News on my brother: First of all: biopsy results are back. It's benign! Chemotherapy will be fully determined while my brother recovers after the biopsy. In the meantime doctors will do additional tests on the sample. Biopsy went not without complications. I'm not even close to understanding everything that my mother and uncle told me, but here's what I gathered: - There was a problem with CSF pressure soon after the surgeons inserted most of the instruments for biopsy. - Soon after they got their sample my brother's blood pressure started to spike. Because of that, surgery took almost twice as long as it was planned. Truth be told, compared to other possible complications (list contained things like "we will puncture what isolates possible cancer from the rest of the body and release it" and "brain stem damage") it sounds like nothing. It isn't, but it would be the understatement of the year if I were to say "it could have been worse". I will keep you updated. Big thank you for your support and kind words! :) Update on me: I met with my new adviser/guide with whom I will be assisting in research. While not the superconductor guru that I've mentioned last time… it's actually even better. The bulk of his research is in the homotopy theory and dualities that I have picked up after lm showed me the ropes during one of our discussions at IRC. Another person I met is my successor who will work with my former adviser. Truth be told I don't know if she's that smart or it was me who didn't do much for the past year, but after barely four hours I got her up to speed with all of the fruits of my research projects. I feel really disturbed while talking to her for some reason. Other than that, I have realised one of the problems with getting stipends. It's talking to people from finances! Two hours of being talked to like I'm autistic for getting GPA-based scholarship on maths and physics… :/ Oh, and I have picked up fencing for my physical activity block. Costs quite a bit, but I have always wanted to try it out and after today's practice I would be a filthy liar if I would say anything other than "it was so friggin' cool!". :D
Hey, good to hear your bro is doing OK! Your research sounds fun! Is it more math or physics? I'll have to hop on IRC sometime when I'm less swamped with research and teaching myself so we can chat about it. While I am sure your successor is smart, that's also the nature of research. It sucks because you put a bunch of effort into discovering something new and it looks like someone else can just show up and learn it in a few hours, but that's only because you spent weeks thinking about what even to research and how to solve each problem you ran into. By the time you're done, you've thought about it so much that it's easy to put your work in a logical progression that makes sense...even though it wasn't that way when you started.
Right now I got a stack of publications, notes and few book recommendations to get myself started, actual topic is going to be set around mid-November. What really surprised me was the fact that quite a lot of the papers were not on homotopy theory, but non-commutative geometry! In adviser's own words "If you're half as smart as I have been told, you'll probably tell me yourself after reading this"… which I'm choosing to take as someone overselling me as even after going through 20% of material (per volume :P) I feel mainly confused about all this. Either way, guy is a mathematical physicist so it could end up being pure maths with a few links to physical theories. Well, good point. But maybe allow me to explain how my former adviser took me from basic problem to something quite complex. I think that my brother once told on IRC about a lecturer who was famous for making similar problem sets for students as homework. Something like: a) You have a rectangular pool 5 by 5, deep enough to forget about anything other than surface. Solve wave equation for that one. b) There is a set of pipes, in-flow on the up and drain on the bottom. Using continuity equation find (some parameters, I never had fluid dynamics :P) … r) For a viscous fluid in the potential field of (V, S) where dS is the boundary of the fluid, find a relation between stream, relative distance and speed for a compressible fluid in (some more parameters, you know the idea) that conserves smooth solutions. s*) Literally a Navier-Stokes problem. Not same person, but the same institute and it seems that that's how they roll. ;) For about first seven months I was guided from some dumb combinatorics problems about cakes, table seats and multiple dogs climbing on chairs to basically formulating Square-lattice Ising Model on my own (yes, still in the language of previous problems :P). This was when my actual assignment started and was about trying to find when it (the Ising's model solution) breaks and looking for something more general. Now here's the thing: someone who already had some exposure to at least freshman mathematics should be able to find at least some of them alone. Someone who five minutes ago didn't know what's a Pochhammer's symbol shouldn't be the one who simplifies my solution like it's 2/4 = 1/2 or retraces my steps of the fly asks same questions that took me days to conclude. Maybe I'm that good with explaining stuff. ;) Either way, thanks for food for thought.Your research sounds fun! Is it more math or physics?
While I am sure your successor is smart, that's also the nature of research. (…)
Man I'm jealous as heck....finding teachers that guide you towards finding the solutions to hard problems on your own is the best. Also, getting to pick your own research topic is the best thing. Hopefully your advisor is good and will help you narrow down your topic to something acheivable. You going to be on IRC this weekend?
Yup, although I'm sharing your hopes regarding guidance. Especially now, after reading one paper from the stack he gave me. Most likely. Ping/PM me if I would not respond.Also, getting to pick your own research topic is the best thing. Hopefully your advisor is good and will help you narrow down your topic to something acheivable.
You going to be on IRC this weekend?