I remember seeing a trailer for Tangled several months ago and not really understanding what the movie was about. It looked like another animated film that was more silly than anything else, with Rapunzel being redefined in a similar mold as Princess Fiona, the spunky, fights-her-own battles princess from Shrek. So when Tangled was released recently, I didn't pay it much attention, and since Ebert didn't review it, didn't bother reading any of the reviews of Tangled. But somehow, the movie overtook HP7 for the top box office spot, got a nearly 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and ew started hearing about its merits by word-of-mouth. And given that the film is animated, word-of-mouth was all ew really needed to convince her to get me to go see it with her. So, contrary to what I usually do with movies I want to see, I just went and saw it. No reviews beforehand, no plot synopsis, not even really aware of the cast members. And I have to say, Tangled really surprised me. In a good way.
Tangled really should have been pitched the way The Princess and the Frog was last year. Maybe Disney was scared to because of the poor reception Princess and the Frog received, but Tangled really represents a return to the animated movies that we grew up with, from Little Mermaid to Beauty and the Beast, to Aladdin, to Lion King. I'm as much of a Pixar fan as everyone else, but sometimes Pixar seems to be too self-aware, whether it's with pop culture references, moral messages, or a seriousness that animated films didn't have back in the day. So it is refreshing to see a movie that takes us to a world where princesses fall in love, where ruffians and scoundrels are really soft inside, where magical kingdoms exist and prosper in peace (aside from the one deranged person). Tangled represented all that made us fall in love with Disney: the path of self discovery in a slow, touching, emotional, and musical process. It is really a movie that became quite beautiful, and has a scene and song that really rivals Kiss the Girls and Aladdin's magic carpet ride.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
A Day in the Life of a PhD
I remember in undergrad, cy briefly dated his Italian TA, and after it ended, he told me to never date a PhD student, because they have no time for you and can be a little crazy. And now that ew has finally completed her doctorate, I can say that there is some truth to cy’s assertion. Obviously that didn’t deter me, as ew and I are now married, but there are some very important realities that I learned from dating a PhD student for over 5 years.
Not all doctors are created equal
Typically, we associate higher education with increased earning potential. Especially when graduate school yields you the title of doctor. However, this does not apply to PhD students. In fact, earning a PhD probably has sapped most candidates of their earning potential, since the jobs awaiting a PhD essentially lead to more academic positions that pay very little, or an industry job that pays no more than someone who already has 5+ years of work experience.
Science inevitably must come first at some point
PhD students at some point HAVE to graduate. They are bound in very low-salary positions to an advisor, lab, and/or collaborators that may drive them bananas. Since research is actually ground-breaking, things don’t always work. Projects don’t always go as hypothesized, dead-ends are fairly common, and there’s quite a bit of luck involved with finding a publishable topic. Because of this, research can drag on for years before an actual dissertation is formed, and once you’re in the middle of research, it’s nearly impossible to start over and switch groups if you do find the work environment untenable. So at some point, usually after 4 years, PhD candidates tend to think to themselves, “I am wasting away the prime years of my life with no earnings in this god-forsaken lab. I have to graduate and get out of here.” And so, science must come first. A weekend trip is considered a visit to the lab, evenings are dominated by ways to figure out the proper chemistry or experimental design, nights are spent restlessly thinking about how to graduate.
PhDs are conflicted people
The appeal of a PhD is in fact working on things that no one else has done. Research by nature is intended to make you feel stupid; if you do not feel stupid, then you are probably not doing any interesting work. So the conundrum is that PhD students are generally smart people who do not like to feel stupid, yet they pursue a field that makes them feel stupid all the time. Additionally, research does not pay well. Companies will not fund nascent ideas, so research tends to be funded by governmental entities. So there is no potential for upside of an IPO or buy out from a company; all intellectually property will be held by universities or national labs. The only upside exists in the faint possibility of a Nobel Prize or similar name recognition among peers. But again, PhDs see industry jobs as boring and unexciting, and thus seek a paradigm shift in the way the world treats new ideas.
I think the most important thing I learned about PhD students is that they need support. Imagine starting a job that promised you the ability to indulge in your true passion in life, only to find out that your true passion is likely impossible to accomplish. Then imagine that this job demanded you to always be thinking about it, work on the weekends, feel guilty about taking holidays, and barely paid you enough to live each month. Then imagine that your work environment deteriorated to the point that you dreaded going into work every day, but you could not go search for another job because that would just restart the entire process you committed yourself to for the past few years. And now imagine doing this as your first job out of school, and five years later, you’re in the same exact position while the rest of your friends you graduated with have moved forward with their lives such that they are working at jobs they either enjoy or at jobs that actually pay them money. For those of us who did not earn a PhD, we’ll never truly understand the dedication, sacrifice, and effort it takes to graduate. At work, I complain about making investments in environmental markets that don’t really have a framework. For ew, she lived in a world that didn’t exist until she built it. So yes, PhDs may be a little crazy sometimes, and they may not always focus on things outside their immediate world, but they’re essentially put in the worst work situation possible and somehow find their way out of it, usually with a new idea that can spur the advancement of something, no matter how niche or small it may seem. And so, though ew says it was anticlimactic to condense 5 years of work into one 45 minute presentation, all I can say is that, those 45 minutes are more than I’ve contributed in the past 5 years. Congrats ew, I couldn’t be more proud.
Not all doctors are created equal
Typically, we associate higher education with increased earning potential. Especially when graduate school yields you the title of doctor. However, this does not apply to PhD students. In fact, earning a PhD probably has sapped most candidates of their earning potential, since the jobs awaiting a PhD essentially lead to more academic positions that pay very little, or an industry job that pays no more than someone who already has 5+ years of work experience.
Science inevitably must come first at some point
PhD students at some point HAVE to graduate. They are bound in very low-salary positions to an advisor, lab, and/or collaborators that may drive them bananas. Since research is actually ground-breaking, things don’t always work. Projects don’t always go as hypothesized, dead-ends are fairly common, and there’s quite a bit of luck involved with finding a publishable topic. Because of this, research can drag on for years before an actual dissertation is formed, and once you’re in the middle of research, it’s nearly impossible to start over and switch groups if you do find the work environment untenable. So at some point, usually after 4 years, PhD candidates tend to think to themselves, “I am wasting away the prime years of my life with no earnings in this god-forsaken lab. I have to graduate and get out of here.” And so, science must come first. A weekend trip is considered a visit to the lab, evenings are dominated by ways to figure out the proper chemistry or experimental design, nights are spent restlessly thinking about how to graduate.
PhDs are conflicted people
The appeal of a PhD is in fact working on things that no one else has done. Research by nature is intended to make you feel stupid; if you do not feel stupid, then you are probably not doing any interesting work. So the conundrum is that PhD students are generally smart people who do not like to feel stupid, yet they pursue a field that makes them feel stupid all the time. Additionally, research does not pay well. Companies will not fund nascent ideas, so research tends to be funded by governmental entities. So there is no potential for upside of an IPO or buy out from a company; all intellectually property will be held by universities or national labs. The only upside exists in the faint possibility of a Nobel Prize or similar name recognition among peers. But again, PhDs see industry jobs as boring and unexciting, and thus seek a paradigm shift in the way the world treats new ideas.
I think the most important thing I learned about PhD students is that they need support. Imagine starting a job that promised you the ability to indulge in your true passion in life, only to find out that your true passion is likely impossible to accomplish. Then imagine that this job demanded you to always be thinking about it, work on the weekends, feel guilty about taking holidays, and barely paid you enough to live each month. Then imagine that your work environment deteriorated to the point that you dreaded going into work every day, but you could not go search for another job because that would just restart the entire process you committed yourself to for the past few years. And now imagine doing this as your first job out of school, and five years later, you’re in the same exact position while the rest of your friends you graduated with have moved forward with their lives such that they are working at jobs they either enjoy or at jobs that actually pay them money. For those of us who did not earn a PhD, we’ll never truly understand the dedication, sacrifice, and effort it takes to graduate. At work, I complain about making investments in environmental markets that don’t really have a framework. For ew, she lived in a world that didn’t exist until she built it. So yes, PhDs may be a little crazy sometimes, and they may not always focus on things outside their immediate world, but they’re essentially put in the worst work situation possible and somehow find their way out of it, usually with a new idea that can spur the advancement of something, no matter how niche or small it may seem. And so, though ew says it was anticlimactic to condense 5 years of work into one 45 minute presentation, all I can say is that, those 45 minutes are more than I’ve contributed in the past 5 years. Congrats ew, I couldn’t be more proud.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Nutcracker
This past weekend the gang and I went up to the Bay Area to kind of celebrate my birthday, but mainly to support st in his Nutcracker performance. The quick birthday blurb is the restaurant that we ended up going to, a Japanese izakaya place called Tanto in Sunnyvale on El Camino, was quite exceptional. The grilled octopus, the dashi soups, and the crab croquettes were highlights. The roe pasta was also quite delicious. But what made it exceptional was the price: definitely great value for the amount of food and alcohol we consumed; the portions were generally larger than I have seen at other izakaya places.
But the main event of the weekend was undoubtedly st's performance. I hadn't actually seen a ballet performance since high school (which, incidentally was also the Nutcracker), so I wasn't sure what to expect. Would I fall asleep like I usually do at the symphony? Or would the visual aspect of the ballet keep me interested? I did enjoy the ballet in Center Stage, but st repeatedly informed me that the ballet in Nutcracker really isn't anything special. But would it even matter, considering that st was
performing as the Nutcracker prince?
A little background on st. Despite his claims of doing tae kwon do, none of us have actually seen him show any sense of athleticism. He tends to be afraid of the ball in ball sports, and he tends to be very lethargic and sleepy in everyday life. Not to mention, he is quite afraid of interacting with other people, especially girls, so upon hearing of his casting as the titular character, most of us were quite surprised. How would an unathletic, somewhat socially awkward, lethargic recluse demonstrate the necessary grace and emotion to connect with Clara and with the audience?
I think that st's willingness to even get this performance opportunity is quite contradictory to his normal character. He didn't start learning ballet until he went back to Stanfurd for his masters and always maintained that he didn't want to showcase his skills (similar to dk, who still denies the spotlight with his piano playing). So when he inquired whether to pursue a role in the Nutcracker, actually pursued it, and then actually accepted the titlular role, that showed incredible growth on his part. And that is what this past weekend was really about. To be comfortable with our inadequacies, but to try to better them, to try to change. Maybe st wasn't the most graceful dancer out there, but he showed incredible passion and fluidity in his steps, and in that way, was brilliant in his performance. It showed a sense of courage to let it all out there for others to see, a sense of vulnerability, and he did connect with the audience because of this, or at least his friends, who may have been skeptical at the begining, but at the end of it, were incredibly proud. There was an article on Yahoo! Sports where Kobe was describing his mentality toward life, where you can either come out of things better than you are or you can crawl up like a coward into a little ball. Oftentimes, st does the latter. To see him do the former was what made the performance special.
But the main event of the weekend was undoubtedly st's performance. I hadn't actually seen a ballet performance since high school (which, incidentally was also the Nutcracker), so I wasn't sure what to expect. Would I fall asleep like I usually do at the symphony? Or would the visual aspect of the ballet keep me interested? I did enjoy the ballet in Center Stage, but st repeatedly informed me that the ballet in Nutcracker really isn't anything special. But would it even matter, considering that st was
performing as the Nutcracker prince?
A little background on st. Despite his claims of doing tae kwon do, none of us have actually seen him show any sense of athleticism. He tends to be afraid of the ball in ball sports, and he tends to be very lethargic and sleepy in everyday life. Not to mention, he is quite afraid of interacting with other people, especially girls, so upon hearing of his casting as the titular character, most of us were quite surprised. How would an unathletic, somewhat socially awkward, lethargic recluse demonstrate the necessary grace and emotion to connect with Clara and with the audience?
I think that st's willingness to even get this performance opportunity is quite contradictory to his normal character. He didn't start learning ballet until he went back to Stanfurd for his masters and always maintained that he didn't want to showcase his skills (similar to dk, who still denies the spotlight with his piano playing). So when he inquired whether to pursue a role in the Nutcracker, actually pursued it, and then actually accepted the titlular role, that showed incredible growth on his part. And that is what this past weekend was really about. To be comfortable with our inadequacies, but to try to better them, to try to change. Maybe st wasn't the most graceful dancer out there, but he showed incredible passion and fluidity in his steps, and in that way, was brilliant in his performance. It showed a sense of courage to let it all out there for others to see, a sense of vulnerability, and he did connect with the audience because of this, or at least his friends, who may have been skeptical at the begining, but at the end of it, were incredibly proud. There was an article on Yahoo! Sports where Kobe was describing his mentality toward life, where you can either come out of things better than you are or you can crawl up like a coward into a little ball. Oftentimes, st does the latter. To see him do the former was what made the performance special.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)