On the futility of wishing
Mar. 12th, 2004 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirAd Mundo Exteriore,
Was inspired by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ldmoonflower to assess my summer plans. Am in not-so-good position at the moment. Rejections from CSHL and SSRP, although I'm not surprised at all about the former and only slightly disappointed about the latter. Have received request for interview regarding the CGR internship, although I have the nagging feeling that I'll be rejected in the end anyway. AMNH application sent out, but no response expected until April.
Have also sent out emails to three professors, but one keeps getting bounced back, so I suppose I should just give it up as a lost cause. Also have applied to yet another program, this one at the Naval Research Laboratory in D.C., which only goes to show how desperate I am, I suppose. I think if I hear no response I'm going to move down to my second round of professors to email.
There's also this interesting job in New York that asks you to research information and design a website displaying oral and literary poetry in rare languages around the world, which sounds fascinating but is not at all related to science. Still...maybe I should write to them anyway. The pay is horrible though. They say that they'll pretty much give you "a desk, a computer and office supplies" and leave you on your own to conduct the project over the course of two to three months. It's pretty tempting, neh? The![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
linguaphiles community, to which solidark referred me, has been reviving my dilettante interest in linguistics. It would be a good opportunity to learn bits and pieces of obscure languages.
Argh. I think I'll go visit the SEO website again.
What I really would like to do this summer (options are pretty much mutually exclusive):
1. Go to the Central branch of the NYPL everyday, from morning till evening, and do intense research into the life of a dead and probably insignificant person. Perhaps the owner of a book found in one of those "rare & used books" shops, or the painter of a generic nineteenth-century portrait of some rich man, the kind you tend to find in Manhattan office buildings that once were private homes (like the NYAS headquarters). Branch out and look into every associated topic--I'm thinking of Byatt's A Biographer's Tale here. Allow notes to massively accumulate in a precise filing system, and write a long interesting biography about him (or her) in August.
2. Stay in Cambridge and walk to the end of every street in the near vicinity of Harvard campus. Also, take the T to Boston and spend days taking photographs of old buildings. Compile a list of every good bookstore in the city.
3. Intern at a lab researching possible mechanisms for the evolution of a primitive cellular environment and early metabolic reactions. Hah, like that will happen.
4. Go on a field trip to the Galapagos Islands and measure finch beaks--this one happens to be inspired by The Beak of the Finch.
5. Take an airplane to Paris, rent a car, and drive across Europe, staying in youth hostels along the way. Preferably with a friend or two. Visit all the old cathedrals, and attend Mass in a different language every week. Do all sightseeing for free, and save money for food, lodging, transportation and photographs. Also, try at least six new varieties of cheese and eat a genuine Wurst. Go hiking in the Alps. Ride the Underground in London, along the exact same routes in Neverwhere. Ride a gondola in Venice.
6. Visit Korea, with my parents. Avoid contact with cousins and other relatives after the first week. Make Mother take me to the hospital where I was born, the apartment in which I lived the first five months of my life, and the church in which I was baptized. Also make them take me to Chejudo, where they had their honeymoon. Visit the Buddhist temples of Bulguksa at Kyeongju. Visit all the old palaces in Seoul. Learn Korean, baduk and hanja in the process.
Unfortunately, these are all quite impossible. The major problem with most of those choices is of course the fact that I have to earn money this summer and/or I don't have enough money to attempt it in the first place. -_-
Still, it's nice to dream, and one very attractive aspect of the "many worlds" theory is that in some universe out there, there is a Tari not so different from me who is actually doing one of these things.
...Tari
Was inspired by
ldmoonflower to assess my summer plans. Am in not-so-good position at the moment. Rejections from CSHL and SSRP, although I'm not surprised at all about the former and only slightly disappointed about the latter. Have received request for interview regarding the CGR internship, although I have the nagging feeling that I'll be rejected in the end anyway. AMNH application sent out, but no response expected until April.Have also sent out emails to three professors, but one keeps getting bounced back, so I suppose I should just give it up as a lost cause. Also have applied to yet another program, this one at the Naval Research Laboratory in D.C., which only goes to show how desperate I am, I suppose. I think if I hear no response I'm going to move down to my second round of professors to email.
There's also this interesting job in New York that asks you to research information and design a website displaying oral and literary poetry in rare languages around the world, which sounds fascinating but is not at all related to science. Still...maybe I should write to them anyway. The pay is horrible though. They say that they'll pretty much give you "a desk, a computer and office supplies" and leave you on your own to conduct the project over the course of two to three months. It's pretty tempting, neh? The
linguaphiles community, to which solidark referred me, has been reviving my dilettante interest in linguistics. It would be a good opportunity to learn bits and pieces of obscure languages.Argh. I think I'll go visit the SEO website again.
What I really would like to do this summer (options are pretty much mutually exclusive):
1. Go to the Central branch of the NYPL everyday, from morning till evening, and do intense research into the life of a dead and probably insignificant person. Perhaps the owner of a book found in one of those "rare & used books" shops, or the painter of a generic nineteenth-century portrait of some rich man, the kind you tend to find in Manhattan office buildings that once were private homes (like the NYAS headquarters). Branch out and look into every associated topic--I'm thinking of Byatt's A Biographer's Tale here. Allow notes to massively accumulate in a precise filing system, and write a long interesting biography about him (or her) in August.
2. Stay in Cambridge and walk to the end of every street in the near vicinity of Harvard campus. Also, take the T to Boston and spend days taking photographs of old buildings. Compile a list of every good bookstore in the city.
3. Intern at a lab researching possible mechanisms for the evolution of a primitive cellular environment and early metabolic reactions. Hah, like that will happen.
4. Go on a field trip to the Galapagos Islands and measure finch beaks--this one happens to be inspired by The Beak of the Finch.
5. Take an airplane to Paris, rent a car, and drive across Europe, staying in youth hostels along the way. Preferably with a friend or two. Visit all the old cathedrals, and attend Mass in a different language every week. Do all sightseeing for free, and save money for food, lodging, transportation and photographs. Also, try at least six new varieties of cheese and eat a genuine Wurst. Go hiking in the Alps. Ride the Underground in London, along the exact same routes in Neverwhere. Ride a gondola in Venice.
6. Visit Korea, with my parents. Avoid contact with cousins and other relatives after the first week. Make Mother take me to the hospital where I was born, the apartment in which I lived the first five months of my life, and the church in which I was baptized. Also make them take me to Chejudo, where they had their honeymoon. Visit the Buddhist temples of Bulguksa at Kyeongju. Visit all the old palaces in Seoul. Learn Korean, baduk and hanja in the process.
Unfortunately, these are all quite impossible. The major problem with most of those choices is of course the fact that I have to earn money this summer and/or I don't have enough money to attempt it in the first place. -_-
Still, it's nice to dream, and one very attractive aspect of the "many worlds" theory is that in some universe out there, there is a Tari not so different from me who is actually doing one of these things.
...Tari
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-11 10:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-11 10:27 pm (UTC)CSHL = Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SSRP = Stanford Summer Research Program
CGR = Center for Genomics Research
AMNH = American Museum of Natural History
...Tari
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-12 12:10 am (UTC)This is especially if you spend the summer roaming the streets of Boston/Cambridge ;).
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-12 10:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-12 06:18 pm (UTC)::sighs:: If only I could afford a trip to Europe...
...Tari