Good progress

I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth. And by "mirth," I mean "enthusiasm for my current research project." And it is a slight lie to claim that wherefore I know not. I have some musings on "wherefore."

My advisor tells me I am making "good progress," but I am doubtful. (Note: advisor's word = pronouncement of truth, and can be accepted as true axiomatically in every model. I AM MAKING GOOD PROGRESS.)

My project is insubstantial, as so much theoretical computer science is. I'm not building anything real: I'm not gluing or sawing or constructing anything that can be held in the hands, passed around in a circle, plugged into a socket, or brought in for show-and-tell. The only sense in which I'm building is a metaphorical one: I'm building mathematical tools. I'm holding theories in my hands and passing them around for comment. I plug one logical system into another. I write on blackboards and tell people about this mathematical project I'm constructing. It's exceedingly abstract, even in metaphor.

If I were to wink out of existence, little of my research would endure. Some papers, some files. But most of my project is in my brain: the motivations, the way each little mathematical tendril wraps around another thing to root my project in the context of significance to computer science.

I think I need to get some Lego robotics kits and spend some time outside. Maybe find a pottery studio -- that kinetic therapy improved my abstracted, mathematical senior[thesis!] year. This frigidly air-conditioned cinderblock cell where I work is responsible for this funk. It's beautiful outside. Maybe next summer I'll get a job as a bike messenger. I'll deliver your messages promptly, with a quick side-dish of context-appropriate Shakespeare. ("News from Verona! How now, Balthasar? How doth my lady?")


This post's theme word: recondite, "abstruse." (That is, "difficult to understand.") Abstruse is the 13th most-looked-up word on the New York Times website (via MetaFilter).

Graduation!

You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I am graduating right now. The graduation is being webcast here, but you won't see me. I'm not there. My parents couldn't come; I didn't want to be forced to rent graduation regalia from the university; I'm still all graduated-out from the week-long immersion in history and ceremony that was H-bomb graduation; and I don't feel like anything has changed. I'm still in the same department, the same university, the same country, the same funding, the same area of research.

I'll go next week and pick up my diploma. I have only seen Ph. D.s from U of T, but if the M. Sc.s are anything like them (plain paper, simple typeface, no Latin) then I expect my diploma to be underwhelming.


This post's theme word: flummafiddle, "nonsense, something worthless."