A year (late) in review
by uber
2008 seems to have generally been regarded as a bad year. It’s interesting to try and consider a universal good or bad quality to a year. I guess the economic crash, which has hit with disturbing speed, has taken a lot of people back. I can’t shake the feeling that people wanted a crisis to come, or at least the media did. It feels a bit like how people spoke about a relief at starting WWI, just to break the tension.
The main thing this year for me has been the thesis. I won’t speak too long on it, but suffice to say that I am now past the time I would like to be while still writing, and so getting increasingly frustrated, especially with myself.
I have never been too good at sticking to only one track, and at one point I was effectively working one full-time job, one part-time and trying to write my thesis. That was too much and I hit December 23rd little more than a cinder.
Thankfully, the part-time work is now largely finished, and I managed to write some fun software that did a job really well. I get a nice warm glow when code works, especially when it runs a hell of a lot faster than expected.
I wrote the code in Python, which I have to say is a rather excellent language. If there’s anyone out there considering learning to program for doing functional stuff quickly, I think the new version of Python would be a great choice. You can deploy web application stuff to the Google App Engine as well to get it online.
My new job is as a postdoc on a very large research project. It’s a totally different experience for me, since my PhD was individually funded. I am really interested to see what support I can give the students that arrive to the project, and what the advantages are of such a big network.
As we get into 2009, I think I just want to get the writing finished. I have a feeling that it is taking a really heavy toll on me now and that letting it drag on would be a catastrophe. On the plus side, I will be a new man when it’s done.
Comments
“2008 seems to have generally been regarded as a bad year.”
Really?
2008 was a crummy year for me (more bad things happened than good things, and good things I’d expected and worked towards did not happen), but I didn’t expect everyone else to feel the same way. It wasn’t that bad a year for the world. A couple friends had kids. A couple more got married. Still more graduated with the PhDs. A few people got jobs. Obama got elected. Some people might be able to afford houses now, when a few years ago that seemed preposterous.
It’s been a bad year for mee too. I went to the doctor more times in 2008 than in the previous several years put together. I’d call that a bad year. And it was a stressfull year without may exciting things to cheer it up and no major improvements in my life in general. Just felt bad.
I had a pretty ok year actually. Sure, I broke up with Kat and moved to Nigeria, but I found Fall From Heaven, got a 2.1 in my degree and kicked my French up a gear. Running a new campaign, people seem to like it.
Thing seems to be doing well, has a new beau and my folks are in good form. I’m not asking for much more than that.