As of yesterday, I’ve finished my third semester in graduate school. At this point, however, the contrast between work in one semester and the next is starting to blur. Things are seemingly no more semester to semester but now are more blended together.
Since the due dates for my Masters project are so early, I’ve made an effort to get everything rolling on that. For what I am doing, there appears to be a lot of licensing issues that have to be worked out and it’s taking some time to get all the paperwork. Good thing I tried to start early, because the CS office admin told me that 50% of students don’t finish their project in time and have to get their degrees in the summer. Yuck.
But it might not matter. Here I was a month ago, really getting tired of the day to day school stuff, just waiting to get my degree and leave. And then, an opportunity struck that I will probably never get again. I was approached by one of my professors about a possible RA position if I wanted to stay for my PhD. I hadn’t even considered this before, since I never really considered myself to be “PhD material”. I do know that if I leave school, I won’t be going back. I met with the prof who would provide the RA position, who specializes in Wireless Sensor Networks. It’s a new, up and coming area of research for computer science and there are so many applications for it. I took a class that dealt with it last semester and I’ll be taking another in the spring. I think it would be a good research area for me and being a PhD student would allow me to focus on fleshing out some of the ideas I’ve had in class projects. It seems that there are a lot of things that would be good to work on more in depth, but classes and the end of the semester always get in the way. Having no classes and just doing research would allow me to do that.
Anyways, this would mean I could potentially be here for another three to four years. That’s ten years here in Williamsburg. Already, my freshman year of college seems so long ago and everything seems so much different now. I can’t imagine what I will think of it if I leave in another three or four years.
I was thinking that next semester would be really easy since I would only have to take one other class on top of my project to graduate, the wireless sensor networks class. Now, for the PhD, I need another class. Between three required classes and four electives 600 level or above, I have to get a 3.7 average. That is going to make things tough. Two classes I just finished will also count towards those seven classes and I’m hoping I did well in both of them. The two classes in the spring would also count towards those four electives and I will have to bust my butt to do well. Otherwise, I’ll have to take something in the fall and push back my PhD candidacy until I finish. Hopefully I can pull it off, because the only two other classes available next spring that I haven’t taken and also fulfill the PhD requirements seem pretty hard. One is a really programming heavy advanced compilers class which everyone I knew that took last year said took a lot of time and work. The other is a theory class that seems to mostly deal with NP-completeness with weekly written assignments. My math background isn’t that strong, but I’ve gotten through two similar algorithms classes. I’ll have to decide which will be better.
In the spring, I also want to try my hand at a marathon, so that should also make things interesting. At this point, though, my priorities are really going to shift. If the going gets tough, something is going to have to give, which probably means my training. Depending on my class schedule, I might not be able to make it to practice most days anyways, so running on my own will free up some time. I know most of my professors seemed concerned last year when I was still on the travel roster because they thought it would really screw with my performance. I managed to prove them wrong, but it seems that the PhD track is yet another level of intensity that I haven’t experienced yet.
This fall I didn’t really do any hard core training for anything. I did a road race at home over Thanksgiving that was more of a workout and I planned to do an indoor 3k last weekend, but I was worried about my achilles so I didn’t go. That’s one good thing about not being on the team — I can decide when I’m at the breaking point and back off. I would rather not race and still be able to run than vice versa. In terms of training this fall, I did some workouts on my own and attempted to do a couple with the team but got completely owned. I’m not in the shape I used to be in, but maybe with a plan I can make some progress. For the marathon, I’ve got to gain weight so I can have more energy to expend over long distances. Apparently the big thing with the marathon is getting your body used to drinking and eating stuff midway through the race so you don’t crash. The dining hall food has really sucked which is part of the problem for me right now. It’s been affecting my every day runs since I can tell I don’t have the same energy. Standing in line for 10 minutes for 3 strands of watery spaghetti just doesn’t cut it. If I don’t deal with this now, I’ll just get injured like I did in the summer.
This whole thing is going to be a big adventure for me. I have nothing to lose, except if something weird happens and I don’t finish my project, decide not to stay for the PhD, and wind up graduating in the summer. I guess in the long run that doesn’t matter too much.
Over break, I’ll have to get going on my M.S. project as well as continue work for NASA Ames. Ames has a list of stuff for my visualization plug in that they want finished. It seems every time I fire it up there are more bugs. Hopefully I can clean it up and get done what they want while still having time for my school project. I don’t want to burn out before the spring semester starts, either. The best thing is that I can do all of this from home on my own time. I don’t have to go to an office from 9 to 5 when I worked during the winter before. It sucked running in the dark, driving home in the dark, and not seeing daylight except when I drove to work in the morning.
For the most part, the weather has been great this fall. I remember freezing my butt off walking back from class at this point in the year. It makes things more enjoyable when the climate is more temperate. Also, my winter coat has a broken zipper.
Hopefully I’ll be out of here within an hour or two so the traffic won’t be too bad on the way home. I’ve got another meeting to attend two and then I’ll really be finished.
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