On Wed June 11 2008 I passed my M.Sc. oral exam. Besides the minor revisions I have to make, this is the end of the road.
It’s getting hard to remember everything that happened, so this is a good time to take stock of the last three years…
- Fall 2005: I enter grad studies, happily coupled, overweight, cheerful and optimistic (naive). Told at an orientation, “these will be the best days of your life.” Discover that grad studies is actually a lot of work: consequently in November I become single and as heavy as I’ve ever been. In December I drag my ass into the gym only to discover I actually like weight training (esp. as a coping mechanism).
- Winter 2006: Select a supervisor, and start work on a conference paper (& learn about how hard it is to focus on a single topic for months on end). Paper is rejected but re-submitted and accepted for presentation at smaller workshop. Move out of the ‘rents. Become less fat and start “dieting” (tracking calories, eating protein, etc.). Take up judo with a friend (who I’ve got a crush on, though she’s engaged). I finish courses. I become president of the dept. student’s association (winning in an election to a superior candidate—this is not false modesty). Stop going to judo regularly.
- Spr/Sum 2006: Go to Boston to present workshop paper. For the first time in my life, I use a hotel’s exercise equipment. Listen to Porcupine Tree and read Oryx and Crake. Presentation goes well; extremely valuable experience. Upon return, given an opportunity to supervise a summer student. Totally botch it; fear I may have turned her off academia. An old friend (re-)introduces himself to me in the gym one day. I haven’t chatted to him for years. The next week, we go for a run together, and he’s become a best friend since. In some kind of retarded effort to escape school, I take up night shifts at the nearby Safeway wherein I stock shelves and listen to mp3s (e.g., Boards of Canada, Pendulum, and episodes of Off the Hook). Feeling the full trauma of being dumped in November, but insodoing maybe finally recovering. Revise workshop paper and re-submit to international conference—accepted, but wanting to get as far away from the project as possible.
- Fall 2006: Start on a brand new project, joining a newly formed research group. Experimenting with the data, passing trajectories through visualisation filters to find ‘decision points’, clustering n-formations. I am totally unfamiliar with core concepts in the field, notions of multivariate distance metrics, ways to deal with small sample sizes—this continues for a year when what I really needed to be doing was reading papers. Presidential duties are taxing; consider giving it up at one point but don’t. Learn I strongly dislike meetings. Visibly lose patience at meetings. Not really enjoying school or being ‘president.’ Low point. Travel to Victoria in October: hacky-sacked with buskers, ate sushi, lost my cellphone, saw Ladysmith Black Mambazo live.
- Winter 2007: Travel to Hawaii with family for Christmas. Exercise at the hotel. Wander often along the coast of Kaua’i. From Hawaii, continue to travel west, to India, for conference. Feeling very wordly at this point. India is a life-changing experience: I gain a sense of self-reliance, perspective, learn to say ‘no,’ and feel rejuvenated. I meet cool people at the conference. Still, more thrashing with the same old ideas when I get back.
- Spr/Sum 2007: Go to Ireland. Go to a conference in San Francisco: meet more cool people there. Look at some of the older attendees; wonder if that will be me. Research doesn’t go anywhere. Sat at the folk fest by myself, but loved it anyway. Maybe I’m destined to be single.
- Fall 2007: Doing the reading that I should’ve been doing a year ago: re-implementing existing clustering algorithms and becoming excited about research again. Have a very helpful meeting with supervisor wherein we (finally) set down some concrete concepts that I should focus on and write my thesis about. I start judo again. Some days I play a lot of Nethack (listening to a lot of Dungen), wasting a lot of time, but probably on the whole enjoying life more than I was a year ago. Begin hanging out more with a friend in the “Study Dungeon.” Coding and running experiments. Things, at this point, are starting to fall into place. The whole time, the ‘thesis’ is just around the corner; but little do I realize how far I have to go.
- Winter 2008: Travel to New Zealand for friends’ marriage. The entire trip is awesome, but a lot different from other trips I’ve taken, wherein I’ve largely had a lot of opportunities for solitude. This time I’m amongst people the whole time. Me and the supervisor set a date for me to be finished my thesis by. We arrange a date for the defense (thereby lighting a fire under my ass). I work every night all day until the deadline, realizing how much work a thesis actually is. Some nights I am walking home and discovering that I’m smiling. Other nights incredibly bleak. Some nights I watch multiple episodes of South Park online, then stay up til 6am working. Discover coffee. Fail to meet the deadline; we push the defense date back. This one I meet. Awoke once from a nightmare that what I was doing was absolutely pointless.
- Spr 2008: Defense is the best I could have hoped for: not anticlimactic, like I feared, and not a total drill, like I also feared.
And here I am, Summer 2008. Still loving judo, have taken up jiu jitsu and swing dance. A lethal combination to be sure. And I’ll be going to the folk fest this year, too (to see Jim White amongst others). I am lined up to do my Ph.D. with an excellent supervisor and a scholarship to boot… I’m at a decision point: should I do it all again?
