One Day...

I won't be tongue-tied when other people in the research group ask me questions.

As graduate students, postdocs, technicians, and such, the actual members of the lab are well-versed in the art of asking questions. In particular, questions that I should be able to answer but can't. (The PI hides in his office and therefore doesn't count.)

Some questions are easier than others. What's the space group of this polymorph? What are the melting points of these elements? Those, at least, have very clear answers. (From now on, every time I see a random, well-established fact concerning my compounds, I write it on a "reference page" in my lab book.)

Other questions are dicier. Based on the three data points that the instrument just measured, do you expect the final plot to behave this particular way? Do you *really* think that this meter is trustworthy? What's the electronic structure of this like?

Usually, with sufficient thinking and/or literature searches, I can eventually come up with answers. That, however, isn't the point. People don't always know whether my answers are right, nor do they really care. They want a concise response that matches well with what they (as more experienced chemists) know, and they want it now. If an answer is unexpected, there better be good reasons to justify the answer.

I guess the idea is that since I work on this project (though it's not strictly speaking "my" project), I should know it better than anyone else, from the conceptual to the trivial, and everything vaguely related in between. It's tough to prepare for these questions - I never know what they'll randomly ask next! (Naturally, nobody asks about things that I do actually know.)

Anyway, it's all good-natured, and I like these questions. But I'm still working towards the day when I can actually answer these things spontaneously.

Postscript 1: I broke something expensive today, right before the start of a measurement. Fail. (Also, booooooo, no data for me.) Definitely still a klutz, even after all these work terms.

Postscript 2: I'm waiting for calculus to end. I mean, evaluating the expressions (e.g. path integrals) themselves are basically exercises in applying simple formulas and then number crunching. Not fun. Also, the lack of rigor is painful - I miss epsilon-delta.