Years ago… well up to two years ago I had the habit or writing a yearly reflections article on what I did in school and just life in general. I forgot or didn’t bother to do it for 2013, and now it’s 2014 and I’m finally done with graduate school, so I might as well summarize my whole graduate school experience. My four years of grad school has been good overall, and I can’t complain much given that I graduated “on time”. Read on to find out my thoughts on my grad school career, looking for a job, and various other things I did while I was trying to become Dr. TJ.
Maine – Acadia National Park Trip
Recently I went a trip with a few travel buddies to Acadia National Park in Maine. We had a pretty good time, and this post contains some photos and highlights of the trip. This was probably the last long-ish vacation trip I’ll have for a while, since I’ll be starting work soon. Yes, I did finally find a job, but I’ll leave that for another post.
Recent Travels
I’ve been busy with graduation recently, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been going to places. Actually, I’ve traveled a fair bit, both near and far, around the time of my graduation, and here’s just a post to summarize where I’ve been recently.
Improving performance of the non-iterative direct state estimation method
I’m posting my theses and research papers from the grad school career on this site. This paper is the first paper I wrote that made in into IEEE’s IEEE Xplore digital library. It’s only a conference paper, but I’m happy it was included into IEEE Xplore. I still don’t have a journal paper to show for my grad school career, but hopefully that’ll change soon. Anyways, read below for the abstract and the link to the IEEE Xplore entry for the full paper.
A Linux-based, Flexible Phasor Data Concentrator Design
Now that I have finished grad school, I am posting my Master thesis on this blog since this blog is a collection of my works, even scholarly ones. At around 45 pages including front and back matter, my thesis is quite short by thesis standards, but it’s still too long to post on this blog, so I’ll only post the abstract and how it can be accessed from my grad school Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. If you don’t know what a phasor data concentrator is, that’s okay. Most people don’t know either. My thesis is a long read that’ll only interest a small number of people in the power systems area. Read on to find out the details.
You may now call me Dr. TJ
That’s right. After 21 years through the formal education system (not counting kindergarten), I have received my PhD degree in electrical engineering. I received my degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute located in Troy, New York, USA. I’ve spent the better part of four years at RPI working on power systems research, and also got my Master degree from here. I put considerable effort and hard work into earning my PhD, and the last semester had been somewhat hectic with me trying to finish on time. But I did it. I prevailed, and this closes another chapter of my life. I consider myself fortunate to have met my adviser, who is probably the nicest research adviser a grad student can hope for, and also good colleagues and friends through my time at RPI. Of course, I have to thank my family for their love and support as well.
The commencement ceremony I attended for my PhD may mark the last time I’m recognized as a student, but we all know learning is a life-long process, and I’ll strive to learn and apply my knowledge to something beneficial and worthwhile in my career. I’m still looking for a job, but things are looking better now that I have more time to focus on the job search. Hopefully I’ll have some good news to share soon. Other than the job search, I’ll also be taking some vacation time to travel around, as this summer may be the last extended vacation I’ll have for a while.
1 Million Unique Visits!!!
My core websites (this blog, the crabbing guide, and the Smash Bros. guide) surpassed the big 1,000,000 unique visits mark some time during the last week. I haven’t been checking the web counter very often these days, so I’m not sure exactly when the count passed a million. It took almost 10 years to reach this mark, and you can see the stats in the graph below. Most of the hits come from the crabbing guide, and you can easily see the cyclical nature of the traffic where there are more visitors during the summer months than the winter months. I’m proud to get to 1 million and also proud that I kept my websites around for so long. Hopefully it’ll take less than 10 years to reach the the 2 million mark.
Thoughts on Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
The few of you who still check on this blog may have noticed that I haven’t been blogging or even talking about anime during this spring 2014 season. I haven’t been watching any of the new series in the season. Instead, I plan to watch some of the older “classics” that have been well received. In the last week, I watched all 27 episode of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, a mecha show from Gainax that some people describe as “epic”. Here are some random thoughts of mine after watching the series.
Contains Spoilers.
PhD Dissertation Approved, Almost Done
Just to share another bit of good news for myself. My PhD dissertation has finally been approved by my university, and that should be the last of the graduation requirements. It took about two weeks to get the dissertation approved since I had submit two revisions. The school has some strict requirements for the formatting and references. Now that the dissertation has been approved, I should be all set to receive my PhD degree later this month. Although I haven’t officially graduated yet, I can probably be referred to as Dr. TJ from now on :lol: . Has a nice ring to it.
I’m of course elated that my graduate school journey is coming to an end, but I’d be happier if I had secured a job. I’m still looking for that elusive first job, so wish me luck.