The Second Day

It has been overcast for most of the time I have been here in South Bend, and today was no exception. As I was walking past Touchdown Jesus to my office in the drizzle, I spied two people in long black robes walking across the quad. My first reaction was "Dude, Notre Dame has some hardcore Harry Potter fans!", but then I realized they were just a couple of priests. I am still getting acclimated to the number of clergy on campus.

I had Mathematical Methods and Intermediate Fluid Mechanics today. Math Methods is going to be covering all the advanced math principles that we will need to do our graduate level work. However, quite a bit of what will be covered in the class has already been introduced to me in Quantum Mechanics. I can't say that I understand it, but at least it will be somewhat familiar. I also get to use Mathematica again. Yipee! I thought I had escaped that torture device, but today I installed it on my laptop. Fluid mechanics also startled me a bit because much of what we will be covering seems to be things I have already been introduced to in various courses at the University of Tulsa. So thanks to all my professors at TU for setting me up to be a competitive grad student.

I also attended the first 15 minutes of Intermediate Thermodynamics, the class which I am TAing. Out of the six students registered, four of them showed up today. There are two TAs. I am so grateful that I don't have to grade homework for a class of 70 this semester.

The professors here also require us to use a format called LATEX when creating technical documents. It is a text based program, and I have to wonder if there is not a slightly more user friendly and newer alternative in use.

The First Day...and a little bit more.

So today was the official start of the school year at Notre Dame and the start of my graduate studies. I am pursuing a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in the area of biofluidics under the watchful eye of Dr. Philippe Sucosky. My very first official graduate class was Continuum Mechanics with Dr. Paolucci. I always find it interesting when professors start off a class by telling you that everything you will spend hours trying to learn in the coming semester is completely made up.

I also had my first meeting with my research group. This semester, I will be building a flow loop to recreate the blood flow through the aorta. I am also in charge of making sure that our lab meets safety requirements for the Class IV laser which I will be using to do a PIV study to determine the mechanism behind the calcification of the aorta.

This evening I attended the welcome picnic next to the library with MK. I was surprised at how fast they were able to get several thousand students through the buffet-style dinner. However, we learned the hard way that it is very important to make sure you remember exactly where you are parked. MK and I spend a good 10 minutes walking around pressing the lock button on the key fob only to figure out that we were one lot over from where we had left the car.

All in all, it was a good first day. I hope to put up some pictures of where I work and live soon.