A parallel universe

The past few years, I have been living in two different worlds and it just dawned on me how alike they look when now I sit back and look at them. I am talking about my doctoral student life at Penn State.

I joined the doctoral program in Fall 2001 but it was not until Fall 2002 that I actually started on my PhD research topic. I got the opportunity to work on Finite element modeling of die compaction process a research topic I had worked on for my masters. The project was NSF funded and had 3 other doctoral students working on it. My work was supposed to develop decision algorithms for process specifications to minimize density gradients and achieve full density parts with minimal distortion. Along the same time the Penn State cricket club was revived by a bunch of enthusiastic students at Penn State. I became aware of it in an IGSA meeting of which I was on the committee of. However it wasn't until 2003 that we actually got to play some meaningful cricket. We played in CLNJ the first season and it was not what we hoped for. Many losses, losing interest due to the travel involved and bad management and the club was on brink of dying similar to what was happening to my research at that time. Yet again I was struggling to get past the modeling of die compaction without a complete grasp on the material model with the overall goal of research miles away. Yet the fight kept going on both fronts. The cricket club kept running and my research kept dabbling.

Fall 2003 and I got control of both facets of my life. After discussing with my adviser we decided to forget the overall goal of research and focus on tackling the die compaction modeling once and for all. I also became the treasurer of the cricket club and helped the club change leagues to make it easier for travel and budgeted properly to allow us to book school van to travel as a team. The research came along and so did the club. We started winning games, the club got steady and my research started coming along. Over the next couple of years these two universes ran in parallel and alike. We won more games and got better as a team and I completed my comprehensive exam where I was finally ready to define my PhD thesis topic.

Finally last season (summer 2006), they both achieved fruition. We won our group to be south div champions and I successfully defended my thesis. It wasn't easy. We had to fight through rained out games and points till the last match and I had to juggle the scheduling dates but it happened. Now as my student life came to an end, so did the cricket club's participation in WMCB. And that is when I got thinking of this amazing coincidence.

As I sit here writing this blog, a new chapter starts in my life. I am now part of another research group as a postdoc. At the same time, with PSCC no longer participating, a few of us have joined the roster of Monument Cricket Club to get a chance to play cricket once again. How will this unfold? I wait to see....

The two universes have worked complementary to one another. One to shape my life and the other to help keep me sane as I shape my life. I hope to find a similar balance throughout my life.