This past weekend, I read one of Matt Might’s recent posts, and, as it always happens, was immediately inspired to Seize the Day, Suck Out the Marrow of Life, and so on, but in the largely sedentary manner common to computer scientists. So, that very day, Michael and I spent all day making a lightweight photo management web app! Fun. Related: I finally got a reasonable computer to work on at home, a 17.3” Toshiba laptop that is almost literally twice the size and speed of my previous PC and barely fits into my backpack and oh golly do I love it.
Though I’ve really taken to this whole writing a blog post about my shenanigans every quarter of grad school thing, I’ve been pretty busy after the Fall quarter ended. First, I worked toward a research paper that I then submitted last Friday, so the fall term felt finished a whole week into the following quarter. And then actual busy-ness of the second quarter rolled around, so I’ve been putting off writing one of these.
So, anyway, Fall quarter. Lots of stuff!
- Science and the Public: took an incredible UW seminar about communicating science to the public, culminating in an upcoming talk at Town Hall Seattle in March, 2012 right after someone whose book I was halfway through reading when I found out about the scheduling, so wow. Also, I attended a really great talk about open science.
- Conferences: Grace Hopper Celebration, in Portland, (thank you, Google Anita Borg scholarship!) and UIST, in Santa Barbara.
- Outreach: went to a high school for CSEdWeek toward the end of the quarter
- Reading: read a bunch of books on my new Kindle Fire (yay! now I can carry my reading material!) and made serious progress on a novel I’m pretty excited about
Also, I took the Algorithms class and made great progress on my research (resulting in the aforementioned paper). To top it all off, my fabulous parents came up for a week during the break to visit Seattle-land for their first time! A tremendous time was had by all and I will be posting some resulting recommendations for Impressing People While Cold and Damp.
All these activities have been really challenging, especially the ones that involved talking in front of people. But it was also my most fun and productive quarter, so I’ve decided to go and challenge the crap out of myself this quarter by doing more talks, working on several research projects at once, and all the while taking the Programming Language class wherein I shall learn to wield the mighty OCaml, a language beloved, or at least really liked, by my ranting role model Steve Yegge.
Because I have now officially convinced myself that the way to feel happy and accomplished is to do at least one thing, every day, that scares you.
A few of my favorite parts are below (emphasis mine), but you can check out the full original Baz Luhrmann’s Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) lyrics.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.
Dance. Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.