How to get a PhD in three easy steps

Step 1: Arrive in the dead center of nowhere -- Laramie, WY.

Step 2: Proceed to freeze half to death, climb at Vedauwoo for 500 days, travel the West, fish, party, and spend interminable hours staring at incomprehensible science-y stuff.

Don't be too surprised if your hair falls out while you're at it.



Step 3: Graduate, be happy it's all over, and move on to bigger and better things.

So that's it, folks. If you're still paying attention, this officially brings this blog to a close. I'm no longer a grad student, I don't live in Wyoming, and at this point there's not that much left to say about how weird I find the US to be -- I've officially gone native. Feel free to glance at the archives: I particularly recommend my first impressions of Laramie, thoughts on a High Plains summer, and some advice about going to graduate school. All the pictures are available on Flickr. If you've lost touch with me for any reason, I am finally available on Facebook again, and if you have a professional inquiry I've got a work web page with more info.

Thanks for reading, everybody, and I hope you enjoyed it.


Cheers,

Dr Johan

You Might Be Getting Older If...

...you've ever read a print edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Y'see, when I was a kid, I'd ask my parents about stuff, and they'd say, "I don't know, why don't we look it up?" They had a middle-of-the-line Swedish encyclopedia sitting in a bookshelf right next to the couch in the living room. I loved that encyclopedia, and since it had a lot of illustrations and long articles, it actually made for good casual reading. After a while, I'd read all the page-length articles -- hence my mad Jeopardy skillz.

In the late 90's mom and dad came into some money, and one of the first things they did was to upgrade the encyclopedia. Out went the now-outdated 80's glossy pages in favor of the Swedish equivalent of EB: the venerable Nationalencyklopedin. It was the French leather edition, too, with the covers embossed in fake gold. Absolutely beautiful set of books, and the 20 volumes take up several feet of shelf space. The company selling it was surprisingly on the ball for 1998, because you got a DVD and a subscription to their website with your purchase. Neither The Tome of All Knowledge nor The Oracle yet existed, and the DVD was certainly handier than fiddling around with books, so the vast majority of those pretty leather-bound books never even got cracked open.

Fast-forward to 2012. Nationalencyclopedin actually survives as a printed work, although it's hard to even find a place to buy it on their website -- they only advertise the web subscription. EB is officially no more. My grandfather's go-to reference on everything has admittedly been out of print since 1957, but it was one hell of a reference work in its day. Unfortunately it caused grandad to occasionally refer to "Indo-China" and "the Negroid race", so I guess there's something to be said for updates. If I ever have any kids, I assume I'll be teaching them Google-Fu on whatever the iPad looks like ten years from now. And I'll certainly be telling long, rambling stories about how much awesomer things were "back in my day."

Oh yeah, and I turned 30 and went to San Francisco. Check out the pictures, and then get off my lawn!

The Great Escape

Not only a classic war movie, and a classic sport climb, my personal interpretation the phrase is "getting away from all the things that get me down about Laramie". My PhD is winding down, and I'll soon break free of the vortex. In the meantime, I've been practicing my prison break techniques. For instance, escaping winter by spending the holidays in California:

The family wisely decided to spend Christmas somewhere nice this year, and so I met up with mom, dad and sis in sunny SoCal in late December. When I left Laramie, it was snowing and -10 F. 24 hours later:

Escape: successful! We had us a hell of time cruising around California in a huge rental car, hanging on the beach, eating seafood, seeing old friends:

Fortunately for all of us, at some point in her life Mom made an executive decision and vowed never to stay in any hotel with less than four stars. I gotta admit, it makes for pretty comfy living:

So for ten glorious days, I was as happy as a pig in mud. Or to put a California spin on it, a seal on the pier:

However, all good things come to an end, and all too soon I found my self Laramie-bound again. But wouldn't you know it, the weather actually cooperated this year and turned out warm. Winter almost didn't happen, and Spring rolled around two weeks early:

To celebrate, I practiced my wall-climbing technique (so I don't have to dig out when the time comes). After 10 long years, four major and six minor joint injuries, and two dozen trashed pairs of climbing shoes, I think I'm finally getting the basics down:

I figure that's almost practice enough. When the chain-gang boss finally looks away, I'm ready to break my shackles and run. Where the road goes from here isn't all that clear yet, but as long as it's heading somewhere different...