Spatial Rift #47

There was a flash of light, and Brad and Marie fell out of the test chamber. They had finally done it! After years of hard work, they had finally transformed themselves into dinosaurs. They ran off into the distance, and lived happily ever raptor.

Uh, hi. Remember me? Yeah, I used to write posts here or something. Thought I'd give that a try again, see how it works out. I've been acclimating to life here at Tufts. There's definitely a different attitude to the physics department here than at Dartmouth. Now, I suspect that every physics department has its own little quirks about their graduate program, but they can all be laid on a spectrum in terms of how many rules the grad students are to follow and how rigid the department is in enforcing them. We might label this quality the "hoopitude" of a graduate physics program -- how many hoops must we jump through, and how difficult are they.

If Dartmouth's hoopitude is an 8.5 out of 10, then Tufts is down around a 2 or 3. The flip side of this very groovy coin is that it requires the grad students to be much more proactive about their education. If you want to learn something, you are expected to muster the resources required, whether that's as simple as cracking open a textbook or as involved as a special topics course with a professor.

Personally I'm still in an adjustment phase regarding this difference. Remember, I was raised as a poster child of the public school system, so my entire academic experience was "do this. ok now do that, then do this other thing, and then ..". I do have a goal in mind, but the nature of the Tufts department will force me to distill my goal down to specified plans and tasks. In the long run, I will end up improving my ability to organize myself and my time.

Uh, speaking of time, we've about reached the end of ours this evening. You probably noticed the brand new pun at the top - going to get back to doing those as well. I can tell you're all thrilled.