o_paradoxus (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} o_paradoxus) wrote,@ 2005-11-13 22:07:00 |
|
An update
I wrote an email to my father recently, and the following is excerpted from that letter. It offers some reflection on life in New York.
As he has not responded, I do not know whether he has read it. I assume that he has. One would think that reporting, as I do in the email, that I am nearly done with a major chunk of my dissertation, which I am about to send to the second reader, would have been worthy of a response.
I have added a few comments today concerning events that have occurred since I wrote the initial letter. These are marked with square brackets.
I promise that it is more exciting than ambulatory meat lockers and tensing in an essay.
---
I am waiting to get a flu shot now. The city is giving them away free, and they give you a little ticket. There is a two hour wait, but you don't have to wait there (it is in a big auditorium). So I came down the street to one of the many coffee shops around here (the West Village). Most places have a wireless network, which is very convenient.
[I think that approximately 20,000 flu shots were given out that day. Wow!]
I have started my library classes, although I am only taking one this time. I met someone interesting---she spent the last several years managing the library at a research station in Antarctica, including once during the winter. Another one of my classmates is an independent music producer, singer, and musician, which is also interesting; he gave me a copy of his latest CD. It's quite good. It sounds like a lot of stuff from the 60's, like the beach boys, but a little more psychedelic. He is a huge Beatles fan and knows about their history in detail.
I also have visited my advisor several times at her work in the medical library at Cornell (their medical school is in NYC, as you may know). That is exciting. They work very closely with the doctors, and are well-respected by them. For instance, one time when I was there, she (my advisor) was working on a problem brought to her by an oncologist. The doctor's patient had not responded to all of the conventional treatments, and the question was, were there any others? There are all sorts of places you can search, including the medical literature, which is indexed in big databases; but then there are databases of molecules of all kinds, and also all kinds of pre-print archives and review articles. Also, the place is very high-tech, with people using palm pilots and laptops to beam around the results of their searches as well as information about the patients on a wireless network in the hospital.
My main focus of work has been my dissertation, of course. I am nearly done with all but the concluding chapter (the first four chapters), and my advisor has said that I ought to send those four chapters to the second reader, who is at Duke, when I am done with it. By ``almost done'' I mean that I am mere paragraphs away---I am working on revising a few sections of the fourth chapter in response to my advisor's comments. I am going to have to do a massive copy-editing job when I finish that stuff, which will be painstaking, but not intellectually taxing.
[I finished this work on Friday, and sent the draft of the dissertation, including the fifth and concluding chapter, to Duke, on Saturday (12 Nov). This is a major milestone. Right now I am simply too drained to really have anything much to say about it. I am happy, but also apprehensive about what changes might be required by the second reader. I realized this afternoon that today was the first day in a very, very long time that I did not have any writing work on the dissertation to do.]
New York has a lot of great places to work, especially the big New York Public Library on 42nd street, with the lions in front, as well as the many coffee shops. Not only is the library extremely beautiful and quiet, they have access to pretty much any book or journal I need, as well as a high-speed Internet link. Bryant Square park, right behind the library, often has free music, for instance, a piano player or jazz group---not an amateur, either.
For my dissertation, I found a paper in a book that is only held in six libraries in the world, only four of which were in the US; the Rockefeller University had a copy. It was the proceedings of a conference about genetics; it was one of those old books from the 1960's and 70's that is basically a typed manuscript bound in hardcover. There were a lot of well-known and important scientists speaking there, so it is not as though it should have been that hard to find, however. I guess they didn't have the money to publish a lot of copies.
Life in New York is very enjoyable. Every trip outside is a mini adventure. There are people playing music on the subways, which is always nice. I have adopted the East Village and Lower East Side (the Tompkins Square Park area) as my neighborhood; there are lots of neat little coffee shops and restaurants around there. It is much different than 10 or 15 years ago, when it was very dangerous. I think its moment is almost past, however, because the big chains are moving in; they are building several big luxury-type apartment buildings. However, it is inhabited by lots of artists and writers, many of whom are very politically active. There are a few too many conspiracy theories floating around there for me, but its a nice break from world of Bush, in which there seems to be no hope for anything good happening in the government or in foreign policy. You can still imagine Bob Dylan wandering around there with his guitar on his back---and in fact there are many musicians who do just that, on their way to play a show. People are very friendly and there is a real neighborhood feel to it.
I wrote an email to my father recently, and the following is excerpted from that letter. It offers some reflection on life in New York.
As he has not responded, I do not know whether he has read it. I assume that he has. One would think that reporting, as I do in the email, that I am nearly done with a major chunk of my dissertation, which I am about to send to the second reader, would have been worthy of a response.
I have added a few comments today concerning events that have occurred since I wrote the initial letter. These are marked with square brackets.
I promise that it is more exciting than ambulatory meat lockers and tensing in an essay.
---
I am waiting to get a flu shot now. The city is giving them away free, and they give you a little ticket. There is a two hour wait, but you don't have to wait there (it is in a big auditorium). So I came down the street to one of the many coffee shops around here (the West Village). Most places have a wireless network, which is very convenient.
[I think that approximately 20,000 flu shots were given out that day. Wow!]
I have started my library classes, although I am only taking one this time. I met someone interesting---she spent the last several years managing the library at a research station in Antarctica, including once during the winter. Another one of my classmates is an independent music producer, singer, and musician, which is also interesting; he gave me a copy of his latest CD. It's quite good. It sounds like a lot of stuff from the 60's, like the beach boys, but a little more psychedelic. He is a huge Beatles fan and knows about their history in detail.
I also have visited my advisor several times at her work in the medical library at Cornell (their medical school is in NYC, as you may know). That is exciting. They work very closely with the doctors, and are well-respected by them. For instance, one time when I was there, she (my advisor) was working on a problem brought to her by an oncologist. The doctor's patient had not responded to all of the conventional treatments, and the question was, were there any others? There are all sorts of places you can search, including the medical literature, which is indexed in big databases; but then there are databases of molecules of all kinds, and also all kinds of pre-print archives and review articles. Also, the place is very high-tech, with people using palm pilots and laptops to beam around the results of their searches as well as information about the patients on a wireless network in the hospital.
My main focus of work has been my dissertation, of course. I am nearly done with all but the concluding chapter (the first four chapters), and my advisor has said that I ought to send those four chapters to the second reader, who is at Duke, when I am done with it. By ``almost done'' I mean that I am mere paragraphs away---I am working on revising a few sections of the fourth chapter in response to my advisor's comments. I am going to have to do a massive copy-editing job when I finish that stuff, which will be painstaking, but not intellectually taxing.
[I finished this work on Friday, and sent the draft of the dissertation, including the fifth and concluding chapter, to Duke, on Saturday (12 Nov). This is a major milestone. Right now I am simply too drained to really have anything much to say about it. I am happy, but also apprehensive about what changes might be required by the second reader. I realized this afternoon that today was the first day in a very, very long time that I did not have any writing work on the dissertation to do.]
New York has a lot of great places to work, especially the big New York Public Library on 42nd street, with the lions in front, as well as the many coffee shops. Not only is the library extremely beautiful and quiet, they have access to pretty much any book or journal I need, as well as a high-speed Internet link. Bryant Square park, right behind the library, often has free music, for instance, a piano player or jazz group---not an amateur, either.
For my dissertation, I found a paper in a book that is only held in six libraries in the world, only four of which were in the US; the Rockefeller University had a copy. It was the proceedings of a conference about genetics; it was one of those old books from the 1960's and 70's that is basically a typed manuscript bound in hardcover. There were a lot of well-known and important scientists speaking there, so it is not as though it should have been that hard to find, however. I guess they didn't have the money to publish a lot of copies.
Life in New York is very enjoyable. Every trip outside is a mini adventure. There are people playing music on the subways, which is always nice. I have adopted the East Village and Lower East Side (the Tompkins Square Park area) as my neighborhood; there are lots of neat little coffee shops and restaurants around there. It is much different than 10 or 15 years ago, when it was very dangerous. I think its moment is almost past, however, because the big chains are moving in; they are building several big luxury-type apartment buildings. However, it is inhabited by lots of artists and writers, many of whom are very politically active. There are a few too many conspiracy theories floating around there for me, but its a nice break from world of Bush, in which there seems to be no hope for anything good happening in the government or in foreign policy. You can still imagine Bob Dylan wandering around there with his guitar on his back---and in fact there are many musicians who do just that, on their way to play a show. People are very friendly and there is a real neighborhood feel to it.
