I’m at RIT right now, sitting at Java’s with a coffee drink and a chocolate croissant… feels like it always did. Driving into campus earlier, it really felt like I was going home. And then I thought… Of course it feels like home! I lived here for 6 years! It’s weird to walk around and have to remind myself I don’t live here anymore. Kind of sad actually. I miss this place a little. And then again, the last two years here caused me a lot of grief… so maybe I’m just a little nostalgic. Missing the idea of having been here, rather than the reality.

Mmmm, I definitely miss Java’s coffees and pastries though. Tasty!

Ceremonies were today. Pictures, as promised :

Classmate brought a bottle of Jameson to the pre-ceremony lineup. Yes, I’m drinking in a classroom. Such a rebel.

I decided to play with my graduate hood… turns out, it can actually work as a hood. In case it had rained, I was prepared :p

Tomorrow is my graduation ceremony. I will be officially an MBA. Now I have two degrees. Fun.

It doesn’t feel like school is over yet. I spent all day packing up most of my things. Going through the remains of my academic life was interesting. I found old papers, assignments, keys to a bunch of places on campus I can’t even remember, and even an old pair of safety glasses which I think were from my sophomore year as a physics major when I started a research position playing with chemicals and a high powered laser. My whole life has been on this campus and now I’m leaving. Basically, I’m leaving what I consider my home. I’m going to be moving a lot over the next couple of months. Hope I find somewhere to settle myself and my things soon (aka. find a job). It’s very nerve-racking.

Where will I be? Hmm…. well, I’ll be half living at my parents’ house in NYC, half living in Rochester with friends, taking a trip to see Brooks in San Francisco for about a week or so, dancing in DC, dancing in North Carolina, dancing in Philly, and doing interviews in Atlanta.

Yes, I’m nervous and scared about the overall uncertainty of the next few months,  but I’m also really excited. Maybe it’s good to not know what’s going to happen for a while. It’ll be a refreshing change, no matter how nervous I might seem about it.

Side note: I tried on my cap and gown today. Because I’m graduating with a master’s degree I get a hood too. It looks like I have a tail… a duck’s tail. Pictures to be posted soon.

I should not be sitting in class right now. Definitely not. More so, I should not have a class presentation today. This class only meets three times throughout the quarter. For our last meeting, we rescheduled the entire class because our professor didn’t want to come in on Thursday of finals week and he thought we wouldn’t want to stick around so late in the week either. It was a nice thought, but not when the end result is that we come in on a Sunday.

And if you’re going to make us come in on a Sunday, as the last day of class, to give a presentation on our research, please don’t lecture for two hours. This is absurd! We have no immediate need for the material anymore! I’m tired, cold (this room is freezing), very sleepy, and I have other projects to work on still. Can I please go home and crawl into bed?

I had a nice chat between TA classes this morning with an old professor of mine. Curiously enough, it was one of the professors I thought liked me least. We discussed the self-important bullshitness of some other majors (like my MBA) and how much more rewarding it was to suffer through physics even if the end result was failure, as compared to being able to do well in other fields and not needing to put much effort in. Struggling with the material felt like a valuable learning experience. Of course, that all depends on the type of person you are how you like to learn. Physicists, it would seem, are slightly masochistic.

He sympathized that the MBA program didn’t reach my expectations. And when I mentioned the rationalization that I understood I wasn’t cut out to be a physicist he surprised me by complementing the effort he saw I put in towards the end of my studies. He had always been the professor that more or less (I thought) was just waiting for me to fail out and switch majors. But he was really just trying to push me (I saw that my senior year). He mentioned that he was particularly proud of my performance on my senior core exam. I aced that thing. It was a nice chat.

April 21, 2008
6:30pm
I’m in my Competitive Strategy class right now. OMG, so bored. Seriously, this class and professor could put a rabid hyena to sleep. It’s only been half an hour, and I’m soooo soooo bored! I’m going to pass out in this chair now! Coffee. Chocolate chip mimi muffins, candy and cough drops just aren’t cutting it.

6:35pm
I’m so unfocused. I wanna go home.

7:10pm
I we just took a brief break. I’m somewhat more awake at the moment. Taking a look at my notes though, I see I really was passing out. My notes have become increasingly illegible… to the point I can’t even guess at what I was trying to write. My sentences are crossing multiple lines. And, what I can read, doesn’t make any sort of sense whatsoever… here’s a sample:

Integration Mechanisms:
- Do not contact w/ offering phone calls
- Liaison Rules – one person [illegible scribbling] their bebop

April 22, 2008
In Operations Management. We have a test today. However, my professor likes to lecture for about a half hour before exams. I don’t like this. I’m sitting here trying to store information and then his dull dull lecture makes me lose it. It would be helpful if he were more interesting. Tonight’s lecture topic is Project Management… a topic I took a class on last quarter – a topic I’m really interested in. He’s rattling on about standing in lines at the bank, the price of gas at the pump, and some other irrelevant stuff. I wish he’d structure his lectures. And dammit, I just want to take my test and get out of here.

Hah… i figured it out… sitting in this class… feels like…. I’m repeatedly getting hit on the head by a 2×4.

*beware – brain melt spewiness ahead*

School is insane. If I don’t take breaks from time to time I’ll be needing a small padded room….

hmmm……  a padded room could be tons of fun  :-p

bouncy.

I want to play with a trampoline. A trampoline would be fun.

Seriously contemplating going skydiving next month. I always wanted to.

Next time I’m home I think I’ll take a trapeeze class with Jenn. *sings* she flew through the air, with the greatest of ease…

shit… I should get back to doing work.

I found comic – it’s EXACTLY what I go through every time I have to run the Young’s double-slit experiment lab with my students…

I really should have started this little collection of student quotes sooner…

From a lab on ray tracing and lenses:

Q: For a convex lens, what is the image distance when the object is very far away (i.e., at infinity)?
A: “When object is far away, the image distance is equally as close.”

Q: For a convex lens, what is the image distance when the object is very far away (i.e., at infinity)?
A: “You hold the lens from the screen the same distance as the size of the lens. ex. 20cm lens = 20cm distance”

Q: Determine the image distance and its uncertainty.
A: “Golisano building”

Or at least, I could be. Yes kids, don’t let this happen to you. See what sleep deprivation and stretching yourself too thin can do? You get a crappy immune system that surrenders at the slightest cold virus that comes along and stressed out so much anxiety attacks come back  when you thought you’d gotten rid of them.  I’m TA-ing right now, and am quite medicated. The professor is lecturing currently so I have time to play on my laptop. It’s my second (and thankfully last) TA class of the day. I didn’t have time to have any sort of decent breakfast, not that I usually do, and I’m in class overlooking their work. I can barely walk in a straight line – anyone else would think I’m hung over or still drunk from a previous night. I can’t focus. I’m dizzy. And this professor just keeps piling on the work. I sit down for a moment to catch my bearings and he urges me on to do some useless task. He doesn’t know how to utilize me efficiently as a teaching assistant, and right now, I just don’t want to bother. I want to go home and sleep, but I can’t. After this, I have to do work for tonight’s class, then work for an assignment due tomorrow. I have 4 labs to grade over the weekend, papers to write, projects to work on, and hw to do. There isn’t enough time in the day. I need to rest up first, but I can’t afford the time it’ll take. These are the bleak and dreary parts of school… can’t wait to be done. Soon. It’s all I keep telling myself. Get through all this crap. Look for the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m just so worn out right now.