So are you sure you want to be a Physicist

So I got the "So are you sure you want to be a Physicist? Maybe you should try something else" talk already this morning (it seemed a bit premature—as, while apparently in perfectly good health, observing preparations for one's own funeral). Pretty much every grad student here seems to have a pretty fatalistic attitude on the subject, mainly to the effect that getting kicked out saves one the trouble of quitting.

This department is so small, it's impossible to avoid any particular set of people—running up the stairs from my office I run into two such persons. I walk out to the river to sulk and who else but Prof. Tipton jogs by, shouting out, "How's it going!" (His first words to me last semester were something to the effect of that he expected me to fail out immediately—or be their best student).

The various possibilities seemed fairly appealing: getting some little job of my own and studying unofficially (as I did quite happily for a year at Berkeley) et cetera. But it has not quite come to that; the professor of 418 has—out of completely unwarranted generosity—offered me a grade of Incomplete, which will stave off the academic probation officers for a while. So it appears I will get to stay a while longer, now with firmly established status as department pariah.

Altogether an exhausting day.

some people i know had better watch out

As I was biking home this afternoon, I saw ahead of me two guys pulled over, the flashing lights of the long arm of the law behind them--

Or so I thought. As I rode by, I read the lettering on the side of the supposed cop car:

DEPT OF MENTAL HEALTH.