I just realized (read: read) that i and -i are the same number. Is that why we multiply things by their compex conjugates when we square them?


I really need more social interaction. But this book is so good...

We threw a big party last night. It was the fourth and final quarterlife release party of the year, which tends to be a pretty hopping event, and this was no exception. It was also the first time I've played with my band to a pretty full audience, which was nice, especially since I felt we sounded particularly sharp last night. Having people tell me they appreciate my playing is always a nice ego boost—but besides playing music, I never really learned how to interact with people in parties. There was at least one instance when I would smile at a cute girl I didn't recognize, but was so taken off-guard when she smiled back and seemed interested that I just froze up and kept walking. Awkward. Especially with so little time before graduation, I wish I could just hit on people without worrying about doing it wrong or making a fool of myself—even when I'm pretty drunk and realize I have very little to lose, my inhibitions never really leave. I suppose that might ultimately be a good thing; it's just frustrating in the short term.

Anyway, the police made a presence at our party for the first time in quite a while, apparently due to a noise complaint, but they mostly just sat outside in their cruisers while we tried to get people to move inside and keep it down a bit, and they left after a while. All in all, a pretty good night, I'd say, and I'm refreshingly and surprisingly un-hungover (we'll see how long that lasts). It promises to be a nice day out there, and it would be great if I could be a little productive today, so I think I'll go see where the day takes me.

I've had a rather crazy couple of days. Last week started out ominously easily, between not having a Pio issue to edit and not having to do any homework for Thursday. On Thursday morning, I got on a plane to get to Rochester, NY to visit the Institute of Optics, not expecting to really want to go there but I was happy to visit if they wanted to fly me out there.

The flight to Seattle was smooth enough, on time and everything. I was supposed to fly to Chicago next, with about a 90 minute layover there before flying to Rochester on the last flight there. As the plane out of Seattle was taxiing to the runway, though, we pulled off to the side of the tarmac and the pilot informed us that they were having instrument problems and were talking to mechanics to see if it needed to be replaced before flying. They decided it did, which I'm thankful for because I imagine it would have been a bit scary if they had eventually decided to fly without it, but that meant returning to the gate for over an hour to replace whatever wasn't working, while we all stayed on the plane. (Incidentally, it started to snow briefly at this point, which seemed really out of character for Seattle in late March.) Anyway, I was pretty sure at this point that I'd have to stay a night in Chicago since I'd clearly miss my connection, but the pilot was able to shave about an hour off the flight time and we were told that weather in Chicago and elsewhere was delaying certain flights, so maybe it was possible after all. We pulled into a snowy Chicago right about the time my other flight was originally set to leave, so I ran to the gate (which was indeed a bit of a jog) to check. None of the departures information screens had any information about the flight, and when I got to the gate, I was told that the flight was canceled anyway. Great.

So, now I had to try to figure out how to get a hotel room, which was a bit confusing since the customer service reps in Chicago weren't entirely helpful. I eventually found a Super 8 about 10 minutes away that worked out fine. I ate vending machine sun chips and chex mix for dinner since I hadn't had a chance to get a decent meal in the midst of trying to find accommodations late at night. United had booked me on the next flight out of Chicago toward Rochester by way of Washington Dulles. This flight left at 6 a.m. Chicago time, which meant I had to get on an airport shuttle at about 4 a.m., which meant I got about 2.5 hours of sleep. So I flew to Washington (which I'm pretty sure is as far away from home and anybody I know as I have ever been), had a layover of about four hours, and flew into Rochester, arriving several hours after the open house program had begun, so I began a whirlwind series of visits with professors and visits to student housing.

I was surprisingly conversational for having only had a couple of hours of sleep, and actually enjoyed most of my faculty interviews. There were still a few inches of snow on the ground there; I feel like the weather would be one of the least appealing things about going there. That said, I enjoyed the visit a lot more than I expected to. The professors were all very friendly and knowledgeable, the students seemed happy enough (likely because the stipend is great and the cost of living is very low), they've got a new building that's pretty nice, and the city of Rochester seemed culturally rich enough to be interesting. Another big gripe, though, is that it seems like a car would be necessary to get around in the city; I hear some people ride bikes, though bike lanes are nonexistent, and it doesn't appear to be a very pedestrian-friendly town. This issue is compounded by the fact that people don't seem to be able to drive in Rochester—I saw at least two incidents of creative driving that could well have resulted in accidents.

So, that was that, and I got on a plane at 10 the next morning for Chicago, and from there to Seattle and back home. The first two flights were pleasantly smooth, but Seattle to Walla Walla was so bumpy that the refreshment service was canceled. And somehow they neglected to put my luggage on the plane in Seattle, so I'm to expect that to arrive this evening. The plan was for me to return to Walla Walla around 5:30, with just enough time to prepare for the big party that was to be held at our house for the ultimate teams in the area participating in OnionFest, at which my band was supposed to play (which I was quite excited about). I got a call when I was at Sea-Tac, however, letting me know that a couple of other bands had shown up in my house who had also been promised chances to play, and that we wouldn't be able to. A quick house meeting upon my return assured me that we would invoke eminent domain in order to get my band to play, though. However, the poor communication didn't let up as the night went on, and my bandmates seem to have been told that we weren't wanted to play, and another bandmate apparently had a bit of a fever and wouldn't return my call, so that plan kind of disintegrated, which I'm rather disappointed about. We have a great set list, but we seem to be stymied every time we try to play a show. It's really disappointing. Anyway, we had one band play, who drove out here from Seattle with a U-Haul trailer full of their equipment. (The other band was never heard from again.) They were pretty good, technically, but it wasn't really great party music, and it apparently drove quite a few people away. I wouldn't really know, though, since I cooped myself up in Dave's and my rooms by this point, since the rest of the house was so packed as to be impossible to get through and I was exhausted from having started my day 16 hours and 2,000 miles ago.

So, that was my extended weekend. Now I have to face the homework I pretended I didn't have to do, as well as putting my house back together after the party. By the time I left for work in the math lab an hour or so ago a couple of cute girls had shown up at my house to help clean up, but that was disappointingly awkward, perhaps because the weekend has left me dazed and exhausted, perhaps because they were bitter that I wasn't helping to clean up. I can't decide whether this weekend has left me satisfied or horribly dissatisfied.

So, I just did my math/physics orals. I passed, but my panel had to deliberate about it a bit too long for my comfort. They said they were confident that I knew the material, but just had a hard time expressing it, which is more or less how I felt about it. Regardless, I'm rather embarrassed at having hesitated and stumbled on really easy questions, and I hardly feel any more relaxed now than I did two hours ago. I don't like feeling like I was passed out of some degree of pity. I guess I'm also disappointed that I can't really afford to celebrate—at least, not yet. I've got a full evening's worth of work to do tonight, I think, so I guess I better get started...

Except it's Monday night. Apparently I failed to realize that although I get a three-day weekend, I still have just as much to do for Tuesdays, plus the work that would have been due on Monday. I resent the fact that every time I try to take a mental health break, I just end up getting even further behind and hence less mentally healthy. At least I'm now auditing my nature class, so that I just have to do the readings instead of doing the readings and writing the 6-8 page paper that would be due tomorrow.

It's days like this that make me end up feeling depressed. That's not to say I'm depressed right now, at least not yet, but I feel like these kinds of days highlight my place in the social scheme of things and why I find that so frustrating. In sum: I feel I'm a foil to all the socially extroverted people I hang out with, and that I've constructed a niche for myself that entails providing for or cleaning up after people in a generally invisible way.

Yesterday, Harrison and I attended a BBQ/potluck at the Women's Resource Lounge; my contributions were a couple of bottles of wine and some hummus and crackers. Harrison openly scoffed at the classiness of this offering—this was more of a beer and hot dogs party, apparently, though nobody seemed to embrace the theme too enthusiastically—and his sophomore groupie friend shoved these offerings aside to make room for some meaty finger-food. Soon, though, both bottles had been emptied, somebody was enjoying the hummus by the spoonful, and Harrison and I were off get yet more wine from Safeway. Harrison, who had more recently claimed he didn't like being drunk and didn't want to drink that night, was soon drunk and apparently enjoying it, judging by his reaction to the girls who were hanging off him. So, one way to see the night was that I was initially scoffed at when I tried to inject a little bit of class into the evening, but the wine ended up being a hit, much to the benefit of the very people who scoffed at me in the first place. (That said, though, I did enjoy the party quite a bit myself; even in my role as the quiet guy, I saw some good, honest interactions with people I don't see too often.)

I was perhaps lucky to be able to face today without a hangover and with the benefit of a pretty good night's rest—benefits of having been drunk by 7:30 p.m., I guess—but was assailed with all the work I'd been putting off, plus bending over to take care of Pio writers who turn in articles more than 24 hours after they were due (I had no fewer than nine late articles to edit today, coming in between midnight at 7 p.m.). To me, that's another example of me fulfilling my niche by cleaning up after other people. I mean, it's nice to be able to help other people out, but the fact that I'm there and willing to pick up the slack when other people's lives get in the way (as if I don't have one myself) puts me in the background, allowing other people to live and enjoy their lives (kinda like the above story). And in the case of the Pio, my niche is only non-invisible when I get to act as the bad guy—filling writers' pages with red ink and such.

I feel like I have more to say on the issue, but it's not coming to mind right now. I'm getting tired, and I fear that if I don't tackle this lab report now, I'll fall asleep before it gets done.

I don't really know who reads this anymore, but for those of you who do, and for my good friends who don't, I'm grateful. I'm increasingly fearful of scaring people away by complaining too much, since I know how unattractive that can be, so I appreciate those people with whom I can talk openly without being afraid of alienation. I hope I can be as good a friend in return. Thank you.

I suppose I spend a lot of time thinking about metaphysics and epistemology. Among the points I hold as key is the idea that the scope of human understanding, at any given point in time, is finite. And yet, in trying to formulate a world view to base my ideas and analyses on, I typically try to perceive too much at the same time, leading me to understand nothing and feel that much more frustrated.

I want to write more about this when I have the time.

I'm a mess.


Details at 11.

I feel like I have too much to do tonight to afford to write a post right now, but I guess I just need an outlet for a bit.

It's been an up-and-down day. Between lingering Pio stresses (which are utterly unavoidable in the first week of press) and realizing that I need to read over a hundred pages today for various classes and a case of acute cognitive dissonance (or cognitive unsureness, anyways), I've had a minor bout of relative depression after a few days of feeling pretty on top of the world. That mood was suddenly interrupted mid-afternoon upon hearing that I'd been accepted to the physics Ph.D. program at the University of Oregon, which is essentially my top choice since I like Eugene and I haven't really seen any other schools. But now I'm back down. It's been one of those weird days where all my housemates also seem a bit touchy, which stresses me out.

I don't know what it is. My current Facebook status announces that I yearn to emote, which for those of you stalking me on two fronts warrants some explanation. I have all these emotions, but I feel like I have no real way to act upon them. I'm used to feeling okay, but when I feel elated, I can't think of a way to reward myself (or can't afford to) or to apply my enthusiasm in a satisfying way. I feel at times lustful, but I lack the means to... you know, realize that. I feel oft-ignored sadness, like now, but I can't seem to vent it. I yearn to sob. I haven't really cried since... October 5th of last year. (I remember this because it was the night before the physics GREs—for an unrelated reason.) But even that wouldn't feel quite satisfying unless I had somebody to see me do it, somebody to try to comfort me. Sometimes I come close—sometimes the strains of an emotional symphony or seeing people emote on TV makes my eyes well up a bit—but the catharsis doesn't come. I certainly don't want to become dependent on anybody else for my mental well-being—that's a slippery, unhealthy slope that would only make me worse off in the end—but I'm getting a little tired of living only in my own head.

I'll be okay. I just need to let myself feel like I do for a bit. (And in some cases, figure out exactly how I do feel.)

Another awkward day. I feel like I've been having a lot of these lately. I woke up thinking I'd have to be busy all day, but was pleased to realize that my commitments could be fulfilled in only an hour or two. All I really have to do now is write a short essay to finish up my application for the University of Michigan and go to a meeting tonight to see if I still get to work in the math lab.

All the same, I can't stand this day for some reason. By the end of the day, everybody will be back in town... but I'm not sure I care. I feel vaguely nauseous, like feeling guilty and worried and malnourished and on an unhealthy sleep schedule. I just bought books for the last time at Whitman (until I switch classes around, anyways), and I felt as awkward and uncomfortable in the bookstore as on my first day here. I see familiar faces everywhere, but I don't know any of them well enough to say 'hi.' Everybody is overjoyed to see each other again, and I just feel like a displaced outsider. I'm not going to complain about not having friends or about people not wanting to know me; not only because I don't necessarily think that way, but because such complaints are, if anything, counterproductive. Instead, I'm depressed because I haven't yet rediscovered my desire to be extroverted and talk to strangers and be a regular, social person. I've felt pretty out of my element lately, socially—a lot of my friendships have changed over the past few months, and while I think that's healthy, for the moment I don't feel I have a very strong base of friends. For the most part, that's okay—I've gotten accustomed to getting along by myself, without needing anybody and being grateful that nobody needs me—but it's a bit disorienting at times. Like today.

With any luck, this is just a one- or two-day funk, and not chronic senioritis creeping into both my social and academic worlds.

Awkward day. I spent some time on the phone with a few Apple representatives to try and diagnose my iPhone's reluctance to receive some calls. The first rep got a bit snappy with me when I was quick to point out that my problem wasn't poor reception or that the phone was in silent mode, while the second rep was very polite and a little flirty and sometimes tripped over her own words. In any case, the first one told me I'd probably have to replace the phone at an Apple store, while the second one (I had to call back after verifying that the phone was, in fact, not receiving calls even after taking Rep 1's advice) told me I could just go to the AT&T store and swap out the SIM card. This I did, and the phone seems to be working better, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's fixed.

I'm very much in solitary vacation mode. It's been a very non-social break; I haven't talked to friends face-to-face besides a brief rendezvous with one friend and a beautiful coffee date with another, both at Starbucks. Both these friends have since skipped town, though—the latter was in town only for a day or two, and I feel very grateful to have seen her at all—so I don't have particularly high hopes for being social any more this break. So, I'll probably be spending New Year's Eve at home with my mom—which could be a lot worse, I suppose, but it could also be a lot better. Oh, well.

I've been sleeping from about 3 a.m. to 1 p.m. most days, which is fun, though it leaves me with about three waking hours of daylight. Lately I've been spending a fair bit of time (by my standards) reading this book "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid," which is really pretty awesome. It was written while the author was a physics grad student at the University of Oregon, which seems like a good omen to me. Anyways, so far, it deals with things like self-reference and number theory and exploring the correspondence between formal systems and reality, drawing upon examples from mathematics, art, and music (as represented by the titular characters). It's far less dry than I make it sound, though, and at 700+ pages, should keep me pretty well engaged through the rest of break.

I'm no longer as freaked out that I'm somehow looking over some thesis-type graduation requirement (thanks Sarah and Linda), and am now instead looking at interesting-sounding classes that still have slots available to pad my schedule a bit, since I'm afraid that Intro to TV Studies, which I'm already registered for, may not quite be my thing. Among the more interesting ones I've found so far, having explored up to the F's in the course catalog: Classics 371: Rhetoric in Early Western Culture; English 338C: Memory and Narrative; Environmental Studies 367B: The Human-Nature (Dis)Connection. This last one sounds particularly appealing—it claims to be a class dedicated to the questions of whether and to what extent humans are a part of nature. I'm really excited at the prospect of taking a class that's not exactly science or social science, but that has some foundational ties to what I'm studying. (Actually, the last two of these classes don't appear in the course catalog, but were added later, so you have to download the course descriptions from the registrar's Web site.)

I still haven't finished grad school applications, but I think I have most of the pieces I need. I've finally sent my recommenders the forms they need to fill out and all that, which is a relief, but I still need to complete the actual applications. The hardest part of this will likely involve cutting my essay down to the right length, maybe tweaking it for each school, and writing another blurb about myself. It seems like this could probably all be done in a day or two at the most, but I'm lazy. But don't worry, it will get done. I think my mind has a subconscious reluctance to let me get to a point where I don't have anything at all to worry about.

I am suddenly terrified that nobody told me that I need to do a thesis before I graduate.

I feel like, between the guy (no pun intended) who organized the Intro to Psych, Section A Final study session and professor who forwarded the e-mail to the Section B listserv, somebody should have noticed that the other section of the class actually has the final at a different time—namely, a day and a half before said study session.

Alright, back to optics...

So, my new cell phone appears to be somewhat random in whether or not it decides to ring when people call me. Also, voice mail doesn't seem to reach it very reliably, either. So, if you need to reach me and I don't seem to be answering my phone, chances are I'm not ignoring you, I just can't tell you're calling. I'm trying to figure out what the matter is and how to fix it, but in the meantime, you can try text messaging me, or shoot me an e-mail or facebook message, since I check those rather frequently.



[As much as I'm amused by the "frustrated" mood icon below, I find it bitterly ironic right now.]

Weird day. The weather has been sloppy and uncomfortable all day, and that's exactly how I feel. I'm inarticulate and aimless and I can't really interact with people very well. I had a big late breakfast, and probably won't be in the mood for dinner anytime soon. I'm not going to try to be productive any more, but I can't think of an enjoyable way to waste time.

I feel like I'm falling apart. It could be argued that I could take some comfort in the fact that a lot of my friends seem to feel about the same, for various reasons and to various degrees, but I feel like that actually makes it worse. I feel like one of the best short-term cures for depression (which can give rise to long-term cures) is feeling that somebody else is willing to listen and really cares. But I feel that this mechanism usually depends on the somebody else to be reasonably stable themselves. In the case of Whitman (or at least the people I talk to), where most people are still trying to figure themselves out, would-be caregivers are typically still learning how to help themselves, much less help anybody else, in a meaningful way.

This frustrates me. I feel that for a long time, I felt more or less stable, and I felt very comfortable trying to give my full attention and empathy to other people. Now, as I find myself mired in existential crises and metaphysical dilemmas and groping for a set of values to call my own, I catch myself increasingly making dispositional attributions to explain what bothers me about other people—painfully ironic, considering how central the concept of transcendental empathy is to my concept of a healthy world view. Thus I become just another face in what I perceive as a crowd of people looking for themselves and for friends to care about them and appreciate them while being too lost or frustrated or whatever to take steps of selfless empathy for somebody else. I'm ashamed of losing my ability to go out of my way to make other's lives easier, since I feel that that kind of true empathy is crucial for a healthy community. But after enduring frustrations from multiple fronts this semester, I find myself listening to my friends when they tell me I just need to take care of myself and hence becoming a bit more self-centered. While I'm not proud of this, though, I'm afraid it's the best I can do for now. I'm just afraid of my closer friends getting burnt out with hearing about my depression.

Jake: You're not helping.

Put. the shower curtains. back.

Spring 2008:

• Quantum Mechanics II (because I should)
• Mathematical Modeling (because I need two more math credits)
• Intro to TV studies (a rhetoric and film studies thing, but I might trade it for the similar Intro to Pop Culture, which doesn't have two hours of screenings a week)
• Computational Physics (sounds useful, and should be relatively easy)
• Fourth on waitlist for Environmental Aesthetics
Total: 13 credits right now; 17 if I get into Environmental Aesthetics

This gives me no classes before 10 a.m., only 2.5 hours of class on Wednesdays (good for copy editing), and only one class (from 1-2 p.m.) on Fridays. I might still move things around a bit, or pick up an SSRA credit, but I'm pretty happy with how this looks for now.

Where have I been all these years?

Having almost completely neglected to worry about next year in any meaningful way, I just attended a lecture on successfully applying to graduate school. I feel like I don't really have the time or energy to stress about that right now, but I know it's not going to get any easier. The lecture was encouraging, though; I feel like I could be a competitive candidate if only I applied myself. But I feel like that would require a greater enthusiasm for my field of study—it's hard for me to want to contact professors at grad schools about my interest when I'm a little dubious about that interest sometimes. (Note to self: make sure grad schools never discover my LiveJournal.)

It was a bit bizarre to hear him talk about the GRE as a hugely important test, having just taken that test yesterday. He offered a bunch of tips about how to explain a poor GRE score to admissions people and generally seemed to downplay the importance of top scores. Speaking of which, I feel a bit conflicted about my GRE scores. The speaker tonight said that the GRE requires about 8-24 hours total preparation for optimal performance, including sitting down and taking several full-length tests. I did none of that; I didn't study at all until the night before the test, when I looked over the test format and a couple practice questions online for about an hour after drinking wine. I probably shouldn't have done well, but I did. I kinda feel like I beat the system again (i.e., having done well on math writtens after minimal studying and setting the curve on tests when I'd partied the night before). I feel like I should be proud of myself, but I feel like I'm having a hard time being satisfied by myself. I keep wanting to tell my friends—I figure I'd want to know if they scored above the 94th percentile in each section—but I'm really afraid of being that guy who brags about test scores. I'm afraid I might be too dependent on acknowledgment from other people. But I already knew that; that's partially why the Pio gets to me sometimes, since my work on that is so generally unnoticed (by most, anyways). I just don't know when it's appropriate to mention my scores, since it might be rude for people to ask me my scores, but I don't want to be rude and offer that information without prompt. An obvious solution would just be to just feel good about it and keep my damn mouth shut, but I feel like that basically constitutes ignoring what I kinda feel is a significant accomplishment. Perhaps I just need better ways of rewarding myself—but that's another topic altogether.

So, I took the general GRE today. Drove up to Moscow last night and stayed with Sarah's parents, who generously wined and dined me, and sat in front of a computer from 8:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. trying to stay awake and engaged. I think I misinterpreted the instructions on one of the essays, but I think my response still fits somewhat with the instructions. Anyways, I got 710 on verbal and 800 on math. At least, I really hope I read those numbers right; like the math writtens, I'll feel better about it once I get it in paper. I'm feeling rather better about applying to grad schools, though, although I feel my physics GRE scores are still very much in the air. Plus, Pio work went quite smoothly tonight; we finished at 9:30 even though I didn't get there until about 4.