adam.oliner.net

Comprehensive exams are over, with relatively positive results. I passed 6 of the 8 that I needed, which is sufficient for me to advance to Ph.D. candidacy and which constitutes me making “reasonable progress” through the end of my second year. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, “reasonable progress” is the vague metric by which the Department, University, and my fellowship determine whether I’m actually worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars they are paying for me to be here. Making reasonable progress is good, and I am.

The last few weeks have been a bit surreal, actually. Aside from taking 13 hours of exams, I also meditated with the Dalai Llama while he visited Stanford, met Orkut (of orkut.com fame) at a bar in Mountain View (I believe my companions were more excited about this than I was, but that’s another story), celebrated International Jane Weekend, and a number of other minor adventures I’ll have to save for another time (because one of them is a surprise… shhhh). I was very impressed by the Dalai Llama, by the way. He was friendly, good-natured, intelligent, and, for someone whose English is by his own admission “a disgrace,” quite well-spoken. Had he not been selected at age two to become the religious leader of a third of a billion people, he said he would like to have been an engineer. His answers to audience questions (including one about genetic engineering) were structured with a respect for science, logic, and practical concerns. He talked about how, as a young man, he was obliged to memorize an ancient Buddhist text that exhaustively accounted for the movement and position of the heavens in a way that was meticulous, precise, and “completely wrong.” To paraphrase his conclusion, there was no sense ignoring what the world was telling us; blindly following the words of a religious text despite the evidence of your own senses is silly. He laughed heartily, and always a little longer than the situation merited. The world could use more religious men like him.

More tidbits: I’ve officially aligned with a research advisor, which roughly means that my bribe check cleared. But seriously, Alex Aiken has agreed to guide me through the doctoral jungle. From my few interactions with him so far, he lives up to his stellar reputation. I am very excited for the opportunity to work with him. I have temporarily put him on hold, however, to work on some residual topics related to my Master’s thesis. In particular, I am preparing a paper for a December 9th deadline. I am also working on a post about torture; keep an eye out for that, because I know you have nothing better to do. Tomorrow, I fly to Boston to spend the week with my girlfriend (Amanda-face!) and family for Thanksgiving. Can I get a “hell, yeah”?

I knew that I could. Time for me to retire now, and become a duck.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 16th, 2005 at 11:54 pm and is filed under School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.