LIFE AS A FIRST YEAR GRAD STUDENT
by John Pask and David Everitt
Both Dave and I came to grad school after about six years of teaching. A few days before classes began, we got our office assignments. At first I thought there might be some mistake, as there were nine nameplates already outside the door of my new office. Upon investigating, however, I noticed ten desks -- no mistake. Though perhaps not as spacious as we had grown accustomed to over the past six years, these accommodations did offer a distinct advantage: lots of other grad students to interact with on a daily basis.
On the first day of class, I remember one of the TA's saying, "I think you'll find that you won't have a lot of time to curl up with your textbooks; you'll be spending most of your time working problems." I thought to myself, "Maybe he couldn't find the time, but I will." Boy was I wrong. The utterly continuous problem sets took an enormous amount of time. Our class quickly realized that the key to success was to work together. We will probably be forever known as the class that took over the physics library for group study. At any given moment first-year students could be found somewhere in the Physics building, arguing and struggling to understand elliptic integrals of the third kind, Floquet theory, things that don't commute with themselves, or just how to send e-mail.
As undergraduates, neither Dave nor I benefited much from working with others. As graduate students, however, we found it invaluable. In some cases, you need a good reference to get started on a problem (in the absence of all the time in the world). Invariably, if neither of us had found it, someone else had. Also, because of our differing strengths and weaknesses, we all benefited enormously from one another in our discussions of concepts, ideas, and approaches to problems -- over lunch, after the day's lectures, and into the wee hours of the morning.
Also invaluable to the learning process, of course, were the faculty. The first couple of weeks, before I caught on to the fact that there was not a lot of time for extra reading, I read way ahead in my mathematical methods course. Having a master's in mathematics, I was particularly interested in the connections between my previous coursework and the formalism of quantum mechanics. I went to the professor's office hours to discuss the many questions which I had accumulated. He was more than happy to discuss anything and everything, even though we had not yet covered most of (and were not going to cover some of) what I was asking about. More impressive still, was the depth and clarity of his explanations, especially considering the kinds of questions I was asking.
The first year was intense, often exhausting. My wife once commented that all she ever saw of me anymore was the back of my head. The key to happiness, I think, was the realization (with the help of my advisor) that there was so much material being covered, and in so much depth, that I couldn't possibly master it all in every detail. With this realization, I was able to strike a happy balance between academic and non-academic life and eventually settled into a routine, which included dinners and at least a couple of evenings a week with wife, family, and friends. Dave eventually came to the same realization. In fact, by the middle of winter quarter he was able to keep his Tuesdays completely physics-free.
Both Dave and I have lived in Davis before, and when we finally did start getting out more, we noticed a few changes around town. Sadly, Davis' vegetarian cooperative restaurant, the Blue Mango, went out of business. The new hot spots are the brewpub Sudwerk and the Mexican food hangout Dos Coyotes. The Farmer's Market is bigger than ever. And all the newest movies can now be seen right here in Davis at the new Holiday Cinema/multi-level parking complex.
All things considered, the first year was indeed demanding; but its demands were more than compensated by its rewards.