TASI

I found out yesterday that I was admitted to the TASI 2007 summer school in Boulder, Colorado. That was quite a pleasant surprised, I was not expecting to be admitted as there were a lot of MIT applicants. I'm excited, the topic this year is "string universe" (it is interesting I was admitted, as I know little to no string theory). The lecturers and topics can be found here . I am most excited about (the) Intriligator's lecture on SUSY breaking, and about David Tong's lectures on solitons and low dimesional gauge theories. MIT locals Barton Zwiebach and Hong Liu will also be speaking and they are always crowd pleasers (and the are 2/3 of my exam committee, so let's hope they read this complement).

Old Sick Lady

Dear Old Sick Lady,

Please leave the library. Why must you continue to cough absurdly loudly while I try to learn about pions? Why is it that you sound like you are possibly about to die, like your bronchial tubes are so full of phelgm that you have trouble sucking in air? See a doctor old sick lady. Also please leave. I am pretty sure you are going to give me a staph infection, whatever that is. Also, why must you systematically use every computer in the library, covering each with the germs that you almost certainly are spewing every time you open that foul mouth of yours to radiate your cough of death?

I am looking at you now as I type this. Don't you have places to be sick lady? How can you spend your entire day on various library computers. Don't you have young, healthy children or possibly grandchildren that can shower you with love, instead of you showering me with bacteria? Perhaps they died of a staph infection.

Open House

Well, the open house is over (finished on friday), and I took the weekend to recover and sleep (and of course, not to study). All in all, despite an unplanned blizzard, I think it went pretty well. The events started wednesday night at the Asgard with drinks and dinner with the prospectives. Not too many prospectives showed up, but more than enough currents did, I think giving the impression that we are a social bunch.

Thursday I gave a short welcome spiel which I think went alright. Then I tried to get some work done with the remainder of the day.

Friday a few of us gave a grad student info session. My presentation there went very well, though I am told that when I talk my face turns all red (this also happens when I drink, when it's cold, when I exercise, and most tuesdays). Also, the fly on my pants kept coming down, I hope that wasn't noticed. After that was the grad student poster session, then dinner at the local pool hall, flat top johnny's. Most prospectives turned up for a few beers, some conversation and pool, and, despite the blizzard most ventured out towards the grad student house party planned afterwards for them (what else were they going to do at 7:30 pm?). The party went expertly; tons showed up and many had a good play on my nintendo wii. There were even a few girls at the party.

Speaking of which there were two (dare I say cute?) prospective women for the CTP. Man, I hope they come. Our current total at the CTP will soon be two. I talked to one for a while. She had some reservations about coming to MIT such as "It seems like there are no girls here, while there are lots at Harvard." I couldn't really argue with that except to say that 1. That's why we need you, and 2. err, harvard sucks.

Crazy

I'm about to explode. The physics open house starts tomorrow, there is also a cookie hour that needs to be executed, plus possibly work that needs to get done (I spent all day uselessly (and not succesfully) tracking down minus signs and symmetry factors). PGSC also has an invited colloquim speaker, Bill Bialek, which would be cool were it not to fall next week, right in the midst of everything else. Evidently I'm meant to organize meetings between him and professors he wants to chat with. I just got his list of people he wants to meet and its huge! He also said he'd like to be surprised. I should set him up with one of the CTP crackpots.

I'd like to say that there are more interesting things going on, but that would be untrue. Until tomorrow...

Exam Time Set

We got our exam dates today and mine is the seemingly far away April 27th, six weeks from this friday. It seems like a lot of time, but if I plan on getting even epsilon research done and learning the entire standard model in that time, it'll fly by. Unfortunately my time slot coincides with the CTP lunch club so the venue has been changed from the seminar room to one of the examiners offices. Strangely, I have the notion that this change of venue could hurt me. I somehow think that the closer, more claustraphobic quarters is more conducive to the examiners ripping me apart.

Also, I was hoping to really get the studying off the ground this week, but it's also the graduate open house for prospective students from weds-friday and the PGSC (of which I am the president) is planning lots of the events. This means I will probably get little to no work done (negative effect, I spent all day today begging people to make posters) and that free food will abound (positive effect). I'm going to go take a walk now; it's nice out.

Gonna Fly Now

Well, it's begun. I've started to go semi-hardcore studying at night. I also find myself whistling parts of the Rocky soundtrack throughout the day. Though I am getting mentally pumped, not as much studying is going on as I'd like. I have bought extremely large index cards along with an extremely large box to hold these index cards. I plan on putting many a mathematical formula on these and drilling myself, but so far I've made two cards and not done any drilling.

We also recieved our part III topics today (for the uninformed the structure of the exam is that you give a mini-presentation about a predesignated topic to three brilliant and intimidating professors, and the remainder of the time is taken up by them asking you pretty much anything they want and you trying not to break out weeping). My question to talk about is: "In the standard model CP violation is encoded in the CKM matrix. What are the experimentally observed examples of CP violation? How are the experimental observations related to the theoretical parameterization?" It's nice because its a topic about which there is tons of literarture. On the flip side, this also means they could have hundreds of questions which I wouldn't have covered while studying. One thing I do know is my presentation with definitely include the mighty unitarity triangle! I've been punished during many a colloquia by having to see this ubiquitous 3 sided polygon and now others will feel my pain.

On another note, I've begun hanging out in the library. I've decided that the bathroom in the basement is pretty much the scariest place ever. There's no lighting, it's constantly dirty and everything is colored this odd seventies pastel. Also, its got lewd graffiti all over the walls of the stalls which leads one to question exactly what kind of MIT student still thinks its funny to draw, in magic marker, a large anthropmorphic penis with a smiley face.

Let the Part III studying begin

I guess it's been a while since I last posted because when I just tried to sign on I was informed that I had to switch my account to something called "new blogger". Appearently all "new blogger" means is that google bought blogger. Anyway, tonight will be the first night that I study for part III (a very large oral qualifying examination that's coming up in about a month and a half), so I figured it'd be a good time to start blogging. From here on in, I resolve that I will post each day until Part III. It'll give me a welcome distraction from all of this. ugh (and I haven't even started yet). Let it begin.