Part 4

I never had graduate students of my own, as a post-doc one is not presented with such a responsible distraction, and then later, teaching at a liberal arts college, there were simply no graduate students to be had, though still plenty of overeager undergraduates desiring to do research.  By now, the problem had sharpened, the goals defined, and I knew what needed to be done, but I couldn’t do it alone.  One collaborator was natural, a fellow post-doc at MIT with an expertise in precision calculations that could ensure that the edifice was sound, through whom I could learn and whose hammer would complement my strength of identification of the right and most interesting nail to strike first.  We had shared some notes back and forth on the initial framing of the problem and some preliminary calculations and in doing so, isolated the remaining issue: we needed one more person in this collaboration to do all of the calculations.  The organizer from MIT had a couple of graduate students just starting their third years, the time when, finally, graduate students become useful, and give to a project more than the effort of teaching and hand-holding takes from an advisor.  I asked about one student who I knew and had chatted with a bit this week, but he was already engaged in a huge, open-ended, multi-year effort to extend results first published in 2010, and with no clear deadline on the horizon, whose time was completely filled.  However, the organizer’s other student had no such prior engagements and further was new to the whole theoretical physics business, having made the extremely rare and nearly practically impossible jump from admission as an experimentalist but qualified to Ph.D. candidacy as a theorist, so was in need of a project on which to cut their teeth.  So, after lunch one day, I had my first conversation with the student who came the closest to being my only graduate advisee.

Theoretical physicists publish papers throughout graduate school and because we don’t use that time to construct an experiment and analyze data, a theoretical physics Ph.D. thesis is usually little more than a collection of these papers, and all that needs to be written at the eleventh hour of the graduation deadline is a short but sweeping introduction to tie them together.  To do this requires really no more than a couple of papers, and a successful student that correspondingly fields a couple of post-doc offers may have half a dozen or so, and I myself had seven published papers in graduate school of which I chose three to highlight for my moderate 116-page thesis.  Then there are off-scale students, with well more than 10 highly-regarded papers published in graduate school and theses that require the better half of a ream to print, and this effort and accomplishment never goes unnoticed.  By 3 years in the future, this student, my student, had published eight papers with me of his 14 total, stapled the three most influential into a 500 page thesis, which was subsequently awarded the prize for the most outstanding original research in theoretical particle physics in the country.  During the winter of his final year, on the awkward 9 month lead time prior-to-job academic schedule, he was sorting through an embarrassment of post-doc offers from each of the top eight places to do particle physics (exclusive of his graduate institution), and then a few years later, joined the faculty at an Ivy League.  Globally, my part in all of this was tiny, my letters of recommendation were strong, yes, but they could say no more than what was already there in his papers, but I hold tight to whatever little influence I had as my most proud academic achievement.  And it all started with a mere nudge, a suggestion, to meet with this student.

From the front door, stairs led down, into the cellar of the 12 Apostles, tables spread throughout the centuries-old vaulted cavern hewn into the rock, then bricked over, the various parts of barrels augmenting the medieval aesthetic.  The ambiance was by far the most intriguing aspect of tonight’s dinner, with the beer and the goulash merely passable, but our group of graduate students and post-docs maintained lively conversation, reflecting on the week or two since arriving.  Someone at the table suggested dessert, and even only ok apfelstrudel à la mode is still apfelstrudel à la mode, so soon a symphony of spoons were clicking on the ceramic plates, but in parallel, others were pulling out Euros and doing some quick estimates of their required share.  As we were about to hail a waiter, the coda from another table ended and fiddler and accordionist stalked their next prey, but we were as helpless as sitting ducks, midweek and late, late at night already so few other tables were occupied, they pounced and for some reason picked me off, planted to my left and right.  I was stuck, I couldn’t push my chair back because the fiddler’s bow hand trapped me in, and the threatening, smug wise-guy face of the accordionist scared me into a smile, thin and emotionless, but stretched beyond the edges of my nose enough that I could fake enjoying it.  The worst part was yet to come, as once the music stopped, they lingered, and the longer they lingered the greater the guilt, and a few at our table passed a Euro or two their way, but I was able to drop my glance, avoiding eye contact, and didn’t look again until ascending the stairs, the musicians’ backs to us, ambushing another table.

Of our dining diaspora, I alone walked northwest toward my hotel, past the darkened door of the Institute, and then connected back with that tram-line street, long since deserted but made somewhat hospitable every block or so where the warm amber glow poured down from the excited sodium vapor above.  Where the road ascended slightly here now was that corner, nudged right by the ancient, stoic tree, and, unlike previous nights, all was too quiet so my consciousness was lost somewhere in my thoughts and memories and dreams.  I didn’t see the car with its headlights off idling ahead, creeping in its lane as I continued to step unconsciously forward, I didn’t hear the passenger’s window roll down, nor did I notice the muzzle that just peeked out of it, but the stream that hit my chest, the howling, cackling laughter erupting in the night, and the revving engine and squealing tires jolted me into the present, and all I could manage to coax out of my throat was “Hey!”, though any audience was already a block behind me and moving away fast.  My shirt was drenched, I had been sprayed by a water gun from about 5 yards, a perfect bullseye hit from that would-be sniper, and, though late, the heat had never really receded even after the sun had set, but I was now refreshed and cooler, and a smile grew across my face along with a couple of head shakes and chuckles.  I suffered no bodily harm and could change my shirt back in my hotel, but at least it wasn’t cat pee.