Thursday, June 13, 2013

On the Merits of Sleep

Turns out, getting sleep is important. When you're rested you don't fall asleep sitting up staring at your computer screen. (Most of the time at least) I didn't think it was possible to sleep sitting up straight. I think I surprised everyone in the room when I sort of fell forward onto the desk. It was maybe time for me to get a nap, and work later. Luckily, my adviser was pretty understanding - as long as I put in the time when I wasn't falling asleep, he didn't care if I worked at the institute or on my laptop later.

Which meant afternoon naps for me. :D yay. I don't know why I haven't done any sort of napping before- I mean, they're so nice, and convenient. Probably because I had something to do. Like classes. Or sailing practice.

I think I might've been able to get through today if I hadn't had to get up so early after the 4am meeting. Throughout the summer, us internationals are invited about once a week to tour some lab or department around the institute.

This morning we toured the applied optics lab. It was actually fairly interesting - they explained how they use the interference between the phases of light waves to determine the thickness of objects and then create holographic images of them, or study minute details of the surface, or grab yeast cells with light and move them around, or rotate them in 3D. It was pretty cool. We even got to go through some of the basement which had exposed piping and cabling on the ceiling. It felt like I was back at MIT.

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