Part of the PhD qualification process here in EECS is a presentation on a substantial body of research, called the Research Qualifying Exam or RQE. The presentation is given to two faculty members and is meant to mimic a conference talk.

When you first arrive in grad school, everyone tells you not to worry about the RQE. There are more important things to focus on in your first few years and, besides that, everyone passes. So I took everyone’s advice and didn’t think much about it for a few years.

At the department’s urging, I got my act together in February and submitted an abstract. I scheduled the exam for the end of April, feeling pretty calm about the whole thing.

Over the next few weeks, I put together the presentation. And I started to get worried. What sorts of things was my committee going to ask me? Is this research good enough for anything? Surely, you should already have some sort of award or commendation or Nobel Prize before you go into this, right?

I gave a practice talk to the rest of my group a few weeks ago. I got some good feedback and re-worked the presentation. But I was still freaking out. By this point, I was thinking that if they’ve failed anyone in the last 10 years, they’re going to fail me. I was petrified that, even though my slides were good (because I had been working on them for so long), I was going to get to the exam and have nothing to say other than, “Look! Diodes! Shiny diodes!”

This past weekend, I had friends of mine sitting in my apartment in shifts to listen to my talk. They were very helpful and very kind, but by the end of the weekend, I was convinced that I was going to fail. Even if the talk went fine, my committee was going to ask me to derive the full band structure of germanium… from first principles… while hopping on one foot. It was doomed to be a debacle.

I had my talk on Monday. The presentation went fine, the questions were nothing like what I was fearing, and my committee seemed to really like my research. It was such a relief! I’ve spent the last day and a half dancing around my office and sending emails with lots of exclamation points and smiley faces in them. I’m one step closer to graduation.

When I was younger, my family used to take quick vacations to Boston. Usually these consisted of my father attending some conference while my mother shuttled around my brother and me to various historical and museum-y places. I have vague memories of coming to the New England Aquarium, riding the Swan Boats, and trying to walk the Freedom Trail. I mean, literally, trying to walk along the red line painted on the street like it was a balance beam. This is what happens when you’re 10 years old and the nuances of the Revolutionary War escape you. (As a side note, I have vivid memories of my first Red Sox game. It was against the Chicago White Sox, we sat on the third base side, and the pitcher for Boston had a no-hitter going until the 6th. There are other details that are puttering around in my brain, but this post isn’t about baseball.)

Since coming to grad school, I’ve been an awful Boston tourist. I feel like I can’t be a tourist because I live here. I’m supposed to know things about Boston and not wander around getting lost. But there are still touristy things I want to do. What’s the solution to all of this? Take your friends when they come to town!

This weekend, my old roommate from college came to visit. Stefanie, my old roommate, currently lives in a small town in North Carolina, so I decided that we would do Boston the city way. This meant no driving (except to and from the airport) and no chain food (with the exception of Dunkin’ Donuts… naturally).

On Friday afternoon, Stefanie headed up to Harvard on the T to visit with some friends while I went to class. That evening, we went to Arrow Street Crepes for dinner. After much talking into the night, we woke up early on Saturday morning to head to Chinatown for dim sum. Stuffed full of dumplings we headed off to Fanueil Hall and Quincy Market. I hadn’t been there in, oh, 15 years or so. It’s really a fun part of town, with cute little shops and street performers.

We then walked over to the Aquarium because, again, I hadn’t been there since starting grad school. And they have penguins. The penguin exhibit is currently under construction, so we decided it wasn’t worth it and instead, headed to the Boston Children’s Museum. No, neither one of us has kids, but the museum has a Science Playground! I ask you, is there a better exhibit in the history of museum exhibits?

We headed back to Cambridge at that point and grabbed a very lovely dinner at Christopher’s in Porter Square. We finished off the night by going candlepin bowling in Davis Square. It’s impossible to be good at candlepin bowling, so it’s really tons of fun.

Stefanie had to leave early on Sunday, but it was great to have her here so that I had an excuse to do all the stuff I’ve been meaning to do. And we didn’t do nearly all of it. I still want to head to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, visit the Harpoon Brewing Company, and, of course, walk the Freedom Trail. I think this means that more friends need to visit.

I’ve gotten into many heated, erm, “discussions” about the pros and cons of living in different regions of the country. Most folks who aren’t native to the Northeast think that we’re all a bunch of snobby, selfish people who don’t have the time of day for anyone else. That, I claim, is patently false.

Last night, I was walking from Central Square back to my apartment along Mass Ave. It was pouring, and, being the prescient student that I am, I had left my umbrella in my office. Awesome. There was a girl walking towards me, although she was about a block away. She started to run because the rain picked up, and, in doing so, she dropped her phone and her wallet. Because of all the rain and noise, she didn’t notice that she had dropped these all-too-important things.

I wanted to shout to her to tell her what she had done, but my voice wouldn’t have carried. I also wanted to run to catch up to her, but my shoes wouldn’t allow it. As luck would have it, this all happened right near a bus stop and a CT1 bus was pulling up. The driver saw what I saw. He put the bus in park, leaped out, and grabbed her things off the ground. He called to her and she came rushing back, shocked at what happened, and incredibly grateful.

The unknown, Good Samaritan bus driver got back on the bus and continued his route.