Technology to the rescue

I have a really really bad memory. I have a hard time recollecting a conversation after a few hours or so. Thats not that big a problem when I am with friends, but its starting to be a huge deal elsewhere. Moreover most of the times when I am in a meeting or having a group conversation I tend to zone out for a few mins and miss out on the important stuff. An excellent example is last evening’s talk with WR and QoH. I can barely recall the details, and I have been kicking myself over it.

Here is where being an engineering nerd starts to pay off. The first thing that crossed my mind was that there had to be a technical solution to this problem. I thought and thought and thought and finally found it. IPoD. I carry mine around everyday everywhere I go. I found this neat digital voice recording attachment to it. Its amazing. It can pick up voices upto 10-15 feet away. It stores the voice notes with a date and time envelope. I can get them off the IPoD, on to my server, and archive them. How neat is that?

I had a pretty interesting evening yesterday. I me…

I had a pretty interesting evening yesterday. I met with my therapist late in the afternoon. I think I am going to call her the “White Rabbit.” She is leading me down to bizzaro land and for some reason I am letting her do it. Oh man, Alice in Wonderland has so many levels to it. Anyways… I basically went to see her to say tell her this isnt working for me, and that we probably should end this. Before I could do that, we started talking about random stuff and I was ranting about my cell phone. I am getting obsessed with it. Somehow the topic moved to my career, and how it was a train wreck waiting to happen. I was telling her about how I feel lost, and that I dont have a sense direction or purpose anymore. The more we talked the more the whole conversation was making sense to me. I was seeing patterns and correlations I hadnt noticed before. It was a really intense conversation, but tragically I remember nothing of it now. It wasnt until she pointed out that I had realized that most of my frustration and disappointment stem from the fact that I am trying to compete and compare myself with QoH and his advisor who has been in this game for over 30 years now. I am not totally buying that story, but she might have a point.

Right after talking to WR, I ran into QoH in the hall way. We went to his office and were basically chit chatting about random things. He brought up the issue of my future being this huge question mark. I could have sworn that WR had called him up and asked him to talk about this. It is really unsettling when such coincidences happen. Anyways, we talked about it for a while, and agreed that I need something to challenge me further. He has promised to look into getting me an invite to write a cutting edge article in the biggest and the badest journal of all. Its the same journal where he had published his big article. He was also talking about writing another book chapter or may be even a whole book. I was starting to feel a bit better about myself when he decided to whip out a resume of a grad student from MIT. This guy is a year younger than me. He has 16 patents. He is on leave from MIT, and is pursuing his MBA at Wharton. He is an associate at McKinsey. A member of the Microsoft’s advisory board, and personal advisor to the big Bill himself. He is on the board of a few venture capital firms too. He takes home a 7 digit pay check. All this and that bastard is a YEAR YOUNGER THAN ME and still a freakin grad student. How the fuck did he do this?

One look at his resume was enough to throw me down the pits of depression again. I was basically choking when QoH was rattling of this guy’s 8 page “condensed” CV. I think he noticed my face shrinking to the size of a raisin, and started making desperate attempts to cheer me up. He was like, oh but this guy doesnt have that many publications. He doesnt have a book chapter and you do. Random silly things like that. It was almost comical. But I really did appreciate his effort. There was no comparing me to this guy, and that is the fact. So much for WR’s theory of me setting my standards based on experienced professors.

My Child has Grown Up

My first undergrad is graduating today. I am so proud of him. He was one of the hardest working guys I have ever come across. I have never taken a moment to tell him how well he has done till today.

A few mins ago he walked into my office to wish goodbye. He brought along a huge cake and a thank you card as his parting gift. I am replicating the text of his card below.

Dear Pseudo,
Thank you for letting me be a part of your team. You have pushed me and thought me a great deal. I found this card appropriate because I survived you and your research
Thanks,
xxx

The other side of the card had a picture of a penguin on a break away ice berg and the caption reads “The Survivor.”

Gmail Invites

I have a whole ton of GMail invites to hand out. Just send an email to pseudosanity at gmail dot com if you would like one.

My Muse

I finally nailed down the thing that makes me the most happy, atleast the least unhappy. Writing. I know it can be frustrating; It can be time consuming; It can throw me down the absyss of depression; but the wonderful sense of accomplishment I get right after I finish it is worth all that and more.

I have a billion things to do, but none that I want to. I dont have the drive or the motivation to finish anything on my plate right now. I dont have a pet project anymore. Thats my biggest problem.

I am going to start two secret projects. Both of them are going to be review papers. I am not going to tell QoH or J about them. If I do, the only advice I will get is, “Why dont you take care of things you have right now and then start something fresh?” They will be partially right about it. My current work load demands all the attention I can give to it. But unless I have that jump in my steps, I am not going to do anything. These papers are going to be my source of joy. I am going to draw heavily from them to offset the boredom of the rest.

I am going to give myself 1 hour a day for 4 months to finish the first draft of each paper. Its a long time, but I have to be careful not to let this dominate my schedule. Lets see how this pans out.

How do you if you are being ambitious or setting y…

How do you if you are being ambitious or setting yourself up for failure?

How do you beef up a resume fast?

QoH and I had a pretty good conversation after this morning’s meeting about my future or more specifically the lack thereof. We were talking about how meek my resume looks right now. I have 5 journal papers, 5 conference papers, and 1 book chapter. Decent by a third year grad student standards, but no where even close to what it would need to be to land me an academic position in an year and half. QoH thinks I need atleast about 30 publications before any good university will even consider me.

I am pretty scared now. I have about a year left before I have to start applying for jobs. 12 months and about 20 papers. Thats close to 2 a month!!!!!!!!! I dont think I can even write fiction that fast. QoH has promised to get me another book chapter invite and recommend me for a few fellowships and awards. They will get me a bit ahead of the curve, but not all the way. How am I going to compete with all these geniuses out of MIT, Berkley, and Stanford? Just thinking about this makes me wanna scream and pull my hair out.

I am just going to go for a walk and not think about this for now.

I just noticed I am rambling quite a bit of-late. …

I just noticed I am rambling quite a bit of-late. That cant be good.

Interesting Question

Anastasia asks if sadness materializes as a actual pain the chest. It takes really courage to pose such a question. Wow. Simple yet profound. Wonder why its so.

Hmm… I cannot come up a title for this

Today was just Blah. I spent nearly all of it either with or talking to medical professionals.

I wasnt feeling well about 2 months ago and made this humungous mistake of going to a doctor. Since then she has managed to find things to bug me about on a regular basis. Anyways, I got a call from my doctor at 8.15 AM, and she wanted to me do a whole bunch of tests that cost more than the net worth of half this city. So I called up insurance and had to haggle with them to get it pre-approved. Once that was done, the actual test had to be done. It was basically me and a huge piece of machinery in a bland room keeping each other company for about 2 hrs. Boring stuff. If I were to design any of these machines, I would put in a video unit and play “The Simpsons” on it.

By the time I was done with the tests, it was time for me go see the therapist. More boring stuff. I hate talking, and that is all she wanted to do. Oh, and the most irritating thing about this: she nitpicks on my choice of words. “Why did you use ‘could have’ in the last sentence?”, “Why did you say ‘I want to kiil you’ instead of ‘should kill you’?”, “Why are you calling me an idiot and not a moron?” ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! I dont see it making any difference what so ever, except for burning a hole in my already pitted pocket. I think I will see her once more, and call it quits.

I finally got my office, and now I have no enthusiasm to work. This is why people need to drink coffee early in the morning, and turn the bloody phone off before anyone can call.

I have a meeting with J and QoH tomorrow. I dont have anything to report. Its going to be a pretty embarrasing update to deliver. At this point, I pretty much dont care.