Die of moe-ness

Hiiragi Kamagi is so cute~

Theory of Solid State Physics class

I wrote in other post that I thought this wouldn't be a too difficult class. But now things have changed. Because it is "theory" class, a more mathematical approach has been used in the class, as opposed to the happy version (more intuitive!) I took before. The professor assumed that the students have certain knowledge about basic solid state physics, and skipped a lot of stuff. For now I'm still fine because of the prior semester. Things will be a lot more interesting later in the semester, when new stuff shows up.

The pace of the course is also pretty fast. I wonder how other students react to the speed of the course and to the fact that a lot of things are skipped.

GRE experience....part 3

Last Friday was probably my last contact with GRE general. The outcome is acceptable, unless my analytical writing suck for whatever reason.

Looking back, the most important sources/things which helped me a lot includes

1. The number 2 website: They have practice GRE (or SAT for high school students) exams with explanation. And it's free. I can say that those little tricks are more or less the same as those taught by preparatory school. There is also a vocabulary builder which really helped the lazy me to prepare for the exam.
2. GRE vocabulary book....I forgot which one at the moment. I'm too lazy to dig out the book from the mountain in my room.
3. (Accidentally,) the writing assignments from my humanities class this semester. The professor assigns one to two pages of writing every lecture, which is twice a week. One to two pages might not seem so much to native English speakers, but it is a lot to me. I think it somehow trains me to write small ideas into paragraphs.
4. Luck. I have to confess, that if I took the exam again couple of days after the test, I will probably not get an acceptable. There were a lot of problems in which I didn't recognize 80% of the vocabularies. Somehow I have guessed the right answer. The practice exams I did before the test showed that my grade will be in the 380~420 range, a lot lower that what I got in the real test.

okay, let's forget about it already~

GRE experience....part 2

Time has come that I have to face the reality.

I took the 9am morning train to Lowell. Right before 10 o'clock the I arrived the station. I wanted to leave myself some time to walk around and try to find the test center; although I did have the map(s) at hand, nobody knows what could happen. Lowell is a nice place where one can enjoy unpolluted air. There are trees all over the place and also some waterway. The test center is about 2km away from the station, and I had a nice little walk to the test center, enjoying the, uh, trees. And buildings of course. The buildings all look similar, but better than those in the university. Thanks to the map, I didn't get lost.

The test center is located in some kind of facility with a lot of rooms and little interactive space. I'm not sure what it is for. I thought originally that it is a university, but it didn't seem so. Well, whatever. I checked the test center from outside the door. It looked like a small classroom with computers. Maybe 20 sets of computers. Since it is still early, I bought a salad roll just next to the "test center" and ate it while walking around the building since I couldn't find a place to sit for an hour or two. I walked around the building one round, and I was kind of fed up with it. I wanted to have some rest before the exam..... Then I decided to wait inside the test center.

Walking through the door, there is a small area with a test supervisor. There is another not-so-big area with 4 computers in it. I almost can't believe my eyes. Four set of computers make up a test center!! Well, that's how it is. Probably because of the physical location of the test center the demand is not high. It was only noon when I walked in. The test supervisor, however, signed me in immediately and the next thing I know is that I sat in front of the computer ready for the test. So they allow us to start earlier and end earlier. I should've gone in even earlier. Good experience for the future. Well, I don't want to take GRE again in the future actually.

The first part is the analytical writing. There isn't too much to say about this. Everybody uses similar formulations for the essay, and the rest is just to full in your idea. I picked this one: "When research priorities are being set for science, education, or any other area, the most important question to consider is: How many people's lives will be improved if the results are successful?" (CP-ed from ets website directly) I believe it is fine to say so because it is from the pool of issue topics. For the argument I got "The surface of a section of Route 101, paved two years ago by McAdam Road Builders, is now badly cracked and marred by dangerous potholes. In another part of the state, a section of Route 66, paved by Appian Roadways more than four years ago, is still in good condition. Appian Roadways has recently purchased state-of-the-art paving machinery, and it has hired a new quality-control manager. Because of its superior work and commitment to quality, we should contract with Appian Roadways rather than McAdam Road Builders to construct the access roads for all our new shopping malls." (CP-ed from ets website directly). I almost used up my time for the argument. 30 minutes is kind of short if you want to add something which was not planned ahead.

The next part is the quantitative section. To me, this section is to relax and make sure your brain get some rest. I've used too much concentration power in the writing section, so I did it slowly to allow myself to recover. Bringing any drinks into the room is not allowed, so there isn't much I can do, for example, to consume some caffeine to maintain certain level of "awakeness". Anyways. I had some good time solving high school level problems. There are also some tricky problems, which I forgot already due to the shock of verbal section.

The verbal section is really a nightmare. You encounter a lot of unfamiliar words, and some of them cannot even be dissected into roots. To me, the hardest parts are the antonyms and the analogies: they depend only on vocabulary. It's just too hard for me. For the beginning 5 or so questions of these types, I still struggled to guess the meanings, but after a while, I gave up. Just choose one and go on. There's no point in struggling, since it won't make a difference. Also in computer based test every question has to be answered: no "blank answer" is allowed. Sentence completion and reading are relatively easier. Actually for reading I had an estimated percentile for number2 website of 77%, so I have quite some confidence on it. The readings are not long to me, as opposed to many people in Asia. I don't know why, but even since SAT times readings are easier compared to other sections. After the better parts, some analogy questions came again....and I was more or less knocked out by the intense attack.

It is because of the trauma from the last section, I didn't pay too much attention on the second quantitative part. I just respond by instinct and occasionally some easy calculation. I was very, very, very lucky that I still got a 800 in the quantitative part. But actually, after the verbal section I thought I will have to take the test again some time in October. I have no idea where my grade will end up to. Maybe three hundred something. After the second quantitative section, I prepared myself for another wave of verbal attack by counting from 1 to 100....

But miracle happened. The second wave didn't come. THE TEST HAS ENDED. Wow. Cool. Well, aren't there supposed to be two verbal sections? Whatever. Then I was given the option of viewing the grades, or cancel the test without viewing. Ding ding ding~ I chose to see the grades. It would be silly to cancel the grades after all the effort made to come to Lowell. And I got the right answer. My verbal grade is acceptable to me. Not high, but definitely not low. Something must have happened: maybe I was just too lucky to choose most of the right answers from the random unfamiliar words. Who knows? I'm fine as long as I have the grades. After I entered the four recipient schools to send scores, I was finally free from the GRE nightmare.

Before the test, I was planning to walk around in Lowell more after everything was done, but due to the big shock from the verbal section, I didn't really want to be a tourist. So I took the 4:15 train back to Boston.

One thing to mention is that it took only 3 hours and 15 minutes for me to complete the whole thing. Most of the time is saved from the quantitative section, I guess.

GRE experience....part I

Date: 2007 Sept. 20, one day before taking the exam.

So I figured that I should make sure where the exam is taking place beforehand. It should be somewhere in Boston, so at most I will have to find the exact location on Google map and print out the map with me as a safety precaution.

I opened the confirmation email, and find the address of the test center. Lowell? Let's check the map.....WTH. Why in the world would I choose a test center so far away from Boston? But, don't worry. This is where transportation comes in. So I checked the bus (greyhound, peterpan) schedule: once per day, afternoon from 1:30 or something. Nice. My test starts from 12:55, so this is not an option. Now let's check the train. It might be a bit expensive, but, well, why not? (Click click click) Cool. There is no station there. Cab? I'd rather schedule another exam, which might be cheaper, and allows me more time to prepare.

Knowing that I might not be able to attend the exam, I then tried to cancel the appointment. Going online, (click click) the online cancel option disappeared :( There is also a phone number listed for canceling or rescheduling the exam. So I called. It was automated response. I followed the instruction and finally, entered the "cancel or confirm exam" menu. Then I heard "you have successfully confirmed the exam." WTH. Where is the cancel option? Oh no...... What if the grade report of mine contains a pair of zeros? That would be cool. In some bad sense though.

Luckily, just before I gave up, William told me of the possibility of going there by commuter rail. This, really, saves my life. Actually I never imagined the commuter rail to go that far. It was sometimes drawn with the subway map, which made me think that it was not that wide-ranged. And also there is one train every hour or so. Yeah~ (or not?) I was also already relaxing because I thought I might not be able to take the exam. Back. I have to hurry to finish whatever schoolwork due on Friday.

So this was the first half of the story. It was in some sense an exciting day. I almost had a heart attack.

Updates on the music assignment last Wednesday

One of the classmate had to go to an office and listen to the sounds of office. It appears that somebody in that office got suspicious and send a letter to all music professors asking about this. lol.

Music class....

It keeps getting more strange. This time we did a soundwalk: follow a series of instructions and listen to specific sounds/music in various locations. That was the homework for today; everybody has to turn in one version of instructions. And we exchange instructions and perform during the class. Length: 30 minutes.

I did a pretty normal one. Pick some positions with strong wind, go through them and feel the wind and try to listen to the sound made by the wind. It could be a bit cold, but, oh well. It's sunny today anyways.

What I have to do is kind of strange though. Go into an elevator, stay there for thirty minutes. It was really funny when I first learned about the task I have to do. This seemed pretty easy at first, but it turned out to be exhausting. People will wondor why you're there, but most won't say anything. Some will ask what floor I'm going to, hmm, well....

Looking back on the two semester of lab classes

I guess time has played his old trick me again. Looking back, everything seemed so interesting. Starting from the not-good-looking first presentation whose appearance is mainly due to the strange latex-presentation tool advertised by the professor and TA. After that I throw the tool away and never use it again. Since it is latex, it's not that obvious how things will turn out, and it's also not obvious how to fine-tune things.

Then I had a crazy Compton scattering presentation. I did hours of math to calculate the energy correction from double scattering from scratch. Miraculously it worked pretty well.

What followed is the huge-uncertainty frank hertz experiment. The value drifts over time. So if we don't take data fast enough, it drifts away~ On the other hand we have to wait until it thermally equillibriate. So it's kind of a dilemma.

The spectroscopy is very easy. Just put in parameters to computer, press enter, and wait. There's also not much to analyze. In contrast the alpha decay is kind of hard. There are too much to calculate, and unfortunately we didn't get enough data. So at the end we settled it by presenting only some numbers we have, and add little decorations to make it look a lot in the presentation.

That concludes the first semester, which is more in chaos compared to the second.

The first experiment, Zeeman effect, is basically a fight with the interferometer. Once you get past the barrier, things are a lot easier. Also we measured 100 points or so instead of the 3 points suggested by the evil lab guide. The uncertainty is a lot smaller this way. Not too interesting about the presentation.

The superconductor experiment is kind of cool, since you can have the chance to play with liquid helium. But we can not actually see the liquid, which is kind of disappointing. This is a pretty easy experiment once you get past the mental barrier thinking that the liquid helium is dangerous....(because the TA's keep telling you that it might explode)

We also did the 21-cm spectroscopy experiment. But unfortunately the telescope was broken by the wind and snow and rain, and our experiment has to stop. We proceed to present half of our intended data. XD.

Finally as the last experiment, we did the Mossbauer effect. It's a fun experiment, because you can press the button, go eat lunch, and come back to press another button. Also because of one set of equipment is a bit malfunctioning, we did the experiment with another group, which made our life a lot easier. (Well, we had twice the data than usual.) I did a small experiment in my last presentation: instead of a standard 10~12 slice presentation, I made it about 60 pages with kind-sized texts. It's hard to tell from the TA's response whether it was good or not though. But it's quite a different experience, since the presenting mode was different. You press the button almost all the time to match your speech.

Thoughts on classes this term....

I'm taking this semester easy. Having it said, it is still normal load, which is 4 regular-unit classes. I don't want to kill myself in the final semester.

The first subject is solid state physics theory, which is a graduate-level class. The pace is pretty fast. If I hadn't taken the undergraduate solid state class, I probably would have a hard time follow. I also can't tell whether it is clear or not for beginners, since the materials are all like reviewing for me. I guess I'll embrace the wave later in the semester; let's hope it's after I finished applying graduate school, or, after I've done most of the things needed for applying.

The next class is artificial intellegence. The brain-and-cog subject name for it is "computational neuroscience." Therefore, really, I thought it was just a class introducing computational methods used in neuroscience research in general...until I saw the textbook couple of days before class. I wanted to take AI for a long time and were worried about not having time for it since I didn't notice there is a brain-and-cog portion of it and therefore can be used as a requirement, so it's like a pleasant surprise to me. But it also means that it will be a more time-consuming class than expected. There's even a final project/paper.

Also there's the humanities requirement. Through lottery I get the introduction to musical composition class. I was expecting something formal like the structure within a song, but from the two classes I've taken so far, it's quite different. The first activity is to observe breathing in groups. Let the vocal cord vibrate naturally. And this had continued I believed for at least twenty minutes. Or maybe half an hour. While it is certainly interesting in some way, it is still kind of weird. From what I understand, there will be no staff in this course. Instead we will invent our own notation for music. How exactly that will work out is still a mystery to me. But, well, if we can get more instinct to sound in general this way, why not? For now, I'm still observing how things will go. The reading and one-page written response per class are pretty heavy to me, and those, I believe, are also heavy to many other students as the number of students decreased almost three-fold between the first two classes.

Finally there is the freshman biology. This is supposed to be the easy subject that I don't have to spend too much time on. So actually it is not four full classes to me.

Back alive ^^

Yesterday noon I didn't eat much for lunch because of the jet-lag. I only had a small soup, and that's it. I thought I could have more for dinner. However, due to the jet-lag again, I fell asleep late afternoon.

So this morning when I woke up at 4 am, I was almost starved to death. I felt that I could corrupt at any moment. Then I found out that the stores in the student center didn't open until 8. The couple of waiting hours were so long.

And finally I got my sandwiches right at 8 o'clock. It's a lot better now....