A Day in the Life of a Grad Student

I have a 4 day weekend every week. I go to school 3 days a week, and have the rest of the week "off". Before the semester started, Jason said "Oh good, so you won't be so stressed this semester". Bahahaha!

There is no "off". I don't know what that means. I don't know what happened between last night and this morning, but I think my body is trying to force me into an "off". I just need to figure out how to get hot dogs and mac & cheese delivered.

In my Advanced Atmospheric Dynamics class, we all joke about the many different ways we could plot our stress levels throughout the week. This last week, mine hit an all time high. I was severely anxious, agitated, tired, and just wrung out. Usually after making it through Tuesday night, there's a sense of relief. But this week I had a midterm in Unix/Linux, and a SuperQuiz in Dynamics, plus a paper presentation in Dynamics (and the homework I turned in was 15 pages long), a double up on Remote Sensing yesterday (because the instructor will be missing classes), and then came home to take my midterm, did the lab for Remote Sensing, and got halfway through a problem in Dynamics. By the time I went to bed, I felt an odd calming sensation. I would get up early in the morning, go for a run, and then meet some people from Dynamics at school to work on derivations of complicated wave equations.

I had a cup of coffee at 5:30 am. Jason texted me to say good morning at 6 am. Then I fell asleep. I woke up again at 7:45 am and had coffee number 2. I had a bowl of oatmeal. I thought about running. I had coffee number 3. I curled back in bed and closed my eyes. I thought about Dynamics. I thought about the 17 papers sitting on my thumb drive that I need to read. I thought about how one of those was one my advisor suggested I read 4 weeks ago, and another was one he suggested I read 2 weeks ago.

I played around on Pinterest, looking up funny memes on being a graduate student. I saw a picture of those little breakfast sausages wrapped in little crescent rolls ("pigs in a blanket") and thought how I should own some of those little sausages. But I would have to get out of my pj's and go to the store.

I thought maybe if I put my contacts in, I'd be inspired to accomplish something today (remember, there are no days off- although I did decide that running was not going to happen today, as I have no clean running shorts and it's too hot to run in yoga pants).

I put my contacts in and opened up my thumb drive. I decided to start with the paper my advisor assigned (when an advisor "suggests" something, it's actually a requirement). I started reading.

"This study has employed both observational data and numerical simulation results to diagnose the synoptic-scale and mesoscale environments conducive to forest fires during the October 2003 extreme fire event in southern California. A three-stage process is proposed to illustrate the coupling of the synoptic-scale
forcing that is evident from the observations, specifically the high pressure ridge and the upper-level jet streak, which leads to meso-a-scale subsidence in its exit region, and the mesoscale forcing that is simulated by the numerical model, specifically the wave breaking and turbulence as well as the wave-induced critical level, which leads to severe downslope (Santa Ana) winds." (Huang et al 2009)

Oh. My. God.

Well.

So now I'm blogging. Because that is just a little too much for my brain right now. And none of the 16 other papers are any easier to read, so moving on to something else is not exactly an option. The only thing that might get me moving is that right now, the manager is running her leaf blower, which she will do for hours, and I really can't handle the noise. Although I could just completely close up my apartment and it would quiet it significantly. Hmm. I think I will do just that.

There. That's a little better. At some point I will probably shower or take a bath as I didn't have time to do that yesterday. Even after going to the gym. Because there was that extra "make-up" Remote Sensing class in there.

I almost feel bad because I was the one who suggested the meeting of the derivations club. I feel like if it weren't so incredibly important that we get those equations figured out, it might actually be sort of enjoyable to sit in front of a white board with 4 other graduate students and scribble out equations that are mostly in Greek and make odd connections between them. Sometimes I imagine myself as one of those crazy physicists or mathematicians as they're making great discoveries staring at huge boards covered in complicated equations.

But then again, I'm not making any discoveries and neither am I fully grasping the meaning behind the equations we're working through. This was one of those days:

It took 7 hours to derive that equation. Seven. For real. Without a break. One equation. Not only have I discovered that I can sit at a computer and stare at computer code for 8 hours at a time, I can also sit in front of a white board and derive wave equations for 7 hours at a time (as long as I have food).

It's a quarter past 10 am and I am still in my pajamas. I will eat something (I'm not sure what) and maybe (or maybe not) take a shower, and see where I get from there.