If I’m having an argument, I tend to use phrases that include the word “you” or “they”. What I’m doing is projecting what I think a person is feeling into my own words. In essence, I’m taking what I think is important in their disagreement and only addressing that. The problem is that I’m not letting the person describe their own experience. Instead, I’m asserting what I think they are saying, and basing my response…

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As a physicist, mathematics is the language I speak. It’s what I use to discuss physics, and I’m familiar with many of the tools that mathematicians learn. The tools range from the fields of calculus, probability, statistics, linear algebra, differential equations, graph theory, and many others. In particular, solving differential equations is like the bread and butter of physics, so I’m versed in this area. Knowing how to untangle the Schrödinger equation or the field…

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Let me share a scenario that I’ve been in a lot, and I want you to think about if you’ve had a similar experience. I’m listening to an explanation of someone who is “above” me in their academic career. This tends to be a professor, researcher, or maybe even my supervisor. They are explaining some technical detail of an idea. Every so often, they look my way and end their sentence in a way that…

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You’re giving a presentation. Mindful that you should ease people into your topic, you start gentle. Things are going great, and then you go to your first example. When planning your talk, you had an easy example, but then you figured that people would think it was too easy. So you added a more complex one, closer to something you were studying in your work. The result? Blank faces from everyone. (more…)

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This, I think, is the next big thing in marketing ourselves. I’m a scientist. My current status is as a PhD student in theoretical physics, studying quantum computation. Most of my output consists of code and papers talking about my scientific work. And while that’s good, I would argue it’s not enough. Sure, it shows that you did some good things, but if I was hiring someone, I would ask two questions. What have you…

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As a graduate student, I’m no stranger to reading lots of papers. Okay, that’s not quite true. I’m used to reading parts of papers. We don’t tend to go through the whole thing like you might a book. Instead, I’m looking for bits that might be useful for me. Despite this, I’m not just scouring the papers for information. I’m not a computer, so digging through raw information isn’t pleasant. In fact, studying a paper…

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Each day, I wake up, eat a bowl of cereal, and go for a run. Day after day, month after month. The specifics of each run vary, but the repetition is relentless. I do a similar thing with my writing and drawing. I have a schedule and I stick to it, showing up again and again. This might seem boring or constricting. This doesn’t sound like the spontaneity of the artist, or the “awesomeness” of…

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If you’re like me, you dreaded presentations in school. Not only were they nerve-wracking because you had to speak to a large group of people, but you also didn’t really know what to say. You ended up muddling through the presentations, never doing an amazing job. Going into graduate school (and beyond), the need for presentations shifts from being something you have to do for class into something that’s expected as a scientist. Now, presentations…

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When I was younger, I wanted to understand everything that was taught to me in class. If the teacher presented it, I wanted to understand it. I was determined to get everything. This extended throughout my secondary and undergraduate education, where I made sure I could do everything that was asked of me. For my master’s degree, I joined a theoretical physics program that is quite different than the norm. One of the hallmarks of…

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Here’s a question for you: How do you describe your research? No, I’m not talking about how you would describe it in technical detail for half an hour. Instead, what if you only had five minutes to explain? And worse, what if the person asking had barely any idea about the field you’re in? Okay, I can see that you’re starting to get worried. That’s because it’s difficult! When you suddenly have to work with…

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