The clock read 2 a.m. as I began this writing session. Why on earth would anyone stay up this late to write about a physics building? Even if the building is spectacular (as is the Mitchell Physics Institute), this is a ridiculous time to write about it. Yet I’m doing so, because I am terrified that if I go an entire day without writing for 30 minutes, all my motivation will shrivel up, along with my graduation hopes. Fortunately, this building-writing project gives me something to write when my brain is too tired to write anything useful. Since my buildings are all on the Texas A&M campus, writing about them serves a critical purpose: it reminds me I’m a graduate student with a dissertation to finish.
Tonight, despite the late hour, I’m more happy/sad than sleepy. What is happy/sad? Well, it’s the feeling you get when a dear friend is moving away, and you know you won’t get to see her or laugh with her for a long time. Yet you can’t be too sad, because you’re so glad you knew her at all, and because true friendship, unlike lesser kinships, somehow overcomes our natural selfishness and seeks what’s best for the other person. I spent this evening creating a photo collage for a friend who’s moving to California. This was a far more important task, at least for tonight, than my lit review. (Farewell and Godspeed, my floating friend….I will miss you!)
Surprisingly, writing about the Physics Institute fit perfectly into a night spent contemplating the gift of friendship. Just before my Physics Institute writing session (which, I’m glad to say, I spent on useful dissertation-related writing), I shared lunch with a graduate school friend. We are both so grateful to have found a kindred spirit to share our journey—commiserating through disquiet and difficulty, consulting over practical problems, and celebrating tiny triumphs. Though we’ve known each other only a few short months, we already know with absolute certainty that we will cheer each other on until graduation and beyond.
Sadly, though I’ve been a doctoral student for nearly eight years, this is the first year I can honestly say I have grad school friends. I have had many grad school acquaintances. Some might qualify as friends…if we had reason to mention each other, we would say “my friend so-and-so.” But we don’t keep in touch, and we never shared our joys or tears.
Why, for so many years, did I only make acquaintances and superficial friendships? Because I was drifting along, unwilling to expose my struggles to others, or expend effort creating ties that might make me accountable. Lately, I have changed my approach. I have made deliberate attempts to connect with other graduate students, both on my campus and elsewhere. As I’ve done so, my progress has improved. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
True friends are rare treasures, in grad school as everywhere else. Like nearly everything of great value, they cannot be obtained or kept without risk. I encourage you to take a chance and reach out a hand, either to a fellow traveler who’s drowning, to a willing rescuer, or to someone who just wants some company. You won’t regret it.
Well, it’s late, so I’d better throw in a short blurb about the George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute of Fundamental Physics and Astronomy. (Wow, that’s a mouthful…I wonder what the physics students actually call it?) Anyway, here goes…
Wow, what a cool building! By luck, I chose the entrance by the spectacular Foucalt Pendulum. It was tempting to break my one-photo rule, because the five-story cylindrical rotunda from which the pendulum hangs is almost as stunning as the pendulum itself. It proved impossible to take an upward-looking photo that captured both the pendulum and the concentric circles formed by five stories of balconies. Forced to choose, I had to opt for the pendulum.
Reflected in the pendulum is the Penrose floor tiling. Every tile is a parallelogram, flecked with shiny bits. I would love to see this room at night—I’ll bet the floor looks like a dark sky full of twinkling stars, with occasional flashing red comets, as the lights on the rim catch the swinging pendulum.
The tile pattern is named after Roger Penrose, who spent his time figuring out how to fill space with nonperiodic tilings that are reflectively and rotationally symmetric. A nonperiodic tile pattern is invariant under translation. In other words, if you had two transparent planes, both with the tile pattern printed on them, you couldn’t slide the top one (without rotating) to a new position and make it match the one below. Yet in the Penrose tiling, though it’s nonperiodic, any finite region can be found an infinite number of times. It’s remarkable, really. If I ever get time, I’d like to read more about it and work through the proofs. (If you ever catch me blogging about the nonperiodicity of Penrose tilings, please chew me out and tell me to get back to my dissertation.)
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