I'm finding that, in grad school, if you don't take a moment to stop, breathe, look around, then the hours, days, weeks, are suddenly...gone.
My homework has been keeping me busy (crunching on NLP HW 2 right now), and I've been burying myself obsessively on research (details on i/o). And I've jumped back in the saddle, doing contract work for good old Evolution.
But that's not all that's gone. You'll recall how bike #1 was stolen while we were away this summer? Well, fortunately, I had old bike #2 to use as my means of transportation for new student life. Last Wednesday I rode over to ISI as usual, and locked my bike up in the parking lot downstairs. When I came out a few hours later, no bike. No chain. No sign whatsoever that a two-wheeled transportation implement had ever sat there.
I went through the usual deal reporting it (I had actual registered it with the state), but no one kidded me that I was going to see it again. The happy ending was that our neighbors Chris and Gwen suggested looking in the Recycler, and after a few hours of effort, I had new wheels, almost comparable (well, sort of), for 50 buckaroos. I almost can afford to have it stolen, too. Almost.
But this bike isn't get the lock-up-downstairs deal. No, it's staying upstairs in my office with me. My charity to thieves?
All gone.
As usual, when we got back from our trip, I hit the ground running. 36 hours later I found myself at my orientation day, trying to adjust to the idea of being a student again.
I was soon reminded: immense bureacracy and confusion. It was like a flashback to my college days, sans the grunge music. Happily, there's one difference: as a PhD student, my department treats me very well.
Anyway here's a taste of the fun: I needed to register for classes in order to get a student ID, computer accounts, health plan, etc. But every single class in Computer Science requires a special clearance from the department, even the seminar that I am required to take! I finally figured out how best to get the clearance, only to learn that, to take my other two classes simultaneously, I had to get special permission from both professors. While waiting for all this permission-giving, I went for option B: I registered for 1 unit of Soccer. And, boom! I was able to get all the goodies I needed. But, finally, at 5pm on Friday, the chips fell into place, and I registered for my actual classes. Woohoo!
The following week, school actually started, and I managed to contract the flu at the same time, a minor complication. But in all I can't complain. I have a pretty wussy schedule: a pass-fail seminar which requires only that I show up and listen to research presentations; an intro AI class which is moving soooooo slowly (amusingly, my advisor even suggested I not bother going to class, watching the lectures online--it's a distance education class); and finally the good class, the first semester of natural language processing, which looks to be the only source of challenges.
The rest of the time, I'll be at ISI for seminars and research work (I allegedly get my office on Monday), the latter also keeping me plenty busy.
Oh, did I mention? I never get in my car. Yep, I am walking in LA. Or rather biking and riding (no way!) public transportation. More on that next time.