Destroyed

Phew! Just finished grading this week batch of lab reports. Last week saw my ego completely destroyed by the first midterm on statistical mechanics.

It was an easy exam. The first problem was a collection of two-level systems; we were asked to find thermodynamic quantities and analyze them. I started doing things the wrong way, until I finally realized I had to find the partition function and calculate everything from there. It was to late when I figure things out. The second problem was a rotating cylinder with a pressure in its axis, we were asked to find the pressure in the boundary. Again, I started walking the wrong path and by the time I realized what I had to do it was to late. Literally, time was up. So I handed in two less-than-half-way done problems.

I was angry at myself. So angry that during lunch I bit my own tongue. I hated myself for not thinking things right. Then I felt in this thinking storm of how I sucked as a physics student, how I was alright back in Puerto Rico and how I am never going to make it to work with quantum gravity. It made me feel really low. I went to Boston during that weekend and worked on homeworks.

I had worked on EM previously during the week, but on Sunday night I realized that what I did was very wrong. It turned out I only had solved correctly one problem, out of 4. Again, it made me feel so hopeless. I ended up arriving at Stony Brook around 8:30 PM to grade my part of the midterm grading for the class I am TAing. It turned out that the professor wanted the grades early, so he had started grading my part with another instructor. I felt so bad when I saw somebody doing my job. I graded a bit of what was left and helped entered all the grades to the spreadsheet in the computer. This lasted until 3:00 AM.

While walking back to my apartment I saw the snow falling down on the campus. That night and Monday we had like 3 inches of snow. I think most of it is melted now, since it had been relatively warm lately. On Tuesday I got my grade from the midterm and it was not that bad, 85/150. The average was around 100, so I am well below average. I do not feel that bad, because I know that (at the end) I had an idea on how to solved the problems.

I also email some professors in the mathematics department asking for summer research. Three out of four already replied with a negative answer, mostly the same; they are busy, they are going to be gone during the summer, they do not have anything to offer, and I can always take courses to learn. I get a bit annoyed by the fact that they tell me I can take the courses. While it is true, I can take the courses at some point, I also have to take a lot of other courses. I am tired of taking courses and solving textbook problems. I want to work with somebody, and to learn things in a non-linear way. Oh well, there is still one professor who has not replied, but I do not have my hopes high...

Still, I am a happy person.