Dairy entry of a wonderful day!

This is going to be a huge one! As it was a HUGE Tuesday!

Monday night I went to sleep with lots of questions in my mind, lots of uncertainties. I distinctly remember typing, "There are a lot of loose ends to tie right now in my life!" just before I logged off Gtalk. I was broke, without an internship, overloaded with TA work, and without a major professor and hence with no direction of my thesis. This had manifested in me taking 3 credit subjects and 2 audit subjects. Along with a half time TA, any graduate student will tell you that's a LOT! Besides, there was the obvious scare of how long this recession would continue. Internships are rare, and people are loosing jobs everywhere. Will I be able to secure a job in an years time? How long can I extend my stay here in ISU in case I cant get a job?! How do I find the funding! Obviously not a great feeling to go to sleep with (Be rest assured I would have slept well anyway :D).

So, there I was walking down from the car parking towards the lab, thinking of whether I should join a professor who had shown some interest towards me working for him. I had not followed it up any time. Our research interests didn't match. But then he was one of the best 5 people I have ever met in my life. Lost in thought, I picked up my gaze and I saw a professor from our department smiling at me. On our way, we discussed a topic I had raked up in his class. Suddenly, as we were crossing a road, he popped me a question, "Indranil, are you looking for a major professor?". I said, "Yes sir!". And then he started discussing his research. 'Well, well!' I said to myself. 'Wasn't he one of the professors I was kind of interested in working for?' HMMM, so I listened to what he was saying and added a few afterthoughts as well! So there I was with an indirect offer to approach him as a major prof, or so I believed.

I reached Dr. Luecke's (http://www.public.iastate.edu/~grl/) class, a class that I was auditing. I had dropped it from credit to audit only in the last class! I will tell you how you feel when you have done it. In one word, lackadaisical! After the class, as I rose to leave, the professor said, "I would like to talk to you!". Apprehensively I waited next to him, while he cleared the doubts of all the other guys. After the whole class had left, he turned to me and said, "I am working on project from NSA on compilers for distributed computing. I guess, you might be interested. If you would work for me I would like to fund you through your studies here including your summers!! But you would need to let me know a little quickly, as we have a hard deadline and have lots of pending work". I was at a loss for words. It was not because I was awestruck, but I was thinking how to sweet talk my way through this :). I had to know more before I said something, about him, about the group, about the work, and about the product. But hey, here was my sure shot funding!!! So I said, "Prof, this is extremely lucrative, lets talk more in your office. I have to scoot for another class right now. I can drop in anytime after 2 PM". "2 PM it will be, came the reply". I ran to the next class. There was a spring in my steps!

2 PM, arrived and I was at his office. After the discussion, I knew this was a HUGE project. It was really cutting edge and on distributed computing, in other words SUPERCOMPUTERS! I got the feeling what a big shot this man was! I will give you a measure. He goes and proposes somethings to heads of the likes of IBM, Dell, Cray, Sun, NSA, NASA, Hitachi etc etc. They ask him for a price tag. They don't even give a competing bid! That's the prof. And then I would be the only MS guy in the team. The other members are full time workers on this project and a PhD! One lady is going to join after she gets her Ph.D. from Ecole Polytechnique France. She is about to join in 1 month. And yes there is an obvious interest from Berkeley (the project extends/validates UPC). So there I was, a midget considering whether I should join this group or not. I was thinking, "How could I have missed out on considering him earlier?". Well that was because he was an adjunct professor in our department and was actually a faculty of the Maths dept!

"OK! I am interested" I told him, "But, I am a TA now and I am not sure whether I could change over to an RA this semester". So he called up the office to find it out. And he was smiling as he heard over his earpiece. He kept down the phone and said, "you are wanted everywhere!". I knew that it must have meant that I had done a good job as a TA. Good news was that the department would try to look for a substitute. Obviously, it was good for them, they could fund another guy. So I left the room, walking in a trance, thinking about things I had to do before committing to him, things that have to work out on their own, and marvelling at the opportunity that I had just got. My phone was buzzing, it was Pavan. "Dude, last sem's TA evaluations have come, go and get it from Dr. Kamal", he blurted. So I went up to meet Dr. Kamal. I was confident of a good evalutation.

I opened it in my office and my heart leapt with joy. I knew why Dr. Luecke was smiling. My TA evalutaions were fabulous. I had managed 3 sections last semester. Each section evaluated me for 12 questions, on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the best! I had got above 4.8 in all! There were comments like "Yes!, Roy roacks". For an international TA, that must be great. Actually, I hope, I win the "Best TA" prize :P!

In the evening I played badminton. I played well. It had to be. In less than 24 hours, my life had taken a huge turn. My studies were funded, my research was defined, I had a major prof who could literally get me a job in a phone call, and performance evaluation had come out great! What else can you ask for in a day! I called up home, then charted the course of the rest of my MS, including getting a minor in management here (well, that's part of another plan, and probably of some future blog), chatted and boasted about my accomplishments on various chat boxes and went off to a sound sleep. Well, that's the only part which was not different from the previous night :)!

P.S. I got the RA by Friday on a higher pay than usual. Dr. Luecke is going to pick up the tution fees as well! Ofcourse, I had to change his class from audit to credit again :P.