8/31/09 – 9/06/09
September 8th, 2009
Another week, another late blog post. It was a long weekend, and my father came to Boston to visit! But more about that in a minute.
The new big project on my plate is getting ready for the Mathematics GRE Subject Test on October 10, since three of the schools to which I’m applying (Stanford, Berkeley, and University of Washington) either require or strongly recommend it. I bought a prep book and have started working through it, both during my lunch breaks at work and in the evenings. The good news is that algebra, geometry, trigonometry, pre-calculus, and univariate calculus make a lot more sense than they did 9-10, 8, never took, never took, and 6-7 years ago. The veils shrouding trigonometric identities, derivatives, and integrals have been lifted! The bad news is that there’s still a lot more of the book to work through, including some topics I never even took a class about (topology, number theory, complex analysis). Considering I’m interested in doing applied statistics and took mostly statistics courses at BU, I’m a bit apprehensive to be taking a mostly pure mathematics test. *crosses fingers, keeps studying*
The last week or two have been absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous in Boston, most sunny with highs in the low 70s and crisp evenings. And to celebrate the long weekend and take a break from the Florida routine, my father flew up to visit. On Friday evening, we went over Harvard Square for some pizza, live music, and the scene of new college students hanging out. On Saturday, he and I headed down to the Arnold Arboretum at the end of the Orange Line and spent the better part of the day wandering around, enjoying the many trees and beautiful grounds. It was actually a neat time to visit; bees were busily pollinating many of the flowering trees we saw. We saw Inglorious Basterds that evening, which was good but, in my humble opinion, no Pulp Fiction. Most of Sunday was spent in downtown Boston, getting some sushi with Julia and shopping at Downtown Crossing. Instead of taking the T home, we walked from The Commons to Biogen so that he could see my work situation.
Seeing my father at Biogen was a neat instance of two of my worlds colliding. By moving from warm, monotonous Fort Lauderdale to cooler, seasonal Boston for college without any close friends, I essentially partitioned my life into the two places and their associated sets of people. It was always a bit strange to see my parents visiting at BU or friends from college at home because the two worlds intersected so infrequently, with myself the only bridge between them. It’s a neat feeling, though, so if you’re ever in Boston, let me know!
On a slightly nerdy note, we also stopped by the Apple Store to pick up Snow Leopard. The installation was painless and when my laptop rebooted, it looked… completely the same. Aside from the blue borders around windows in Expose and the new color scheme seen when you click and hold down on a Dock item, it looks identical. That said, Mail is definitely running faster, Finder is more responsive, Quicktime has a sleek new look, and my external drives/camera cards/iPod have ejected on the first try 100% of the time, all good things. If you’ve got $30 burning a hole in your pocket, check it out.
