Here is a very engaging story William Dembski wrote about one of his dissertation advisors from University of Chicago who recently passed away. The discussion of the some of the process when he got his (second) PhD with respect to selection of a dissertation topic, dissertation advisors and sometimes unavoidable problems with finishing a dissertation was not only interesting but pertinent with respect to Christian’s current work/school life. It truly can be a hard slog to finish up. That is especially true if the dissertation advisor is not engaged and/or has personality conflicts with the students. There are tons of horror stories on this topic. It makes me happy that both Kelly and Christian appear to have found good advisors for their doctoral work.
Betty Blonde #462 – 04/19/2010
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There are opportunities to learn everywhere. I look back at my somewhat misspent youth and realize that all of that time when I was an angry and miserable ingrate, I could have spent learning new stuff. The funny deal is that I enjoyed learning new stuff, even back then. I just did not understand that the confusion and frustration of learning hard stuff eventually translated in joy-filled understanding. And, just as important, it built on the stuff learned previously.
Christian sent me the paper he wrote as partial fulfillment of his qualifying examination and will turn it in later today. He does the oral qualification examination for his PhD on Friday, his last day as a teenager. What a great way to leave teenager-hood. Actually, he has done much more than we ever anticipated he might do by this time in his life. He has a few more classes after this, but the bulk of his time will be spent on identification of a research topic (he has a pretty good idea what it will be, but needs more specifics) followed by research for his dissertation.
If I have the time right, Christian, at this very moment, is presenting his Information Theory research at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. This is the first time he has done this kind of formal presentation (with a tie and all that). It is the culmination of a full year of research in a brand new (to Christian) area of Mathematics and Electrical Engineering. Lorena and I are on pins and needles waiting to hear how it went. If all goes well, this should eventually turn into a refereed conference paper and, with expanded research and content, possibly even a refereed journal article.
Christian is scheduled to fly to Boston tomorrow to give a talk on his research. He has all the technical material well in hand and a well organized presentation. Not so amazingly, one of his biggest challenges is to create professional and compelling PowerPoint slides that convey his ideas. It seems like none of the tools commonly used to create graphics for the slides have improved very much or gotten any easier to use in the last twenty years.
Kelly’s whirlwind visit ended yesterday afternoon when Lorena took her up to Vancouver to catch the train back to Seattle. This week has turned into a big week for both Kelly and Christian. I already spoke about Christian’s trip back east to present his research results for the year. Kelly is in the middle of a smaller, but still big chunk of research she needs to show to her boss when he arrives back to Seattle from a month or so away in Europe of some such thing. The upshot is there has been a lot of pressure and angst that should see some relief this week.
