Life Since Stanford
My tenth college reunion is coming up this year. I still haven't made up my mind if I am attending or not. My life is too hectic and uncertain right now, and there are many things that can happen between now and October, most outside my control.
I did attend my five year reunion. It came at the end of a particularly difficult episode in my life, and it was a wonderful opportunity to get to California and meet up with many of my old friends. At the time I did not feel like filling out the class-book info sheet, sine I did not feel like there were many things at that point which I felt too proud about. Since then I have been doing much better, but there have still been many setbacks and personal tragedies that I've gone through. I decided to fill out my class-book page this time around. I mixed factual with frivolous, and what follows is the description of my life since Stanford:
- Decided four years of Stanford Physics just wasn't nearly enough, so stayed on for an MS in Applied Physics
- Finally got sent packing to do more Physics somewhere else, ended up in Midwest, joined the Physics Department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and managed to get a Ph.D. out of it
- During the Dot-Com bubble became yet another sucker who invested in a bunch of shady stocks. (Hey, everyone was doing it!) At least now I know not to pursue a career in financial asset management.
- Became addicted to online social networks (Orkut, MySpace, Facebook, ...) so if you see me on one of those - add me! I always need more friends.
- Decided that the current system of scientific peer review leaves a lot to be desired, so started a website (www.naboj.com) that tries to remedy the current situation.
- Been watching a lot of movies. Movies are good.
- Been reading even more book. Finally came across a book that was so bad I needed to write an online review of it on Amazon and warn people about it. This got me addicted to writing reviews on Amazon.
- I realized that since leaving Stanford I have not been reading daily print newspapers as much as I used to. These days I rely mostly on news aggregators for my daily (hourly?) news fixes. News is good.
- I've also been doing a lot of weight-lifting. For a while I was pushing the bench-press personal record, got it to 350 lbs, but then decided that the bench press was overrated and since then I just want to look and feel good. In tight cloths.
- Toyed with an idea of finding a cure for cancer, but left that task for others to tackle. There are only so many hours in a day.
- If asked to recite the first 100 digits of π, I probably couldn't do it. Probably.
- I've visited Stanford several times since moving to Midwest. It's obscene how many people are still in the area.
- When I moved to Midwest I discovered my deep passion for hiking, preferably steep hills with lots of redwoods around. Bad timing.