grad school

one of the objectives of this blog is to document my progress toward my ultimate goal of becoming a scientist.  in that vein, i’ve had several breakthroughs recently:

1.  i have compiled a list of schools and they are the following:  university of iowa, university of wisconsin-madison, university of california-davis, duke, rochester, and maybe purdue.  i picked many of these schools because i know people who have attended them.

2.  i have signed up to retake the GRE physics subject test twice this fall, and i’ve had a lot of success studying for it.  i reworked a lot of homework problems and reread some of my text books and it makes more sense to me the second time around.  i’m confident i’ll do well on the test and in my coursework as a graduate student.

3.  i have had small victories in making personal contacts with people at these schools who have been very supportive and enthusiastic about my application.  this has generally boosted my confidence and relieved my anxiety over attending a school and getting an advisor that don’t suit me well.

4.  marty said he will follow me wherever i go, and i will be very greatful to have him with me.

i’m glad i took this much-needed time off from school, and i’ll be a better student as a result of it.  i just hope the admissions committees agree because i am so excited to be going back to school.

tandem cycling

we test rode a tandem bicycle last week!  marty and i went to bikesmith’s, decked out in cycling clothes, to ride the tandem they had in stock.  we walked the bike to an open street and got on.  i have no idea how we did not fall off in the first 5 minutes.  the bike was very shaky and we had no idea how to balance it.  we rode in a neighborhood with lots of stop signs, so  we had to practice stopping and starting a lot, which can also be scary.

after about 40 minutes of riding, i was much more comfortable.   as captain, marty said it felt like riding a bike with 100 lbs on the rear tire, so the handling was very tricky.  the bike was also too big for him, so we think that was a problem.  being the stoker, i could not see in front of the bicycle, and i had no control over steering or braking which is a really strange feeling.  i’ll have to retrain myself to only worry about pedaling, and i started to get used to this during our short ride.  at one point marty told me to stop pedaling so he could try to pedal by himself.  this proved to be very difficult, and i think he was surprised at how much of the work i had been doing!

anyway, we are really excited about getting a tandem.  the greatest advantage is that we won’t get separated on bicycle rides.   additionally, tandem cycling will give us another activity that we can enjoy together.