今晚不知怎么又睡不着了。贴一篇blog

Do it neatly

Maybe I should wear a tie and suit to say something profound in this very first blog entry, which, in other hand, might be funny if keeping on doing like this. Anyway, I don't mind saying something less trivial. Yesterday I saw something quite interesting (scientific humor) from a homepage of a former Caltech graduate. It was called "Rules of Lab". While most of so called "rules" would make people like me keep laughing with bitter sweet (or sweet bitter, as you might see), I came into a sentence saying "if you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly". Actually I couldn't tell whether it was joking or not. The question that really stroke me was "what I am doing".

One year ago, when I was still in my college, I was very sure about my future plan as a grad student. Now I think there were basically two reasons:

(a) science and engineering was what I had already known and thus what I wanted. I could do interesting things in grad school that would be later put into practical application.
(b) I couldn't just jump into business since I never got any aura on that. Neither could I just abruptly start working in a company since in my field college student couldn't do that much.

So this choice seemed to be wise, or it was the one. Apparently if I was to be grad student for sure, do my work in US should be better. This motivation was simple, clear and persuasive to the "past me". Even now it is still reasonable in the whole. But the problem was, is and will be when I make a plan, I can only take something in the "past me" for reference, instead of talking to "future me". Otherwise I may still be in US now but not here. Future is always unpredictable, and that should be the beauty of it. But for many people including me, this beauty is not quite approachable to be appreciated with ease.

I will just skip talking about the first semester here, which is just a miserable flashback. Something does happen in second semester till now: I find I am doomed. Grad school can be perfect if I verify the two reasons I mention above, while, in my current case, I can not. For (a), I am not doing something I am interested. My purpose in grad school was and is to do something real, something practical, finish my thesis and put it into real life. I don't mean people devoted to theoretical things are nothing but nerds. People are different. While someone is talking about the great minds of Steven Hawkings or Albert Einstein, I would rather admire someone like Thomas Edison. But now I am just going in the opposite, not to my will, but just having no choice. In real life not everything is moving towards your advantages. Grad school is different from college. If I want to solo, I should think over many other things. I just find there are not so many opportunities as I imagined before to do what I am interested, however strongly motivated. Maybe engineering school here is too small, or it's just a bad time. For (b), I said I couldn't just because I hadn't tried. If I lose my reasons, what am I doing here? That comes back to the quote: "if you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly".

At least now I don't know if it is an awful answer. I will just say I don't know and go on. But I can't help think back on this issue from time to time. Well, at least I know I am lost, but still trying to do it neatly. I avoid talking about the value of doing something, as many guys in research community often claim their work is of great potential of application while they know they are telling some kind of lies which they believe as the truth not because it is but it just can not be substantiated somehow. I am doing my job, by which I get my necessities. Not much, just bread and milk, a trade-off of unsubstantiated possibility to find myself sometime in the future, of keeping the light on, and away from numbness. That's my current philosophy of doing it neatly.