Michael Karlesky

A cabinet of wonders. Minus the cabinet. And possibly the wonders.

Humbled.

October 15, 2013  /  Michael Karlesky

The best definition of humility that I’ve ever heard is that it is a true recognition of reality and one’s place in it. Humility is neither modesty nor humiliation. In its simplicity, humility is actually quite powerful. It is the consideration of both the frailty and the strength in myself and in the world around me.

This season of life in New York City has likely been the most humbling I've ever known. Nearly daily I come to know some measure of humility anew. In my graduate studies I am coming to see both how capable I am and just how limited I am. I am one of the very few in this world who is blessed with this level of education. And so I recognize how much privilege I enjoy in that while simultaneously wrestling with the hard question of just what it is I will do with that privilege.

This city is home to both the most powerful and the most destitute. I am confronted with both the places of power I will likely never know and the powerlessness I am unable to do much about. New York City pumps out opportunity like a grove of trees in Prospect Park does oxygen. The scent of it is intoxicating but also strangely debilitating. While it is not always the case that I cannot help (or choose not to), more often than not, my only expression of humanity to those on the subway who ask for change or those on the street who ask for something to eat is to look them in the eye when I say no.

New York City is home to people from every nation on Earth. I meet and see people who live and look and think and believe and succeed and struggle so very differently from me. I am liberated in how these experiences reveal my stigmas and prejudices and open my eyes to previously unseen beauty, but I am also crushed in the recognition of how long I have been sheltered from such things.

Perhaps it is time that is most humbling. I have so little of it now because of school and school-related obligations. This lack has taken from me much in the way of relationships I once knew and has also kept from me much in the way of new relationships.

I don’t know that I’ve ever heard someone reflect on the connection of humility and gratitude. While I am knowing humility like I may have never known it before, I am also coming to know gratitude like I have never known it before.

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“…satisfied with your progress.”

August 07, 2013  /  Michael Karlesky

My official letter [click to embiggen]

For the last two years I’ve been a Ph.D. student.

By the way, woah. Two whole years already!

Just after the completion of my most recent semester this past spring I was required to complete my qualifying exam. I won’t bore you with the complex details of my qualifying exam process, but I will summarize. U.S. doctoral programs generally include some form of an exam in the middle of the program to demonstrate a given student’s mastery of their area of study. Only upon passing this exam is a student allowed to progress on to their dissertation work that will complete their degree. The exam itself is, of course, incredibly demanding. It requires many hours to complete and many more hours of preparation beforehand. Once a Ph.D. student passes their qualifying exam that student is promoted to Ph.D. candidate.

I recently received the official letter that I am now a Ph.D. candidate. 

In my case, because I entered this program without any graduate credits, I have one more full semester of classes to take (this fall) and a few leftover class credits to take on top of that. More importantly, in the meantime I must now begin developing my dissertation topic towards an eventual proposal as well as begin assembling my dissertation committee. These need to come together in the months after the winter holidays.

My dissertation will entail building a complex project towards testing some hypothesis and then writing up the results for all the work to be evaluated by my dissertation committee. The written portion of this work will amount to a highly-technical book with hundreds of citations. It will only ever be read by perhaps 5–10 people at most. If I am diligent and blessed, I might be able to complete all of this in perhaps 18 months. We’ll see. What might my dissertation topic be you ask? More on this later. For a sense of what all this means in the big picture, see my earlier post about it.

So how am I feeling about this significant moment?  Well, first of all, you need to know that I’ve known unofficially that I passed my exam for a couple months now. I waited until I had the official letter to show you before posting this update. So, in a sense, this is old news to me. At the time that I first learned that I had passed I was very relieved but also quite blasé about it. I was so exhausted at that point that I barely had any gas in the tank to really care. Since then, I’ve had a good summer to recuperate. But I still really don’t care all that much. I think this is because I’m not really doing this program for the degree so much as for the experience. I am far more excited about certain ideas and thinkers I’ve encountered, skills I’m developing, relationships I’ve formed, and projects I hope to work on. So passing the exam was mostly just one more hoop jumped through on my way to bigger and better things.

I am far more appreciative of all of your constant support, dear readers, than I am of the letter I posted above. In fact, I made a special trip in order to get the original paper copy so I could show it to you here because I knew you would want to see it. So really my experience of this exam is one of gratitude — in passing it, obviously, but also to all of you for helping me through this incredibly challenging thing I’ve taken on. So, once again, thank you for all the calls, notes, prayers, and encouragement all along the way.

 

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Unused.

June 26, 2013  /  Michael Karlesky

I've become a subway nerd. By extension I also love New York City's streetcars… that no longer exist. Just the other day I totally geeked out over finding old tracks poking through the asphalt of a street near my apartment. Whenever I get a chance to see any of New York's hidden underground transit system I take it. Last week I got to tour the abandoned Delancey Trolley Station.

Delancey Trolley Station has gone unused for over sixty years. In a city where all available space is put to use, this is utterly remarkable. Delancey Station is nearly an acre of wide open space (albeit underground) that has not even become a storage space for the equipment of the subway station that abuts it. The station once served as a turnaround for the trolleys that ran back and forth over the Williamsburg Bridge — one of several bridges connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan. Transit has since moved to the subway and bus system that has long since supplanted the city's once ubiquitous streetcars.

But Delancey may not be abandoned for long. You may recall that High Line Park in Manhattan has become my favorite park in the whole world. What was once an abandoned, rotting, elevated freight train line running along Manhattan's industrial Westside is now one of the most beloved green spaces in the city. There is presently an effort to develop Delancey Station into the Low Line, complete with a solar collection system that will distribute enough sunlight underground to allow plant life to grow.

One of the unexpected consequences of uprooting my life in moving to New York is simply how unused I have felt. I never realized how much of a network of people I had back in Michigan and how much joy it brought me to help one person in need connect with another person who could help meet that need. Landing in an entirely new place of strangers and being all but consumed by school I've not been able to make any connections for anyone. But very recently I've noticed this beginning to change. As people I know have been looking for work or help with their projects, I've realized that I actually now know people that I can connect together. And it feels really good — like sunlight puncturing a dark space and allowing some life to grow.

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Coney Island’s B&B Carousell

June 10, 2013  /  Michael Karlesky

As of two weeks ago I am on summer break. I can barely put into words how weary and exhausted I have been after this school year. I have been relaxing — maybe “recuperating” is the better word. I am only now beginning to feel some life and verve and energy return.

We just weathered a tropical storm blowing up the coast. It rained for days, and yet more rain is in store for this week. This past weekend, however, was absolutely beautiful.

I recently read an article on the renovation and return of the historic B&B Carousell to Coney Island (the peculiar spelling of carousell  is intentional). Being the history nerd and amusement park aficionado that I am, I rode my bike down to Coney Island on Saturday to take it in. The carousel and its new pavilion are gorgeous.

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I just flew in from Paris and boy are my arms tired…

May 06, 2013  /  Michael Karlesky

Bonjour. When I left New York a week and a half ago, there were no leaves on the tree outside my bedroom window. Now it’s green everywhere I look. Prospect Park is beautiful.​

I got to go to Paris for the CHI 2013 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in order to present some work of mine and attend sessions. I attended last year as well in Austin, Texas. It was an exhausting week but a great experience.​

The CHI conference was four days attended by over 3,000 people from all over the world with more than 400 papers presented and hundreds more posters and interactive projects on display. To give you a sense of the sort of thing I saw at this conference, see Microsoft’s Illumiroom project (be sure to watch a video). This is a really polished project that is easy to immediately understand. Other presentations delved into the philosophy of computer interaction or even looked at using cups of water as a computer input device.

​During the time I wasn’t at the conference I was working on schoolwork and seeing Paris — often at the same time. I spent plenty of time at some great cafes working on my laptop and reading computational geometry papers on the Paris Metro.

The first full day I was in Paris before the conference began I climbed all the stairs to the top of Montmartre to eat lunch on the steps of Sacré Coeur and take in all of Paris with the two students accompanying me on this trip. After the conference was over, we visited Place de la Concorde and walked the Seine in the evening to see Notre Dame and eat dinner in the Latin Quarter. When we entered the restaurant for dinner, Holly (one of the students with me) said to the waiter “cinq” (“five” in English) while holding up four fingers. There were three of us for dinner. The waiter was perplexed until I died laughing and held up three fingers and said “trois.” Holly will never live this down.

In the last two days before I returned to New York I saw the Eiffel Tower and experienced the incredible Ladurée macaroons before strolling around the courtyards of the Louvre.

The shuttle to Charles de Gaulle airport left from the Arc de Triomphe yesterday morning. Twelve hours later I and my luggage were rolling by the Barclays Center stadium in downtown Brooklyn.

The next two weeks are a sprint to finish the semester. I have three final projects, a homework assignment, and a final exam. In the week following the conclusion of the semester I have the last portion of my doctoral qualification exam. Ya know. Not much to do at all…

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