27 ian. 2007

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.