meanfreepath

I have, for some time, felt the need to reflect on the past year and more specifically, on the past semester, with an eye towards the future. Now that

indecisionwins has done the same, it is time for me to do so.

The easiest place to begin is on the academic front. Classes as a whole went fairly well this semester. In Shakespeare, I definitely could have read some of the plays more carefully (for instance, I ended up rushing through Macbeth because I had read it in high school) and my final paper could have been much better written. Had I submitted that to someone like Tom Whitman, I am sure it would have been returned covered in red ink. Our scene group could have been more adventurous in terms of trying more things besides watching film versions most of the time, although we certainly had our share of adventures with locked rooms, malfunctioning equipment, and misshelved reserve items! In the end I did well enough in the class, enjoyed it, and benefited from Prof. Riebling's insights.

I did somewhat better in Abstract Algebra than I expected, though part of it may be Bergstrand being a more lenient grader than, say, Hunter. In terms of the conceptual difficulty of the material, 49 was my hardest class this semester, although 111 was more work. I hope my grasp of the material remains strong, for I should start Grood's first Algebra II assignment soon. Yesterday I did find myself having to stop to think carefully about what an integral domain is and isn't, even though Z is the archetypal example, and I had to look up the definition before remembering that an ideal is the ring analogue of a normal subgroup.

In any case, things I've forgotten from last semester can be remedied with a little brushing up. What's more important is how I approached the course and how that will bear on the algebra seminar, 102. Although I usually got at least a decent amount of the work done before the Wednesday problem sessions, too much math was still getting left until Thursday night after 111. For me, I have to spread out doing math even more than physics, because the material is sometimes that much harder to digest. Tim Cronin's habit of working on math after lecture every day is a good habit to adopt should I take another lecture math course (like Real Analysis) in the future, but working regularly on Algebra next semester is going to take a new level of discipline on my part. Next semester there also won't be a lecture to count on, but fortunately Fraleigh is quite readable. Generally with math and physics I find I need to read once to get a feel for the basic ideas before actively plunging into the text to work out derivations, proofs, and examples. With Fraleigh the best bet is probably to read and work the problems for one section at a time, for I can only digest so much math at once and problems help solidify understanding.

The crux of the problem, however, is this: I find it very hard to stop working on something that's due sooner and start working on something that's due later. This semester, it led to my never doing 111 until after the 112 seminar and vice versa. Math got crammed in wherever it could go (usually after 111). Because I spaced the seminars as far as possible, this wasn't too much of a problem, but next semester, with 3 seminars 3 days in a row, it will be. Frankly I don't know how I'm going to address this. Using a planner more strictly might help, but I find it almost impossible to allocate specific blocks of time for working on a particular class rather than for working in general. This is because it's hard to predict how long it will take to read a particular chapter or work a given problem set - one can get stuck on a problem and spend hours mired in nasty algebra and calculus before realizing one is on the wrong track. I think it becomes a question of willpower and knowing that it will go worse if one doesn't start the next seminar before finishing the current one. It could work next semester though; my schedule right now leaves me with huge chunks of free time.

On to physics. Comparing 111 and 112 is interesting. In the former, we had a lot more problems, but in the latter, I really got into the presentations. I don't think my 111 presentations ever had the all-consuming quality of some of my 112 ones, like the ones on antenna theory, Alfven's Theorem and plasma physics, and the Clausius-Mosotti Equation. I mean that I never got caught up enough in the 111 presentations to dash out of the seminar room at breaktime, head straight for a computer, and start modifying and running code as I did when, during the Clausius-Mosotti presentation, I initially forgot that the ideal gas law breaks down at high pressures and got huge discrepancies between theory and experiment. Probably my best 111 presentation was the one on Legendre transformations. Playing with the tippe top was fun, but I didn't enjoy that presentation because the analytically tractable models oversimplfied the physics. I guess the kinds of presentations I like best are the ones where I get to learn and explain something theoretical that's self-contained, especially if the theory can be compared to experimental results.

Even though my presentations in 112 were better, I still think I learned more in 111 simply because Amy assigned more and harder problems than Carl. We really didn't do all that many of Griffiths' exclamation point problems, and I know that some of the PDE problems we did in 50 for Doc were harder than the analogous electrostatic ones we did in 112. For one thing, we never did much with spherical harmonics or Bessel functions (though they're not in Griffiths, even if perhaps they should be). We got a week behind in 112 because of Bobby Berman's death, but given how upset he and a lot of other people were, I think that was the best thing for Carl to do. Life with its suffering and grief sometimes has to take precedence to academics. Speaking in terms of the whole semester though, any resulting weaknesses in electromagnetic theory will only come back to haunt me in Honors exams and in graduate school when I have to deal with Jackson's notorious text and take PhD qualifiers.

On the whole, 111 was satisfactory. I think I got a pretty decent understanding of classical mechanics. Thornton & Marion went downhill after the chapters on Lagrangian and Hamiltonian dynamics but I've already complained enough about that. It is a standard classic, and there are few if any good candidates for substitutes. On the plus side, I got an appreciation for and a new interest kindled in the area of nonlinear/chaotic dynamics. I'd have liked to do some of the more advanced topics in Hamiltonian dynamics that were covered in Hand & Finch and Goldstein, like action-angle variables and Hamilton-Jacobi theory. But it is for topics like these that graduate classical mechanics classes exist...

This now brings me to the last question before next semester: my schedule. I am going to take the 3 seminars: quantum, stat mech, and algebra. Keeping fire school completely out of the picture for the moment, the question remains as to whether I should take a fourth class or maybe advanced lab. Is it better to focus on math and physics, at the expense of exploring other areas? Or is it worth taking some other class, even though it will almost certainly get short shrift at times? I remind myself that I decided to apply to Swarthmore because I wanted to get a well-rounded liberal arts education and made a conscious decision not to apply to a place like MIT.

This past semester ranks as my worst ever in terms of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. There were too many all-nighters or semi-all-nighters (going to bed near or past 4:30-5:00ish), some of which could have been avoided. In general I was not getting enough sleep and paid for it - I frequently fell asleep reading and definitely dozed off in 111 a couple of times (I think the physics seminar room needs more lights at night but I think having 113 in the afternoon should help). Not getting enough sleep partly screwed up my eating habits. I stopped eating breakfast and just didn't eat healthy too much of the time. I didn't exercise regularly or enough, for much of the semester, and thus got really out of shape. Caffeine and sugar are not substitutes for sleep.

Next semester, I intend to make general health more of a priority. I want myself to get up before 9:00 every day and wake up at the same time day-to-day. To this effect, I will try to get to bed before 3:00 unless there's something critically due (I am going to be out of the science center by 2:00 if at all possible). I will make sure to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. I will exercise every day and run at least 4 days a week. As the Air Force suggests to its officer candidates preparing for their physical exams, I will take exercise study breaks. When feeling drowsy while reading, instead of succumbing to sleep, I will have a sip of water and do a set of push-ups, crunches, or lunges. The stairs of the science center should allow for exercise even in bad weather or late at night, and perhaps I'll join

crystalpyramid in the gym every now and then.

Realistically, there's no way I'm going to become superbly fit. Rather, it's simply about being in better shape, improving cardiovascular fitness, and building muscle strength, especially upper-body. I'd be very satisfied to attain the level of activity I'd consider appropriate for the off-season in high school or sort of what I was managing first semester freshman year. I haven't run any of the longer routes, like the Wallingford or Morton loops, since then. One does physics better, I think, with a sound mind in a healthy body.

The main motivation for not neglecting physical fitness as I have tended to this semester, however, is firefighting. Running to the firehouse for calls is one thing, but functioning in a hot environment with SCBA is going to require just as much cardiovascular fitness. Given my age, I'm not at risk, but statistically heart attacks, and not flames or smoke, are the #1 killer of firefighters. Of course, I need to work on upper and lower body strength to do any number of things that might have to be done on the fireground, such as draggiing attack lines, raising ladders, and doing forcible entry. It is fortunate that since Swarthmore is a volunteer department, we are not subjected to the standard IAFF Candidate Physical Ability Test that most professional firefighter candidates must pass. That test involves a number of events like hitting a force plate with a sledgehammer, thrusting and pulling with a pike pole to simulate tearing down a celiing, and dragging a rescue dummy, all while wearing a 50 pound vest to simulate the weight of bunker gear and SCBA. Right now, there's no way I'd pass. But with work one can achieve and mantain a comparable level of fitness.

One decision to eventually make is whether I'll do fire school next semester. Right now, I just don't know; I'll see how the first few weeks of classes go before making up my mind. It will be a huge time drain, especially during one week in March when there will be a lecture on both Tuesday and Thursday nights, CPR training on Saturday, and fire evolutions on Sunday. Fire school might be something best postponed to the summer, but we'll see. Kate Pacha was saying that it's very tough on the body, and if she, whom I can only describe as resembling Jessica Gersh on some combination of steroids and speed, found it physically demanding... It may be different out in Iowa but I do think basic fire training, which has to conform to NFSTA standards, is pretty similar nationwide. At any rate I need to talk to some more Swarthmore people about what it's like in Delaware County.

Socially, 2004 has been a good year. Thanks for the most part to SWIL, since sophomore year I've had a real social life for the first time. I've met lots of wonderful people among the sophomores and frosh. I've seen people like

sildra move on past Swat into the world of graduate school. I've discovered that Bryn Mawr is an awesome place with wonderful people, traditions I wish we had at Swat, and great food. I've gotten to become friends with people like

nightengalesknd, who I first met about a year ago at post-Hogmanay gaming. I've gotten a LiveJournal and have written a good amount in it.

Two areas I should continue to work on: my relationships with my family and with God.

For the longest time, I've wanted to be in a dating relationship with someone. This year, nothing has changed in that regard. I have watched couples in SWIL form and in some cases break up. Once again I have watched the little froshlings somehow magically pair up with each other. I was reading math jokes recently and found one about a mathematician who goes to a bar every Friday. Each time, he sits in a corner facing the wall, closes his eyes, and asks the thin air if he might buy a drink as if there were a woman there. This goes on for months until finally, after one particularly heartfelt appeal to nothingness on Valentine's Day, the bartender finally asks the mathematician what he is doing. The mathematician mumbles something about quantum mechanics and the finite probability of the wavefunctions collapsing into a beautiful woman when he opens his eyes. The bartender then asks, "But why don't you try asking one of the regulars here, like that blonde over there?" The mathematician laughs and says, "As if there's any chance she'd accept." More likely than not that'll be me in another 10 or 15 years, except that I don't go to bars. Perhaps there is hope.

At any rate, given how much stuff will be on my plate this summer (possibly Firefighter I or some more training like First Responder or Firefighter II, general and physics GRE's, and most importantly senior thesis research) I should avoid the emotionally draining and ultimately painful situations that have happened the last two summers. Those who know what I'm talking about, know.

Wow... this probably now qualifies as my longest LJ post, ever. It's been an eventful year, and for the most part a good one. May 2005 be a happy, healthy, and fufilling year for everyone.