Blogging has been on the back burner

I wish i was blogging more frequently. I am perpetually busy ever since I've been at Oak Ridge. My 40 hours of research at Oak Ridge National Lab (I'm going to refer to this as ORNL from now), an inorganic chemistry course and a weekly seminar series along with GRE prep keeps my time occupied. I am a part of the HERE-ORSS program (ACM/GCLA) which is sort of like an internship and I would highly recommend this to anyone who has a semester to take off and participitate in this. This would boost your graduate application beyond your wildest expectations. I went to Vanderbilt University to visit the VINSE (Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering) and check out their programs. I was able to meet a few of their professors and talk to them about their interdisclipnary material science graduate program and research centres. They have a brand new 3 million dollar facility for nano science research including PLD (Pulsed Laser Depostion which I will talk about more later since I work at ORNL on that), carbon nano tubes, nano fluidics, nano fabrication, and nano optics to name a few. I don't know much about Nashville but I'm assuming that if I am called back for an interview, I will be able to see more of what the city and the college has to offer. So, far I think Vanderbilt is ok and they have a decent cafeteria.. They asked me to come down for their Nano Day on Oct 19 where I would be able to meet most of their faculty and students. Jenn came along with me to Vandy because she wanted to check out the Bio-Chem division, and she got to talk to a few professors too. She said that one was almost cocky about his publications/research and hated teaching because for some odd reason, they don't get paid for teaching yet they have to teach a class. Anyway, the ride up and down was a ton of fun and we talked most of the way. We listened to one of her time management and motivational cds and had a discussion which eventually went off on a tangent and we never got back to what we were talking initially..hehe..

We might go to a few other universities to check them out. I guess we'll see.