small update

[nibot]

Yesterday Diane and I went to the first class of Spanish 1A at Vista. The professor seems pretty fun(ny) but the whole 2-hour first session was dedicated to him blathering on about how hard the course would be, in order to get people to drop. Hmm. Then we saw What Alice Found with Rebekah and Stevie at Landmark Act 1&2. Last week we toured the Scharffen Berger chocolate factory in Berkeley with Matt (ankaerith) and Dina. Last weekend Kenny, Michelle, Diane, and I went on a super-nifty hike up in the Berkeley Hills' fire trails.

It looks like I will be boarding in a frat in the very soon upcoming future. Not sure which one yet, but I have a bunch of leads. Tomorrow I'm going to go visit a bunch of them. I think it will be a great sociological experiment... from the gay house to the frat house! and before that I lived with a bunch of orthodox jews, and before that I lived in a swedish dorm. Amusingly, one of my housemates said, "ooh, there are such cute boys there! You can be my 'in' to [three greek letters]!"

I've been reading more about phonons. There's a great entry on Phonons in the Wikipedia (actually the whole wikipedia is astonishingly useful; it's an open-source encyclopedia, and I often find it more useful than Mathworld for physics/math topics). I'm really shocked that phonons (which, remember, are vibrational modes in a crystal) can be considered spin-2 bosons! I think understanding phonons and their friends will lead to a much better understanding of field theory and wave-particle duality in general. In EE117 (electromagnetism) the professor showed some network of springs as a model for the propagation of waves/photons, and suddenly it's making a bit more sense.

There's a class this semester on C*-algebras. I got the book from the library, and I'm curious if I'll be able to follow along, despite being blatantly underqualified. Probably not, but the course description is pretty exciting: "The theory of operator algebras grew out of the needs of quantum mechanics, but by now also has strong interactions with many other areas of mathematics. ... t I will somewhat emphasize examples which go in the directions of my current research interests, which involve certain mathematical issues which arise in string theory and related high-energy physics. Thus one thread which will run through the course will be to see what the various concepts look like for quantum tori, which are the most accessible non-commutative differential manifolds." Similarly, I'm debating taking Math 140 (Metric Differential Geometry) because I'd kind-of sort-of secretly like to get on the string theory track. In any case, the two courses I intend to take for-sure are Physics 141A (Solid State Physics) and Math 114 (Galois Theory, with Ken Ribet). You can check out my ridiculously ambitious schedule of courses I want to check out during the first week. (-:

On the software engineering front, I have a much better understanding of COM now, based mainly on reading Essential COM and working on the JEOL project, as detailed by my alter-ego nibot_lab. Also, thanks to hyperionab I found out about GeoURL, which I think is pretty nifty, and I plan on geo-coding all my pages on splorg dot org as soon as possible.

SF Cacophony is celebrating MLK day with a Peninsula Pub-Crawl: Do you commute on CalTrain every day and wonder what's going on in those communities you pass by every day? Well, we've got an afternoon of train-based exploration planned from San Francisco to San Jose, with numerous stops in between. We'll wander through San Mateo, Redwood City (Climate Best By Government Test), visit Steamies bar in Hillsdale (haven't you always wondered what that place is like?) and more. All this using only a single Caltrain Day Pass!. It's just $11 for a Caltrain daypass, plus booze money of course.. anyone wanna go??

Still reading Prisoner's Dilemma and Fresh Air Fiend sporadically.

Comments

Re: My Suggestions

[shamster.livejournal.com]

SOOOoooooooo...

Is it treated like a community college program in that anyone can attend classes for the right price?

Re: My Suggestions

[nibot.livejournal.com]

If a course is not full, you can register via UC Extension (http://www.unex.berkeley.edu/). Here's what they have to say:

Through UC Berkeley Extension you may enroll in some regular UC Berkeley campus courses through an option called "concurrent enrollment." To be accepted in a concurrent course, all prerequisites for the course must be met. To enroll, you must obtain the consent of the instructor, the head of the campus department, and, in some cases, the dean of the department's school or college. Any other course requirements must also be met, such as a transcript of study. Enrollment must be for credit. You are considered an Extension student when enrolled through concurrent enrollment. Extension's Registrar maintains your records of study. Being accepted for a concurrent course does not constitute admission to UC Berkeley as a regular student.

It costs nearly something like $750 to register for a regular 4 unit course. There are various restrictions... you can't take the place of a regularly enrolled Berkeley student, you cannot apply credit from graduate-level courses in Extension to a UC Graduate program, you don't get insurance, you don't get a library card, etc. There are ways around many of these restrictions (if you join the alumni association, you get library privileges, etc).

Re: My Suggestions

[shamster.livejournal.com]

How does that compare to the normal undergrad registration fees?

Also - what's a good way to formulate a statement of purpose for applications?

Re: My Suggestions

[nibot.livejournal.com]

How does that compare to the normal undergrad registration fees?

Extension definitely costs more and gives you less. In theory, it's equivalent to out-of-state tuition, and you get no student services. I'm not sure if I'm actually going to register.. I don't think I can afford it, and I don't really mind not getting credit.

Also - what's a good way to formulate a statement of purpose for applications?

I'm not really sure.. I'm still not satisfied with mine, and it's gone through a major revision for each school I've applied to. I have some good links, though, which I'll post sometime. It's hard, because all the things that come to mind first (like, "Since the age of X, I've wanted to be Y") are considered inane.

Re: My Suggestions

[shamster.livejournal.com]

I've started writing in chemsitry jokes (a la: "There's only 3 uses for radio waves in chemistry - Music and talk shows on your car stereo, and NMR") and telling people how I love arcane and backwards sciences that have a superficial appearance of triviality. (Oops, did I just obfuscate?) Trying to find atleast one sentence per paragraph that isn't as cliche as the rest of my life. Also, because the reviewers are going to be chemistry geeks (in my case) they will appreciate that only chemistry geeks will write geeky jokes in their statements... does that ring true?

Re: My Suggestions

[nibot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that sounds good.. you're always clever with that sort of thing. Where are you applying? And, for what?

Re: My Suggestions

[shamster.livejournal.com]

Currently working on an application for an ACS program in radio+nuclear chemistry at one of two campuses (san jose or NY state). Also sending in to UofO, Eugene, and UCSC for their REU and SURF programs in p-chem and o-chem respectively. My current research advisor was an advisee for the program director in Oregon so he contacted her directly and put in good words. Not sure about that program just because it doesn't seem to me to be anything but a summer fling. The ACS program promises (on their website) to continue research for DoE labs throughout the year and then into some grad program...