PhD Memoirs #4

It’s been a while, I know, but I have assuredly been working on my thesis (with randomly distributed short/long phases of inactivity, of course). Just 2 days back I got all my analytical results matched with those obtained using 007’s method but only after again going through a phase of appreciable turmoil. Fortunately, my previous experience gave me a much better reason to not lose hope and to hold my ground in the battle! Consequently, I again experienced a nice sense of achievement after I got this positive outcome. I wish I could describe the full details here but I am feeling pretty tired right now. Moreover that would probably make this uninteresting for the readers which I suspect aren’t many as it is.

By the way, this morning I gave a presentation before my thesis committee members summarizing the work done during the current semester (which is about to end in about a week from now). And I have a bad habit (probably like many others) of not pulling my socks up well before the deadline so that the past week has been very hectic for me.. The presentation went fine, by the way. But now the road ahead resembles the long highway-type in a desert – one cannot spot the end-point while gazing as far as one can. I have certain ideas as to what things to focus on presently and I hope my intuition works in my favor.

Oh, I would like to mention that I have resumed my table tennis practice in the evenings and I think it has made a lot of difference as to the general mood I find myself in. Also, towards the end of my French course I became good friends with a classmate and my social life’s become much more dynamic (relatively speaking) since then. These two factors have probably contributed significantly towards the progress I have been able to make during the current semester. And so I wish to convey my gratitude to (1) my classmate, for making my stay much more exciting and interesting in ways I can’t describe well due to my little background in human psychology and (2) my dad, for encouraging me to play TT early on which turned out to be a very valuable asset and helped me have an enjoyable stay at IITK during my undergraduate, and now graduate, studies!

Oh, one more update – this semester I started reading science-fiction novels!! And I really enjoyed all those I have read till now:

‘The Invisible Man’ ; ‘The Island of Dr. Moreau’ ; ‘The Time Machine’ by H. G. Wells

‘Nightfall’ (short story) ; ‘The Gods Themselves’ by Isaac Asimov (this guy is just brilliant – came to know him from this article: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/04/07/isaac-asimov-bill-moyers-education-science-religion/)

And I plan to read many more during this summer! In fact, I have been thinking of writing a post exclusively on this but I thought of mentioning it here since I think this activity has also been helpful in keeping my mind fertile and my brain's neurons in a state of heightened entropy. 

Okay, more updates later.