When I grow up
From my comfortable white chair at the kitchen table, I reach around behind my laptop to grab my water glass. A bowl of chips, 2 laptops, a thick notebook, a hard drive, and several loose-leaf scientific papers are strewn across the table in front of me. To my left, Andrew, my host/adviser/collaborator/mentor, swirls a pen in the air about an inch above one of the few remaining blank pages in my notebook. His face has an expression of deep thought. I think he's trying to explain something to me, but he's started about 5 sentences in as many minutes and not finished any of them.
I take a sip of water. "What if we tried this?" he finally asks, and in an instant, we take off on another intellectual adventure, marching down uncharted passages of data analysis.
We spent the better part of the afternoon like this. By the end of it, we had come up with three or four solid, decent ideas for how to analyze my data set. Well, to be more accurate, Andrew came up with three or four solid, decent ideas.
I like to consider myself a good scientist, but whenever I sit next to a mentor that I greatly respect - someone with guts, brains, and decades of experience - I'm reminded that I'm still a Ph.D. student, and I still have a lot to learn. Andrew is an excellent person to learn from, because his ideas are original and often quite bold. More than that, he treats my ideas as valid and handles me with respect, even if I'm off my rocker. It is an honor and a privilege to work with him.
The rest of the evening was spent jumping on a trampoline with a five-year-old, learning how to cook some fancy-sounding French dish that basically amounts to chicken fingers, and sipping caffeinated tea at an ill-advised hour of the night.
I'm reminded of a graduate student, K, that I met in California. Both of K's parents were professors, so when she was growing up, her parents would often have their graduate students over for dinner. K grew up thinking that graduate students were the coolest people alive, and if you had asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would have said "A graduate student!" Well, by the time I met K, she was nearly finished with her Ph.D. and had begun to joke that she needed a new goal in life.
I consider it a privilege to be invited into another scientists' home, to meet their family, to eat with them. Andrew and Astri have treated me so well, so I can say this with certainty: When I grow up, I want to be the type of scientist that invites her grad students to dinner.
I take a sip of water. "What if we tried this?" he finally asks, and in an instant, we take off on another intellectual adventure, marching down uncharted passages of data analysis.
We spent the better part of the afternoon like this. By the end of it, we had come up with three or four solid, decent ideas for how to analyze my data set. Well, to be more accurate, Andrew came up with three or four solid, decent ideas.
I like to consider myself a good scientist, but whenever I sit next to a mentor that I greatly respect - someone with guts, brains, and decades of experience - I'm reminded that I'm still a Ph.D. student, and I still have a lot to learn. Andrew is an excellent person to learn from, because his ideas are original and often quite bold. More than that, he treats my ideas as valid and handles me with respect, even if I'm off my rocker. It is an honor and a privilege to work with him.
The rest of the evening was spent jumping on a trampoline with a five-year-old, learning how to cook some fancy-sounding French dish that basically amounts to chicken fingers, and sipping caffeinated tea at an ill-advised hour of the night.
I'm reminded of a graduate student, K, that I met in California. Both of K's parents were professors, so when she was growing up, her parents would often have their graduate students over for dinner. K grew up thinking that graduate students were the coolest people alive, and if you had asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would have said "A graduate student!" Well, by the time I met K, she was nearly finished with her Ph.D. and had begun to joke that she needed a new goal in life.
I consider it a privilege to be invited into another scientists' home, to meet their family, to eat with them. Andrew and Astri have treated me so well, so I can say this with certainty: When I grow up, I want to be the type of scientist that invites her grad students to dinner.
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