[异乡生活] 在普林斯顿的第一年 [复制链接]

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发表于 2003-3-12 02:18:29 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

发信人: onlypig (水果猪), 信区: AdvancedEdu
标  题: 'Year #1 at Princeton' (zz)
发信站: 北大未名站 (2003年03月11日12:08:41 星期二) , 站内信件

在普林斯顿的第一年
(中间有一段讲到Men and Women at the Graduate College,值得一看)

http://www.princeton.edu/~hehmeyer/YearOne.htm

'Year #1 at Princeton' -- Owen Hehmeyer's (satirical) look at graduate student
life in Princeton (thanks, Owen!)

I Live in the Graduate College.  Everybody here asks you The 3 Questions,
but there exists a real problem between the Men and Women here.  My Classmates
and I hang out in Engineering Building, but my office is in G-109.  Sometimes,
people ask me what I do and I mutter something like “Engineering?  What’s
That?”One of the big adjustments of my first year was learning the lowdown on
Jersey.  Here are my findings: The Skinny on Jersey.

The Graduate College
On September 9th, 2001, I moved into the Graduate College at Princeton
University.  My room is 10’ x 11’.  It does have a built in that makes it
seem bigger, but it’s a far cry from they spacious 4-bedroom I had in Austin
just the previous academic year.  I’ve got a computer, but no TV, no radio, no
microwave, and no sink.  Having crammed everything from my apartment into this
space, I have none left, and, as a result, I do not mind not having the afore
-mentioned items. I share a bathroom down the hall.  It hasn’t been upgraded
since the 60’s.
Physical discomfort aside, The Graduate College, whose great story is told on
the Princeton site, Princeton University Graduate College, is a great place to
live.  You get to meet all kinds of really interesting (weird) people from all
over the world.  The Graduate College is about ½ International Students,
so I’ve meet people from Australia, Nigeria, Greece, Turkey, France, China,
India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, Yugoslavia (Serbia), and on and on.  More
importantly, I meet people who are not chemical engineers.  I’ve met a man who
can read Coptic, a lady who helped design buildings in San Fran and Barcelona,
plasma physicists, people with funny Jersey accents, theologians (from the
Seminary), and my neighbor has composed some very odd music on his computer and
performed everywhere from Tokyo to London. What have I done?  Not much.

The 3 Questions and My Classmates:
I have made friends with nearly everyone in my department, the Department of
Chemical Engineering.  We are an odd bunch.  The first three things you are
asked when you meet anybody at Princeton are:

1.) What’s you name?

2.) Where are you from (home country/state and school)?

3.) What are you studying?

I will give the answers to questions 1 and 2 for all of my classmates (most
of whom are my friends) to spare my web viewers from asking.  It also gives you
a good idea of the great diversity here.  And lastly, when they search for
themselves on the Internet (as everybody does right?), they’ll find my site.

Lazaros Batsilas    Greece: (school in Greece)

Chris Calderon       Indiana: Purdue

Chris Doelling       Colorado: Boulder

Matthew Duncan       Michigan: Ann Arbor (the only Master’s tudent)

Lea Goentoro       Indonesia - Wisconsin: Madison

John Hatjopoulos    Pennsylvania:  Penn State

Owen Hehmeyer       Texas: Austin (from Texarkana!)

Stacy Kirkendall    Texas: Texas A&M

Elizabeth Koch       Maryland: College Park

Sibel Korkut       Turkey: (school in Turkey)

Kelly Kuhns          Delaware: Main campus (but from PA)

Philip Lenart       Pittsburgh (but from Indiana, same town as Chris C.)

Djordje Nikolic    Serbia - Louisiana:Tulane(lived in Atlanta for some time)

Tom O’Connor       NYC: Cooper Union (but from Jersey)

Liang Qiao          China (Beijing): Tsinghua

Walid Saad          Lebanon - Minnesota: Twin Cities

Denis Shcherbakov    Russia - California: Caltech

Daniel Sweeney       Jersey: Rowan

Jared Tatum          Kentucky: Lexington

Obioma Uche          Nigeria - California: Berkeley

Men and Women at the Graduate College

I heard this Joke:  If you are a 1st-year girl there is a 4th sentence:  You
immediately tell the guy asking you these questions that you have boyfriend in
another state and that you plan to have him move out to be with you very soon.
I’m not kidding.  It’s weird.  If she doesn’t say this and she is at all
outgoing and attractive, she will drown in the drool of her male peers.  Only
if they are paying attention though.  There seems to also be a remarkable
number of utterly uninterested guys who have not a care in the world except for
their work. I personally, like loads of things (see my Interests) besides
chemical engineering.

People are getting married these days.  The average age of marriage for
women is 24.  That means my female friends here at the Graduate School are
getting hitched.  Three of the women (every American girl, zero of the Inter
-national) in my class are getting married this year!  That’s ½ of them.
It seems most of the guys (or maybe it is just me) are standing around
dumfounded, in full understanding that the average age of marriage for guys is
27.  Dating here at the GC is problematic because they are 3 guys for every
girl (see list in my department) and lots of people prefer to speak in languages
other than English, and it’s the only one I speak (besides a bit of Spanish
that doesn’t count.  I Wish I was trilingual.).  I’d complain about the lack
of women more, but every other Graduate School is just as bad.  Guys just go to
graduate school in far greater numbers and there isn’t much we can do about it.
(Except maybe stopping the drooling).  I have met a couple of nice (and single)
girls here, my satire aside.  I think too, that some people here just aren’t
very outgoing, and that makes things a little tougher.  But what do you expect
– this is Graduate School.  Everyone is a little odd.

The Engineering Building
The Engineering Quadrangle is called the E-Quad.  It does not have four
sides.  It also contains much more than engineering.  Thus, in no way is the
name applicable whatsoever.  It also has the distinction of being the most ugly
building at Princeton.  To be fair, Princeton has one of the most beautiful
campuses I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a bunch).  It is a sprawling mess of
about a half dozen wings built from the 60’s to the present day.  It was a
“quad” in a way, but the sides are kind of misshapen from expansion, and
various wings hang off, including mine, G-wing.  If there were 4, you would
have A-D, so obviously, if I’m in G, there must be something terribly wrong.
I’m assigned in G-109.  I eat lunch most days in the Lapidus Lounge.  I’m
sure he was a very famous, very wealthy Princeton engineer, but I’ve never
heard of him.

My Advisor and G-109
My advisor is Athanassios Z. Panagiotopoulos.  Try saying that 5 times fast.
The link shows him in all of his bearded glory.  He’s a swell guy.  We all
like him.  In fact, I came to Princeton largely because of him, though that’s
not a good reason to come.  He likes to use computers to track thousands of
molecules. It helps that he has more computers than God.  We have more than 60
processors for only a handful of people.  Many group members have TWO flat
panel monitors on their desks.  That way, we can play Oregon Trail on one and
select MP3’s over the over.  Actually, the office is eerily quiet most of the
time.  Occasionally, you hear the furious pounding of keyboards or a sigh of
mathematical relief.  Other times you hear Carrie Lock talking to Scott Shell
over the phone about when to go to lunch, what to cook for dinner, etc. Also,
Dom comes in a lot (to see Carrie) and he’s really nice too.  I mostly do
homework because I’m not doing research much yet.  Oh yes.  Thanos (as we call
him) is really smart.  And he is fairly famous from what I have gathered
recently, though I didn’t know it when I signed up for 5 years with him. Funny,
you don’t know a lot of things when you sign up for 5 years of Graduate School.
It seems I may have made the right choice after all.

Is What I Do Engineering?
What does an engineer do you might ask?  Some people, when they think of an
engineer, think of locomotive drivers.  Others think of Dilbert.  Perhaps the
truth is somewhere in between?  Engineers do lots of stuff.  If anything, the
word engineer is too broad because it includes everybody who makes, designs, or
breaks stuff.

Personally, at various times I have programmed computers to make machines
the size of a room work, programmed computers to calculate physically meaningful
but utterly useless facts about bonds lengths on the order of 1/10000000000 of
a meter (about), sat at my desk and “played” with equations, written environ
-mental impact reports about Alaska, taught people science, measured things 50
times in a row, and all manner of other things.  Really, I’m beginning to
think an engineer is really just a person who can stomach mathematics and
tedious measuring.
  We are all valuable because most people throw up when asked to do math and
measure things.  The secret truth is that almost all engineers are scientists
who got duped into being engineers because the great majority of the world has
no use for pure scientists.  In order to convince the engineers, who otherwise
would just “play” with “stuff” like scientists do, to actually engineer
things(that is – to work), society has collectively decided to pay us more.
Most of the time, that works.  Me, like many engineers, am constantly trying to
do the most intellectually interesting things possible, which basically amounts
to playing with math on computers (In my opinion.  For others, it’s blowing
things up in chemistry labs).  However, in order to maintain my “engineering
” status, I try to make up reasons how my science and math toys can actually
be of use.  Sometimes, people buy this.  About twice in my life, I have actually
created something of real, lasting value (see my Work section).  The idea is to
capitalize on your lucky success.

I love engineering.  It’s the best compromise between science and being a
technician that there is.

Jersey:  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The best thing about New Jersey has nothing to do with Jersey.  Jersey is
close to New York City, the Best City in the World.  That alone makes North and
Central Jersey O.K.  Without New York, New Jersey has no right to exist.  In
fact, I think Jersey basically exists because of New York.  South Jersey is a
different kind of cat.  South Jersey, Delaware, and all that mess should just
be lumped into a different state.  Princeton is close to the little crook in
Jersey on the West side, kind of North of the middle.  I probably offended every
visotor from Jersey, but New Yorkers have been insulting Jersey for a while, so
they should be used to it by now.  J

The Good:

New York.  There are lots of different kinds of people from all over the
world.  Princeton University.  Loads of high paying jobs for people like me.
A true fall with pretty trees.  New York.  People here usually vote for the
Democrats.  The cost of living is reasonable compared to New York.  New York.
The Turnpike (it’s fast).  4 complete seasons.

The Bad:

Route One.  The DMV office.  Tolls.  Traffic.  They are too many laws about
everything.  Insurance rates.  Tax rates.  The old, ugly factories along the
turnpike.  Having to turn right to turn left.  A bit cold.

The Ugly:

Route One!
When you are boarding the final train leaving Penn Station in New York,
bound for Trenton, I swear the conductor says “Get you Jersey trash back to
where you below.”  I know he says something like, “Final Train to Jersey.
Final train.”  But they way a New Yorker can spit out “Jersey” sounds really
mean.  Being from Jersey now makes me feel “cheap,” like I’m not as good as
a New Yorker.  Which, of course, is true.  New York kicks ass.

[/SIZE]

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偷西瓜
※ 修改:·onlypig 于 03月11日12:35:56  修改本文·[FROM: 162.105.244.51]
※ 来源:·北大未名站 bbs.pku.edu.cn·[FROM: 162.105.244.51

UA
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