Mid-PhD Crisis

Like a madman groping in a dark room

Seek the light to burn away the gloom

I’ve lost my mind but my feelings are true

Everything I do, I offer to you.

-- No Turn Un-Stoned (Shpongle)

I am now a mid-career PhD student. That was how my advisor described me during the first departmental meeting of this academic year while introducing his research group to the incoming batch of grad students. Then, I didn’t give much thought to the term he used; mid-career. However, listening to the above lyrics and considering my PhD progress - probably anyone’s for that matter - it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that truer words have never been spoken.

But then, Jorge Cham knew it all along. Nearing 40 in my ‘lab years’, this is probably the perfect time for a mid-‘lab’ life crisis. It seems to have struck me hard. Look at what I am doing right now. I should be working on my thesis. Instead I am procrastinating, penning down my thoughts. I can’t help it. Each time I stare at the word document of my would-be thesis, I can’t help myself getting distracted. On a positive note, though, this time has been a productive blogging period for me, what, with plenty of updates over the last month or so, both here and at Interstate 42.

Newton’s third law of graduation - "For every action towards graduation there is an equal and opposite distraction".

It wasn’t always like this. I got through the inevitable post-qualifiers slump that hit me last summer, obtained some good results and published a paper before this summer began. But now, summer is gone and I have nothing to show for it. I have been coding, compiling and debugging; but I am nowhere near simulating the thermal behavior around laser heated nanoparticles. Guess it happens; it is after all a mid-PhD slump.

Things should pick up soon, if not I should force it. It is time I took Cecilia’s resolve and started working full time on my candidacy report that would later become my thesis. Before my advisor loses his patience, I have to finish the report and take my candidacy examination. But, where are the freaking results? ~Long breath~

In the meantime, I came across a friend’s facebook status - “I TA for a professor whose Erdos Number is 1. Yes No.1 and no lesser. Despite that fact the amount of respect that he gives to other minions like me is amazing! The more I see these people, the smaller I feel in this world. Who said grad school was burden, it is an enlightening experience at every step”. He is a new grad student at RPI and all I can say is ‘enjoy the honeymoon while it lasts. It won’t be long before you end up like this'.

As for the rest, take care and have a blast.

PS: Take note of Jorge Cham’s disclaimer. If you are new to PhD Comics, then remember, ‘reading this entire archive can be hazardous to your research. Proceed with caution and use only in moderation.’

A matter of choice

One harmless decision. One more a few minutes later. Then a series of small, seemingly inconsequential choices. Nothing more. Yet, in the end the damage was done. Ah, hindsight! Things look so simple in it. Turning back, connecting the dots, a pattern emerges.

I was tired. Working away in my tiny cubicle, I had kept sleep at bay for forty hours.  No more. I had to get out, get back home. Never before had I longed so much to snuggle under my blankets. Never before had the thought of a warm bed comforted me more.

Before that, though, I had to satisfy the growing discomfort inside my stomach. I needed food. Cooking was not an option, not with my eyelids threatening to snap shut, the threat growing stronger every waking second. Thank god for the new diner just outside campus.

A collective ‘Welcome to Moe’s!’ greeting and a short queue later I was able to give my order - rice bowl with chicken and soybeans with a free pack of tortilla chips. To go; one harmless decision. After all, why take the risk of embarrassment, drooling over the table at the diner?

I got the chips in a paper bag. The cashier asked, “Do you want a bag for the rice bowl?” I shook my head in the negative. The second one, after all why waste paper? I put the bowl in the bag with the chips and headed out.

The pedestrian signal was red. “Home in ten minutes”, I thought as I waited. A minute later the signal changed and I was on my way. A little across I met a friend. He had just returned after hiking the Presidential Traverse. I could have just greeted him and walked past but I wanted to ask about the hike. A simple choice.

A few minutes later we said our goodbyes and I continued my journey home. As I reached the end of the block, the intersection between 15th and Sage, the pedestrian signal was red. I looked around. Across 15th I saw another friend of mine. He hadn’t seen me. I could have waited for a few more seconds, rushed across Sage and been on my way. A seemingly harmless choice later, I was on the opposite side of 15th. We exchanged pleasantries and started discussing about possible next hikes and camping trips. Fall was approaching and the views would be simply out of the world.

As we parted our ways, after a while, I could hear my stomach grumbling. I had to rush back home. I increased my speed, my hands swinging more violently. I was just a block away from home when I heard a tear. I looked down only to see the bag give away. Unbeknownst to me leaked gravy from the bowl was gradually weakening the bag’s integrity; and, now there I was staring in distress at my dinner on the sidewalk.

I cleaned up, deposited my dinner in the nearest garbage bin and walked home. Now I had to cook something. I am too lazy to do that on a regular day. Now I was too tired to even think about standing over the oven, stirring and waiting. As I reached home I made my last decision of the day. As soon as I saw the bed weariness overcame me. I would have to sleep in an empty stomach. “How would this decision come back to bite me?", I thought as I lay in bed quickly losing consciousness.

I learnt a simple lesson from all this, one of the simple truths of life. Your choice matters, every decision counts. Everything in life may not happen for a reason, but they definitely do because of one. There are no simple choices. As chaos theory goes, even the flutter of a butterfly can wreak havoc on the opposite side of the world. Every decision, thus, has to be weighted with care.

This is true more so for an entity like a nation. The choices of each of its individuals, however small and inconsequential they may seem, matter. Collectively they form the nation’s psyche.

Next time I’ll think twice before jumping a signal, bribing the police officer to escape the fine, buying movie tickets in black, traveling in a train or a bus without buying the ticket, and misrepresenting land costs to escape property tax. Any one of these acts by a single person may be small with respect to the working machinery of a nation, but it is not inconsequential. Things add up. Collectively they contribute to India’s corrupted psyche.

Do comment

I am basically a silent person. There have been several situations, several conversations where I would like to chip in with something I want to say, but more often than not, my voice gets drowned in my own indecision. That is what this blog is about. Whatever I miss out saying, no matter what the reason, here I wish to write and express my deepest thoughts, not that I think too much.

All in all, whatever I have written is supposed to be a part of different conversations and like all conversations something will be said to me in return too. I want to hear that, at least as the indicator that I am being heard. So guys, please comment, no matter what it is that you write.

A life can change in a couple of minutes!!!

For five days now, I have been sad, for reasons I could not even understand. I came up with a lot of possible explanations to make myself feel better, the result, my two earlier blogs, but personally, I didn't feel any shit better.

And it took only a couple of minutes of a seemingly trifle conversation with a good friend of mine to give me a facelift. This whole semester I was behaving just the way, I didn't want to. I didn't see what I was becoming. Maybe I was blind. I was cutting myself off from the friends I have in NITC, behaving as though I was some high funda intellectual, not really maintaining contact with the people around. My earlier profile picture summarised this attitude of mine with an uncharacteristic smirk. I didn't like being like that and thus my mind started sending distress signals, yet I didn't notice.

I was turning into a wannabe, a person who I am not, just based on baseless assumptions and desires on being different. I don't want to be different. I don't want to be an enigma. Inherently I am a simple person, looking to have fun in simple ways with other simple friends. I need to cut the crap, just be who I am, smile and not smirk, and once again seriously feel I belong here.

Spirit's Down!!!

No longer do I have any idea what I am doing here. There was a time when I felt on top, when I felt I could be anyone I wanted here. I thought I had finally broken the shell that had been suffocating me for around three years before coming here. But I guess I was wrong. That ill fated question, "Keeshayo?" has made me so scared of trying out something, that once again I am descending into the gloom and darkness within the shroud I had thought I had shed.

Pai casually, a bit drunk, made a comment to me that if he was God, he would take the world back to the Stone Age. #*@% technology. Well that's all he said. And ya he was right. If we have to realise the value of being here on this earth, we will have to be constantly reminded of how difficult progress has been from the moment man set foot on earth to today. What better way to do that than compelling mankind to keep repeating that process over and over again.

And then my mind took over. I started connecting every nuance of that comment to my life in general and that made me sad but at the same time offered me a greater insight into the person inside me.

I am a person for whom a new setting is akin to a breath of fresh air. If I stay within any setting I tend to eventually become the stereotype that the society within that setting makes me out to be. Though initially, it is all fun and nice, for I would then only be defining myself in that new phase of life and I can be anyone I choose to be; with time, the definition I give myself in the setting starts suffocating me to such an extent that only a change would make me better. I need to constantly rejuvenate and redefine myself, else all purpose, all ambition, all dreams just start fading away. What's wrong with that? I like to change; change is a good thing right? well then, why am I feeling all lost and sad?

That's when it struck, you know. Till now I have been living in time constrained settings. I live there for around two to three years happily defining myself, till other peoples' perception of me takes my life into a constancy. Now, ideally in such a situation, I would like to call it quits, change the setting, leave when I am on top keeping only happy memories of that setting in my mind. But no. Till now in every phase of life (I have gone through three) my presence in that setting is already predetermined by other factors. For instance, I have to stay four years in NITC to get my BTech degree. So even after the stagnation point of that phase of life has been reached, I have to continue living there being sad that I can't do anything definitive, anything that would make me fit in that setting. The longer I have to live with this frame of my mind, the more I start to hate that place and eventually when I get out, the only memories of that place would be the sad ones over the last few years which would clearly overshadow the happier moments I had before.

Actually, I kind of like this place. I don't want to go out next year nursing only the bad memories accumulated over the coming year, for now, I have started feeling the stagnancy in this setting.

Life ain't so good!!!

For a long time I was plagued with an inferiority complex, which to a certain extent I still have. That bred in a me a kind of "stereotypism" that makes me hate or rather fear the question - "Keeshayo?" (For those who know me as Kiran, in NITC I am Keesha). I wouldn't say I lack discipline, but there were so many things that I wanted to do, which I was unable to. Initially I thought I was not disciplined enough. But, now I realize, the fear of that inevitable question, unconsciously rendered me into a state of inaction, where everything I did was what OTHERS expected me to do, not what I wanted to do. What happened to the football I used to play? What happened to my determination to play Badminton daily? What happened to my persistence to become physically fit?

So don't again ask me who I am or say that you don't know much about me even after working or studying together for a few years, for even I have no idea who I am. I am an enigma. People don't know me, or rather I don't let people to get to know me.

In all essence I am inherently vulnerable. But, with people not knowing me, a sense of legend is spawned around me. People tend to believe, after a period of time, that I have some capability to make some difference in this world. The seriously far-fetched over-estimations of my abilities gives me an intoxicating sense of power, a sense that I am different, an escape from the complexes that riddle me.

But the one thing I have been unconsciously developing over a long period of time, one attribute I am proud of having, is the power of silence. Silence is golden, and that pays off in the sense that whenever I choose to speak now, I make a difference, I am heard, my voice is not lost in all the other blabbering around me.

All in all, I want to be different. I don't want to trudge the same path everyone one else is trundling along. But whether I am truly able to make a difference, or whether I end up as just another wierdo, only time will tell.

In a Personal Dilemma!!!

It just so happens that i am not a loquacious speaker. More often than not when i suddenly meet an old acquaintance, words get stuck in my throat, for what to speak does not come naturally to me. I need to plan in advance before talking to anyone and that is why when people tell me that in an interview speak as in any natural conversation with a friend, i tend to ask what is a natural conversation like?