Eddie Davis

Eddie Davis is from Piscataway, New Jersey.

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July 2006
June 2006

Remembering my violin amidst the Ph.D. journey

The Celtic fiddling tunes of Alexis MacIsaac's "Inspired" are wonderful to listen to and tempting to play. Next week my advisor goes on vacation for three weeks. How wonderful it will be to break out the Bach Partita in E again. Although I shudder at what my intonation will be after three weeks away from practice.

My fingers should be primed for playing, though.
Maybe I should start defining how long I've been a doctor-in-training by how many letters I've erased on my keyboard. "E" vanished in January. "A" and "T" followed in May. "N", "R" and "S" disappeared in June. Perhaps there are other v.com bloggers out there who can relate to what eventually will be a blank keyboard...

I miss being able to enjoy the holidays. My family is over a thousand miles away, but I was looking forward to feeling like I was part of the USA family by spending July 4 in Manhattan for the East River fireworks with so many other Americans. Apparently enjoyment of national holidays is another privilege denied to this doctor-in-training. What would be the first two words you would think of to describe your supervisor if you were called in to work on this national holiday? Especially if you were the only one who was asked to do it among the rest of your co-workers?

It's not the first holiday I've given up, certainly, and I'm sure it won't be the last. But holidays are a great (so-called legitimate, in the eyes of most Ph.D. advisor) excuse to get away from the confines of work. Ph.D. students generally don't get weekends off for five years, and finding time to recharge is important.

There are only a few holidays in the year, and when one feels like those have been taken away as well, it becomes easy to despair of ever finding a few hours of free time once more. The more invaluable you make yourself to a boss, the more that is expected of you just because you can get the job done quickly and competently. In academia, one can be blackmailed into working, literally, 24/7/365. The Ph.D. is never guaranteed. 1,500 - 2,000 days of work, with nothing to show.

The equivalent in the v.com world is a five- to seven-year audition. Each cut one passes is met with equal relief and dread, and the experience becomes only harder the deeper into the field one gets. Soon it becomes even too hard to quit because one has invested so much. What, then, can we rely on during those times when we reach the breaking point?

The realization that while there are some things in this world that are worth sacrificing one's life for, there are many others that are not. Fortunately, the quality of our character is never defined by the letters after (or before) our names, but rather what we set out to achieve, with what we have, in the circumstances we find ourselves in.

In two years I turn 27. Sometime in 2008, I should earn my Ph.D. I hope that during that time I will have done more than just earn a 4.0 GPA or survive twenty calculus classes. I hope to have made someone's day, someone's life, brighter, by just being there for them. I hope I've realized that on some days, the Ph.D. can wait, but friends in need cannot. Lastly, I hope never to forget the healing power of music.

It will be wonderful to find that practice time again. I've missed my violin.

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Random Thoughts

I am a paradox.

This is my 17th year of school. It will take me 20 to finish school.

I scored higher on my verbal than my math for my GREs. The grad school equivalent of the SAT. So I’m an engineer who knows a little something about words but can’t do math.

Oh yes, my thesis is all math. More math than any other student in my department, actually. With lots of computer programming and statistics tossed in to keep life amusing.

I officially moved into Dante’s Inferno nine months ago when I passed my thesis proposal. The lease expires in three years.

My family is proud that I earned my M.S. degree. My colleagues in med school and grad school are more impressed by the 4.0. All I care about is that I made it through fifteen calculus courses.

I work hard for my accomplishments, but I don’t particularly care about being recognized for them. Recognition bores me. I care more about looking at myself in the mirror later on and being able to say that I did the best job I could. My family thinks I have a few screws loose in my head. All that work, they say, and you don’t want people to know?

Come on, when’s the last time the news was about how engineers make the world run?

The secret of my teaching success? It’s the blue jeans. I can teach the exact same material to my undergrads, repeat the same lecture delivered to them by the professor, and they will understand perfectly. Really. It’s all about the blue jeans.

The science of obtaining the Ph.D. is the art of making everything that was once comprehensible impossibly obscure.

I was an excellent teaching assistant. My undergrads loved me. The other grad students thought I was insane, that I would spend so much time teaching. My advisor reprimanded me for being too dedicated. My undergrads are now being paid quite well in industry. That’s right, who will I look to in 3 years when I need a job?

3.7 GPA during the undergrad years. A warm and fuzzy 4.0 in grad. "Summa cum laude” is an honor reserved for the undergrads. Someone had it backwards...

That's right, yours truly. Certainly not the college admin.

Pressure brings out the occasional genius in me. Whenever I don’t have deadlines, my work stagnates. When they surround me from all sides, I am capable of doing wonderful work. But I usually collapse after the third all-nighter. In spades.

I am the only student in my department who will see a baby deer, then spend twenty minutes driving to/from home to get my camera, and return to take a picture of it. My peers live in the world of machines, chemicals, and occasionally drinking games. No room in there for nature appreciation. Or for playing a wonderful instrument in the violin.

Yes, I am quite different from my colleagues. I celebrate my uniqueness. I am me. What a thoroughly philosophical statement from a philosopher-in-training.

It is now 2:30 AM. I’m seriously considering driving back to my empty lab to practice Bach’s Partita III. For the third time in the past week.

Um, wait. I have a meeting with my advisor in about seven hours. And my MIT undergrad probably needs me to show up as well.

Preferably awake.

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Surviving the Ph.D. journey with the violin!

Hello all =)

I started playing the violin when I was 11 and, 14 years later, still look to it as my ever-present friend. None of my other friends have ever been able to accomplish this feat. Although, to be fair, none of my other friends have resided in my room/apartment 24/7 for the past 14 years. And it can be difficult to find a friend willing to talk or be with me at 3:00 AM. They generally follow the socially acceptable behavior of being asleep at this hour (as they should!). For this 4th-year Ph.D. student, 3:00 usually means I'm debugging my thousand-line computer programs. And just when I'm ready to go look for a hammer, I see my violin and wisely decide to start burning off energy on it. So, for another night, my computer's life is spared.

So, I spent my childhood in Texas, attended Texas A&M for two years before getting my B.S. in chemical engineering (2001), and then worked for ChevronTexaco in New Orleans immediately after. In September 2003, I moved cross-country to start Ph.D. work at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The free way to earning a M.S., though at at a heavy price. 5 years is a long time and there's a reason why so few people pursue the doctorate. Who wants to still be in school after 25?

It's a long, mostly frustrating journey, and chances are that most people (read: friends, family, people at random social events) won't be able to understand even the fundamentals of what one's thesis work is based on. It's a lonely journey. At the same time, the promise of additional job security is alluring. At 20, I was earning just under 60K working for ChevronTexaco. At 27, with the Ph.D., it will be $65-80K.

When I was 18, I was told that it took exceptional talent to be a professional violinist who could command salaries competitive with what I eventually earned as a process engineer. Somehow I doubt I could have earned this much at my respective ages of 20 and 27...Does anyone know what the average salary is for a prof. musician? Is it a realistic scenario for a professional violinist to command a salary in the $50-80K range while still in their 20s?

Seven years later, I don't regret my decision to pursue chemical engineering instead of music. I of course kept my violin, practiced whenever I could, and learned new music styles as my life took me to New Orleans and New Jersey. Both Cajun and Irish fiddling are very enjoyable ways to spend an hour, though it's really quite an interesting experience to play a Baroque, Romantic, and fiddling piece without any breaks in between.

Example: Earlier this evening, I tried the Vivaldi A Minor (Suzuki 4), Perpetuo Mobile, Accolay A Minor (Solos for Young Violinists, 3), and a Cajun fiddling piece J'Ete au Bal (I Went to the Dance). Three styles of music, same instrument, same bow. One of the best practices I've had in a long time =)

Technically, I'm able to play pieces at the Suzuki 7 and Barber 3 level. I'm guessing that the technical aptitude varies among all the bloggers here, so hopefully my own technical competency falls somewhere within this range - it certainly would be nice to meet a community of other violinists with whom I don't feel completely outclassed in ability, even though I might not fall under the usual categories of the people posting (e.g. high school, music major, professional violinist, teacher).

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