Grad Student

Through these last 3.5 weeks of driving to Pittsburgh, looking for an apartment, filling out payroll and office paperwork, setting up a new bank account, finding good parking spaces in the area, finding supermarkets in the area, listening to faculty talks, talking to potential advisors, receiving my first fast-paced Statistics lectures, doing my first homework, mingling with fellow MLD students, swimming in the campus pool (THE BEST EVER), running at my first CMU race, setting up internet in the apartment, and generally just settling down and accomodating here in Pittsburgh, I had been too busy to realize this, but it just now hit me:

I am now a Grad Student (see below):

A Grad Student!!! Getting a Ph.D.!!!!! "Philosophy Doctorate". Weird name for a Machine Learning degree - I don't think I'll be learning much about existential dilemmas or the meaning of Life in my required courses (though a certain recent recommended movie by Monty Python might help out with that). Of course, if we reference the redundantly original origins of "Philosophy" (Philo - Attraction, Love; Sophos - Knowledge, Wisdom), then it makes quite a lot of sense. Ph.D. graduates are supposed to know stuff that no one has known before. They know more, they want to know, they investigate to know more about... whatever. So in that way it makes sense.

Does it make sense in my specific Life path? I think it does. I believe some of the projects going on around here are really innovative, and will hence provide new knowledge of some kind. That doesn't necessarily mean that it will make people any wiser, though, but... it's worth a try, right? :)

Masochists who guard semi-useful research for small wages. ROLLING ON THE FLOOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD. Seriously. :D

P.S: I know next to nothing about copyright laws, but please don't sue me, Jorge Cham.

P.P.S: This entry actually looks like a real blog entry! You know, one paragraph, then a few words of text followed by an image, followed by more text, usually explaining the image and/or related concepts. Cool.