Home for a few days.

Posted by Steve Hanna on July 24th, 2006 filed in Random Tags: , , , , ,

After sitting in Champaign wasting my life playing WoW, I decided to head home for a few days. I would really like to get some programming done, but WoW is an incredible addiction…

Anyhow, I had to take a greyhound bus home. Let me make this completely unequivocal, the people who cannot afford planes, take busses; these people, while perhaps very nice and decent for the most part are in general dirty and smelly. INCREDIBLY SMELLY. Did I mention it took me 8 hours to get from Champaign to Ohio?! Yeah, I <3 buses. Notice, while I cannot afford a plane ticket to come home for a few days, it should be noted that I do not fit into the “smelly” subset of people who ride the buses.

On the bus I read a book called Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman and I highly recommend it. It seems to be a modernized Alice in Wonderland of sorts (without the latent pedophilia). It was a solid story all the way through and I didn’t feel like there were a lot of lulls in the story.

Over the past few days I have a read a collection of works by Franz Kafka. I rather enjoy his work and I find it very moving in the way he relates his protagonists to the struggles he had with his father. I was inspired to read this book after I saw the Squid and the Whale, which was also quite a formidable movie.

Right now I am trying to motivate myself to finish my Personal Statement for grad school. I have been studying for the GREs and now I am trying to pool my letters of recommendation. A professor requested (as I am sure most will) my personal statement. When he asked that, I assumed it would be an easy task. Thus far, it hasn’t been difficult, but I find myself wanting to make it perfect and really give myself a chance to think it over. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been so lethargic? Or maybe I’m writing this to further put off the impending doom.

The problem is that the personal statement is fragmented yet perfect in my head. I think of witty quips to throw in the paper, useful anecdotes, etc. The problem seems to be that in my head things always sound better. Something is lost in the process of transferring my ideas to paper. However, things are only lost when I attempt to write while not in the proper mood. Unfortunately, this mood has recently eluded me and I sit here writing in a blog that I am nearly certain that no one reads.

I’ve managed to be a little productive. I got some results for the flash worm project I had been working on. I also presented my results and ideas at the Summer ‘06 TCIP Workshop at UIUC. I was nervous because besides Paul, I was the only undergraduate there. However the presentation went very well, and people seemed to be impressed. Thus I warded off the chagrin that I imagine will occur when I give presentations such as these.

This brings me to a point. Rarely in my life have I failed at anything and often my measure for failure is achieving a B instead of an A. I realize this; I can identify my problem; I can even step back into a third person perspective and realize that I am being a fool. Unfortunately, this does not change the way my mind operates. For the longest time, I have had horrible anxiety about everything relating to my future or success. This may come as a shock to people, because for the most part I think I have a confident image. The anxiety wanes when I obtain the grade I was after or I finish a project but it always flares up when some other new important task presents itself. The real problem is that I evaluate myself on a continuous basis and at any moment I can expect the worst; but the worst never happens. The real problem seems to be that I haven’t built enough confidence in myself despite all the things I have done. Even writing this makes me feel a bit awkward and uncomfortable, because I measure my success as moderate, and using it as an axiom for the reasons why I should not be anxious seems almost criminal. With grad school on the horizon, GREs coming in a few months, and classes starting even sooner, I feel like the world is slowly closing in. While I make it? Certainly. Will it be easy? No, decidedly not. Will I find the reasons to stop worrying? Probably not. But until then, I’ll keep searching.

Also, I think I finalized a list of graduate schools for a PhD in Computer or Electrical Engineering(in no particular order):
UIUC
MIT
CMU
Berkeley
Standford
CalTech
UWash
Cornell

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