The sun has finally showed up today, which is nice. I haven’t seen much of the Chicago area in the past few weeks (school and neighborhood). I’m going to miss it. I’m a sentimental fool at times, but I did like living here. I did make some friends. I think, unfortunately, to continue the theme [...]

I have been looking at what search terms bring people here. One of the searches is “don’t like my dance studio.” I’m not sure what the person who was searching for it hopes to find, but I suspect maybe advice on what to do. My first question is why s/he doesn’t like the dance studio. [...]

Evidently, according to some study, we’re not doing too well. I agree that paying math and science teachers more isn’t the answer. How does that help, if they’re not doing a good job? Obviously, teachers should be paid well. A friend made a video that has good ideas on how to improve education. I don’t [...]

I haven’t gotten to see very much lately of the city, besides my school and where I live, but I started realizing today that I did grow to enjoy living here. Chicago isn’t perfect, to say the least, but it has been home for the past 2 years. After being rather transient (since I was [...]

My thesis defense was yesterday. It went okay. I was disappointed by the lack of crowd (one adjunct admitted he went to the beach). The presentation was not flawless. I use Keynote, which is the Mac version of Powerpoint; I prefer it, though I have Powerpoint. The day before, when I rehearsed, Keynote had an [...]

Tomorrow is my defense. My advisor, the kid who defends Wednesday, and I did a dry run, along with two others. Remarkably, my dry run was painless. I have to make some corrections tonight, but beyond that- it went well for my first, last, and only dry run. I have to admit I was nervous- [...]

So my thesis has gone to committee. Scary, huh? I spent yesterday scrambling to get myself together; Mathematica crashed on me 5 times. While that sounds unfortunate but not too bad, Mathematica chose to crash when I finished loading all 6 sets of data. Those six sets take about an hour to load. I’m right [...]

Yesterday I received my first ever job rejection letter in the mail. I’ve been rejected by jobs, but never have I received a real rejection letter. I’m extremely impressed, and I’m not being sarcastic. My experience with job searching is if I’m lucky enough to land an interview, I usually hear a rejection via email, [...]

Writing, that’s where. Since my advisor has returned from vacation, I’ve been furiously writing and editing my thesis. Chapter 4 is a little better now, but it’s one of those things I’m still struggling with.  One part of the experiment has a ton of data and to sift through it and interpret is a little [...]

A few days ago, I applied for a tutoring job on Craig’s List. I received a reply back. The person had a daughter coming to the US and wanted a physics tutor for the three months she’s here. He would send a check to me and I was to take my share of the money [...]