1. It take an impressive amount of background knowledge of all the facets of physics and astronomy even to specialize in a particular area.
2. Interestingly enough, at the same time there are so many areas of astronomy to specialize in. It's as if each star has its own field! This makes my initial aspirations of studying general areas like 'black holes' or 'dark energy' sound naive and uninformed.
3. I am amazed by the breadth of each of our class speakers' knowledge - where between our time as undergraduates and graduates will we acquire that amount of expertise? It's as if there's some huge knowledge discontinuity forming over just a matter of years.
A quick aside -
At the same time I dispelled some prior prejudices about astronomy. I felt that the distinction between a practical an theoretical astronomer is not always as clear cut as I imagined.
I used to think of practical astronomers as having to wake early in the morning and work late at night at the lab or telescope to catch a fleeting star or make a late report, while theoretical scientists would (in theory at least) stay at home and watch reruns for most of the time, then dedicate an intense amount of time and concetration on researching and publishing the next paper. If we think of our work as an astronomer as an evolutionary progression, I saw practical scientists as examples of gradualism while theorists exemplified punctuated equilibrium. A practicer of the dark arts would have to follow an engraved work schedule plus anomalies, while a theorist could blow bubbles all day as long as he periodically published something.
But of course, to be any good as a practicing astronomer, you need a luscious theory backbone, and to be able to say anything as a theorist you need observations to verify your ideas and sometimes even come up with them.
Back to the list:
4. Being a professional astronomer requires a quirky sense of humor of at all times.
5. Computer programming- This winter I plan on going through and teaching myself C+ (sic) since so far I've tried to do everything with Mathematica.
My ultimate goal is to ultimately have a goal. I used to be certain that I wanted to study the hidden and unobservable universe, but now I'm not sure what I want to specialize in. I'd like to develop the vast breadth of background knowledge and fine-tuned intuition astronomers uniformly possess. At the same time I don't want to put off deciding a particular field too long so I can focus my SURFs and try to bridge that knowledge discontinuity between grads and undergrads.
I want to say that the ultimate goal of astronomy is to find a theory of unification, but I know that's insufficient. Even if we find out everything we can about the beginning of the universe and map out its evolution we will still not know much more about observable stellar and galactic properties.
This is a really thoughtful blog post!
ReplyDeleteI like what you say about the "knowledge discontinuity between grads and undergrads." I used to notice that a lot myself in undergrad, and it made me wonder if maybe I wasn't cut out for research. However, they let me into grad school (even if I wasn't sure I deserved it) and within a few months of being at grad school, I miraculously found myself on the other side of this "gap." Looking back it wasn't really a gap at all - just a natural progression. Of course, I've got a ton of learning ahead of me. But in my first year of grad school, I found I had developed an ability to work much more independently on research than previously in my life, and not quite sure where that came from. Grad school is magic like that.
I guess my point is, don't worry about specializing in undergrad unless you find something that you want to do so much that you don't want to try other things. There is plenty of time to try out a variety of fields and subfields, both in undergrad and the first few years of grad school. In fact, it's a really good idea to do this, because astronomers (both observers and theorists) rarely stick to one research problem for their whole lives and so it is very useful to get exposure to various research topics starting early in your career.
If you decide to write a senior thesis, then you will get the experience of specializing somewhat in undergrad, since those often last from the summer before your senior year through the end of your senior year. Even though I advise against doing it too much, specializing can definitely be rewarding - you get to the point where you get to start making independent decisions about your research.