A Friend Is A Person With Whom I May Be Sincere. Before Him I May Think Aloud.

Many relationships would be a lot healthier if we romanticized honest, open and direct communication instead of idealizing the idea of a partner who's intuitively in tune with your every need. You don't need someone who can read your mind, you just need someone who's willing to listen when you speak.

Christ Church. x

my room perpetually smells like coffee now

Dark Academia Subjects: Physics

Nathan Filer, The Shock of the Fall || Anna Akhmatova || V.E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic [Shades of Magic #1] || Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot || Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Science Dark Academia Things

staying up late to read one cool paper

which turns into reading another cool paper that the first paper referenced

that turns into getting to lab mid afternoon because you woke up at noon 

staying in lab late into the evening because there’s just so much to do

wanting to be aesthetic, but knowing that wearing nice clothes into lab is a bad idea (:’()

blue light glasses to protect your eyes from strain as you analyze data

going back to lab late at night to rerun an experiment because the data sucked and you have group meeting tomorrow

the wonderful feeling of finally troubleshooting that one experiment correctly

having science idols that you gaze wonderingly at when you see them at conferences

struggling through a class even but you enjoy it because sometimes learning is just hard

students emailing you with questions about the class you’re TA-ing causing you to wonder when you became the Adult In Charge who Knows Things

talking with your PI/ older grad students and realizing that you definitely are NOT the Adult In Charge who Knows Things but that’s a good thing because it means that you’re in the right place to learn

when your NMR shows your expected product and the MS shows high purity (tears of joy)

being the nerd in all your conversations with non-Science people and pulling out fun facts about solubility rules, thermodynamics, or the ultimate crowd pleaser: molecular quantum mechanics

getting really excited meeting another person your age from your field even if your projects are totally different

remembering even that when science is kicking your butt… you’re doing something cool that will have an impact and that no-one else has done yet!

I am, as the poets say, a disaster.

Something not enough people have been discussing about Oppenheimer is just how accurately they portray what the wonder and awe of physics feels like. I remember watching the thought sequences and near obsession Oppenheimer had with stars and quantum mechanics, and between the visuals and the music, it just resonated *so hard with me.*

The phrase, "can you hear the music?" so perfectly describes what made me fall in love with physics in the first place. It's something so *beyond* the scope of human existence; a hidden score that the universe harmonizes to. I so often feel like movies either downplay science or glorify it to seem less taxing and tricky than it is, but I feel like Oppenheimer found the sweet spot. To quote someone I saw review the trailer, they "made scientists (and for that matter physicists) cool again." Anyways, just thought that was neat and figured I'd share my nerdy little thoughts since there's so much barbenheimer everywhere and I can't seem to find just Oppenheimer appreciation. Do love barbenheimer though.