grad school: prelim

My studying has been lackadaisical, and, I dare say, at times fun. I know Kris (vyncentvega) and Matt would disagree; but then, they are under much greater pressure to pass than I am. A fun part of physics is figuring out problems that have elegant, clever solutions. Solving them analytically on paper and then achieving perfect correspondence with numerical simulations on the computer is quite satisfying. Dabbling at them is entertaining too, and reminds me of similar dabbling with the old programming contest problems at Berkeley. That dabbling at problems there was punctuated by annual trials at the actual programming contest, which, after a first try in which I was relatively clueless, I began to win.

I am not really expecting to pass this time, though it would certainly be to my benefit to do well.