This story does not involve camp at all. When I was finishing up my bachelor's degree, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. At the time, I thought that I should go on and get my Master's and eventually my Ph.D because that is what my dad had done. So I stayed.
Graduate school was way different than undergrad. First, it was much smaller, my classes had about 10-15 people in them. I was one of the only Americans. The others were a mix of Romanians, Chinese, Indians, and a few of the other United Colors of Benetton. Also, I was outclassed. There were some super smart people. Fortunately, they were also incredibly friendly and willing to help me.
One of the perks of doing a graduate degree in Engineering is that it is free. There is a big demand for engineers, so I think almost everyone who was doing a graduate degree had a tuition waiver and drew about $1200 a month as a stipend. At the time, this seemed like huge money for me. I was living in a $300 a month apartment, and in Buffalo, that is actually pretty nice digs! The heat was included in the rent, so there was no incentive to save money. There was a window in the bathroom and I loved taking a steaming hot shower, with the window open when it was well below zero outside.
The other perk of being a graduate student is that you get assigned to a lab. This is a semi-private place to work with other graduate students. In addition to the workspaces with computers, most labs have a fridge, a sofa and a couple of other creature comforts. Unlike undergrad, you are expected to work most days, even if you are not at class. As you can probably imagine, I had some characters as lab mates.
Cosmin (real name - unlikely to be reading this blog) was a brilliant Romanian. He had been the teaching assistant for my Aerodynamics class I had really liked him because he sincerely wanted us to understand the material, even if it mean spending lots of extra time explaining it. This was admirable, because at the time he was making the same $1200 a month that I was. But, he was supporting his wife and sending money back home to Romania. He didn't need to spend all the additional time he did explaining concepts, but he loved engineering so much that he wanted to share it with others. He was a tireless worker, always the first in the lab and often slept on the couch because he spent so much time on his work. His research focused on trying to model the flame that was created if propane was ignited. Think about this, think about even just lighting a candle and how the flame grows and shrinks, how it flickers and dances. He was developing equations that described this behavior. What amazed me the most was that part of his research involved renting time from a supercomputer. His programs would take approximately 3 months to run. If he made an error in his program, he wouldn't find out until 3 months later. The supercomputer would spit out hundreds of files, each one a few hundred gigabytes. These were not videos or pictures, just millions upon millions of computations. He taught me so much about computer programming, I think it was a welcome relief to work on my programs because they were so much simpler.
Then there was Tony. Tony was actually in my group. My group was working on a project called the Multi-Recompression-Heater, or MRH. The idea was that if you could continuously compress a gas (easy) and then allow it to expand without losing any heat (very very very difficult), you could achieve extremely high temperatures. Tony, was the only other American I knew. Two things I really liked about Tony: (1) He was a big fan of making eye contact with you when talking with you, even if he was driving. I rode around with him on a few occasions, and he would insist on turning in his seat and looking at you anytime he talked to you. I have no idea how he did it, it seemed impossible that he could still look at the road, but he somehow managed. It was particularly impressive because it never seemed like he sneaked peaks at the road, he just seemed to maintain eye contact with you and the driving seemed to just happen. (2) I greatly enjoy a good euphemism for urinating. I have heard the usual ones about draining the lizard or seeing a man about a horse, but Tony had a great one and one that I have never heard again. I was hooked the first time he said it, he said "I'm going to throw a whizz" Perhaps it was the verb "throw", perhaps the nostalgia of the word "whizz" but I instantly adopted it as my own for awhile.
We had three faculty advisers. Dr. Mollendorf, Dr. Felske and Dr. Lordi. Dr. Mollendorf, first name Joe, was known affectionately as "Smoking Joe". He never smoked, but it was incredibly difficult to ever pin down his whereabouts, he disappeared like smoke. He was incredibly vain. He never came to terms with the fact that he needed glasses, so he got himself a pair of prescription sunglasses. The problem was that at the time, most of the teaching involved using an overhead projector. Naturally, the lights would be turned down or off to view the screen. It was an extremely low light environment. Nevertheless, if a student had a question regarding a particular slide put on the overhead, old smoking Joe would throw on his sunglasses, as if the 80 watt lightbulb was blinding him, and and take a look at the slide. Everyone knew what was up, but smoking Joe kept up the facade.
Dr. Felske, even among super smart people, was the smartest of the bunch. I believe he had finished his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D all with a 4.0 average. He was a little guy, but a giant in the classroom. His classes were generally a tour de force in calculus and trigometric proofs. You couldn't keep up with him, it was mainly an effort in trying to not fall too far behind Apparently, he had suffered a bit of a mental breakdown a few years ago and had been known to walk the halls of the engineering buildings late at night spouting nonsensical things. The kind of afflictions only the genius possess. I admired him greatly.
Finally, Dr. Lordi was mainly an industry guy. He had worked in various industry jobs and only taught in an adjunct role. He was the most down to earth guy I had met. He had a degree from M.I.T., but he seemed like the kind of guy who would chop wood for his dinner if needed. I spent many hours in his office learning all about shock waves and supersonic flow.
Every week, we would meet to discuss the progress of our research. Tony was working the mechanical side of the project. He was re purposing a super charger off of a car to serve as a real life model of an MRH. Dave, a Russian, was working on the computational fluid mechanics of the various flows inside the MRH. My job was to develop applications for this heater. These meeting were always interesting, because you never knew what questions would be thrown at you, particularly from Dr. Felske.
One meeting stands out for two reasons: (1) Tony was explaining the current status of his research and Dr. Felske was really grilling him, even more than normal. I don't know if Tony just got frustrated or something else happened, but he threw out some ridiculous hypothetical example. In a complete dead-pan voice, with a very flat effect, Dr. Felske simply stated "Tony, you are being absurd." And he was. Only Dr. Felske would have said it though. (2) I was explaining the progress of my research and that I had reached a point that I needed to wait for something else to happen before I could take any more steps. For some reason, this upset Smoking Joe, and he was pressing me on it. To this day, I don't know what I said differently the last time, but it was like a light bulb had clicked for Smoking Joe. At the time, Smoking Joe was getting his pilot's license. So I finished with my explanation of what needed to happen next and instead of pushing me further Smoking Joe simply said "Holding Pattern, got it!"
That was it. I finished my thesis and graduated and in a few short months I was in Okinawa.
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