daily venture

Inspiration will always sing; inspiration will never explain.

How can you sing if your mouth be filled with food?
How shall your hand be raised in blessing if it is filled with gold?

complex or simple ephemeral or permanent

Human beings, such a complex creature, sometimes can just think things in its most simple way. However in other time, they may twist themselves up.

Just at the beginning of this week, I felt so happy, not for myself, because obviously I am in such confusion about my future or my life, but for SSL, who just got the offer from the company he is always dreaming of. Along with such ephemeral happiness, suddenly, another fact jumped into my life. In less than a month, he will go to Shanghai for his internship at that company, together with another team member of the lab. Maybe such feeling of leaving is so familiar or maybe I am such a kind of people who will not be used to leaving people who has been part of my normal life, this is the season of beginning of school, but at this moment, just as the leaves following from trees, all the feelings and thoughts still remain in the last season - the graduate time. Why I am feeling so sad?

From the perspective of life, in a way, there will be three kinds of people who will be appear in our life. The first are the ones who will be thought of when in  sad, helpless and suffering. The second are the ones who deceive you or make use of you. The last are the ones of strangers. However in my point of view, I really think that there will another kind of people between the strangers and the ones who will be in great position in your heart - the one who just has walked into your life and accompanied for a time, but finally they will walk out and leave away, only leaving you some special memory or nothing. In such kind of person, there are your mates of kindergarten, junior school, high school, former co-worker, teacher or the travelling companies and so on. It might be possible that you can't even remember their name. I believe, in most people's life, the number of the first and second kinds person would be much smaller than that of the two latter ones, just as the brain to choose tiny part of everyday happening to turn into memory. That 's also the reason why those two kinds of people will be special in our life.

Maybe it is time to move on, just as the end of the travelling. However I still believe if some one already as one of the fist categories people in my life, the relationship will definitely not be degraded. But others might not think so. Then such uncertainty or the feeling of losing some precious things or feelings make us so anxiety then it will become sad. In another word, the fear of changing is the main reason.

Nonetheless, just as the old saying - if moving tree, it will die; only if human changing, he will be survive, people need to change themselves or the environment for the better improvement. So maybe the best way to let some one still be in the most important person in your life, is to hope him to change into the way he wishes to be and be there if he is in need even he doesn't know that there will be some one.

chasing cars

Snow Patrol Lyrics

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
and just forget the world?

In such a busy city, to find someone who would like just lie here with me , watching season change and experiencing growing pains, that will be the most happiness thing in life.

Advice for Prospective Research Students

After these days of finding proper advisors and research groups among tons of web pages, I felt so exhausted and lost. Some kindly schoolmates gave me some advices, including such document. I really think it is worthy to share it, especially for those having the same experiences currently or in the future.

Advice for Prospective Research Students

Like most professors, I get several hundred emails a year from prospective students interested in coming to UVa for graduate school and joining my research group. I try to reply to all messages that are not obviously spam, but find most messages I receive make me less likely to want to accept the students sending them. This page provides some advice for prospective grad school applicants considering emailing me, but most of it probably applies to any other professor you want to contact also.

Who To Contact

Its a really bad idea to send spam emails to long lists of professors. These emails will never help you, and some professors will maintain blacklists of applicants who do this to make sure their application is rejected without consideration.

Your goal in sending email is not to contact as many professors as you can, but to identify a few professors who you might want as your research advisor and then to find which of those seem most promising as advisors and convince them that you would be a worthwhile student.

You should only contact professors with whom you have a genuine interest in working based on knowing something about them and what they do. You can find out about professors' research by looking at their web pages (professors who don't have web pages about their research are either not interested in recruiting students, not doing any research, or so famous they probably have someone to filter their email for them).

Do Your Homework

Before contacting a potential advisor, do your homework: read the advisor's home page (mine is http://www.cs.virginia.edu/evans/) and at least one recent paper (links to my papers are available at http://www.cs.virginia.edu/evans/pubs/).

If doing this doesn't give you any interesting ideas, this is probably not someone with whom you want to do research so you shouldn't waste time contacting her or him. If it does, send a short introductory email.

First Email

A typical message should go something like this:

From: Flipper Wordsfish Subject: Prospective Student Interested in TSU Problem	Make sure your from address and subject lines are useful
Dear Professor Nemo,	Greeting: its safest to be a bit formal here.
I will be finishing a BS degree in Underwater Mathematics at the Atlantis Deep Ocean University this year. I am considering applying to UVa's PhD program and would be interested joining your Octople Cryptology research group.	Briefly introduce yourself in at most two sentences. Don't tell your whole life story. Be direct and clear about applying to grad school.
I found your paper, "A Linear-Time Solution to the Travelling Sea Urchin Problem", on your website (http://www.smith.org/urchin.html). I was fascinated by your result, especially as I have spent several summers studying the similar travelling sea cucumber problem as an intern at Microshifty Corp in the Attle Sea. (You can find a paper about my work on this at http://www.flipper.com/research/tscp.html)	Explain specifically what you read and where you found it (people sometimes publish several papers with similar names and forget which is which). A touch of flattery never hurts, but don't go overboard. If appropriate, relate it to your background and interests and briefly plug your work.
I believe your result is even more important than your paper implies, since it can be extended to solve the Travelling Salesman Problem and thus to prove P = NP.	Concisely describe your insight or why you are interested in the work.
Do you think it would be worthwhile to pursue this line of research? If you are interested, I can send you a proof sketch.	End with a clear, simple question. Offer a suggestion on how to proceed.
Regards, Flipper Wordsfish (flipper@adou.edu)	Closing — make sure to include you name and email address.

Of course, your insight isn't likely to be so significant as Flipper's. But, you should make an effort to raise an interesting question about the work described in the paper, to suggest extensions or applications of the work, or to relate it directly to something you have done.

It is definitely worth taking time to write clearly and consisely using correct spelling and grammar. As with all emails, the message should be broken into short paragraphs, the sentences should be simple and straightforward, and no line should have more than 80 characters.

What Not To Do

Never do any of these:

· Don't send information about your GRE scores, GPA, class rank, cholesterol levels, favorite movies, etc. and ask what your chances of admission are. Standardized tests and grades have minimal influence on your chances of admission and reveal very little about your potential as a researcher. No one can or should tell you anything about your chances of admission based on an email.

· Don't send a first email longer than one screenful (about 60 lines). You should be able to get across everything you need in a first email concisely and use longer emails if technical depth is required in follow ups.

· Don't waste space and time telling me how hard-working, creative and smart you are — demonstrate it with the contents of your message.

· Don't waste space and time telling me how brilliant I am. The fact that you are interested in joining my research group is flattery enough.

· Don't make generic statements about being interested in my work or how well it relates to your interests. I have projects in several different areas and can't figure out what you mean unless you describe a specific connection or interest.

· Don't attach anything to your email. If you want to provide additional content, you should do this by sending a URL (as plain text, not a link). If you are not able to create a web page, you may mention that you have a relevant paper and will send it to me if I request it.

· Don't use HTML encoded email or non-standard character sets. If you are a non-native English speaker, make sure your "From:" address appears using the English alphabet. If you have a common or difficult for English speakers to pronounce Chinese name, it is to your advantage to use a name that English speakers can pronounce and remember. I do realize it is very unfair for us to expect you to change your name for our convenience and cultural ignorance! But, once you get admitted you can and should tell people what you want them to call you.

· Don't use any fancy formatting in your email (including your message signature).

Follow Up

Since most professors get lots of email, there is some chance that even if you do everything right, your message will get lost in my inbox and you won't get a reply. If you don't get a reply after about a week, send a follow up email that politely asks if the message was received and includes the previous message. If you still don't get a response, that's a pretty good sign that the potential professor you are contacting is not someone you want as your advisor.

Conclusion

Getting into a good PhD program is extremely competitive and professors are strongly motivated to identify and attract the best possible research students to their group. At any department you would want to go to (including UVa), the acceptance rate is usually in the single digit percentages. At the most competitive departments, only a few slots every year are awarded to students without recommendation letters from people the faculty know well.

It takes work to find the right PhD program and advisor, but contacting potential advisors directly is your best way to find a research group that matches your interests and goals well and possibly to improve your chances of being admitted.

Once you've read and followed these directions, please feel free to contact me about coming to UVa to do a PhD in Computer Science. Your goal is to start an interesting email conversation about research ideas.

If you find that my research does not fit well with your interests, feel free to contact me for general advice and suggestions on other professors to contact. If you follow the suggestions above, I am likely to reply, especially if you ask questions that are not answered by http://www.cs.virginia.edu/WhyUVA/.