When and why did you first start studying physics? Did you just encounter it in school, or did you first try to study it independently? Also, what made you decide to focus on your current area of expertise?
I took a physics course in my International Baccalaureate program in high school—if you’re not familiar with IB, it’s sort of the European version of AP—and it really resonated with me. There’s just a lot of cool stuff in physics; we did things like building electric motors using these ancient military-surplus magnets that had once been installed in radars for coastal fortresses. Then when I went on to college, I took some math courses and some physics courses, and found I liked the physics better. In the summer of 2003 (I think) I went to CERN as a summer student, and had an absolute blast even though the actual work I was doing wasn’t so very advanced. (I wrote a C interface to an ancient Fortran simulation program that had been kicking around since it was literally on punchcards. Of course the scientist who assigned me the task could have done it himself in a week, while it took me all summer, but that saved him a week and taught me some real coding, so it was a good deal for both of us.) So I sort of followed the path of least resistance from that point. I ended up doing my Master’s degree on BaBar data. Then for my PhD I wanted to do it outside Norway, so it was basically a question of connections: My advisor knew someone who was looking for a grad student, wrote me a recommendation, and I moved to the US and started my PhD. Then, when it was time to choose a thesis topic, I actually, at first, chose something completely different, involving neutrinos and reconstructing a particular decay chain from missing energy and some constraints. It turned out we couldn’t get a meaningful measurement with the data we had, there were too many random events that would fake the signal. So I switched to charm mixing, which (with perhaps the teensiest touch of hindsight bias) I now actually find more interesting anyway.
As you can see, ‘decide’ may be a somewhat strong word in this context; I’ve basically worked on what my advisors have suggested, and found it interesting enough not to quit. I suspect I could have worked on practically any problem with much the same results.
As you can see, ‘decide’ may be a somewhat strong word in this context; I’ve basically worked on what my advisors have suggested, and found it interesting enough not to quit. I suspect I could have worked on practically any problem with much the same results.
When and why did you first start studying physics? Did you just encounter it in school, or did you first try to study it independently? Also, what made you decide to focus on your current area of expertise?
I took a physics course in my International Baccalaureate program in high school—if you’re not familiar with IB, it’s sort of the European version of AP—and it really resonated with me. There’s just a lot of cool stuff in physics; we did things like building electric motors using these ancient military-surplus magnets that had once been installed in radars for coastal fortresses. Then when I went on to college, I took some math courses and some physics courses, and found I liked the physics better. In the summer of 2003 (I think) I went to CERN as a summer student, and had an absolute blast even though the actual work I was doing wasn’t so very advanced. (I wrote a C interface to an ancient Fortran simulation program that had been kicking around since it was literally on punchcards. Of course the scientist who assigned me the task could have done it himself in a week, while it took me all summer, but that saved him a week and taught me some real coding, so it was a good deal for both of us.) So I sort of followed the path of least resistance from that point. I ended up doing my Master’s degree on BaBar data. Then for my PhD I wanted to do it outside Norway, so it was basically a question of connections: My advisor knew someone who was looking for a grad student, wrote me a recommendation, and I moved to the US and started my PhD. Then, when it was time to choose a thesis topic, I actually, at first, chose something completely different, involving neutrinos and reconstructing a particular decay chain from missing energy and some constraints. It turned out we couldn’t get a meaningful measurement with the data we had, there were too many random events that would fake the signal. So I switched to charm mixing, which (with perhaps the teensiest touch of hindsight bias) I now actually find more interesting anyway.
As you can see, ‘decide’ may be a somewhat strong word in this context; I’ve basically worked on what my advisors have suggested, and found it interesting enough not to quit. I suspect I could have worked on practically any problem with much the same results.
Yep, sunk cost is not always a fallacy.
There’s a better way to put that: switching costs are real. Sunk costs, properly identified, are fallacious.