It was surprisingly difficult choosing an advisor in my PhD.

I was choosing between two advisors: James Analytis and Michael Zaletel. They are both wonderful professors with great ideas. Academically speaking, I could not go wrong. In terms of personality, they were quite different. James is outgoing, nice, and very gregarious while Mike was less relaxed but very concentrated on his work. When talking to either of them, I could almost their wealth of knowledge was almost overwhelming. Alas, I could not work with both of them: Their subjects were too far apart and joint advisorship between experiment and theory sounded like too much. Here are the top reasons why I chose James as my advisor.

  1. A Love of Real Data

For how much I love theory, nothing will give me as much excitement as looking at real data. We put lots of effort and love into an experiment and we cross our t’s to make sure what we are seeing is real… and then we see a little blip or a little bend in the graph which tells us that something is a foot. Finding and investigating those blips gives me the gumption to put my nose on the grindstone. Also, graphs are so pretty!!!

  1. The Big Picture Fallacy

One thing I felt like I didn’t get enough of was the big picture. Working in experiment feels a lot like sprinting between different tasks and not having as much time to figure out the bigger picture. I enjoyed my rotation in the Zaletel group because it felt like all I was doing was reading and understanding. But its still hard to see the bigger picture in theory! Many theorists do computations without knowing why they do them. I think that “only theorists know the big picture” was a large fallacy in my brand that I had to defeat. And when I did, I realized that with the proper time management and persistent studying, I can get that clear big picture too.

  1. Working with my hands

While spending my summer in the Analytis group lab, I remembered how much I enjoyed working with my hands. I remembered by childhood working with my radio set, tinkering with my dad’s tools, and enjoying baking. All of these pleasant experiences helped me remember how much I enjoyed doing ‘real things’ with my hands.

  1. The models vs. how models break

In theory, it feels like one is usually studying a model. But I came to learn and appreciate the idea of studying an actual system and investigating more on how a model breaks. This led me to believe that I was interested in dealing with real life systems as opposed to models.

  1. My journey I looked back on my journey as a researcher and in my interest in physics. I did undergraduate research in experiment but had a love of mathematics and the theory surrounding the experiment. A part of me wanted to become a theorist because of how much I spend studying pure math- a large portion of my friends from undergrad were mathematicians or theoretical physicists. I soon came around to thinking that just because I do experiment, doesn’t mean I have to turn my back on that math.

Wrap-up Link to heading

And so I chose to work with James. The possibilities excite me to no end. What if I became an experimentalist that can stomach the theory that comes out? What if I was an experimentalist with a taste of what is good/bad theory? What if I had the idealism of a theorist and the determined drive of an experimentalist? Wouldn’t I be so much more of an interesting scientist?