Unlimited opportunities

When I was leaving the Czech Republic last august my expectations about the United states weren't the highest ones -- neither in the scientific area nor in the terms of people and their everyday life.

I guess no one can really blame me for that after seeing the American foreign policy, mainstream movies, MacDonalds and news reports that "American scientists discovered that chocolate is better than kissing ... or something like that". To make a long story short I definitely didn't plan to stay in the US longer than I according to the conditions of my scholarship had to.

I didn't try to make friends (because it would be hard to leave them), didn't get a cell phone number (because I didn't have any friends to call), didn't get a proper bike (because it might be hard to sell it when I need to ... and Berkeley is flat anyways and so it doesn't mattet that the breaks don't ) or a good bike lock (because it didn't make sense to me to buy a $30 lock for a $50 bike) and anytime I someone started to be to close to me I freaked out and scared them away, because I didn't want to go through the heartbreak of lsaying goodbye on June the 15th and never seeing them again.

Well, never say never. Last week I have submitted the request for the extension of my stay here by another year. But let me start from the beginning.

My studies

I have spent 7 years studying mathematics, last two years in the PhD program. The topic of my dissertation is Mathematical Modeling of the Radiobiological Effect of Oxygen (at some point I will put a slightly more descriptive specification on my website). The reason for which I came to UC Berkeley was that my thesis wasn't going anywhere in Prague, since the frequent answer of my advisors to my questions was "find it somewhere in the literature" and my search for relevant publications usually ended after two weeks fo traveling between the libraies of different faculties and academy of sciences with the realization that "that article is really nto available in the Czech Republic".

The first thing professor Sachs asked me, after I arrived to Berkeley and after I presented what and how I want to do in my thesis to him, was whether it would be possible to change the topic of the thesis. Scary ay? The thing was that my idea of what was the state of science in this field would have been accurate about 15 years ago and there were other, more directly applicable phenomena in radiation biology, I could research on. Not being (completely) discouraged by this I checked-out the whole radiation chemistry shelf of books in the chemistry library and radiation biology and biophysics shelf in the life sciences library (amazing how - on the contary to Charles university in Prague - you can use your library card in any one of the university libraries regardless of your faculty) and started making up for everythin Czech radiation science missed (or at least forgot to tell me) in the last 15 years. After 8 months the result is that I have about 40 pages of my thesis and approx. half of the computer simulation in need to do for it, which is way more that I have done during the previous two years in Prague.

In the beginnig of March I have also started learning about those "more directly applicable" fields of mathematical modeling in radiation biology I have mentioned above. It's designing models for cell population dynamics (again: more description on my website ... sometime) using random processes with the application to the breast cancer research. I hope the extension of my stay will be approved so that I could do more on this.

My work

I used to have the misconception that with a PhD in mathematics you can either go working to academia or become a really important manager in a bank or something like that. Well in the Czech Republic it is the case and the first choice means never being able to get a mortage while the second one means not to achieve anything more than earning a lot of money. I am not sure if I am clever enough to be a scientist, but I know that I do want to achieve more in my life than just being rich.

I want to change the world...or at least make a difference in the little part of it I can reach. My ex-roommate used to say that "Those who only aim for easy goals only achieve the easy goals" and I believe that things that are easy to get are usually not worth much. And in the US there are so many possibilities how to do that and so many actions that need to be taken.

I am making a little fundraising web thing for the Crooked Trails, a community based travel organization from Seattle, tomorrow I am starting tutoring socially disadvantaged kids in an after school programme in Oakland and I am considering cancelling my Tuesday appointment in San Francisco Homeless Services Coalition - a charity working to help homeless women and children, because I would go crazy doing all this. But it all needs to be done ... to bad there are only 24 hours in a day.

America is not called "the land of unlimited opportunities" by mistake.

My life

I always thought that living a happy life must involve having a family a nice house and a steady job. And I was doing all I could to achieve that ... well I didn't do so well with the family part, but I was pretty succesfull in working towards the house and stedy job. But what if all you need to be happy is just doing what makes you happy?

Zied says I live in future too much and I should just do what seems right right now. There definitely is something about it.

Maybe it's time to start being my own person and live a life which makes me happy and not a life the society considers happy, a life which will supposively make me happy later or a life of humiliating myself to to make someone else happy. And I think that I am finally learning it. I am slowly starting to move from a side to the middle of my bed, I cook again even though there is no one to eat the food except for me and I am learning to do fun stuff on my own (see the "Craiglist rideshare" post below :-).

The conditions of my visa require me to spend 2 years in the Czech Republic after I finish my program in the US, but I will come back. And if you ever hear me saying that I don't want to pack all my life to suitcases again and fly to the other side of globe after those two years, please come, slap me and make me do that.

If it requires you to fly over to Prague from the US, I will reimburse you for the air ticket.