Entracte - Texas

"Stuck on you
I've got this feeling deep down in my soul that I just can't lose
Guess I'm on my way
Needed a friend
And the way I feel about you I guess I'll be with you 'til the end
Guess I'm on my way
Mighty glad you stayed"

"Oh, the North country winters keep a gettin' me now
Lost my money playin' poker so I had to up and leave
But I ain't a turnin' back
To livin' that old life no more..."

"Suddenly I see this is what I wanna be
Suddely I see why the hell it means so much to me
'Cause this is what I wanna be
Suddenly I see why the hell it means so much to me..."


Finally in Texas. A few more days before I officially start my position as an R.A. Also the first day of a new long distance relationship. What will the future hold? Who knows? All I know is, all I can do is look forward...and some how, it will all turn out just fine.

Done.

Now I'm just exhausted.

Got my M.S. this semester. Now to rest, celebrate, and re-organize my life. Kevin and I escaped to Rochester for this weekend, so this should be good.

It's Official

Friends,

I have just been notified that I've been accepted into the PhD Program in Computer Science at Texas A&M University. I will be working with one of the most stellar advisors that a girl could ever hope for in a field that is cutting edge.

So I guess this is it then... I am leaving RPI after this semester (hopefully with a Masters).

It's official.

-Suzanne

Transition, part II (Chapter IV)

And you would have never thought in the end
How amazing it feels just to live again
It's a feeling you cannot miss
It burns a hole through everyone that feels it...
Alive. I feel myself awakening again. I haven't written here for a few weeks now, mainly because it has been so busy. I came back to RPI. TA training ensued. My mind shut down for a few weeks, as the realization of exactly how busy and exhuausted I've been this summer just washed over me, like a tidal wave. Besides accomplishing meaningless stuff, like getting ready for my courses and buying stuff necessary for day to day living, my mind has been shut off. I didn't finish the scripts necessary to finish the project so I can publish; I've just been too exhausted. I'm sure I'll resurrect them at some point and finish what I need to do. But now I have other things to worry about. I have a masters thesis to work on this semester, on Hidden Markov Models. As an initial project, I'm going to write a simple HMM in FORTRAN. Let's see how successful I am. I'm also TAing two(!) courses this semester; Data Mining and Computer Organization. Computer Organization will be a nice review, but Data Mining is what I'm really excited about. I think TAing that course will help me quite a bit in my two courses this semester, Computability and Complexity and Applications in Probability and Statistics. I need As in both of them so I can pass my qualifiers. Hopefully, this will also be accomplished.

All in all, it's going to be a busy semester. As far as relaxing goes, I went to a LAN party last night. I got to meet some interesting people and play some awesome old retro games. I also got shanghi'ed into giving a presentation on Computational Biology for the campus ACM. I'm terribly nervous, though somewhat excited and anxious; what if I look like a complete idiot? I talked to my friend Ethan about it, and he thinks I'll be ok. I think he has more faith in me that's due though.

So that's been the last few lonely, mostly boring weeks. Though only one week of school has passed, I've been agonizing, since my mind has been mainly shut off. But I think I'm coming alive again. And this is good news... good news indeed.

I don't want to talk about the whole "being single" thing anymore. In short, the plan is that I want to be single for at least one whole semester, so I can learn to stand on my own two feet, and learn to be self-reliant. A noble goal, but one that no one thinks I'll make. My friends told me today that none of them think I'll make it through the month without finding a boyfriend. Some are even counting down the days until I'm no longer single. While it's all very funny, it's a little sad that no one thinks I'm capable of being single for any long period of time. I still plan to stick to my goal, since I think I really need a period to rediscover myself. Hopefully I'll be able to reach my personal goals at the end of this semester too.

It's Sunday, the Sunday before Labor Day, and I missed church, again. This is quite saddening, since I did want to start going to church regularly again. Maybe after I finish reading the slew of books I plan on getting through this semester, I'll start reading the Bible again. At least that way I can start forming a bond with the spiritual side of me that I've somewhat left in the dark. For the rest of today, it's going to be paper reading, and perhaps flirting a bit with my Fortran book. I need to make an early start in this thesis, because I know as the semester goes on, I'm going to be hellishly busy. So wish me luck! I honestly hope this productivity spell that I feel coming on will last for a good deal. I need all the inspiration I can get.

That's all for now.

Transition, part II (Chapter III)

We just boarded the plane. It's 10:45am. I'm going ot have to cut this short very soon. You see, at the airport, I bought this Sudoku puzzle book that contains 400 puzzles. My goal for this flight? To see how many I can get through in 3 hours. I think this bit of fun is definitely worth the money I spent ^-^

So back to the topic at hand. I'm single. Out of respect for Dan's and my privacy, I leave out all the details. I ask you to not ask me about them either. The current situation is very messy. I was going to move in with Dan this year. Now I'm not. My good friend Amy has offered me a place to stay next semester, but she's graduating in December. I have to find a place to live after that.

I'm a planner; I like to plan every portion of my life. For the first time ever, I find myself unable to do that. This next semester is going to be quite an experience. I am so nervous and excited at the same time.

Heh. Amy really came through for me. This break-up would have been a lot harder if she had not been there to offer me a place to stay. Granted, I have no place to talk about how difficult the break-up was.

After all, I was the one who ended it.

The plane has started to taxi. We'll be taking off soon. My sudoku challenge awaits! I'll write more after I get into NJ, and after I have some time to settle in.

Transition, part II (Chapter II)

I entered Texas fairly nervous and exited, and very anxious about entering graduate school this coming Fall, with my only strength and comfort being my boyfriend of 1.5 years, Dan. I leave Texas feeling accomplished, with a new-found confidence simmering underneath. In 10 weeks, I accomplished what I set out to do; namely, designing a new algorithm for phylogenetic construction.

Not only did I create said algorithm, I created one that is competitive with existing methods. For me, this was the first, fully independent, creative, and most-meaningful project of my life. I poured my soul, talents, skills and mind into this work. Near the end, I also was pulling 60-70 hour weeks. And the best part was? I didn't care. I was so damn driven; it was amazing to see myself so incredibly focused. Finally, I saw what I always felt was there inside of me; a woman obssesed with her work, with a problem. What a great confidence boost. The project has been a success; when I get home, I'll be finishing up the project by drawing up some more graphs. Then I'll be writing up the paper that my professor and I are going to publish. Just a success.

But that's not all I did in 10 weeks. That's not all that is changed. I leave Texas relying on my own strength, my ability to stand on my own. In 10 weeks, I managed to completely unravel Dan's and my relationship. We broke up three weeks ago. I don't know if I'd refer to this as an accomplishment though.

For this first time in almost 5 years, I'm single. I'm single, and I'm entering graduate school. It's like starting a whole new life... perhaps this is what I want to write about.

Transition, part II (Chapter I)

The next set of posts, "Transition, part II" were written partly on my way home from Texas. This is going to be fairly lengthy set of posts, and, as a caveat, I may not post them contiguously.

As I write this, I'm sitting at the airport in Dallas, Ft. Worth, waiting for my connecting flight to Newark. I'm finally coming home from Texas. I got up early today. Very early. When the alarm went off at 5am, I hit the snooze button. When the larm went of at 5:10am, I jumped out of bed in a panic; the cab was scheduled to depart at 5:30. I had 20 minutes to get ready, get extraneous stuff packed, turn in my key and drag approximately 100 lbs of luggage down four floors. I wouldn't be surprised if I woke up the entire dorm with the racket I made going down the stairs. I got to the airport at College Station at 5:49, only to find that the American Airlines baggage check wasn't even open; they didn't come in until 6:30am. Well. This was definitely not an airport in the North East, where you have to be 2 hrs early or risk missing your flight. After I checked my baggage, I noticed security check was closed. This was confusing, as they were open only a little while before. Security check didn't reopen until 7:10am. My flight was scheduled to board at 7:19am. By this time, I was silently panicking again. Of course, as I went through security, I got pulled over to be screened and patted down (Oh College Station, how I'll miss you). 5 minutes later, I had all my stuff together. The best part is, we did board, on time, at 7:19am. No problems.

The laxness of the airport, the blatant lack of hurry defines this place. It is a stark contrast to the mad rush, impatience, and need to start everything early that exists in the NE. I was suprrised that I liked it. Texas is an interesting place like that. Though I've been researching all summer long, I still think of the trip as a vacation in a lot of ways. A new place, flowers, new faces, warm weather (edit: oppresively warm weather). Yeah, I never bought my cowboy hat, but I'm going to miss Texas.

So why is this entry called "Transition, part II"? Flights are rarely transitions. Vacations come and go; summers pass. So why do I think, one again, that my life is in transition?

Because once again, it is.

Transition

... And then, with the draw of a breath, it was all over. I just sit here, blinking, at my parents' house, 200 miles away from the place I had definitively called "home" for the last four years. In a sense, it shouldn't come as such a shock; unlike the other students who are graduating, I am returning to RPI. I will still see my friends, my professors and everyone else I know. I'm not leaving. Yet, in another way, I am.

I can't even imagine what it will be like when I enter RPI again in August, this time as a first year graduate student. I can't even imagine what being in Texas this summer is going to be like. It blows my mind that, in two weeks, I'm going to 1700 miles away from where I am now doing bleeding edge research with a professor! And that in 10 weeks after that, I'm going to be done with said research, and I will be flying back for a two day break before I head over to RPI again to start TA training, and move into my new apartment with Dan. And then, just a little while after that, I will be a graduate student! It seems so surreal. My life is starting to speed up and I don't know if I'll be exhillirated or suffering from Toxic Shock at the end of the summer.

So I have two weeks to prepare. In these two weeks, I want to 1.) Refamiliarize myself with C and possibly FORTRAN, 2.)Start reading all the research papers on my summer professor's site, and get a general gist of what I'm going to do, 3.) Contact RPI about taking a qualifier or two and 4.) Get on a new diet. I have reached the unhappy weight of 133 lbs, which, at my height, is a bit too much for me to bear. I'm not "heavy" by a long shot, but I am definitely overweight, having gained approximately 15 lbs in the last year itself (partially due to illness). So tomorrow, I will start my new exercising plan ("Oh no.. call the cops. She's going to diet again?"). Seriously. This one is legit. I've been reading The Hacker's Diet by John Walker. It seems intresting, and hell, I need something to amuse myself in my spare time this summer, so what's better than trying to shed those ugly extra pounds?

That's for tomorrow. Tonight, I'm going to sit back, relax and just think about how I'm actually a college graduate, with a Bachelors in Computer Science. A song Dan introduced me to, "Here's to the Night", is stuck in my head. While it's about a one night stand, I think this song accurately protrays my current feelings about finally graduating. Good night everyone. To my friends who are graduating (Ethan, Theo, and so many more), congratulations :-) And I wish you all the best in whatever you do: "Here's a toast to all those who hear me all to well..."

"Here's to the night we felt alive
Here's to the tears you knew you'd cry
Here's to goodbye tomorrow's going to come to soon"