fucks every week and I am running out of them". Isn't that awesome!!

Yesterday, I was roaming in market for around 6 hours....shopped loads of chocolates and other small stuff for home. Will start packing soon for my 2nd trip to India. happy holidays!

2nd Semester over – Summers ahead

Just finished with my 2nd semester. I don’t know yet, how well it went. One of the ways of assessment can be based on the GPA that I score, which is awaited as of now. I don’t expect much either. Alternatively, I can comment on my research progress and judge based on that.

Well, for me, research just kicked in. I have been assigned my potential phd project right away when I returned back from India in January. I am making good efforts to grasp all the things that have been discovered by my seniors regarding this project. I must say, it’s one of the difficult and almost a dreamer for a manufacturing guy, in this time, when people are going berserk to realize features size in nano-scale.

The end goal for this project (based on my understanding) will be able to machine (using milling processes primarily) parts with feature size as small as 1 micron, repeatably and on different kinds of available materials. Sounds good!? Just to give an idea of the efforts involved, it will take approx. work of 4 phd students to realize this dream (4*4=16 years of work) I am just hopeful to reduce it to 3 ppl (third one being me..:))

PS: No, I don’t have any plans to live phd life for more than 5 years (Just clarifying). I said I am hopeful!

Made few good friends, RP- was my buddy for this full semester. He just graduated, I wish he finds a job soon. TT – my lone female friend; she’s a nice company, we hung out more than a couple of times in Pittsburgh.

Commenting on future – summers ahead – most of the friends will go away – intern, home or job. So, expecting some lonely times ahead. Well, I have planned a weekend trip to NY to meet old pals Mital and Harshit.

Let’s see how everything goes!!

-SN

one night at gates-hillman center

I have been scolded, for my deeds over the past few weeks, seems very legit; served as an eye opener for me.

KPA, one of the phd students in my lab group, whose project I am taking over, came to me and tried to explain the fact that I have been treated nicely by my prof. till now. He speculates a very strong reason behind it; prof. seems very busy now a days and he strongly suggest not to assume his leniency as if it’s a chilled out time. Sooner or later it will come to you and you will then need to defend.

In retrospect, and keeping my future prospects in mind, I went home early. Not to sleep and rest but to eat dinner and come back to school to study. I chose gates-hillman center coffee shop to sit for my late night studies. It’s a nice place; quite, ambient and away from distractions. I saw a lot of desi’s studying here, I assume last minute fight is still very much in our blood. I started working.

Half past 12, a sweeper came to clean up the tables and arranging chairs around. He looked as if he is on a mission, no measurable reactions or feelings that I can see on this face. He pulls chairs in a hurry, cleans them and arranges in order. I kept studying. Then suddenly, lights on one of the corners of the coffee shop went off. Students sitting there looked around 360 degrees but couldn’t figure out what happened. They continued to work on their laptops. I guess the load on their shoulder doesn’t allow them to waste time in figuring these thing out. Not to forget I kept studying.

I completed my reading of paper before than expected (30 minutes before to be precise). As I started thinking,about how to spend this time. I clicked on my blog and started typing. And I am still typing. This sweeper guy came once again with a vacuum cleaner. I believe he is going to run this machine, the sound of which will echo in this big hall (now almost empty). To my respite my 30 minutes are coming to an end….publishing and logging it off……

My first semester of Phd studies (academic version)

Well, today marks the completion of my first semester of PhD studies. I am writing today to comment on what I felt during the past 4 months or so; how my research work is affected by my thoughts and what it takes to be successful.

Since this was my first semester, I was loaded with lots and lots of course work. And as I was shifting from primarily an Industrial Engineering background to hard core manufacturing specialist, I had to do a lot of course work. This certainly helps me when I am reading research papers in my area of research and also unlocks up an extra memory block in my mind to think over some of the critical issues that the manufacturing industry is facing today.

So, as I said I was loaded with course work - it was hard for me to find time to relax and enjoy. Each subject contained weekly assignments which I had to complete and that to in a strict non-cooperative environment (missed undergrad days here..:)). On top of it, each assignment involved some programming language to code stuff - one uses C++, other MATLAB and third one Mathematica!! Phew! At one point of time, I was beginning to confuse between the syntax used in different programming applications. I did ended in spending long nights understanding syntax, writing code and debugging it. And to resolve our misunderstanding / incapability to move forward in solving problems, we had TA hours. If you miss that for some reason or didn't started your assignment well before in time so that you can efficiently utilize this time, you are basically screwed up. That happened with me 4-5 times and I ended up spending far more time that I expected. So the moral of the story is to attack assignments as soon as you see them online. (:P)

Then there were times when it was almost impossible to proceed (whatever the reason be), in those times I used to take coffee breaks and may be talk with other students to find out how screwed he is in his set of assignments. That provided me much needed relief (how sadistic!) and little bit fresh mind to think over my problem again. So, that's pretty much how I fought with my course work during past semester.

Now, I will talk about something which everybody in grad school thinks twice before asking a grad student - "research". That's a strict protocol between grad students that no one will ask anything even remotely related to research; which tempts me to write this famous one-liner (researcher's version) - "whatever happen in lab remains in lab". It was a real hard time to satisfy professor with adequate research work along side courses which are ready to suck all your energy. I was taking up on a project where a recent phd graduate left. After it's description, at first I thought it's an easy one to work on where he did all the theoretical research work, developed set-up for conducting experiments and even procured work pieces to work upon. I was excited and so was my professor in assigning this project to me. Then after a while, as I progressed, complication also keeps on progressing. It forced me to change my mindset towards this project as it demanded some more respect from me. I told to myself - this is not going to be a cakewalk for sure, let me use the classical tool of "divide and rule". I broke the problem into parts and focused on each one with full respect and concentration (and taking to my lab mates alongside about my thinking). I was able to move forward and at the end I could realize the solution to the problem(s). I guess this is what we call research!

If I am able to maintain the right mindset and keep trying all the possible ways one by one, I am sure there exist at least one path which leads to eternity (after all solving a problem feels nothing less than eternity). So, that's describes pretty much how my semester went (academic version). Fun version coming soon! :)

New Life: few weeks down the line

Hi all,

Seems like I am settled and transitioning into Carnegie Mellon culture. Today afternoon, someone cracked a joke on life of grad students. It goes like this:

“you know you are a grad student if you start your assignment on the day it’s posted rather than the day it’s due!!” :P

And I hear a lot of jokes on phd’s: most of them (I guess all of them) reiterates about the “Patiently hoping for Degree” part…..:D — well that’s true!!

Let me write about what happened/changed in last 6 weeks or so:

- I became old (turned 24 recently!)

-Started to like “regular” coffee’s here, with 3-4 sachets of sugar! {yuk!! plane coffee sucks, extreme bitter in taste) (number of sachets should converge to zero as years’ pass by, expecting a slow rate though)

- Back to studying mode – feels good!

- Did many mistakes (in first 2 weeks) while solving simple operators like integration, multiplicaiton etc etc. (ab zyada muh mat khulwao..:P)

- Cooking: doesn’t deserve this down on list. Transformed into "the Chef"

- Intend to makes less jokes on people (I have absolutely no idea what happened to me!)

- Attended 100% classes (record till now)

- Chicks..lots of them (finally studying at an University rather than an Institute)

- Now, I don't get time even on weekends! so sad!


Also, I would like to focus on what haven’t changed (so far):

- Working hours at par with what I was experiencing at ZS (except that you can’t crib on your work!!)

- Lots of work, daily task plan, weekly meetings, conference calls and cisco vpn – all the same.

- salary (now in $$)

- Nokia e71….still there..:)

Going to sleep now….will write soon about studies, lab and research!