The standard practice here at CV is to post a hearty blogorific shout out following one’s student’s thesis defense. So, given that another of my students just launched himself out of the nest and is happily flapping himself away to a great postdoctoral position, I really should step up and join the tradition of sending my enthusiastic congratulations across the blogosphere. But honestly, I just don’t wanna. It’s not that my student didn’t present an excellent defense of a strong body of work, or that I’m not terribly proud of what he accomplished. It’s just that I get completely bummed whenever one of my students leaves. I uniformly adore my students, and every time one graduates I question how in the world I’m going to get over it. Intellectually, my students are my closest collaborators (since the breadth and smallish size of my department naturally limits the degree of research overlap among the other faculty). Thus, when students graduate, I lose a significant source of scientific interaction. Personally, the students in my department are terrific people, and a pleasure to know and work with. So, I flat out miss them when they leave.
However, I will try to rise above and say that Ricardo, Master of Supernova Metallicities and Producer of a Seriously Old School Astronomical Thesis (double digits of observing nights on more than 5 different telescopes!) I’m very very proud of you, and deeply happy for you, but if I seem a bit sullen, it’s because I’m a selfish git.
May 12th, 2007 at 8:49 am
Bravo, Ricardo! (And please try to forgive the sullen old git for his snit. I’m sure he means well.)
May 12th, 2007 at 8:57 am
Congratulations to you both, although I certainly know what you mean about missing good students.
May 12th, 2007 at 9:41 am
Um, Zeno? The sullen old git is actually a her. And I’m sure she means well too. And so do you.
Congrats to Ricardo, and condolences (and congrats for a successful launch) to Julianne.
May 12th, 2007 at 11:39 am
I hear you, Julianne. We profs work so hard with the students, bringing them to the point that they are functioning research scientists, able to productively contribute to the research program – and then the ingrates want to graduate and leave! So that someone else who hires them as a post-doc will get all the benefit of our training!
Seriously, the trick, which you’ve learned, is to pick that right moment. No piece of science is ever truly finished. So when to let them leave the nest? Too soon, and they’re not fully trained. Wait longer and you get the benefits from them, but that’s not in their best interest. (Which hasn’t stopped some of our colleagues from taking advantage, as it were).
Kudos all around.
May 12th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Duh: I keep forgetting that Sean has lots of partners on CV. (I followed him over here from his old site at Preposterous Universe.) I really must learn to read the bylines at group blogs!
I smite my forehead in penance!
May 12th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Julianne,
Have y’all published any of that metallicity work yet? If so, gotta ref?
On a related note, by what stretch of the imagination do C, N, O, and Ne qualify as metals? And as a more pedantic analytical question, why don’t astronomers simply refer to whatever they actually measure, when they report metallicity: e.g. instead of calling something hich metallicity, why isn’t it high iron, or high Ti-O, or high whatever other emission line is the flavour of the week?
May 12th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Lab Lemming: it can be confusing. But as you probably already know, in astronomical or cosmological terms metallicity can be considered more a reference to the when and where the heavier elements were synthesised rather than to the elements themselves.
May 12th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Julianne and Ricardo
Heartfelt congratulations to you both. Ricardo, congratulations on doing work that marks your becoming an independent researcher, and starting your own career. Julianne, congratulations on having successfully provided an environment that allowed Ricardo to grow into a research scientist, and on having the good grace to let him leave when he was ready. And I understand your feelings completely; I’m sad when my students get their Ph.D.’s and leave, even though that’s what I want for them. The consolation is that if they stay in the field you get to see them for the rest of your career, at workshops, and conferences, and as visitors; and you get the vicarious thrill of watching them produce their Ph.D. students, your scientific grandchildren. What really breaks my heart is when a former student, who is doing wonderful work and really wants to stay in physics, is forced out of the field by the limited opportunities (a sadly common occurrence in particle theory these days). They don’t get the career for which they worked so hard, and you rarely, if ever, get to see them again once they’re out of the orbit of academic physics.
May 12th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Congratulations to Ricardo, Master of Supernova Metallicities!
May 12th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Lab Lemming: in astronomy, there are three elements: X, Y, and Z. X is more commonly known as hydrogen, Y is more commonly known as helium, and Z is everything else … a.k.a. “metals.”
May 13th, 2007 at 5:39 am
I am familiar with the terminology. Rather, I am questioning the wisdom in lumping together elements formed in different stellar environments.
After all, for those of us who study solids, there is only one element in the astronomical table.
May 13th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Lab Lemming, but isn’t that actually the point, i.e. it distinguishes the elements produced in some type of stellar process, whether stellar nucleosynthesis or explosive nucleosynthesis for instance, from those created in the big bang or primordial nucleosynthesis. In that sense, there is only one ‘solid’ element as such in the astronomical table, as they are all the result of some type of stellar process.
May 31st, 2007 at 11:55 am
[...] tower is Ignacy Sawicki, who successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis yesterday. (Some of us are less grudging with our congratulations than others.) I swooped into Chicago for the event, then swooped right [...]
June 1st, 2007 at 12:12 am
Hi, Julianne.
Don’t worry; we’ll be sure to treat him very well, now that he’s back home in Chile. I just saw him last Saturday at Armin & Marlene’s despedida, before R went up to Campanas. I hope to talk to him next week …
Saludos!