Finished Comprehensive Exam

Comprehensive Exam, 9 May

The second major obstacle in the Math PhD program here is the comprehensive exam. This is an oral exam with a sylabbus designed in coordination with your advisor. The main topics that were on my syllabus were homology (singular homology, cellular homology and computations, cohomology, universal coefficient theorem, etc.) and Reimannian Geometry (general definitions and properties, connections, geodesics, Levi-Civita connection, etc.). My comp started with me giving a talk on Floer Homology and its use in proving the Arnold Conjecture, and then the committee asked me questions about the other topics.

Turkey Rocks, 20-21 May

Sierra and I spent a weekend in Woodland Park, CO climbing at Turkey Rocks: an area with beautiful splitter cracks. This is me preparing some gear for sending Gobble Up (5.8, hand/fist/offwidth) and Steppenwolf (5.9, offwidth/thin hands), the two prominent cracks in front of me.

Rest of the Summer and Fall

Excited for the winter and skiing now, but reflecting on some of the great times over the last few months: backpacking in the Sangre de Cristo Range, fly fishing, skiing Grays Peak in perfect summer conditions on June 24, roadtripping and camping in Squamish, climbing the Squamish Buttress and Angle's Crest, and hiking with Sierra.