Grad School: Week One

First off, where are you Tim, Toto, and Alfredo? Updates! Pronto! Stat! Schnell! (Do the French have a word for quickly? I'm thinking probably not. If they do its probably not a catchy one or two syllable one.)

Now it's time to update you on my first week at graduate school.

I'm taking three classes and being a lab T.A. My three classes are Quantum Mechanics, Electromagnetic Theory, and Mathematical Methods of Optics and Physics. So far it seems like my first semester will be covering material that I've already seen before, but trying to really get it down this time. I'll be T.A.ing for intro mechanics and E&M labs, which should be fun, but right now means that I have to do all of their ten labs in the next week, which is not so fun.

I'm in an office with two other first years (though there are supposed to be three others but apparently they have found somewhere else to do all their work). The other two students in my office are Shane, who graduated from Knox College in Iowa last year, and Jim who graduated from Hamilton (and also swam as an undergrad) but has been teaching high school near Boston for the last few years.

I found out that the motto here at U of R is Meliora which is Latin for "Always Better" or some other similar phrase with the word better in it. This is slightly less verbose than Carleton's motto (Declaratio Sermonum Tuorum Illuminat--"The Revelation of Your Words Illuminates"), but it's still a good one. The colors seem to be pretty much exactly the same as Carleton's, but the mascot is a yellowjacket (bee).

Grad school update

I start classes on Monday. But I registered today! Apparently for my first term I only have to take 2 classes. That was a complete shocker. There are 4 courses that are required of every student, and you take them all your first year. They are called the core courses. One of the classes is basically a solid state physics class, and they use the same textbook I used in my winter term Carleton solid state class. I bet I'll leave this one with a much deeper understanding though...

Anyway, I thought 2 classes was way less than I could handle. I also wasn't going to be a teacher's assistant (I was going to be grading), so I figured I could handle a 3rd course. 3 other first year grad students had the same idea, so after some orientation stuff we went to talk to a faculty member who was also the graduate program director. We decided to talk to him because we couldn't get a good answer from the current grad students. They all claimed that the 2 courses in the first semester were very hard, but some made it seem like you could take 3 courses. We asked the prof and the first thing he says is "why would you want to take 3 courses?!?!" I guess these 2 courses will take up a lot of my time. I also have to have a 3.5 gpa in the core courses...so I better do well!

During my 1st semester, I also have to find an advisor that I get along with who also does research I'm interested in. I suppose I'll be doing a lot of interviewing with them in the coming months.

One year from today I have to take my qualifying exam, which is what allows me to proceed toward my dissertation. At Maryland, it's not actually an exam that tests your encyclopedic knowledge. Rather, you choose an area that is outside what you will do your thesis on (or at least outside of the realm of your research group) and then a faculty committee gives you a question. From that point, you have 2 weeks of absolutely grueling work to come up with a research proposal and show how you would approach the question. After 2 weeks you have to turn in a 10 page paper and give a 30 minute presentation followed by a very scary questioning by the faculty. Most of the grad students claim that is the hardest part of the whole process...so I'll be glad to get that over with next year.

That's all I got for now. There are 9 other first year material science grad students. Almost all of us are physics majors, only 2 of them are girls, and only 1 is an international student. We'll see how the year goes!