The Waterloo Autumn

(Ver abaixo para a versão original em Português)

The timespan between March and June 2009 - as of my awakening to my German Ph.D. studies, coupled with a series of trips throughout the European continent, and the establishment of countless new friendships, all interwoven by the beautiful springtime colours - was appropriately christened as "the Erlangen Springtime". Following the same line of thought, it'd be fitting to entitle the present period as "the Waterloo Autumn".

I flew in here in quite distressed circumstances - as a matter of fact, maybe the whole year until then could share this adjective. And in spite of having held meetings and video-conference calls, the research proposal I handed in was worded in such a wide context as possible to fit, basically, whatever direction my work here could take. Peter, my advisor in Erlangen, was busy writing his book, and as such I was quite on my own to choose my own heading. On the other hand, Norbert, my co-advisor here, seemed to be expecting I would arrive here with a well-defined question - both with regards to the objectives as to the methods and techniques I would employ. That this led to a stand-still in my first weeks here shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone...

Perhaps due to this stagnancy, or maybe because of other circumstances related to my moving to a new terra incognita with a different culture and lacking the social cobweb I had been weaving over the past seasons in Germanic grounds - and thus with lots of free time to spend thinking - I caught myself frequently contemplating my future role in an eventual academic career. An immediate issue concerns my capacity for such: time and again I have the feeling my analytical abilities are shallow, that my results lack a more elaborate mathematical formalism, and that, about to begin my third year, I'm still not proficient in any sufficiently advanced technique, being constrained to minor comments on the handful of subjects I've gone beyond the first few introductory steps. It is true, however - as Monica has already pointed out in a comment to a previous post - that I tend to suggest averages should be such as to fit myself somewhere around the centre of the bell curve - and I'm also sure I'm the most modest person whose blog you've ever read, by the way :) . Nevertheless. If, recognizing all those factors, I do attempt to delve into a particular technique or method, I will quickly find myself in an overly critical - cynical, almost - analysis, concluding invariably that such is not an appropriate tool for whatever problem I intend to tackle. Further extending such a perspective to the entire field - or, why not, to all of Physics - one can still reach the same conclusions, except perhaps to a zero-measure set containing as its elements those few truly original results which went beyond the borders of one's own plate (from the German expression "über den Tellerrand" - maybe you'd rather just use "think outside the box") . Oh well. I believe any reasonable physicist will conclude that such is indeed the case at hand (so far unconditionally confirmed in numerous conversations with other students (*) during the coffee-breaks at IQC (**) ); and that a large base of merely differentially-incrementing results is needed before one may, in a rare act of geniality, put the ideas together and bring an entire field forward. But how to maintain motivation, when the perspective of being one capable of providing such magnificent insights is dim at best?

Another issue arises from a more pragmatic view of the career dilemma. Marco, one of the group's post-docs, was recently "upgraded" to an assistant professorship, and even though his contract is "long term" (supposedly 5 years, if I remember correctly), it's not a tenure track. The same applies to my advisor back in Erlangen, Peter, who, in spite of leading an Emmy-Noether group in a prestigious Max-Planck Institute (and having authored books and numerous highly-cited articles), still doesn't have a permanent position. Now, at some point (preferably before one's retirement), one could expect a somewhat stable geographical location to become necessary for the development of a relationship and/or a family. My capacity to evaluate the matter at hand may be limited, but if a physicist with some 30-50 published journal articles cannot find a permanent position in an attractive institution when approaching the 35-40 year age bracket, what can one conclude about the possibilities of conciliating an academic career with what most mere mortals would call "a normal life"? (***)

(*) Other interesting discussions have addressed the focus of academic research at the border between science and engineering - and our, or maybe my, incapacity to identify a given phenomenon as scientifically relevant due to its limited practical applicability. Nevertheless, the question remains: is a theory unable of proposing an experiment capable of testing or validating itself at all useful? Equally, is it of any worth an experiment designed with the sole purpose of verifying the established theory? Now, don't get me wrong here: many a theory had to be replaced after failing to provide sufficient answers to a scrutinizing test - take the recent discrepancies found in the predicted size of the proton as an example - and those are precisely the kind we need more. But - sorry, Jonathan - once you've proved you can generate an N-partite entangled photonic state, and the technique has been shown to extend to N+1 states as well, then further increasing N may be an amazing engineering achievement, but it's no longer a scientific feat. Nature editors, give us a break.

(**) The coffee, I should add, is/continues to be unbearable, and perhaps prevents more stimulating discussions from taking place due to its watery, americano, I'd-rather-drink-English-tea characteristics. I miss my home espresso machine.

(***) By no means do I wish by this to imply I'm necessarily after such a normal life; but a certain amount of tranquillity/stability may still be welcome - if not for purely personal reasons, then at least to enable the researcher to develop his work without the constant pressure to obtain immediate results in order to guarantee his next contract...
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This may all sound quite dim and obscure, but I better ratify: not only philosophical wanderings of predominantly negative nature occupy my time in Canada. The warm late-August summer still allowed me to enjoy beautiful evenings outside, and even some days when I remember to have cursed the heat. September brought me to my "definitive" address, in a cozy, if still under renovation, house shared with Kate and Lilly - and a coffee grinder and a collection of Bialettis - from which one may infer the criteria I used to decide on my new home...

Settled in, I interwove idle weekends - mostly at home, reading or lazily surfing the web - with more active ones, with different activities and trips in the nearby areas. My first excursion took me to Detroit, where I met my long-time triathlon friend Julia, currently a post-doc at Wayne State U. A fortnight later, together with IQC's Nathan and his girlfriend Emma, I headed to Algonquin Provincial Park for a weekend of canoe camping, camp-fires and marshmallows. Two weeks later, I attended Los Campesinos! (Friday) and Belle & Sebastian (Tuesday) concerts in Toronto (and danced 'til I had blisters on my feet!), with the weekend in between spent with NDI's Omar in Etobicoke, and Thanksgiving Monday with Emma's parents in North Toronto/Markham. Finally, for the last two weekends, I joined some fellow IQC colleagues in climbing afternoons in Guelph, in a novel discovery (for a cyclist) that upper-body muscles are also capable of moving the body against gravity :) . And there's still the usual brunches, dinners or pub nights with the other students, training with the UWaterloo table-tennis club, jogging and running through the neighbourhood's parks, and reading aplenty: I'm on the final chapters of "Anna Karenina" (my second Tolstoy of the year), besides "The 4-hour workweek" - a practical guide to the Whiskas Lifestyle, even if perhaps rather oriented to 9-to-5 office lemmings, "Angst vor Deutschland" - discussing Germany's new role after reunification, and "Training and Racing with a Power Meter", aiming to better shape my workouts in the upcoming season...
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Meanwhile, two-and-a-half months have gone by. Temperatures now reach below freezing at night, but sunny days still make up for reasonably pleasant temperatures during the day - nevertheless, the heating has already been turned on - very much to my liking: colder days, under appropriate conditions, are always welcome. I'd even dare saying it'd be the ideal season, were it not for the local monopoly imposing overinflated prices to the delicious wines that keep me company...