Busy times

The last two weeks of my life were spent taking midterms. These are definitely things that I will be glad to never have to take again; first, though, I must get through the next year and a half. To make the story even better, for my first midterm my alarm clock (read: cell phone) turned stopped overnight and so the alarm didn’t sound, and yes, I missed the midterm. Fortunately the teacher allowed me to make it up immediately when I got to campus that day, but then my calculator’s batteries died. The other two midterms weren’t so eventful, but I left them feeling about the same.

After that, though, I got to visit Los Angeles (now the furthest west I’ve been) for a conference and got to see my old coworkers while there. I greatly enjoyed the trip and getting to catch up with them. One of the best parts of my old job was the ability of my coworkers (and me with them) to have interesting discussions about topics that could only be called academic by someone who didn’t know what the word meant, and yet discuss these spurious things in the framework of scholars. We were able to have a few of these conversations again—mostly stuff like analyzing people’s behavior patterns and preferences, things that let us talk about what makes other people attractive and why we like different music and movies, etc.—as well as a few more directly relevant to our work.

On Monday I got to sit down with a professor here who is on the top of the game in the areas in which I have interest. We sat for an hour and talked about things I can be doing now (mostly passing classes and prelims), things I can start doing soon (areas for focus, working along with him), and decisions that, given I will stay in this field (as seems likely at the moment), I will have to make (what specific direction to take research). The meeting went very well and I left with a new group to enter, one focusing on my areas of interest.

Yesterday I went into Chicago to listen to the new chancellor of my old college talk. He answered several questions I had and it seems like he has a good vision for the future of the university. While there I got to meet more people with ties to my old college and it seems like I’m finally close to getting that critical mass of friends in the city necessary to have more of a social life (read: a social life).

So today I finally get to rest. No homework is due tomorrow, no events are this evening, no meetings or conferences are scheduled tonight. Who knows, I might even get some sleep tonight.