July 28 (I know that's not today's date)

I finally got four scientist to agree on a two-hour meeting for my prelim defense. It's scheduled for July 28. According to department guidelines I need to send them the written proposal by July 14. Which is effectively July 12 since I'm driving to Colorado with J-man and his kids July 13-14.

I have just under a month and a half to write the long-overdue research proposal for my PhD (I was supposed to do it last year, but my dad's illness came first). It seems like a long time and too soon all at once. I'm supposed to use an atmospheric model that I still don't have running reliably. Before I send my proposal to the committee I need to do some test runs to gauge how much computer time I'll need, which may in part determine which experiments I conduct. Can't if the model's not running right.

Regardless, I am excited to get this out of the way. It's the second big hurdle towards a PhD (first was the qualifying exam). Once I pass the prelim, all I have left is research and final defense. I don't even have to take any more classes (though I probably will because I'm me and there are lots of interesting classes at colleges).

What are the rites of passage on the way to a PhD in your department?

Strides in research

Research is moving. In December of last year (a whopping five months ago!) my adviser and I planned to submit a paper. Well, we just submitted it last Monday. Finally. After working on the darn thing for a year and a half! Now it's out of my life for at least a couple of months. Good riddance.

On a related note, I recently received a request to review a manuscript for the journal to which I submitted my paper. I didn't realize that they would ask a grad student to review a paper before she even has a publication through the peer-review process. This will be new. Luckily I have an adviser to shadow me so I do it right.

I gave my first conference talk in January. I uploaded it two hours before my presentation time and didn't practice at all. Though my talk was the last one of the session, I entered the room at the beginning of the session. I watched as the seats slowly filled and people gathered along the walls throughout the session. The talk before mine must be really interesting!

As the applause faded and I heard my name spoken into the microphone, few people left. They came for my talk? I hoped for a clear mind and calm nerves. My talk came out reasonably cogent and perfect length. My adviser was relieved, as was I. No one asked a question, though the person running the session tracked me down later and said he enjoyed my talk and that I was doing important work. Neat! I survived my first conference talk, and perhaps made waves in the process.

I hope to continue that smidgen of momentum. My PhD research direction changed a bit, much to my satisfaction. I'll still work with the WRF model, but the standard version instead of a special climate version. It is much easier to get my hands on and has better support. The results should be relevant to many mountainous areas around the tropics, which makes me feel like the research is more worth doing.

That's not all, folks. I'm trying to schedule my prelim (again) while I try to help a visiting undergrad (I'm learning alongside him), work with a geology student on a side project, and now review a paper. Do you know how difficult it is to get four scientists to agree on a two-hour block of time to meet? If one's not in DC, another is in Fiji. Or maybe India.

My adviser wants me to finish by December 2012. I have a start on some of the background work, but I'm still having trouble running the model. I haven't decided yet if that's a delusion. How long should the research and writing portion of a PhD take? Eh, I'll give it a shot anyhow. I certainly don't want to be the perpetual grad student.

Which brings me to my future after grad school. I have not yet decide how or when to integrate communication and education into my degree, though I it is important that I get that experience before I graduate. I don't know what kind of position I'll look for. Scientist, programmer, communications... who knows. If J-man and I stay together in Grad School Town, it depends on what's available in the area. Post all that under future work.

Next time: personal progress, and there is plenty to be had ;)

Busy, busy!

Writing my first paper: Oh, the pain!

I am in the midst of editing my first scientific paper, and it's painful! I'm sure most of the pain is self inflicted. It's not bad once I sit down and start working, but it seems like the work never ends. I've been working with the same (last) figure for the paper for many weeks, fighting computer problems that defy explanation. I finally moved the scripts to a different machine. I don't think it's working. Though the program is still listed as an active process, the output file is showing no progress.

The part of the paper that I can write without the last figure is coming along. I'm flailing a little because I'm not sure how to write it. I suppose I'll find out if I'm doing it correctly when I send my polished-as-I-can-get-it draft to the advisor. To do that, however, I need to plot the last figure.

I have completely given up hope of finishing the prelim before the end of summer. I'd have to figure out how to run a model, generate preliminary data, write everything up, and figure out what else I have to do for a prelim in the next two weeks before my adviser and I are both out of town for the majority of August. Dammit!

As a result, I am registered for a class this fall on using the WRF model. I suppose it'll be a useful class. I still don't want to take it.

In positive news, my journalism (copyediting) professor invited me to chat with her about finding a way to get the experience and knowledge I need to break into science writing. I'll definitely take her up on that.

Two days into the Petascale Workshop

Now that have reached the end of my self-imposed research hiatus, I am not working on research. Instead, I'm attending the Scaling to Petascale workshop this week. This should give me a good introduction to massively parallel computing, which I hope will be useful for running the Weather Research and Forecasting model as part of my PhD research.

I was late to the workshop on Monday because some genius thought it'd be fun to throw eggs at my car overnight. Around 7:20am, I found yellow goo smeared across the side of my car and broken egg shells littering the road. After half an hour of scrubbing the side of my car with dish soap, I got most of it off.

However, I could not head straight to the workshop. I had to first take my car through an automated car wash to get the dish soap off (yay, its first car wash since I bought it a little over two years ago!). I still need to find some clear coat touch-up to fix some chips where the egg hit. At least the whole thing only cost me about $4 plus a bit of clear coat touch-up. I missed part of the opening speakers, but nothing substantial.

A continental breakfast of the usual pastries and fruit was provided, so I decided I'd eat breakfast at home the rest of the week. Honestly, I've had a very hard time paying attention to the speakers. I really want to be interested enough that it holds my attention. I think a lot of the concepts we're learning are neat, but I'm somehow unable to pay attention for more than a few minutes without doing something else.

Part of it is lack of sleep (nine hours between Sunday and Monday nights), but it's also difficult to listen to computer science talks, especially when the speaker has a heavy accent. I find the workshop as a whole overwhelming. The talks involve a lot of terminology that I don't understand even when it is clearly pronounced and they are pretty dense. Programming is better learned through experience than through lectures anyhow. I'm hoping that the presentations and websites will be enough to help me through the example exercises, which seem very good.