Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Hello world!

That's it. I finally decided to start my own blog. I have been rehearsing this idea for a while, and finally got something actually worth writing about.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to start off very cheerfully.

My first ever submission of a paper to a scientific journal was refused. Apparently, the referee didn't agree with an otherwise widely accepted equation of state. I wonder how he would propose to explain the dark energy. That dude must be a genius. Ha. Ha.

The rest of my week could quite accurately be described as academic hell. My Statistical Mechanics final quiz, under the form of an interview with the teacher, was a disaster. I couldn't remember the most basic calculations for a classic canonic ensemble for a gas of harmonic oscillators. As soon as I left the room all sweaty and shaky and ashamed, it all came back to me. I wrote the whole thing down and ran back to the teacher's office. When I showed him the job done, all he said was "how come you didn't do it before?". Lovely.

I guess everyone is afraid of not being well-succeeded in life, especially when you actually start going on your own. I am terrified. Because science is too damn cruel.

I mean, every other career gives you the benefit of mediocrity. If you can't be the best, just be another average pawn and it all works out. But not with science. A mediocre scientist ends up as a high school teacher, or working at a bank, or some other mind-numbing unfulfilling brainless job out there.

And everyone comes to me saying "don't be sad, it's nothing", or "you'll get another shot at this". Easy for them to say. I'm the one haunted by mediocrity.

But enough ranting about it.

I hope I keep this thing fairly frequently updated. And now, let's work on the looks of this place.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, man! I'm glad you joined us on anonymously sharing some of your innermost thoughts to the Wide Wide World!

But I regret the contents of your first post. May those be the last bad news reported here, mate!

iPivo said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
iPivo said...

Dude, everyone can settle for mediocrity... those are the people who will neither experience failure nor success.

Though it may sound cliché it is important to taste the bitterness of a defeat in order to fully enjoy your success. Your paper may have been refused, but that does not make your effort over the last year pointless.

You are entitled to forget things every now and than, you may find some difficulties in having your work accepted but that will never make you mediocre. You have chosen a very tough path, you chose not to cheat, not to take the easy way out, among your kind you might seem just another guy... but you are just another "hard-working-smart-ass-physicist" and that put you light years away from what we perceive as mediocre.

p.s:I had to change just one sentence... sorry

Francisco said...

I can't believe you think you're actually feeling mediocre just because someone refuse your paper. So what? Everyone gets refused now and then. I know you probably don't want people telling you it's nothing, but hey, you made it this far, didn't you? Just give it time, dude. It was your first paper. You'll write a ton more. And a lot of them will be accepted. And then you'll be asked to referee papers from young PhD students, and you'll be the one to refuse them.

Success is a journey, not a destination. So stop running.