- the application process is interesting in that i was forced to confront my past present future. though i was also trying to appeal to the committee so it’s not totally authentic and i might have glossed over some important self realizations. also in writing i got the help of very nice grad students who themselves fought hard to get into academia (from the systemic side).
- listened to a writing interview. i think for me, right now the goal is clear, be clear and specific about what I am genuinely interested in, if it’s unique then just explain how i became interested in it, why. the task at hand is to arrange the pieces right now for the reasons to align a bit, because i have two goals, one the longer term nature, one the shorter term physics.
- i know how to tell the story now … (a hour later) nevermind i watched one lecture each on every field i worked in and feel like two of my projects are poorly described for what we actually did and found. so now focusing on those two paragraphs per se. (a minute later) now i want to spend time on actually doing stuff (rendering?!) - infertile words (”we could”, “I want”) and rich soil results…. (500 trials, 5 sims, p-val)
- the story became aina → metamaterial → flocking → morphogenesis → condensates too.
- fatigued about how to frame the thesis and the faculty interest. then revived when I saw how Sohit did it with just 2 sentences for 3 faculty about the techniques he wants to learn.