Friends, books and snow
>> One of the greatest things about being in grad school has been meeting a wide array of very interesting people. Not only are they intellectually inclined, but they're also passionate about music, sports, movies, cooking, technology and many other things. I've learnt a lot from my friends and colleagues and I feel grateful for the opportunity to have spent time with them. Yesterday a friend introduced me to squash and I enjoyed the experience so much that now I am hooked to it. Since I don't want to invest too much money into it right away (squash gear is expensive), I intend to start with racquetball. I plan to buy myself a racquet and take advantage of the numerous racqetball courts around campus.
>> It snowed here a LOT last week. I think we got more than a foot of snow. University shut down for a day and I enjoyed walking around experiencing the transformation that the piles of white had brought to the familiar streets and landmarks. While it stopped snowing on Wed night, the interstates were still jammed on Thurs and I was not looking forward to the two hour drive to [teaching hospital] on Fri morning. But the meeting on Fri was cancelled and so here I am on the weekend, blogging from home. The good thing is that the University's Institution Review Board (IRB) has cleared my research and the apartment is ready on the campus of [teaching hospital]. So I am all set to start my research.
>> [Adviser] had offered to buy me $100 worth of books and, being the bibliophile that I am, I took forever to come up the list of books I wanted. After many hours spent on Amazon.com trying to cram as many of my coveted books into the $100 budget as possible, I came up with the following list:
-- On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Non-fiction - William Zinsser
-- The Craft of Research - Booth, Williams, and Colomb
-- A Rule Book for Arguments - Anthony Weston
-- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity - David Allen
-- Beyond Bullet Points - Cliff Atkinson
-- The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving - Morgan D. Jones
-- Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques - Michael Michalko
-- Writing Ethnographic Field Notes - Emerson, Fretz, Shaw
-- Graphic Storytelling - Will Eisner
The finalists that didn't make it to the list were:
-- Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning an M.A. or PhD - Robert Peters
-- Hospital Based Emergency Care: At the Breaking Point - Institute of Medicine (2006)
-- Building a Better Delivery System: A New Engineering/Health Care Partnership - National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine (2005)
-- Moleskin small ruled notebook
Peters' book didn't make it because about half the book deals with why to get a PhD and how to get into a good program. I think its a little too late for me to know those things. I really wanted the IOM reports, but they are expensive and available free online at the National Academies Press website. The only problem is each page is a separate PDF file and so reading or printing the pages is a pain. I would think the NAP and IOM would want to make it easier for the general public to access and read these reports. I do want the moleskin notebook, mostly because its supposed to be the thing to have if you like to write journals (kind of like the iPod is the thing to have if you like to listen to music). But I just couldn't bring myself to justify spending $9.95 on a mere notebook.
>> I've been consumed with writing three papers simulataneously in the past two weeks and i'm finding it difficult to multitask. There is definitely a huge overload associated with context switching between tasks (there goes the geek in me....).
>> It snowed here a LOT last week. I think we got more than a foot of snow. University shut down for a day and I enjoyed walking around experiencing the transformation that the piles of white had brought to the familiar streets and landmarks. While it stopped snowing on Wed night, the interstates were still jammed on Thurs and I was not looking forward to the two hour drive to [teaching hospital] on Fri morning. But the meeting on Fri was cancelled and so here I am on the weekend, blogging from home. The good thing is that the University's Institution Review Board (IRB) has cleared my research and the apartment is ready on the campus of [teaching hospital]. So I am all set to start my research.
>> [Adviser] had offered to buy me $100 worth of books and, being the bibliophile that I am, I took forever to come up the list of books I wanted. After many hours spent on Amazon.com trying to cram as many of my coveted books into the $100 budget as possible, I came up with the following list:
-- On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Non-fiction - William Zinsser
-- The Craft of Research - Booth, Williams, and Colomb
-- A Rule Book for Arguments - Anthony Weston
-- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity - David Allen
-- Beyond Bullet Points - Cliff Atkinson
-- The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving - Morgan D. Jones
-- Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques - Michael Michalko
-- Writing Ethnographic Field Notes - Emerson, Fretz, Shaw
-- Graphic Storytelling - Will Eisner
The finalists that didn't make it to the list were:
-- Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning an M.A. or PhD - Robert Peters
-- Hospital Based Emergency Care: At the Breaking Point - Institute of Medicine (2006)
-- Building a Better Delivery System: A New Engineering/Health Care Partnership - National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine (2005)
-- Moleskin small ruled notebook
Peters' book didn't make it because about half the book deals with why to get a PhD and how to get into a good program. I think its a little too late for me to know those things. I really wanted the IOM reports, but they are expensive and available free online at the National Academies Press website. The only problem is each page is a separate PDF file and so reading or printing the pages is a pain. I would think the NAP and IOM would want to make it easier for the general public to access and read these reports. I do want the moleskin notebook, mostly because its supposed to be the thing to have if you like to write journals (kind of like the iPod is the thing to have if you like to listen to music). But I just couldn't bring myself to justify spending $9.95 on a mere notebook.
>> I've been consumed with writing three papers simulataneously in the past two weeks and i'm finding it difficult to multitask. There is definitely a huge overload associated with context switching between tasks (there goes the geek in me....).
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