Well, it's been almost a week since term started, and I am pretty well pleased with it so far. I've got an interesting slate of classes; my lab work is going well if slowly; I'm being social and getting to know people better; I've moved rooms and my stuff is organized (for the first time since June, I think).

I'm keeping more or less happy, somehow. I think this is because I'm keeping busy -- because I have work that doesn't make it a drag to keep busy. We'll see if this lasts. After all, I haven't had any psets or tests yet. But sometimes I can feel myself starting to get depressed, and I'm becoming better and better to force myself to realize that I am not a failure at everything ever just because I made some silly mistake. Also, crucially, I'm forcing myself to realize that, just because I feel lousy or upset sometimes, doesn't mean I'm back at square one w/r/t emotional improvement. After all, it is perfectly OK to feel lousy when one is tired and hungry and a little frustrated.

"'And this, too, shall pass away.' It was an old platitude, even then."

I'm not going to say much about how my term is going productivity- and emotions-wise, because I don't want to jinx it. Just gonna talk about classes.

* 20.310 Molecular, Cellular, and Tissue Biomechanics -- basically, the physics of relatively small biological things. Lots of overlap with mechanical engineering. Required bioengineering core class.

* 20.330 Fields, Forces, and Flows in Biological Systems -- the fluid-flow and electromagnetics version of the above. Again, lots of overlap with mechanical engineering. Required bioengineering core class.

* 20.385 Advanced Topics in Synthetic Biology -- shiny shiny shiny shiny! Journal club every week, more or less. It's going to be kickass. Plus, we get to mentor frosh who are discovering synthbio. Aww. Memories of being in their position.

* Concert Choir -- it's choir. It's shiny. We're doing Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem, something that Peter Child (awesome prof of awesome) wrote for us, and... I think one other awesome thing.

My original plan was to limit it to these four, in order to repair my sanity and spend more time on my UROP. But I was seduced by the siren song of all the electives I want to take and may not have an opportunity to take next semester, plus other shinies. These are all on a provisional basis and I will drop them like hot rocks if my sanity starts to slip:

* 7.36 Foundations of Computational and Systems Biology -- seems useful and cool, although probably a lot of work.

* 7.25 Biological Regulatory Mechanisms -- sounds shiny and important for synthetic biology, but unfortunately conflicts with 7.36, so I have to skip lectures to even decide which one I want. I haven't attended this one yet. (Even if it didn't conflict, I wouldn't take both for credit. That way lies madness.)

* 7.something Awesome Little 6-Unit Pass-Fail Seminar on RNAi -- because it's there, and because I know not a darn thing about RNAi, and because I need to get better at reading primary literature.

* 21M.350 Musical Analysis -- I wouldn't take this for credit anyway, even if it didn't conflict with the RNAi seminar, but it sounds awfully interesting. I would love to be able to analyze (and maybe imitate) my favorite composers (madrigals, Vaughan Willams, Durufle, etc). Fortunately, it's small and friendly and informal, so I might "come hang out / audit" one day a week.

* I'm also being a tutor for 20.111, biology-flavored thermodynamics. This takes a couple hours a week.

I have this urge, which strikes me as extremely selfish or self-centered, to become really good at some kind of awesome performing art and play in front of crowds and get applause and encores. I've never really tried to get into any, though, except singing sort of, and I can't afford voice lessons or sing well enough without them to avoid embarrassment.

I was watching some videos of Harvard's wushu club, which three of my friends are in, performing shiny choreographed dance-fight scenes. It was badass and awesome and I wanted it... but I also want a martial art to be actually useful in fighting actual people, and I kind of agreed with one friend who said she had changed martial arts partly for this reason.

I'm not even sure I want to get up in front of crowds and perform and get applause and whatnot. I hate being the center of attention. So what's my deal? What am I really wanting here?

The field of inspirationology is full of quotes about how nothing is really impossible, you should ignore everyone who says something is impossible, strive for the impossible stuff because possible is boring, and so on, blah blah, woof woof. But then iampied goes and writes something like this:

When I was looking at the end of January from the new year, I did not think I would get this far. It would be oh-so-good for me, of course, something I should do. But it was impossible. "Impossible."

Maybe it's OK for me to feel like it's impossible to really love research, to get any results, to kill anhedonia and bitterness. To make it through another semester. "Impossible" to make it through another semester. Hell, I've done it five times. Why should this one be the impossible one?

I get all nervous when I try to imagine writing a PhD thesis or a grant proposal, or teaching an undergrad class, or deciding on a broad research direction for an entire lab. But I don't have to feel like I can do those things already; I've got years and years to figure it out.

Anhedonia, derealization, depersonalization, perfectionism, cognitive distortions, fear, uncertainty, and doubt: "And these, too, shall pass away."

Maybe my last two weeks were really nothing but new-UROP euphoria. Maybe I'm just tired and hungry. Maybe I've changed my reaction to $bad_situation to be "feeling numb and utterly unenthusiastic" instead of "feeling actively miserable", although if this is the case then I expect the worst to blow over within a week, tops.

Anhedonia, or perfect neutrality? It's not an upsetting or painful state, except when I think about all the shit I've got to do that I now care even less about doing.

I think, after I pour this stack of plates, I might force myself to read a synthbio paper. It's not on my to do list, but it might help a little? Bring back the shiny? If not, there's also a neat-sounding seminar tomorrow morning... hell, there's always something, around here.

I seem to be a lot more open about my emotions (in particular, my bad emotions) than most other people I know. I'm wondering if this is, in fact, healthy. I haven't taken any data but I could believe there's a negative correlation between how much you write about your angst and how well-adjusted you are, although of course that doesn't say anything about causation. But I could believe that a healthy dose of stoicism, um, "builds character"? Discipline and bottom-up feedback and all that; "act the way you want to feel".

This is not to say that there aren't bad reasons to bottle stuff up, or that it can't be beneficial to talk about things. In particular, I am a big fan of explicitly addressing interpersonal tensions rather than trying to deal with them internally. (Knowing the reasoning behind someone else's behaviors goes a long way towards finding them less annoying.) Also, holding stuff in for the sake of not causing someone else pain can be totally counterproductive if you have decent reason to suppose they're feeling that pain anyway.

But there is a point at which feeling out loud becomes a spectacle of flagellation, and tragedy becomes showmanship.

Raffi: One way in which I think we're different is that you aim for really thorough mastery of something.

Me: ...rather than being a jack of all trades?

Raffi: Yeah, one of the things I really like about med school is that it's forcing me to dig in deep and actually achieve mastery of something. So I can continue dabbling later.

:D

I do find myself drawn to this sort of mastery. One of the things I most enjoyed about Going Postal was the description of clacks operators as craftsmen -- as learning their skill so well that it becomes part of their anatomy, as having basically their own dialect, as learning to read clacks/semaphore messages solely by the sound of the shutters flapping, as children picking up the craft by osmosis, as remembering dead clacks operators by sending their names up and down the line continuously. I'd like to be a craftsman. Perhaps this is part of what drew me to chainmaille and conlanging.

So can biology / bioengineering be a craft? I hope so... but if there's craftsmanship to be found here, it probably isn't in the mechanics of techniques. The whole point of science is to perform reproducible experiments, which means eliminating the human variation. (I have been enjoying stuff like getting really good at pouring plates, but there's only so much mastery to be found there.) I suppose this is the sort of field where Real Mastery only comes when you're forty or so.

...Then again, Real Mastery in the sciences (and in sciency engineering fields) seems to require the kind of jackdom-of-all-trades that allows one to think across disciplines with ease. Or perhaps I just see a lot of that because I associate with professors who are (1) interdisciplinary by trade and (2) tenured enough to indulge their neophilia.)

I like the idea of the Wanderer, but I don't have to be one professionally. I can be a Journeyman instead.

I've had a lovely setting of Crossing the Bar stuck in my head for the past 24 hours, and I don't mind at all except that I can't sing it (because I'm at work, because my range isn't appropriate for the melody, and because I am not capable of singing in 4+ parts). It's straining to burst out of me.

This is the numen, the inspiration, that I learned to love in high school. I hadn't forgotten that it existed, going a year and a half without being in a choir, but I had forgotten how intense it could get. It's tremendous, and a little frightening, and very distracting. I have a hard time making the science come out when the music wants to come out instead.

(I wish voice lessons were not so expensive. I can never do anything justice unless I hide behind a fifty-person choir.)

It turns out burning things does not always make them go away.

(I am happy in general. It's just this one thing that is really bothering me, though I suppose it's nice to be upset because of an Actual Upsetting Thing and not because of my own destructive thought patterns.)

So apparently TK really likes me. He said up front that he would be happy to write me recommendation letters without my even mentioning my plans to spend the month atoning for what I didn't do last semester. And when I finally got around to saying that I wanted to continue working for him, he was like, "Awesome!".

I do not understand why. Maybe I just have a totally uncalibrated sense of what UROPs should be expected to do. Or maybe TK does.

The most important conversations are the ones I can't find by searching through my email archives.

I am no longer allowed to quit my anti-RSI software. I have to leave it running. (It's already configured to launch at login, but I tend to get annoyed at it when I'm chatting or playing a game -- no more. A 30-second pause never hurt anything.)

I don't have RSI problems exactly, but I do have eyestrain problems. I'm using AntiRSI right now, and it's not exactly optimized for eyestrain prevention -- I can read to my heart's content as long as I don't press keys or move the mouse beyond a crawl. Anyone have a better suggestion? (Mac OSX 10.4)

"I remember what it was like to want to do things."

Discuss.

Focus on class in which I failed an exam

Do not even *think* of worrying about optional revise-your-paper-for-an-improved-grade opportunity, in other class in which I am doing fine, which is due on the same day.

Studying. Damn it.

I need to have some actual self-discipline and control. I totally used to have some, back in middle school or thereabouts (where by "some" I mean an age-appropriate amount, not as much as a 20-year-old needs). What happened to it?

For the Nth time I'm tempted to run off to a Zen monastery. I mean, I like things like chocolate and being able to sleep in on the weekends, but I could live without them. And the regimentation would probably do me a lot of good. (I could probably get something similar by going into the armed forces, but that doesn't appeal to me because I don't particularly want to shoot people.)

I think the problem would be that joining a monastery is supposed to be a lifetime commitment. This is quite apart from the problem of most Zen monasteries being in Japan. I'm pretty sure there's some vaguely monastery-like place in the Bay Area, where we went on a field trip in middle school, where you can be a member but still live in the Real World and nobody expects you to live there forever... I should inquire.

Assuming an appropriate place exists, the question then becomes, when should I spend time there? Is this a one-summer thing or a gap-year thing, assuming my eventual goal is to go to grad school in bio(engineering)? How long can I afford to lose connection with the people who will write my recommendation letters? Should I apply to grad schools and then defer for a year? Will any places accept me if I state that up front?

...Maybe it's not even appropriate to enter a Zen monastery with a selfish goal like personal development. But isn't the goal of regular Zen monks "to achieve enlightenment", as opposed to doing good works or something?

Also, most people don't have to do something this drastic in order to become sensible, mature, disciplined adults. What do normal people do, and how do I do that?

My hands, my shirt, and my backpack all had chalk dust all over them by the end of the weekend.

I consider this an accomplishment.

I'll probably write a lot more about how my splash classes went... later, when I'm not catching up on all the relaxing I meant to do this weekend.

Yesterday I was baking three separate cakes and worrying about how to coordinate three separate recipes and whether I shouldn't have taken requests and just made everybody go with chocolate or something.

Flipping through Joy of Cooking, I noticed a recipe called "Hurry-Up Cake". Fast and easy plain cake, with a number of recipes right after it that were just things like "Hurry-Up Chocolate Cake: Make Hurry-Up Cake except add cocoa powder". Modularity! Awesome! It was wonderful, and allowed me to prepare three separate cakes on a tight schedule with a minimum of effort. (They were chocolate, spice, and "gingerbread" aka "just throw in some ginger powder and some cinnamon". The chocolate was a little lackluster, but the other two were wonderful if I do say so myself.)

When I was done, masterdnas did some epic cake art. I was amazed by the outcomes -- they looked genuinely great, not just "great for someone who's not used to working with frosting". Pics forthcoming.

Yay birthdays!

Just got my 20.320 exam grade back. I guess I can scratch "fail an exam" off the list of things to do before I graduate. Argh.

Time for lots of reviewing and studying. If I don't pass this class, I have to either take a 5th year or change majors. (I did fine on the first exam, so I'm sort of in limbo at this point.)

I chose my class schedule for this term specifically in order to get to the point where I wouldn't be scoring high in everything. To find my limits. Well, I've found them, and I'm disappointed they're so low (although this goes along with the recent terrible time management skills).

OK, found my damn limits. Time to extend them.

The trouble with stories is that it's too easy to lose yourself, and forget that what worked in the story would never work in Real Life, for reasons that cannot be removed by authorial fiat.

Yes, this world has its beauties, but there's no getting around the fact that much of it is unutterably mundane. Think too hard about stories and you turn into Don Quixote, who forgets that knights need to do stuff like, y'know, eat, because it's never mentioned in the books.

"If every man could weave a dream to keep him from despair"... no one would ever get anything done. Even the stories would stop existing after a while -- someone has to make them, after all.

It does no good to dream idly about fantasies. I am not in Middle-Earth, or Numenor, or the wilds of 19th-century Appalachia, or even in regular old current-day Canada. I am in a house in Brookline and I have a van to vacuum and a lab report to write.

And now I'm tired. I'm only a little bit sleep deprived and only a little bit physically tired, but I'm just... drained in some way, not sure whether 'emotionally' or 'spiritually' is the better word here. I guess staying in the fighting mentality for a long time can do that to you.

(Taking a test that I'm relatively ill prepared for will also do that just fine.)

I have enough energy to occasionally be excited about something, or even laugh or bounce. It's a funny thing, though. My typical mood today has been low, but stably so, not rapidly spiraling into DOOOOOOM. That's an improvement, I suppose. Still gotta work on that whole "waaaaaaaaaaay too emotionally volatile" thing.

must decrease emotional vapor pressure