blinky blinky
so today was fairly amusing. my advisor had two visitors in the office today, two guys that she went to grad school with and is now working on a project with. they were using these blinking lights for a physics demonstration and a few with them (they are basically these little blinking leds that you can magnetically attach to your clothes or something else. they are marketed for "discos and concerts"). so Brian and I were playing around with those for a while, and let's just say that he did something that made our advisor nearly die laughing. it was great. angel has pictures, but I doubt Brian would like them posted on the internet. ;-)
we also went to lunch (yay free food) with the other professors and we all had a good time trying to decide the best way to annoy their past advisor while we're at the conference we're going to in a few weeks. should be amusing.
anyway, studying is going ok. I am reading griffiths and I think it is helping me understand what is going on. apparently there are a lot of things that I just never understood when I was going through my undergrad stuff, so it's good to go over it so I have a better conceptual understanding of what I'm doing. I'm just worried that I'm going to run out of time.
I guess I'm at this point where I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to pass it this time around, but I feel absolutely confident that if I fail, I will be able to pass it in January. so that's good.
Angel, you need to think positively! if you go into the test thinking you're going to fail, then you have no chance at all. I am trying to be realistic, but I also have to be optimistic or there's no point at all. maybe it's just because I'm naturally a very optimistic person and can't really help but think that way, but I really believe that your attitude has an influence on what happens. please don't quit! we have exactly four weeks. it's possible!
posted by Cynthia @ 11:23 PM
1 Comments:
Hi Cynthia. You dont know me but I'm Emily, Angel's friend Emily from Puerto Rico. We probably know each other by reference only :-P
Anyway, just wanted to tell you not to panic with the exam. When I was studying for mine I was freaking out too thinking of all the things that I shoulda learned in undergrad but that I didn't and now were coming back to bite me in the ass. The trick is to be calm, don't try to study too much in one day because your brain will be fried and it won't absorb any more information, and just try to re-learn the most important aspects. If you have time in the end (i.e., couple of days before The Big Day), go over the more specific details. Try to learn the broad things. You can always derive specific equations from more general ones. Though I wouldn't try to derive the three laws of thermodynamics from F=ma, but you get the point :-P
BTW, is your comprehensive oral or written? Because well, in an oral comprehensive (like the one I took) you have the chance to kinda bullshit around an answer and the profs can help you if you happen to be bullshitting in the right direction but missing the target. With written comps, well, I didn't take it that way because my department changed the policy just before my year, but I heard that the trick there is to not get bogged down in just one problem trying to solve it for a long time. If you read a problem and you have no clue, move on and try another one, then come back to it in the end. But also try not to leave anything blank. Just like in the oral exam the point is to say *something*, the point in the written exam is to write *something*, as long as it is significant to the question being asked.
I guess your exam is more physics than astronomy, so it's gonna be like a glorified GRE subject test, so I wish you and Angel and all that are taking comps the best of luck and lots of success. I will now be cliche and tell you what all the older grads told me before I took comps: "It really isn't all that bad after all". I feel your pain because I took my comps just over two months ago, so I can totally remember the agony of studyding and group studying and having the "holy crap I don't know shit" realization every other day. But it is possible to do well in the comps. The profs don't really expect you to know *everything*, just to know enough to show you're worthy of the big-bad PhD title. Hang in there and good luck! :-)
P.S. Sorry if my intended "tiny little bit" of advice went on forever. I tend to talk a lot. Ask Angel. He'll say it's true :-P
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