First time travelling alone for a collaborative work.

Ok so my first time travel for a collaborative work occurred last Tuesday which brought me to the beautiful university town of Charlottesville, Virginia. I am helping to (almost done) build this neat electronic circuit, which is called a pockels cell switch, for a Qweak Collaborator and to do that I had to come down to University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Now Charlottesville is about 140 miles from Newport News and it takes about 2 and ½ hours to drive there. But for me it was sort of a big deal because that was the first time I had to drive alone. I mean alone alone. Earlier I had driven the car alone when we moved to Virginia from Ohio but I was following Rakitha who was driving the truck. But on Tuesday I had to drive alone! On top of that I had to stay in a hotel alone for the first time. Again, I have stayed in a room alone before on my first visit to JLab, but then I had friends staying in a room down the hall. So that was not scary. But this time I was doing things alone. I was nervous. So one may ask, 'whats the big deal? People do it all the time, specially graduate students!'. Well, being me the way I was brought up in my home country, I was still afraid of going to places alone and not to mention my parents don't like that either. That was the main reason my parents came to USA with me when I first came here for my graduate studies. But that was like almost 3 years ago and I have come a long way from being dependent to being independent. I have realized one don't need to be scared of doing things alone as long as one is sure about them selves. But still I was nervous.

Nervous or not I had to go. I was going to go. It was a personal chalange to me and I wasn't going to back away because I was afraid. So I packed my bags, rented a car, booked a hotel, took a GPS and just incase printed out the Google maps too, said goodbye to Rakitha and started my journey to Charlottesville around 2.30p.m on Monday. 20 miles in to the journey when I was feeling comfortable enough to do 70 m.p.h. on a 65 m.p.h. road it suddenly hit me that I forgot my suitcase! (Bummer!). It was on the trunk of our car and in all the excitement we both forgot about it. So I had to turn and go back for it (sigh..). It was lucky that I remembered it then. Otherwise I can’t imagine reaching Charlottesville around 4.p.m and realizing I had no cloths to wear for the duration of my stay. There was no way that I would have gone back for the bag then. It’s one thing to drive in daylight, it’s a whole different thing to drive alone at night and I was not ready for that yet. So the whole ‘suitcase’ scene lead to me reach Charlottesville around 5.p.m. I was just able to meet up with my Qweak Collaborator there whome I was supposed to meet around 4p.m.
So that was my first experiance traveling alone for collaborative work. Maynot be much for many people, but for me it was something that I will never forget. But all and all it was fun. I enjoyed my stay at the hotel and the university made me miss Athens sooo much!

Being true to the name.

"The journal of a grad student" ..
Well, I am being true to the name I gave for my blog. This blog is lacking some serious blogging!
What to do, grad students like me who doesn't have that artistic ability or time to put things nicely on a paper, find it really hard to maintain their blogs. Being too busy or too tired to think about this doesnt help either but that how things are right now, at least with me. I make this post for the sake of blogging and a feeling of pitty for my blog.