To All Graduate Students:
This week, weather permitting, we will have the first of nine
candidate visits for the two open faculty positions (condensed
matter theory and high energy experiment). The next six weeks will
be both very busy and very exciting. Each visit will include a
colloquium and an opportunity for students to have an informal lunch
with the candidate. Please pay close attention to your emails and
posted announcements -- days, times and rooms will vary, and weather
could disrupt the schedules.
This is a wonderful opportunity for you to learn -- not only about
condensed matter and high energy physics, but also about what it
means to be an early-career physicist on the job market. Please
note the following:
- You are expected to attend the colloquia. They are an
essential part of your educational program and your development
as a
scientist. Your classes provide a scaffolding of basic physics
for you
to build on, and your individual research provides deep
expertise in a
specific field and vital experience in independent exploration.
One of
the purposes of the colloquia is to provide an exposure to other
research fields, other analytical approaches, and other
perspectives
that you may not otherwise encounter. You may think that talks
on protein dynamics or neutrino oscillations are of no interest
or importance to you, but you're
wrong. You never know when you will pick up a useful idea, and
time
spent learning good science from a good scientist is never
wasted.
- Their value to you transcends the specific science the talk is
about. They show you how science is done, and how to talk about
it
(or sometimes how not to talk about it) to an audience of
nonexperts.
This is an absolutely crucial skill for any scientist and you
should
take advantage of any opportunity to observe how it is done.
- Talks by job candidates are especially valuable. They are
invariably given by outstanding scientists (otherwise they
wouldn't have been invited) and are usually very good talks
(since the speaker is highly motivated to do a good job). Also,
the speakers are only a little bit ahead of you in their
careers -- in a few years you will be standing where they are.
You can
see what an excellent graduate and postdoctoral research program
looks
like, how to put together a job talk, how to handle questions --
even how to dress and how to present yourself. These
are indispensable professional skills.
- Having pizza with the candidate is great, and I encourage you
to participate, but it's not a
substitute for attending the talk.
Many of you have already been regularly attending the colloquia,
which is wonderful. Getting to the job talks will take a little more
attention and organization, since they won't all be on Friday
afternoons, but it will be richly rewarded.
The first job talk will be this Friday Jan. 28, 3:00 pm, in Robinson
Hall (either 250 or 253), by Dr. Lisa Manning, on “How Does
Surface Tension Emerge From Structure in Biological Tissues?”.
I look forward to seeing you all there,
Roger Tobin
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