...because I don't have time to make significant headway on physics before drying my laundry

The GRE happened on Saturday. I don't know how well I did. There were some things I probably should have remembered but didn't; at any rate it's all over now and I'll just have to wait a few weeks to see how I did. Hopefully it was well enough to be respectable.

Saturday afternoon featured going into Philly where I met up with nightengalesknd, prydera, and doneril. We had a nice time walking around on South Street, which I had never been to before. The occaisional excursion away from Swarthmore (and no, I'm not counting mutual aid fire calls here) can be quite refreshing.

I need to get graduate school stuff happening. Soon. Very soon. At some point this week I need to sit down with Doc to talk about this; I'll feel better once I get a chunk of thesis written. I still haven't done the Sweet-Parker model, and I really wanted to look up some stuff on sawtooth reconnection events in tokamaks and write something about that. If, presumably, we are supposed to have drafts by Christmas break (although last year's seniors didn't), life will be great fun and will feature endless amounts of free time and nights of lots of sleep.

Although I have my doubts from time to time, I still believe that I want to be a physicist. I still don't know about experiment vs. theory or what subfield, although I'm not sure I have what it takes to be a theorist. Could I be a competent experimentalist? I surely hope so.

I found out this afternoon that there's no way I'll get to go to CERN this summer. Previously, a bunch of Swat seniors had gone after graduation, people like Lisa Larrimore, Robin Smith, and Abram Falk. It used to be that Northeastern and UMich both sponsored REU's to CERN, where graduated seniors were eligible. Now, alas, Northeastern is no longer doing their program, and postgrads are no longer eligible for Michigan. I had really hoped to be able to get to Europe for free by doing physics, but sometimes things just don't work out. If, however, I manage to get really lucky and get that Churchill...

I also need to meet with Amy Bug tomorrow morning to decide on classes. I definitely want to take Solid State at Haverford with Walter Smith, and I'm also pretty sure I want to continue with Music 12. Not sure what to do for the rest of my schedule. I could take two more real classes, which might be nice given it's my last semester at Swat. Or, given that I'll need time to finish my thesis and study for Honors exams, I perhaps should only take 3 classes (Music 12 being 1.5) and then get another half credit from chorus. I'm also feeling quite ambivalent about taking Computational next semester... not sure I'll really enjoy it.