I take a step forward, but then quickly retract my step. I look left, then right. My palms are sweaty. It’s 9:55AM. “I’m going to be late,” I think to myself. Panic sets in. “Do I make a run for it, or play it safe and wait it out?” I can feel my heart beating through my chest. “No, I can longer let fear control me,” I tell myself. “I’ve made my decision. It’s go time.” I then quickly dart across the heavily congested bike path. And now I am well on my way to Quantum Mechanics lecture.

Welcome to a day in the life.

While successfully crossing those bike paths around campus during rush hour can be an art, and something that gets my adrenaline running once in a while, there is of course much, much more to my day! My junior year is in full swing, and here are the highlights:

Classes, Classes, and More Classes

Life as a double major in physics and biology makes me one busy bee! This quarter I am taking 5 classes, ranging from quantum mechanics to genetics! I have already learned so much in the last two weeks. Studying both physics and biology is challenging but intriguing and of course, rewarding. One minute I’m learning about Schrödinger’s equation and infinite quantum wells, then literally an hour later I am learning about sickle-cell disease! I know, there really isn’t too much overlap in physics and biology, but both fields are growing in research and are very interesting in their own unique way. Through all the homework sets and reading, I enjoy learning in both fields.

Textbooks Galore: Here are my textbooks for the quarter (from top to bottom): Thermodynamics, Quantum Mechanics, Biochemistry, and Genetics (not pictured: Mechanics). This amounts to a grand total of 20 units!

Let there be Light!

…Or not. My research project entails creating an absorber that absorbs a certain frequency of light. Simply put, it is my job to make a compact, affordable absorber that absorbs scattered light from my lab’s experiments (you can read more about my lab – the Sherwin Group in the UCSB Physics Department – and our experiments, here). Why is my job important? The current absorbers we have cost $2000 a piece, and are too bulky for our set-up! Without absorbers, scattered light interferes with our data. You can see a comparison of the cone absorber (black “witch’s hat”) to my plastic absorber below. I’ve managed to increase the absorption of my absorber 100-fold in the last week; I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am about this! With a little more fine-tuning, maybe I’ll be able to put the guys who make the black cones out of business…

One Big Expensive Witch’s Hat: The plastic absorber I made (left) vs. the commercial cone absorber (right) currently used. With a little more work, my plastic absorber will be ready for use in the lab!

Work Hard, Play Hard

With everything going on academically and on the research front, it seems that there is little time for relaxing or having fun. This is true a lot of the time, but not always! Just this past weekend I took Saturday off and went to the Santa Barbara Harbor Festival. It was a gorgeous, warm day, perfect for relaxing and trying all sorts of seafood. While I didn’t try the really exotic seafood, I munched on fried calamari and sipped on cherry coke, all while overlooking the SB harbor. As I walked back home with my friends, taking in the views of the calm, deep blue waters, palm trees, and grand, majestic mountains, I thought to myself, “this is the life.” (Very cliché, but hey, it’s true!). Yes, things may get busy, hectic, and stressful with everything going on, but life is all about balance!* Balancing school, work, research, you name it. Sometimes I feel like I’m tipping the scale, but then I remember that I’m studying and doing what ultimately makes me happy. And here and there, I can take some time to relax and enjoy myself!

*Life is also about making decisions (like deciding when to cross the bike path)… but that is for another blog post!

California Dreamin’: My view as I walked back from the Santa Barbara Harbor Festival.