#physiku

So I mean, all things considered I really did have a nice time in undergraduate. There are a number of factors that plug into that, my NT brain, a fairly privileged upbringing, living in a country where it’s not signing up for years of debt to go pursue higher education. In my third year I decided “all right, it’s time to Decide what I will study in graduate school.” I narrowed it down to fluid dynamics (esp those with good environmental applications) and quantum computing, both of which seemed to have pretty solid career prospects. I took on a summer research term in fluid dynamics, and did my undergraduate thesis in quantum computation.

While both of these had their pros and cons, quantum computation seemed more sexy and exciting, so I lined up to start angling for that. I had my graduate work all planned out -- I was going to go to a school that specialized in that -- which was a small school mind you, not the biggest name ever but had a good program for QC specifically. And I’d attended a summer school there which gave me an in with the folks there. I thought it was a sure thing, I have an excellent resume and research track record, top grades etc etc.

But the problems started to creep up when I realized there wasn’t...anyone specifically I wanted to work with there. Either their work wasn’t the kind of stuff I did for my undergrad thesis, or I’d heard things from other graduate students that made me think “oh, I wouldn’t at all do well under that person”. This caused me to hem and haw a bit -- and that was sort of my mistake there. The school takes people on a supervisory level, so to speak, so if you want to go there, you have to convince a person that they want you working for them. And because I wasn’t really interested in working for anyone specifically...I didn’t do that. And to my surprise, they didn’t accept me. 

My cachet of graduate school acceptances looks fantastic on paper -- I applied to the Big(TM) UK schools (Cambridge, Oxford) and they both accepted me. But ofc there’s a catch there -- those were for course masters programs that transition into research work, ie. they wouldn’t pay me; and I’d be signing up for yet MORE coursework. Added to that, even at a research PhD level, grants for non-UK/EU folks are hard to come by. So I’d basically be signing myself up for an expensive hellscape in a very scary shark tank. Not to mention forcing my local partner to relocate, and offloading a brutal time change on my long distance partner. So though the ego boost was great, those were always off the table. 

Interestingly enough, my rejection from my first choice school came after I’d already accepted the school I’m at now. I accepted this school for a number of reasons; but the strongest of which was there is a professor here who I got along with very well and had met at a conference. Their work was only tangentially related to mine (string theory), but their past graduate student had done a lot of work with string theory and quantum information, so I figured after talking to them that I could give a shot at making my home there.

However, once I GOT to the school and spoke with their graduate student in person, he painted a very depressing picture of what it’s like to work in string theory right now (seriously, talk to any working young string theorist, they’re all disillusioned sad sacks). He spoke highly of my current supervisor; saying that was the person he’d considered most before deciding on string theory (which he thought was a mistake). So I did a 180, looked into a few more people, and then was like “all right, here we go, cosmology now”. 

But of course, as I was learning in first year, though you can kind of sneak quantum computation into string theory research, the leap to cosmology research just...isn’t there. Adding to that, my quantum computations were becoming stressful interpersonally and really adding to my overall imposter syndrome) 

At this same time last summer I applied for a graduate scholarship on an application that included quantum computation as applied to N-body simulations as its pitch (I actually did get the scholarship, incidentally -- I was a runner up and the first place folks, whoever they were, had to turn it down, probably cause they got a better one :) ). 

But that aside, my supervisor took me aside on retreat to that telescope he works with and said “this is a good proposal but I don’t think this is what you should be doing with your thesis and here’s why”. He was kind but clear on why he thought that -- and I thought about it for a week and was like “you know, he’s right. I need to let this quantum computation stuff go”. So I did.

It’s easy to say you could treat this as a “cautionary tale” -- and of course, when applying for graduate school the number one problem is going to be finding a supervisor you like and whose work you like doing. But hindsight being 20/20, I actually wouldn’t change any of those muddles. Quantum computation was a shark-tank hellscape, and I didn’t really realize how much that bothered me until I started hanging out in astronomy spaces. Here the prevailing conversation is “how can we show the public how COOL this shit is” and not “how can I get venture capitalists to invest in my QC startup”. Though I don’t think I’d have ever chosen cosmology, I’m quite happy now that I’ve tripped ass-backwards into it. 

I think the real takeaway from all of this is to be open to many things in graduate school. Most people in science graduate school are very analytic -- we want to make the decisions that lead to the ‘best’ outcome. The truth of the matter is there are a lot of academic study paths for my thesis that would make me happy; and I think going through all that uncertainty that led to where I am now was a more valuable life experience than rolling straight into a supervision situation that was exactly what I planned and expected.