Statistically Significant

I’m not sure when the desire to visit California became embedded in my mind, but it was a while ago. Maybe it was the first time I watched one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption, and Tim Robbins delivered the beautiful line, “I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.” Maybe it was all the West Coast rap I listened to growing up (probably not). Or maybe the idea of an environmentally conscious, warm-weathered, beautifully-sceneried intellectual community with strong tech and biotech sectors has been growing on me for a while now. Whatever the cause, I’ve wanted to visit Northern California for a while. And tomorrow morning, I’m flying to San Francisco.

Spring Break 2010, woohoo! After exploring the greater Berkeley area on Sunday afternoon, the adventure officially begins with Berkeley’s “Meet the Statistics Department” program. According to the schedule I received yesterday, Monday will be a day of general information sessions from people such as the Chair of the department, the Head Graduate Advisor, representative professors from the two Designated Emphasis tracks (Computational and Genomic Biology / Communication, Computation, and Statistics), and the President of the Statistics Graduate Student Association. We’ll also have the chance to chat with many current students, which will be great. Tuesday is Faculty Meeting day, and I have four meetings scheduled with various faculty members. I have a feeling that these are going to be eye-opening.

After lunch with the Berkeley crowd on Tuesday, my father’s cousin will be picking me up and taking me back to Santa Rosa to hang out for a day. She’s promised both a California wine-tasting session and a Crossfit workout… I have a hard time imagining a better Wednesday. Thursday is a travel day; destination: Madison, WI. I’m not quite sure what we’re going to be doing on Friday, as I didn’t receive an agenda, but I imagine it’ll be some information sessions and opportunities to chat with professors and graduate students. And Saturday, I finish my cross-country adventure with an early flight back to Boston.

This is going to be an amazing trip. There are almost uniformly sunny skies forecasted, and I’m going to be taking some pictures. Stay tuned!