Toughts about PhD

Every day I receive emails with Post-Doc scholarships/jobs and very few with PhD positions. Why nobody seem to want students on PhD ?

Before entering to the Faculty of Physics, all the Doctors in Physics or Mathematics where for me like "goods". The idea was, that if somebody is a Doctor in Physics/Mathematics it means that he/she has a contribution to the development of Physics/Mathematics. The second idea was that if you have a great contribution to science, you need to work and to spend time for research and study. So, in my opinion the average age of an average Doctor was 35-40 years.

Nowadays, the average age for an PhD in Physics is 28-30 years, and in general the contribution to science are very small. In the past the progress was made form big steps, and so was the development of science. Now the progress is made form small steps, but is more rapid.

This is, in my opinion, the reason for low requirements for obtaining the PhD title. Is not necessary to have o great contribution to science, all you need is a piece o paper with your name next to title of Doctor, and its enough. ow people look different at you. Now the place of Doctorate was taken by Post-Doctorate. It's like dividing the period of time necessary for the old Doctorate in two parts. So, the real contribution are from post-doc scientists. But for how long. In conclusion, the scientific level of PhD is decreasing, and this title tells nothing about you as a scientist. The only title that matters now is the Post-Doc title.

Sunday

PENTRU OBY
At 10:00 LT we went to the church very close to our apartment:

Catalina's cousin is priest in Dallas (http://www.sfantamaria-dallas.org/). But this Sunday was also a priest in Bucharest, at Sf. Ilie Church.
Before lunch I went to the park, and I take some photos for this blog.

Old house with a very sad story.

Old house near the second largest building in the world (after Pentagon).

One of the Bucharest symbols.

Street close to the Herestrau Park.

After lunch, and after some delicious "spaghetti", we visit my parents. So, you can tell that this Sunday was a "non-scientific" one. But tomorrow another week begins, so I see you at 05:00 LT in the morning, I will be working at thesis.
My plans for the next week are:

• finish my first paper for PhD;
• first results of the SEVERE Project, in which I work with my friend Adam (http://www.thoughtfishing.com/);
• send my article about the onset of cloud-to-ground lightning activity to Romanian Journal of Meteorology;
• discuss the participation of Romania in the EUCLID(http://www.euclid.org/realtime.html);
• start my paper for EGU 2007 conference (http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2007/)
• study from Bluestein book on synoptic meteorology;
• learn MATLAB
• "thinking about the future" (I will explain some day).

So I finish for today with one more picture. This picture is from a bus:

On the paper is written: At the The Museum of the Romanian Peasant a chair is not only a chair, it's a story. And after that, is the logo of the, Always new since 1906. This is the web page of the museum: http://www.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro/.

My first PhD exam

Yesterday I give my first exam at the PhD. After two hour of writing about the climate components, Fourier and Wavelet transform and finally about the empirical orthogonal functions, I end up by taking 10 points of 10 possible. The PhD is structured for 1.5 year like a "Doctoral School" (the official name). This mean that we have to go to classes and we have to prepare some papers and presentations. In this school we are like 20 students, mainly form physics of the earth (seismology), air pollution and meteorology. We are 3 students in meteorology, me and two of my colleagues from the Institute. I have a thesis in lightning meteorology, and the other two in "air masses" and "EPS". My point about this exams is that they don't help me at all. The subject of this exams it has nothing to do with my thesis. So I need to study and to waist time with this exams, time which can be used to prepare my thesis. In Romania the PhD and the work at the Institute are two separate things, so I can at work at my thesis between 08:00 and 17:00 LT. In this case I need to wake up at 05:00 LT to gain 2 hour of study. So I need to waist time with something that has nothing to do with my work. Me be if I am very indulgent, I can use something from the first exam, but the second one will be about air pollution, and so one....

Enough with the scientific part. Now something about the social part, The Wedding. We plan (me and Catalina) to go today to see a show about wedding and all the stuff related to this subject. Because we go with my sister and also because the show will be close to a park, I plan to spend a quiet afternoon in the park, reading my book. I want to finish today the Romanian version of " The Truth about Sacha Knisch" by Aris Fiorestos.

The novel, set in Berlin in the summer of 1928 : http://www.arisfioretos.com/eng/01-01-05-SaschaKnisch-o.html.

My first post

Hello,

This will be a blog about meteorology, and also a blog about me
trying to became a meteorologist and a researcher.

For the moment I'm study for my Ph.D. in Romania at the
University of Bucharest (http://unibuc.ro/en/home),
in the Faculty of Physics (http://unibuc.ro/en/fac_ffiz_en).

Tomorrow I will have my first exam for the Ph.D., so I spend
the entire day reading about Fourier Transform and Wavelet Transform.
You will find an excellent tutorial about Wavelet Transform at
http://users.rowan.edu/~polikar/WAVELETS/WTtutorial.html.

So, if you want to know about :

• my path in meteorology
• meteorology in Romania
• my job at the Romanian National Meteorological Administration
• ...and even my wedding (which will be in this summer)

read my blog.