Geekery, education and high-powered brains ...

.... it's still all about the people.

This week I was having tea and stuff with some friends, and P the
mathematician was describing his experience of interviewing for (and
getting! hooray!) a tenure-track faculty position at UPenn. We were
all pretty happy for him (he said this job "Exceeded my best case
scenario. By a lot.") What were the interviews like? What'd they ask
you about?

Well, he said, it's not really like that. They really just wanted to
see what kind of person I am. It was all really casual, just kind of a
get-to-know-you thing. To see if I would be ok to have an office next
to them.

Wow. We were all kinda nonplussed. Really? But this is a stupendously
good job. Like, beyond your dreams kind of thing. And they just wanted
to know if you're a good person? If you're kind, and caring? Huhwhuh?

So P went on. Ok, see, they can't really ask me about my work because,
well ... none of us really understands what the others do. I could
tell them something about my work, and they'd just have no way to tell
if I was lying or not. There's about 12 or 13 people in the world who
could check my claims about my work, and none of them is going to be
at the same university as me. We're all so specialized at this level
of math; our peers are almost never our colleagues.

The rest of us sat there gobsmacked for a few seconds, and then burst
into gleeful laughter. Giggling, chortling, loving-it laughing. How
absolutely cool is that? How geektastic?

But it gets better.

How did you choose your field? It's so specialized, I mean, how did
you know this was it for you?

Oh, no, I didn't choose this specialization. I chose an advisor. I
chose someone who I could work with, someone who was excited about
what he was doing and who got me excited.

[grinz] I can't tell you how much this made my day. For a lot of days.
My friend (who is a wonderful, gentle soul btw) is in this world
that's so high-powered that you have to rely as much on who someone is
as on what they can do.


--
Kristen
Yes, yes ... I know they checked his PhD and all that. But still. :-)

.

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