tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61711175362717344112024-03-13T05:44:26.960-07:00Aidan finds a new careerAidan finds a new career: The long and winding journey from particle physics into the unknownAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-48917840776784398222016-03-27T04:49:00.000-07:002016-03-27T04:49:04.922-07:00The move back<p>In December I made plans to move back to the UK. After some searching I decided to settle in Manchester and found a nice place with plenty of space. Apparently it's not normal in my field to find somewhere to live before moving, and the ULB found it unusual that I had somewhere to move into before I arrived. That says quite a lot about the mentality of the field, and the fact that the idea that someone would want to move with more than a couple of bags of possessions is perverse is a little worrying. In any case, it matched up nicely with the Trinity friends' Christmas dinner, and they were very happy to help me.</p>
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Behind the wheel.</div>
<p>The move back presented a bit of a problem, and I love a good problem. It meant driving a huge white van from the UK to Brussels and back, via the Channel Tunnel. None of that was cheap or easy or quick. Even the packing was hard work and exercise in space manangement that spanned a couple of weeks. The logistics were tricky too, partly because I had a friend helping me out, so that meant planning double hotel rooms, breaks at the right times, finding decent food, and translating French to English.</p>
<p>One of the reasons I did all of this was because I knew it would be hard, and that transitioning to life in the UK would also be hard and logistically challenging. I wanted to look back on this as a time when I took on something physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding, and dealt with it head on, without giving in to fear or lethargy. It would have been easier to hire someone else to move my possessions and just fly to Manchester, but I went for the option that was cheaper, more labour intensive, and that called on the support of my friends at both ends.</p>
<p>Since then, the moving process has continued, and I'd forgotten quite how long it takes to organise all the boring things like Council Tax, GP registration, and changing bank accounts. (I'm still using my Belgian bank account for most things, despite being back for over two months.) I still look back on the move fondly, as an adventure from Brussels, through France and the Channel Tunnel, around London and Birmingham. It was a lot of fun and I'm glad I still have it within me to take on something so daunting without a second thought. That's the attitude I'm going to need in the next year or so, and I've got yet another achivement under my belt that should keep me going when things get tough.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-30615489768224252052016-03-27T04:46:00.000-07:002016-03-27T04:46:18.292-07:00J is for Jamboree<p>I haven't written in this blog for quite a while (I actually thought it was even longer than it really is), even though many interesting things have happened, and the only reason is that I've been very busy. In the usual course of work, we have to prepare results for important meetings and for conferences. If all goes to plan we get plenty of beam time and then a few weeks to put the results together in time for the conferences. One of the biggest conferences, Moriond, is taking place right now, and it's what I expected to be working towards. It turns out that CERN and CMS had different ideas.</p>
<p>First, the LHC slipped behind schedule (which is fairly typical) and that meant there was less time to analyse what we already had in place. Then the CMS exotica (EXO) group decided to host their annual meeting off-site in November. Finally, CERN decided that they didn't want Moriond to get the first announcements of any big discoveries, so they asked us to prepare our results for mid-December Jamboree, just before the Christmas break. At the same time as all this was going on, I was in the process of handing over the analysis to my successor, as well as doing the regular work that goes along with developing and maintaining an analysis package, and performing calibrations. When all of this is taken into account it's quite a lot of work.</p>
<p>I don't mind hard work, in fact I thrive on it, but this did seem quite excessive. The EXO meeting in the middle of all the Jamboree was problematic. The meeting itself was fine, and an excellent use of time, but it was planned long before the Jamboree was announced, and created "maximal destructive interference", as one colleague put it. The problems we had with a preliminary analysis were multiplied because we had to on the one hand develop the analysis for the Jamboree, and on the other hand freeze and report on the analysis for the EXO meeting. The simultaneous development and freezing of work is a constant source of frustration and seems rather futile to me. We have to have a version of the code and plots ready for a presentation, while at the same time working on the calibrations on the side which will eventually lead to different code and plots for the Jamboree. As in any field, progress reports detract from progress, and that's fine when you have time to spare.</p>
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Finally, the Jamboree arrives, and we get to see what the competition sees...
</div>
<p>Unfortunately we didn't have much time to spare. The internal review process spans several months, and we laid out a plan for the review that gave us no breathing space at all. (This wasn't poor planning on our part- there was only just enough time to fit the review in once the announcement of the Jamboree was made.) That meant that I had get my work done, at any cost, because there would be no second chances and very little wiggle room. Given this situation, there were many studies and decisions we postponed until Moriond to give us more time to work on them, and many of these things needed more time and consideration because they were very deep questions. The Jamboree would be a place to present a simple preliminary report on the findings, and Moriond would allow us to go into more detail on the salient points and the challenges of 2016 data taking.</p>
<p>The timeline was brutal, and it took its toll on all of us. My health suffered, my teaching was not up to scratch, and I was having to tell people to leave my office as I gave a last minute sign-off on physics decisions. As I'm sure you can work out, I'm not a fan of the decision to have a Jamboree in mid-December. This isn't because of the extra work, that goes with the job and I was expecting similar for Moriond, but it's because the deadline was arbitrary and motivated by CERN's need to be first with any big discovery. I don't begrudge CERN being first, but I do begrudge not giving the physicists enough time to get robust results ready for a public announcement. When I present results I want them to be well researched, well understood, and with plenty of supporting evidence. As it happened we had to show results that had preliminary luminosity measurements that changed by about 5% between the Jamboree and Moriond. I don't care that the data and simulation were consistent, or that the uncertainties were sufficiently large, what I care about is that if we had waited a few more weeks we would have had a better understanding of the luminosity. Instead we put physicists through a brutal deadline twice just because CERN decided to announce a Jamboree and nobody wanted to be excluded.</p>
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Working on Christmas day on a very important study that got pushed back. At least I tried to bring some seasonal cheer to the physics...
</div>
<p>I've complained about the conference cycle before, and I doubt it will ever get better. One of my favourite feelings is when we have a deep problem to solve, which obviously won't be solved in time, and we make the decision to miss a deadline. That feels like a victory for science, placing the understanding of the problem above the recognition for it, and it eventually leads to better results.</p>
<p>I'm glad I helped get the Jamboree results out, and also that I helped the transition from the Jamboree to Moriond, but I also consider it a bitter reminder of one of the biggest problems in this field (and I'm sure many others.) If nothing else, I'm just not young enough to keep up that kind of timeline indefinitely. Since moving back to the UK things have been busy and stressful, but I am no longer staying up until 3am to finish off a piece of work, and I'm generally much happier. These days the fruits of my labour are realised much sooner and make more sense to me. That's a topic for another post though, this post is all about the unreasonable pressure exerted by the Jamboree and the dubious decision to put it at such an awkward time.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-82649466835749516912015-11-23T01:55:00.000-08:002015-11-23T01:55:24.454-08:00The final marathon<p>Right now work on CMS is tough. We have tight deadlines to meet and a lot of work to do. This is what happens every time we get new data, and despite the increased workload it is my favourite time to be a physicist. What usually happens is that we target the Moriond conferences in March, but this time there is a December Jamboree for rapid analyses, and I'm working on one of them. The Jamboree and Moriond are my final push to get some physics results out, physics results that I'll be proud of and will make me nostalgic years from now. This is what I've been waiting for the past two years, building up my tools slowly and getting them ready, in anticipation of the data that turns our world upside down. There was some initial excitement over a single very high mass event, which was completely unexpected. Since then we've been keeping an extra look out for high mass events in the data set, and this has only made the curent work more exciting and competitive.</p>
<p>Unfortunately this level of work is not sustainable, even without any other commitments. As one of my friends pointed out in a recent (and probably final) visit to CERN, it's not unusual to do 40 hours of work in two days when things get tough. On top this, there is travel, teaching, and other meetings that take a long time. When I moved to CERN, I moved there to work, and to immerse myself in the life of the lab, which meant more work. It was very exciting and rewarding, but also exhausting. Since moving to Brussels I've been told to restrain my enthusiasm and to not lose myself in work, which isn't why I came here. I came to work hard, to give physics one last chance to show me that I still love it. Looking to the future, I realised that I don't want to keep following the same patterns. Whatever I work at, I'll always work hard and have long hours, but for the next few years I want to be able to set my own deadlines and any rush will be self inflicted.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gOT_zbqDg3A/VlLibIOH6lI/AAAAAAAAFGY/bLWZR6gHSYg/s1600/venice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gOT_zbqDg3A/VlLibIOH6lI/AAAAAAAAFGY/bLWZR6gHSYg/s1600/venice.jpg" /></a><br />A quick trip to Venice. It was pleasant, but did rather distract from the main event.</div>
<p>So I find myself slogging through the final marathon, a final blaze of glory before it all ends, and for now, I love it. If I had my own way I'd do nothing else, and for a few weeks I'd immserse myself in the work, going from one cross check to another and measuring all the spectra I could get manage. Knowing that this is the last time makes it all the more enjoyable, and more frustrating when other commitments keep me away from this work. These few months are the whole reason I came, and the reason I waited two years for the data. This is what make physics fun, this is what makes physics worth the time and effort.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-89950388424202356812015-11-15T04:26:00.000-08:002015-11-15T04:26:10.897-08:00Moonlighting<p>For the past few months I've been rather busy (hence the lack of updates) with some outreach activities. For a long time I've wanted to create a lightweight particle physics experiment simulator that can run in the browser. An offshoot of this has been a trigger simulator and this has been used in various physics shows across the UK. These shows have developed from the standup comedy I performed last year, into a series of interactive comedic lectures where I write apps that allow the audience to interact. As with any project, it has its fair share of frustrations, but overall I'm very pleased and excited by how it's progressing. The show itself is roughly split in two halves, with the first half discussing cognitive biases, and the second half taking the audience through the scientific method, using the discovery of the Higgs boson as an example. They use the apps to collect and analyse data, and we end the show with the discovery of the boson.</p>
<p>It ticks a lot of the boxes that I was looking for in a project:</p>
<ul>
<li>It allows me to develop some JavaScript skills in a new environment.</li>
<li>It forces me to write for portable devices.</li>
<li>It involves writing a user interface and testing it on people.</li>
<li>It develops my communication skills.</li>
<li>There's opportunity for travel in the UK</li>
<li>It's slowly building up a range of useful contacts for future work.</li>
<li>It involves collaboration with colleagues in the UK.</li>
<li>There are social media elements that I need to build up.</li>
</ul>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AsYDzbtwUeg/Vkh5qFWsv0I/AAAAAAAAE-0/Mtxb1HxR-S0/s1600/trigger_game.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AsYDzbtwUeg/Vkh5qFWsv0I/AAAAAAAAE-0/Mtxb1HxR-S0/s1600/trigger_game.jpg" /></a>The first draft of the app in action.</div>
<p>To be honest it is quite a workload to commit to, and there are still some elements that have to come together. However the timeline is long, the progress has been quite rapid, and the audiences seem to love the show (and give useful feedback at the end.) As with most of my projects, this is a stepping stone to something bigger and better. Interacting with the public (both the audience and people testing my apps) exposes me to new skills I haven't need to explore much before, and each iteration improves my skills at making the interaction intuitive. For example, no matter how rough a draft is, and no matter how much I tell someone about a project, they still assume that if an app doesn't acknowledge an input then it hasn't seen it. That means for every interaction I need to add something to let the user know things are happening, even in the roughest, most basic draft. Suddenly even trivial changes take a while to implement.</p>
<p>There is scope to extend the project beyond January, and for now I'm ambivalent about doing so. I already have many plans for what to do in the following year and I don't want to overburden myself with free projects. There's also a constant tension between the education and the entertainment, and I want to focus more on the education. Unfortunately that doesn't sell many tickets, and it's harder to deliver. At the same time the most lucrative elements of the show are not so much focused on the science itself, but more about cognitive biases. That's a fun and exciting avenue to pursue, bue it may require the help of someone with a degree in psychology to back up some of the claims we make.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZtZQV9OqWUE/Vkh5ybx_GqI/AAAAAAAAE-8/y4Khs-2Gskg/s1600/GSALShow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZtZQV9OqWUE/Vkh5ybx_GqI/AAAAAAAAE-8/y4Khs-2Gskg/s1600/GSALShow.jpg" /></a>During the show itself.</div>
<p>This project is a nice counter balance to my research, with a focus on communication rather than analysis, ease of use rather than problem solving, and rediscovery rather than research. Even the medium of the browser is different, more direct and fast paced (and in my opinion, more pleasant to work with) than the data analysis on the GRID. That said, the standards are higher. The public expect things to work flawlessly first time, and do not tolerate quick fixes or works in progress.</p>
<p>Much of the work is already done, but there is still a lot to finish up, and with the data analysis in full swing I don't have much time to dedicate to it these days. Right now I'm hurtling across the UK on a train to give a seminar in Liverpool, while my analysis jobs are being resubmitted. There's still a lot of physics to be done between now and the end of my contract and I have to make time for both my job and my outreach. I'm never bored with this much physics!</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-52287047038027782302015-08-13T00:46:00.001-07:002015-08-13T00:46:18.176-07:00Embracing uncertainty<p>I've spent the past three weeks at CERN for shifts (something I'll blog about another time) and bumped into many old friends and colleagues. Some of them have asked me about what I've got planned for the next year or so. That's not an easy question to answer, and not one that I want to answer right now. My life from one week to the next is very diverse, which means I have problems predicting what I'll be doing a week from now, let alone a year from now. That's how I like it. I love it that my life changes giving me new experiences all the time. On top of that, if life has taught me anything in the past decade it's that it's okay to not have a firm plan.</p>
<p>I'm not sure why other people seem to find uncertainty uncomfortable. For me it means freedom. It means not tying myself down and being predicatble or boring or bored. I'm currently in a physics lab where we have to routinely deal with lack of knowledge and where we have to find the answers ourselves, if we're lucky enough that we can obtain some answers. We all know what the job market is like in the field and that it's normal to move around, and that the number of opportunities outside the field is vast compared to the number inside. Yet somehow people find my lack of a job and a place to live in six months disturbing. That's how I found myself two years ago, with my SMU contract winding up and searching for a new job. Within a few months of looking I found a great job in Brussels in a new country in a city I'd never lived in before. I went from no planned job and no planned abode to finding a decent position and a flat in a foreign country. It was all timed so that one contract ended the day before the next one began. That was all down to embracing the uncertainty and taking advantage of the opportunities of the time.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uouwNvq-NEg/VcxLE0smNKI/AAAAAAAAEsQ/wuZiyz7lXUw/s1600/BICEP3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uouwNvq-NEg/VcxLE0smNKI/AAAAAAAAEsQ/wuZiyz7lXUw/s1600/BICEP3.jpg" /></a><br />Uncertainty is when you meet a colleague of a colleague in Paris and he asks you to join him at the South Pole for some world class science.</div>
<p>I don't know why people ask me what my plans are. Is to make me feel better, or them? Is it reassure them that the world isn't a scary place? Sometimes it feels invasive. These uncertainties are my own, not theirs, and they're not entitled to an answer to these tough questions, even if I had them. I suppose in some ways it's easier for me as someone single with no dependents. I can't maintain a stable relationahip with this kind of lifestyle, and pets and children are certainly out of the question.</p>
<p>I won't pretend that it's always easy. Occassionally I am afraid of the future and the uncertainty that comes with it. Sometimes I think I must be mad to leave the comfortable bubble of academia. Then I look back at the other times in my life with hard decisions, the times I moved everything I had into a new, foreign place, and was a better person for it. One of the reasons I moved to Brussels was exactly because it was a new place and living in a foreign country is good for personal development. I've done that three times now, and aside from learning French again I don't think there's much else to be gained from doing it again. The kind of personal growth I need now involves creating and leading my own projects. There's a huge scope for learning there and so it brings its own steep learning curve and uncertainty. I don't know where I'll be what I'll be doing a year from now because I don't know much about the steps I'm going to take in the next few months. I can say exactly the same about every year since I finished my undergraduate course, and those years have given me more than I ever would have asked for.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-42083955063003436652015-07-09T06:39:00.000-07:002015-07-09T06:39:51.796-07:00When work and pastimes collide<p>Someone asked me to write a few paragraphs about what I like about my work and coding in general, so here's what I sent. It quite nicely summarises the transition from physics based problem solving, and other, further reaching topics.</p>
I'm Aidan and I use computers all the time for work and as a hobby! I work on the CMS experiment at CERN and it's my job to analyse the data that we collect. It's a very exciting job because we're using some of the world's largest data sets and the world's most powerful computing systems, and we're the first people to see the results. It's not a simple job, because the task is so large, and there are many opportunities for mistakes and failures, of both humans and computers. The final results we show the public are usually just a graph, or s single number, or even a diagram of a single physics event, but there are hundreds of tiny steps between getting the data and showing those results. That's what I do, and there's something very satisfying about making that possible.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://malandes.web.cern.ch/malandes/cc.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oQNhInH5pnQ/VZ54QZ2o7MI/AAAAAAAAEl0/6zUBTvCYOjA/s1600/CERNcomputing.jpg" /></a> Some of the computing resources available at CERN. (CERN Computing)</div>
<p>It's all about problem solving and being creative in how to approach these problems. At CERN we have access to so many different resources, and we are given the freedom to use them as we see fit. We're faced with some of the most challenging and promising data in the world, we're given some of the most impressive tools to analyse them, and we can play about with whatever methods we like to get the answers we need. For me it's all about working out how to solve the problems and be ready for the when the data arrive. They arrived a few weeks ago and for the past two years I've been slowly building up the software needed to analyse them and to understand the data sets we use. As it happens I was one of the first people to analyse the most recent data, perhaps the first in the world, and seeing the data, using the software I had written myself, is one of the best feelings in the world. It's not something you "do", it's something you create, and becomes your pride and joy. For the past couple of weeks I've been staying up very late and working from home, just to get a few extra hours to analyse the data, and to be the first to see it, because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. If you want a project that you can make your own, that you can build up from almost nothing into something beautiful and elegant, then data analysis might be perfect for you!</p>
<p>I also develop code in my spare time. When I was a child we didn't have the internet, and all we had at home was a BBC micro computer with 32 Kb of memory, and a handbook to a computer language called BBC BASIC. In those days the floppy disks really were floppy, they were about 13 cm wide, and had to be stored in protective paper sleeves. It was with those tools that I learned how to code and how write simple programs. I knew that this is what I wanted to do with my life (or at least a part of it.) Eventually we got a family computer and a slow dial-up internet connection. Over the years I've learned so many different computing languages, and I keep learning new languages and skills today. Some of my coding projects have been ongoing for over a decade, so it really is a gift that keeps on giving. I think that as well being a lot of fun, coding helps develop a lot problem solving skills, and helps clarify the way we think. It's one thing to ask someone to make a cup of tea, but if you have a tell a computer how to do it then you suddenly realise how precise you have to be! But once you've worked out how to tell a computer how to make one cup of tea, you can tell it to make thousands of cups of tea, you can tell it to tell other computers how to make cups of tea, you can change things around a bit to get a cup of coffee instead. Suddenly all these possibilities open up and you realise that you can do so much more than you could before.</p>
<p>Computing is all about empowerment and extending your reach to do things which are beyond even most intelligent and tireless of people. If there's a problem you want to solve, then the only limits are your own ingenuity and the limits of your hardware. One time I lost my phone and I needed to make an alarm clock, so I spent about 20 minutes making a web page and now I've got an alarm clock I can use any time. Problem solved! I've always enjoyed maths and science and this has motivated a lot of my coding projects. Sometimes someone will tell me about some theorem or a fractal or a pattern, and for the next few days all I want to do is find out more, to analyse it, to find out the answers, and with coding that's possible. If, like me, you have an insatiable urge to discover things and understand things, then learning how to code is one of the best things you can do with your time. If you want to answer a question you can go online, get a little help, find the data you need, and get your answer. Some of the data I've analysed have been general election results, LGBT rights worldwide, stock prices, and how much money I spend on train tickets to visit family and friends (which told me I could afford to visit family and friends more often!)</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tackvLYBsVM/VZ54j0tIF_I/AAAAAAAAEl8/JwSfw2rJPuQ/s1600/screenshot3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tackvLYBsVM/VZ54j0tIF_I/AAAAAAAAEl8/JwSfw2rJPuQ/s1600/screenshot3.png" /></a>LGBT rights in Europe, a temporal intersection of politics, social change, and geography, that just begs to be analysed.</div>
<p>Solving problems is one thing, but making games is another. I love to make games, and sharing them with my friends. If solving problems and analysing data are fun and interesting, then that's nothing compared to interacting with other people. Suddenly you have to combine computing with psychology, and that's fascinating. Even more than that you have to keep up with the latest technology, which puts you at the cutting edge. There have been many times where I've looked online for the answer to a problem and found that nobody has posted an answer, so it's possible that I'm the first person to come across it! I love to push technology to its limits and see how far I can push software before it breaks. As soon a a new technology opens up I'm all over it and seeing what can be done, what fun I can have. One of my current projects involves writing educational software about data collection at the LHC. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time, and it's all my own work. As far as I can tell there's nobody else in the world doing anything even similar to what I'm doing, and now I'm getting funding from a UK research council to develop this further and take it into schools. If you have an idea that want to pursue, and the patience to follow it through, then there are so many opportunities that open up for you.</p>
<p>It's not just games though, you can make some beautiful art with software. There's a mathematical fractal known as the Apollonian gasket which is where you pack a space with circles, so I learned how to make this fractal, then decided to use it to fill a photo. Suddenly I had a really cool image that I could print off and put on my wall. Even better than that, I could scale it up to any size without losing any image quality!</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oTBkthdAahU/VZ53zczbRNI/AAAAAAAAEls/TEtQSub0puk/s1600/starryNight3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oTBkthdAahU/VZ53zczbRNI/AAAAAAAAEls/TEtQSub0puk/s1600/starryNight3.png" /></a>Apollonian gasket art.</div>
<p>There is something very satisfying about making something of your own, especially when you show it to a friend and they have a hard time believing that you made such a thing. That's what I do on my website as well, I make an interesting game or a tool and for some reason it doesn't occur to some people that writing your own software is possible. Of course it is, because real people have done it and none of us is particularly special in our talents. It takes a little patience, some practice, and a drive to create something new. As time goes on we find more and more resources at our disposal, more and more experts to help us, better hardware to use, and all this makes it easier than ever to start developing software. There's an excellent community out there as well, other hobbyists who want to share the joy of coding with the latest newcomers. Some of the most fascinating people I've ever met have been other coders, people who freely share their own projects, help strangers out, write games for fun, and write software for the greater good. If you want to see some examples of open and honest altruism then speak to coders online and see what they have made and freely shared. They've made something that has cost them nothing but their time, patience, experience and ingenuity, then shared it with the world. Some things are frivolous, some are crowd-sourced projects that help people out, some lead to revolutionary new techniques or ideas.</p>
<p>It's an exciting time to be a hobbyist or a developer, and I've found that there's no firm boundary between my hobby ends and my work begins. The skills I learn in my spare time I apply to my work, and the problems I solve in my work inspire new projects. I now find myself developing educational software, inspired by my work and initially a hobby, now occupying more of my time and something that will feature prominently on my CV. It's like the saying goes, if you find a job you love you'll never have to work a day in your life!</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-21264814296746257012015-07-08T06:56:00.000-07:002015-07-08T07:00:45.966-07:00New data!<p>Recently the LHC has started Run 2 and this week there are high intensity beams delivering a lot of data. This is a very exciting time to be a physicist and what I have been waiting for the past two years. In fact, my contract as been extended to make the best use of this new data. No amount of working with simulation or theory can compare to working with real data. This job has a lot of advantages and disadvantages, and right now the job is extremely motivating and enjoyable.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-erHIhDrVWcw/VZ0qH5OXvyI/AAAAAAAAElM/bj1bIsCg_1s/s1600/CMSEventDisplay2015.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-erHIhDrVWcw/VZ0qH5OXvyI/AAAAAAAAElM/bj1bIsCg_1s/s1600/CMSEventDisplay2015.png" /></a> What the first 2015 data looked like at CMS.</div>
<p>Something I've wanted to do with new data is automatically analyse them as they arrive, and now I can do that for the first time. (I had tried when I worked on ATLAS, but due to time and technology constraints it was not possible.) Now that we have a globally distributed computing system where any computer can access any file at any time I can stream the latest data each night and run the analysis before I even wake up. So that's what I'm doing right now and it's one of the most fun projects I've ever developed! I've spent the past couple of years preparing and tweaking the software so that I'd have a push-button system in place by now, and it's worked very well so far. There are going to be many teething problems, of course, but they're minor compared to the labour that will be saved. My first large test job is currently running, analysing at its peak 300 events per second (100 events per second, once I/O is taken into account.) Following on from a <a href="http://aidanfindsanewcareer.blogspot.be/2015/04/playing-catch-up.html">previous post</a> about how my personal computing resources are not sufficient to do all the work I need to do, I've contacted IT support and been given a generous allowance of disk space, as well being able to run my CPU and I/O intensive jobs overnight. This is going to make a huge difference, and has allowed me to support my students with the simulations and datasets that I analyse. Seeing all this come together is a wonderful experience.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IAK5EYcVLTY/VZ0r6vm2ehI/AAAAAAAAElY/inkquSszLqs/s1600/ControlRoom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IAK5EYcVLTY/VZ0r6vm2ehI/AAAAAAAAElY/inkquSszLqs/s1600/ControlRoom.jpg" /></a>This is how excited physicists get when we first see beams in the machine! I was a very proud Shift Leader that day.</div>
<p>On the one hand this is, of course, very rewarding, but on the other hand a little disappointing that this isn't already being done. There seems to be a culture in particle physics that real work is about manually submitting jobs and analysing data, and there are politics associated with the notion that people should take turns in carrying the burden. We have the technology and expertise to run an analysis automatically, so why not do that? That's what we would see in the private sector. We have access to some of the largest datasets the world has ever seen and some of the most powerful computing resources ever created, it would be a crime not to exploit those as much as possible. I get the impression that I'm the only person doing this kind of work, and if that's the case then it's certainly time to move on to a different workplace. But first, I have data to analyse! I love data.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-86486083502091258372015-05-13T07:16:00.001-07:002015-07-08T06:59:06.198-07:00A perverse design choice<p>Today I'm spending my time working around a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. I work on the CMS experiment, using the CMSSW framework, which is usually rather well organised. However it suffers from a problem that is not seen in most other industries, which is that its developers continually and knowingly breaks backwards compatability. This is a major problem because different datasets and simulation campaigns get tied to particular releases, which means that if you develop your own software, as I have done, and you want to use it with different datasets or simulation campaigns, as I do, then you have to take these differences into account.</p>
<p>CMSSW uses C++, so there is no getting around the problem that the method signatures have to match exactly. As an example I have the following lines of code in CMSSW_5_3_11, which is used for the 8 TeV data:</p>
<pre>
beamSpotLabel_ = iConfig.getParameter<edm::InputTag>("beamSpot") ;
</pre>
<p>For later CMSSW releases the code looks like this:</p>
<pre>
beamSpotLabel_ = consumes<BeamSpot>(iConfig.getParameter<InputTag>("beamSpot")) ;
</pre>
<p>As you can see the implementation has changed in such way that if I want to use the <tt>beamspot</tt> in CMSSW_5_3_11 and later versions I need to carry around two sets of code. Unfortunately this isn't the end of the story because I have five different CMSSW releases in parallel, with different changes in implementation between each one, so I need to keep track of five different sets of tweaks just to get things working. For a while I had five different branches and instructions on which ones people should use, but this meant making five pull requests and five merges each time, because merging to a master branch would overwrite all these small tweaks when applying it to the separate branches. As a result I would end up with five branches diverging by more and more each time someone makes a pull request, and would have to maintain them manually, and all the while GitHub would be complaining that things aren't up to date.</p>
<p>The way I got around this was to use C++ comments and use a script to change the CMSSW release. I have to admit that I find this solution to be quite clever. The above code would be replaced with something like this:</p>
<pre>
// CHOOSE_RELEASE_START CMSSW_7_0_6_patch1 CMSSW_7_3_0 CMSSW_7_2_0 CMSSW_6_2_5 CMSSW_6_2_0_SLHC23_patch1
beamSpotLabel_ = consumes<BeamSpot>(iConfig.getParameter<InputTag>("beamSpot")) ;
// CHOOSE_RELEASE_END CMSSW_7_0_6_patch1 CMSSW_7_3_0 CMSSW_7_2_0 CMSSW_6_2_5 CMSSW_6_2_0_SLHC23_patch1
/* CHOOSE_RELEASE_START CMSSW_5_3_11
beamSpotLabel_ = iConfig.getParameter<edm::InputTag>("beamSpot") ;
CHOOSE_RELEASE_END CMSSW_5_3_11 */
</pre>
<p>Then all I need is a python script to go though and comment/uncomment the relevant parts to match the release. This way I can keep one single branch with all the pull requests and keep everything up to date with minimal fuss. When I told a friend that this is what I was doing she was shocked. What sort of organisation would break backwards comptability so regularly, especially if it means that code that works at 13 TeV won't work at 8 TeV? It turns out the answer is the CMS experiment would do that, and this makes code development time consuming, tedious, and potentially dangerous. I don't want to be around in a few years time when most people can't remember how to use CMSSW_5_3_11 for the 8 TeV data.</p>
<p>I thought things were under control, except now there is a new problem. Suppose a developer adds a new feature and submits a pull request- which CMSSW release are they using? Is it important to specify which CMSSW release they use? So now I have to write yet another script that goes through all five releases, create environments for each one in turn, copy across the source code and attempt to build it. Every time there's a new feature, no matter how minor, it has to be tested with all these different CMSSW releases. It also has to be tested in a "safe" space where other CMSSW relases can't interfere with it. Suppose I am developing in CMSSW_7_3_0, which is one of the most recent releases. I create a new release area, check out the code, do my development and test it. Now I need to test it on the other four releases, and do so somewhere outside the current release area. That means going up through the directory structure, making five new release areas, copying the source code, setting up the environment, doing build clean, then build, and fixing errors as they arise. This is not at all pretty, and it's also a bit of an imposition on the user, since it makes temporary directories in their user space. However that's the best I can do under the circumstances and we'll see soon enough if it's sufficient. This all assumes that the user is not using a sixth CMSSW release, which is something else I need to take into account...</p>
<p>CMS has made a perverse design choice that is taking up a lot of my time that could be better spent on actual physics analysis. I think that's an excellent reason to move on to a more sane coding environment somewhere in the private sector.</p>
<p>Edit: After speaking with some colleagues (who sympathised) and friends (who gave some useful advice) I realised that the "correct" way to handle this situation is to use compiler directives. I have other people using the software, so for now I'll keep the current solution, but when a suitable time comes I'll consider using compiler directives to manage the build. However, even that brings its own challanges.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-27214528259384869982015-04-28T05:18:00.000-07:002015-04-28T05:18:34.403-07:00A loss of life and talent<p>Two weeks ago one of my close friends, Moritz, died in a climbing accident. I've <a hreh="http://goodgriefproject.blogspot.com/2015/04/moritz.html">blogged about it</a> a lot on my <a href="http://goodgriefproject.blogspot.com">other blog</a>, and it's had a profound effect on my attitude to work. The decision to study particle physics followed my brother's suicide, when I needed time to myself and needed to put off big decisions about my life. I've been prioritising my professional life over my personal life ever since, but now my needs have changed. I spent a long weekend in the UK with some good friends who know what it's like to grieve, and some who knew Moritz. In contrast to that, life in Brussels and at CERN seems cold and I've lost a lot of enthusiasm for physics. I've been keeping this blog for over a year at this point and for over a year I've been planning my next steps. This has been accelerated by losing Moritz. For the past year I've used my spare time to develop plans for the future. With Moritz's death my attention has suddenly been focused more on the future and find myself building up the infrastructure I need to move back to the UK with some startup companies under my belt. For the past few days I've found myself contemplating moving back as early as August, before we get the most interesting LHC data. At this moment my heart isn't in physics at the moment, and it feels like my enthusiasm for it died with Moritz. It's made me feel very strongly that CERN is in the past and even though I didn't see much of a future for me in particle physics research, at the moment I'm struggling to see how it's relevant to the present day. I don't know if this will be a temporary feeling or not, so I'm waiting before I act on it, and I might get my passion back for one last hurrah before I move on to more exciting and challenging things.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ip4MFrAqy_s/VT95_V-gHJI/AAAAAAAAEXg/QoRwmhmA-AU/s1600/moritz2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img style="border:1px solid black" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ip4MFrAqy_s/VT95_V-gHJI/AAAAAAAAEXg/QoRwmhmA-AU/s1600/moritz2.jpg" /></a><br />Moritz as I remember him, full of ambition and on top of the world.</div>
<p>Moritz was incredibly bright and ambitious. Particle physics has lost one if its most promising minds, just as his career was about to take off and go to new and exciting places. His loss to field is one more piled on top of so many promising young people who have failed to find good jobs, in spite of their brilliance and genius. The field is harsh and cruel, and although it's just bad luck that Moritz died so young it's one loss too many for me. I don't want to spend any more time in a field which seems to repeatedly ignore talent and ingenuity (which it also did to Moritz) while there are other opportunities out there just waiting to be taken.</p>
<p>I don't want to make rash decisions based on fear, or regret, or grief, or frustration, which is why I'm waiting before I decide when to leave. There's also no reason to think that another choice won't have all the same problems. But given the choice between living in yet another foreign country for relatively poor pay and poor working conditions, and working close to the people who actually care for me when I need them the most it's an easy choice to make. I'm done giving particle physics the benefit of the doubt and at this point only a UK based fellowship where I got to set my own agenda would keep me in the field.</p>
<p>(This post was written en route to Moritz's funeral.)</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-89590993530753446802015-04-28T05:10:00.001-07:002015-04-28T05:19:17.761-07:00Playing catch-up<p>I haven't posted much on this blog in a while and that's mostly because I've been too busy. A couple of months ago I was working very hard in the office, the spending a lot of evenings out having beers with graduating students (something I do more for their sake and the sake of the future of the field than my own sake), and generally not having much rest. This is how I like things, I love to be active and I hate being bored. It was around this time that I caught a virus while I had to go to CERN to present a talk. Without time to rest and recover I found myself on the plane unable to use my hands as they cramped up and went very cold. I was taken from the plane in an ambulance, and around an hour later I was able to get myself to CERN and spent most of the trip sleeping 16 hours a day (while having more work piled on me). I took most of the next week off and rather than sit at home for a week I invited my mum to visit Belgium. Since then I've been playing catch-up, and it's only now that I find myself in a state where most things are finished and I can look to the next tasks.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-U5diUBNZfGM/VT93MIErBsI/AAAAAAAAEXE/f4K30-RlPTg/s1600/Atomium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img style="border:1px solid black" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-U5diUBNZfGM/VT93MIErBsI/AAAAAAAAEXE/f4K30-RlPTg/s1600/Atomium.jpg" /></a><br />Not wanting to waste any time, I spent my sick days showing my mother the sights.</div>
<p>This isn't particular to physics and I'm quite sure I'd have faced similar problems in any job I chose. I'm not very happy with how the aftermath was handled though. My boss acted as though excessive work had caused me to catch a virus, rather than this being bad luck. (I hadn't been this ill in about twenty years.) On top of this I was given some additional work which I simply didn't have time for, while at the same time was being told that the most important work wasn't urgent. Time and again my boss has told me not work so much on the ntuple maker that I developed, until I tell her that every other part of my work depends upon it and that it greatly speeds up the rest of my work. She seems to have a very poor understanding of what my work entails or what I need to complete the tasks which is incredibly frustrating at times. At the time the ntuple maker had five different releases for five different releases of the central software CMSSW. Each release corresponded to a different aspect of my other work, so maintaining the code was essential to everything else.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N9ywWlu038Q/VT930WnXorI/AAAAAAAAEXM/ROFjfsRYbFE/s1600/IIHETree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img style="border:1px solid black" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N9ywWlu038Q/VT930WnXorI/AAAAAAAAEXM/ROFjfsRYbFE/s1600/IIHETree.jpg" /></a><br />13 branches and 6 releases, upon which all the rest of my work depends.</div>
<p>These problems are made even worse by some serious gaps in the technical support. I've had roughly five tasks running in parallel that all require my time, CPU time, and disk space. While I've got plenty of CPU time at my disposal there isn't enough disk space to perform more than about two tasks at once. As a result if I work on one of my tasks I have to delete the files for another one to make space, perform my work, then regenerate or copy the files over for the first task again. All this eats into my time and ultimately makes me significantly less productive. There are some perverse design choices made by the local IT support, for example not making <tt>/tmp</tt> space available, or giving us access to large amounts of disk space without being able to use it interactively. Rather, I need to copy the files locally and work with them there, so I spend hours waiting for files to be transferred.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FTYOWOnK1hc/VT94f9_9fzI/AAAAAAAAEXU/sLTQ-O3jX4Q/s1600/datasets.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img style="border:1px solid black" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FTYOWOnK1hc/VT94f9_9fzI/AAAAAAAAEXU/sLTQ-O3jX4Q/s1600/datasets.jpg" /></a><br />An extra terabyte could solve nearly all my problems.</div>
<p>All of this seems to come from an attitude that I shouldn't try working too hard, and that I shouldn't try to be excellent at my job, and I find that not only frustrating, but it makes it feel like I'm wasting my time here. I moved my entire life to Brussels for this job and I want to make it worth the sacrifices. Instead I find myself confronted with arbitrary limitations on what I can achieve technically, and being told to not work on the very things that make me more productive and efficient. Even when I have to take time off and play catch up the resources that I need are not available to me. With the right resources I could be at least twice as productive, and in fact one of the most frustrating aspects is that once I'd finished working my way through the backlog the actual physics just took a matter of hours to get some very interesting and useful results. This is work that my boss had been telling me to abandon, despite getting interesting results within a few hours. If I'd had an extra terabyte of disk space two months ago I'd have had those results two months ago. It's simply a waste of time working in these kinds of conditions, and if things don't improve I might just invest in my own hard drives to store the files I need.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-55152580297029620882015-01-08T16:02:00.000-08:002015-01-08T16:02:45.707-08:00The public and private sectors<p>The last time I wrote a blog post it was on a plane from Miami to Washington DC on one of my other blogs. It was there that I wrote about the support of one of my closest friends, and about how my life as has unfolded in the past few years. At the moment I'm on the Eurostar heading from Brussels to London, so it only seems fitting that I write another blog post, this time about the future and how the support of my friends will help me shape the coming years.</p>
<p>The last time I was in London (for scientific outreach and collaboration on the associated software) and I took the opportunity to speak to some friends about the opportunities available in London. They are both former physicists whom I met during my research at SLAC in California and they have taken two very different paths. Tim completed his PhD and went into financial services, working in the city, whereas Graham completely his PhD, taught in a school and now works in the British Civil Service. The two experiences appear more similar that I would have thought. In both cases their jobs rely on their ability to analyse and manage data, create models, and perform statistical analyses. They both take the skills they developed in their PhDs and turn them to immediately useful exercises, rather than engaging in what is essentially structured intellectual curiosity.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XKhZg4itJ1c/VK7edkEzzhI/AAAAAAAADSA/tekZH9y8IwI/s1600/TimGraham.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XKhZg4itJ1c/VK7edkEzzhI/AAAAAAAADSA/tekZH9y8IwI/s1600/TimGraham.jpg" /></a><br />Visiting the Tate Modern with Tim and Graham</div>
<p>While there is something rewarding about working in science, there is also something to be said for working in something less esoteric and more tangible. I often get the feeling that I stopped doing what I do very few people would notice. Despite a rich physics program at the LHC there is a nagging doubt in the back of my mind that there simply aren't enough interesting projects to occupy all the physicists. If we stripped down the collaborations to streamlined sizes that could reasonably achieve the same goals then very few people would really notice that I wasn't there anymore. I don't think the same can be said when our actions have consequences for other people, and it would be exhilarating to once again feel that my work impacted on other people far outside my field of work. (Incidentally I've been active in many areas outside my work that have impacted on others, including my sabbatical year at the student union, creating the LGBT CERN group, and starting a one person outreach effort to try to get more people interested in the findings of the LHC, so I clearly have a need to be productive outside of academia.)</p>
<p>Taking a look at the constrasts of their experiences reveals some of the more frustrating aspects of their jobs. Applications for the Civil Service can take many months to a year to complete, and depending on the path taken one can end up in the wrong stream with respect to the graduate programs. Since I've already got a masters degree, a PhD, had three full time jobs, and lived abroad it would be a shame to end up on the slow stream, especially after so much time going through the application process. On the other hand from what I've heard about the financial services the process is very quick, and considering I'd be moving from one country to another, it may prove to be a little too quick. On the other hand if pay and promotions are performance based then the stream I enter wouldn't matter too much. The two approaches seem to be polar opposites of each other, with the Civil Service being slow, methodical, shrouded in history and red tape, whereas the financial sectors is rapid, innovative, and responsive to changing environments. It's almost worth applying just to get the experiences.</p>
<p>Of course it's also important to look at the nature of the work. The Civil Service is just that- a service for the people, and that appeals to me a great deal. I have always wanted to help those around me, and not just spontaneously, but in a structured and consistent manner. Charity is all well and good, but it's not the same as enacting policy, in fact it's often a poor substitute for it. Having had a history of student politics and formalised support structures I'm very much in favour of policy driven work, rather than sporadic handouts from those who have a social conscience. Putting political biases aside it's clear that execution of public policy can only go so far. The world also needs innovators and investors to improve our society. That's where the financial industries can really make a difference. Whether that's for better or for worse is not a simple or even meaningful distinction as far as i can see. There are those who rail against the financial industry, and mock those who take part as having sold their souls. To be honest I can't much of a difference between academia and finance. The world would be much worse off without either, and there are those who exploit both for their own personal gain. It's true that when bankers play with people's money it can affect the economy in a more direct way, but the particle accelerators aren't cheap, and we burn through tens of millions of pounds each year, with only a few dozen papers to show for it. It's more politically correct to defend academia, but that doesn't mean that writing papers is morally superior to moving money around to where it's needed and skimming a little profit off the top at the same time. On the subject of ethics it's also important to consider the moral implications of working for the Civil Service. Would I want to enact the policies of a Conservative government? If not then how can I in good conscience claim to be serving the public? I can't pick and choose which policies I want to enact, so the morality of working for the Civil Service is a lot more nuanced than it at first appears. Given the choice I'd rather plan for more hospitals and fewer cars, but those decisions wouldn't be up to me.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a7JQHwSexBI/VK7g5zamaqI/AAAAAAAADSM/pvuSmqtqR6E/s1600/DataShine.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a7JQHwSexBI/VK7g5zamaqI/AAAAAAAADSM/pvuSmqtqR6E/s1600/DataShine.png" /></a><br />I would love to get my hands on all that lovely data.</div>
<p>Day to day the jobs seems fairly similar in some respects. They work with computers to make predictions and analyse what they can. However the Civil Service has more firm working hours and more reasonable workloads, whereas in finance there are often late nights and hard deadlines, which is much closer to how I work now. To be honest if that was the only difference I'd go for a job in the financial sector. I find the deadlines exciting and they improve my productivity. I recently found myself working to deadlines for some recent classes I had to teach and it improved my output significantly. In the Civil Service it looks as though the software is quite outdated and limiting, whereas in the financial sector I'd be expected to be fluent in C and be able to write my own software. Given those choices my preference is again clear. I'd take the freedom of a C programm over constraining spreadsheets any day. There is joy in constructing something new from a handful of raw materials, even if those raw materials are for loops and xml files.</p>
<p>So would I pursue either kind of job? Perhaps. They are both appealing in their own ways, but this is not an exclusive list of opportunities. I'm still considering a start up opportunity, which requires a lot of "free" time for development. I'm certainly going to keep my options open for now and compare the different opportunities to each other. Making these kinds of comparisons clarifies my thinking and helps to narrow down my interests. The Civil Service would be a "safe" option, and a rewarding one, but I'm not sure that's what I want at this stage in my life. On the other hand working in finance might just repeat some of the more stressful aspects of my current job at the same time as lacking the intellectual stimulation that I crave so much. No job is perfect, although as far as the actual work goes in my current job I'd have a hard time finding something more rewarding. The parts of my life I'd hope to improve by changing field are related to the salary, geography, social and love lives, and medium to long term stability (where staying in one country for more than five years is considered "stable"). Settling down in London or Manchester for a while would certainly address most of, if not all of, those concerns, and I've got two very good opportunities to pursue.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-73369170045164266282014-12-17T07:41:00.002-08:002014-12-17T07:41:42.746-08:00Jet setting<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nVkuJRsLiEM/VJGjLT_677I/AAAAAAAADLs/GYgvIL7_L50/s1600/MiamiBay550.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nVkuJRsLiEM/VJGjLT_677I/AAAAAAAADLs/GYgvIL7_L50/s1600/MiamiBay550.jpg" /></a><br />Enjoying the view from the hotel.</div>
<p>As I write this post I'm sitting on the patio of a hotel in Miami. It's CMS Week and that means it's time to travel to a foreign country and present my work to the whole collaboration. Since mid August I've spent about half my time away from Brussels, travelling for work, and spending a large amount of time in the air. It's certainly one of the perks of the job and conference organisers go out of their way to make the experience fun. So putting everything else to one side for a minute, the opportunity for travel is something I love and certaintly one of the most fun parts of the job.</p>
<p>There are certainly advantages and disadvantages to this part of the lifestyle though. Spending so much time travelling obviously means spending much less time at home, so I've barely been to the gym, or even had regular shopping trips for the past four months. My social life has taken second place to shifts at CERN, workshops and CMS week, and that takes a toll after a while.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xsd7-zTClB4/VJGjpdBCKVI/AAAAAAAADL0/Md7LrJaHSd0/s1600/Danube550.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xsd7-zTClB4/VJGjpdBCKVI/AAAAAAAADL0/Md7LrJaHSd0/s1600/Danube550.jpg" /></a><br />Elsewhere on my travels I got to stay on the Danube and watch the Serbian navy sail past.</div>
<p>However I think the biggest advantage of these trips is that it gives me time to think outside of my normal routine for a while. Physics needs a huge amount of innovation and new ideas are not cheap. Taking the time to get out of the lab, walk in a foreign climate for while with a laptop and a notepad, without meetings to attend or deadlines to meet gives me the chance to step back and find new directions for my work. It's very rare that I go for a trip and don't come back with at least three new ideas that can substantially improve my current work, or lead to something new. I love innovating, I love problem solving, and I love physics. Although I'm attending talks and collaborating, this is essentially a working holiday so I'm going to do what I love doing the most- blue sky thinking about how to solve the biggest problems I currently face at work. I wish I work like this all the time, but unfortunately the hard work needs to be done too, and when I get back to Brussels I'll have to return to meetings and documentation and submitting jobs.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gs0LyEcYNxQ/VJGkDqTFStI/AAAAAAAADL8/3S1v31iEudw/s1600/Ballroom550.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gs0LyEcYNxQ/VJGkDqTFStI/AAAAAAAADL8/3S1v31iEudw/s1600/Ballroom550.jpg" /></a><br />Anticipating my presentation to the collaboration.</div>
<p>For now I can bask in the December sun, chat with the Director of the lab about the "bigger picture", decide what my priorities should be for next year, and take the time to plan it all out. It's good to be back in the USA again, and I hope to have opportunities like this in whatever job I have in the future.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-74770067457205737162014-11-01T12:33:00.002-07:002014-11-01T12:33:25.506-07:00Coding opportunity: ContentMine<p>While on a trip to CERN I met a collaborator of a friend, and we discussed options after physics. She mentioned an interesting project called ContentMine, which aims to electronically mine data and information from academic articles. It's a concept which could change the way we respond to information and academic findings, and its website explicitly says:</p>
<blockquote>"Although content mining can be done without breaking current laws, the borderline between legal and illegal is usually unclear. So we campaign for reform, and we work on the basis that anything that is legal for a human should also be legal for a machine."</blockquote>
<p>As a scientist, a supporter of open access to academic discoveries, an acticist, a coder, and one who loves to push boundaries of technology, this is of great interest to me! At the moment I am at saturation when it comes to coding projects, but this is certainly a project I would like to be a part of in the future, and one to keep watching.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://contentmine.org/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://contentmine.org/static/CM.png" /></a></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-91479597636407693172014-10-30T13:05:00.000-07:002014-10-30T23:13:42.522-07:00And now for something completely different<p>Earlier this year I took part in a stand up comedy event at CERN. I knew one of the people who arranged it last year and tentatively put my name forward. A few months later I had to confirm my interest in the act and somewhat nervously decided to go ahead with it. I like to paint myself into corners like this, it focuses the mind. I wrote a set and after some help slashing the worst jokes I was left with fifteen minutes of presentable material. On the evening I got on stage, performed the act, got many laughs and a few rounds of applause. It felt great and I am very glad I put my neck out to do what is often considered one of the most challenging acts to perform.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6z_CSe4D_V4/VFKZOtNoNTI/AAAAAAAACvg/yDGqPr7Mvz4/s1600/TRQ_7135.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6z_CSe4D_V4/VFKZOtNoNTI/AAAAAAAACvg/yDGqPr7Mvz4/s1600/TRQ_7135.jpg" /></a><br />The amateaur lineup before the show.</div>
<p>The main reason I was glad was not because it was fun, or because of the great people I met, or because I helped the outreach efforts of CERN, or because of the support of my friends (although I am glad about all these things as well) but because it was something completely new that challenged me in ways I'd never thought about before. I was given a brief that went something like "Create a fifteen minute set related to physics or CERN for an audience of people who are mostly non-scientists, who do not speak English as a first language." That brief was simultaneously constraining and liberating. There was a huge scope for creativity in terms of content, style, behaviour, and delivery. At the same time having to craft each joke to fit in with the thematic and language constraints stretched my vocabulary. For example, I couldn't say "vial of poison" when discussing Schrödinger's cat, it had to be a "bottle of poison", and I couldn't use the word "mantlepiece" at all. None of my jokes could rely on speaking quickly or using British idioms. Even referring to simple scientific concepts reqired explanations. Perhaps the most difficult part was seeing the act from the point of view of the audience, and realising that their collective sense of humour was not the same as mine. They didn't know where the jokes were heading, and I did, so I would have to lead them very deliberately from one joke to another, including a few callbacks.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-82x72zkvdaE/VFKX2pzzQyI/AAAAAAAACu8/sfexKIEJ6uA/s1600/comedy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-82x72zkvdaE/VFKX2pzzQyI/AAAAAAAACu8/sfexKIEJ6uA/s1600/comedy.jpg" width="550px"/></a><br />One of the organisers took this photo in rehearsal. It looks as though I'm talking about something dynamic and insightful instead of joking about cats.</div>
<p>All these challenges exercised skills I hadn't really used before and the experience was exhilerating. To realise you can take on something so alien and succeed is a huge achievement. Even better, it improved my general communication and public speaking skills, which is very marketable when looking for new jobs. It was an opportunity to step outside of the world academia and research, which values thoroughness, discourse and precision, to stand up comedy, which values storytelling, empathy, and a certain amount of ambiguity. In an act it's not acceptable to stumble or be corrected, whereas in an academic discussion if nobody questions what you say then you are either irrelevant or not communicating clearly enough. In addition to that the presentation of the message matters almost as much as the message itself, which is the complete antithesis of academic discourse. (One of my friends told me that with the correct timing and delivery the audience will laugh no matter what you say, which is true to an extent.)</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qNrhehSVvIA/VFKYbPYTFGI/AAAAAAAACvM/WuaNreVq6ak/s1600/TRQ_7205.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qNrhehSVvIA/VFKYbPYTFGI/AAAAAAAACvM/WuaNreVq6ak/s1600/TRQ_7205.jpg" width="550px"/></a><br />My friends came out in force and after the event they started the after party.</div>
<p>Once the show was over I was of course very happy with what I had done, but I wasn't sure what would come of it. It turns out that I didn't merely perform a set, I met many new people who would encourage me to explore comedy further. In my next trip to the UK I made a point to visit the Edinburgh Festival with one of the event talents, Chella. Next week I intend to meet some more talent, Helen, for another project that could open up a few more exciting projects. In between I've met with all the organisers of the event and it's helped to change the way I think about how we communicate with the public, and the importance of getting the message right. Whatever the next decades bring this experience will help to shape the way I approach my work and add some new edge to my communication skills which should serve my career well. Being challenged is good, being creative is good, novelty is good, and getting outside one's comfort zone is great. If it's possible to entertain people along the way then all the better.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SyT4da_o1Cs/VFKYyZo2M3I/AAAAAAAACvU/mY7wT9XHWaQ/s1600/TRQ_7319.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SyT4da_o1Cs/VFKYyZo2M3I/AAAAAAAACvU/mY7wT9XHWaQ/s1600/TRQ_7319.jpg" width="550px"/></a><br />We all take to the stage for a final bow.</div>
<p>You can view the event in its entirety with the following link. My set starts around 30:00. <a href="http://cds.cern.ch/record/1728261?ln=en">Webcast archive of Comedy Collider 2014</a></p>
<p>(All photos © CERN: <a href="https://cds.cern.ch/record/1965972/">https://cds.cern.ch/record/1965972/</a>, or @AlexBrovvn.)</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-30876242184955219122014-10-23T23:34:00.000-07:002014-10-24T00:00:58.508-07:00A handful of perspectives<p>Over the past few months I've spoken to quite a few people about leaving the field. (One of the first questions many people often ask is "Have you found a new job yet? What are you going to do?" which is premature and I think is missing the point.) A few perspectives have stuck with me, and while I'm not sure I can make a full blog post about each, I can certainly combine them into a single post.</p>
<p>One of my former physicist friends told me about how she'd moved onto jobs more closely related to technology and finance. She's with the people she cares about and she seems happier and more driven than when I knew her as a PhD student, and I think she made the right choice. In spite of this, there's something you can get from science that can't really get elsewhere, and she said that the work was like looking at the face of nature. It's almost a spiritual experience when you find out a fact about the universe that nobody has known before. That's something that I'll miss. On the other hand there's also a great amount of satisfaction to be gained from creating something new, and that's what has really interested me to a greater and greater extent in recent years. Trading in one satisfying experience for another is no bad thing, even if nothing else can ever replace the feeling you get when you make a new measurement.</p>
<p>Another friend and colleague pointed out that I might miss life as an ex-patriate, and this hadn't occured to me at all. When you're an expat you tend to meet other expats, who are living abroad to follow their passions. You get used to being a tourist in your home town, finding out the most exciting and bizarre places you can. It's an exciting experience, and there's a rush you get when you have a decent converstaion in a foreign language. Knowing that you can set your roots down anywhere is quite liberating and expands the mind. Something I should be careful about is settling down into a rut, where I surround myself with people who have never even travelled abroad, let alone lived in a foreign country. My life has been much richer for being a serial expat and I should try to hold onto that.</p>
<p>Recently I was speaking with a friend who said half-jokingly that I was a poor role model because of the sacrifices he had to make to be a physicist. I pointed out that this was one of the main reasons for leaving. We have to make sacrifices for anything we choose to do, and making a different set of sacrifices can be a welcome change. While I see that having role models at any stage in your career is important, I don't think that a fallen role model is a reason to lose motivation, and in any case I should be a strong role model for those people who want to leave the field. The only difference between my own experience and other people's is that I'm publicly discussing my choice. It helps focus my own mind, and helps others who are going through similar thought processes to come to conclusions.</p>
<p>Finally I'll mention my own thoughts on the matter. At every stage in my life I've been more interested in becoming something rather being something. I'd rather study to get a degree than just have the degree, I'd rather search the dataset for a new discovery than have my name on the discovery paper. In the same way I'd rather do everything necessary to become a professor than actually be a professor, and I think that I would stand a rather good chance at getting a faculty position if I applied myself. However once I got a permanent position somewhere I'd stop becoming a professor and start being a professor. It's not that I wouldn't have things to aim for after that, but it just wouldn't be the same. I enjoy the struggle, I enjoy bettering myself, I enjoy working my way up to more prestigious positions, but I don't want that process to end yet.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-28925597030079406872014-10-07T02:55:00.000-07:002014-10-07T02:55:53.752-07:00Health scare<p>Recently my nana was taken into hospital with blood clots in her lungs. That's the kind of condition that can be suddenly fatal, or from which one can make a full recovery. I found out about her condition on Tuesday evening, after she'd been in hospital for a few days and her situation looked serious. At the time I was in Brussels, due to fly to Geneva on the Thursday to give a talk, and then to Belgrade on the Saturday to attend a week long conference. I tried to find a way to fit in a trip to the UK to see her while I still could. Leaving that a week or more could have meant it was too late.</p>
<p>Having lost my other grandmother while I was in the USA (having visited her in hospital a couple of weeks before) I didn't want the same thing to happen to my nana while I was away. She's a central part of my mother's side of the family, linking my rather large extended family together and for as long as I can remember hosting very successful parties on Hallowe'en (very close to her birthday.) When I think of my nana I usually have memories of when I was a teenager and still living in Crewe. She loved to make us bacon sandwiches, rice pudding, and cups of tea. (I still enjoy a good cup of tea when I visit her.) So when I found out she might not leave the hospital alive I found myself dealing with the potential of a double loss, first that I might lose my nana, and second that I might lose one of my strongest connections to my past and to the rest of my family.</p>
<p>My decision to move abroad for a few years was largely a response to my brother's suicide, and it was a good opportunity to get away and clear my mind of troubles while I got the rest of my life back together again. I saw staying in academia as the easy option in terms of my emotional state (it's obviously the more challenging option, intellectually, which also helped.) But now, nine years after Dylan's death it's fairly obvious that I've come to terms with that loss and moved with my life. In the meantime I'm still living abroad while my nana is rushed into hospital while a potentially life threatening condition, and all I can think of is that I don't want her to die before I return to the UK. The whole incident has reinforced all the reasons why I want to return. There are many sacrifices that have to be made to be a nomadic scientist (or nomadic in any profession) but close family members are not sacrifices I want to make. I've been away for eight years now, and people's lives have moved on, some people have had brushes with death. On the other hand I'm just eight years older and eight years more experienced and there's nothing really keeping me in Belgium (or anywhere else) long term.</p>
<p>I get the feeling that had my nana died while I was abroad and I suffered from amnesia about the past few years, the first question I'd ask myself would be "Why were you still in Belgium in the first place?" I don't think I could provide an answer to that question that wouldn't work equally well if I chose to live in the UK instead.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-63250850875799258872014-09-17T11:34:00.000-07:002014-09-17T11:34:26.175-07:00Branching out<p>For the past eight years I've been active in particle physics research, but that hasn't been my only interest. As time has gone on I've found myself taking on more and more elaborate projects in my spare time that build on my experiences as an international particle physicist, without directly contributing to my physics research. During my time at SLAC I spent most of my spare time travelling and exploring the local (and not so local) world around me. As time passed I found I spent more and more time developing programming skills for fun, but always with an eye for what would be useful and transferable in the future. (At one point I wrote a content management system from scratch. It was rapid development and looking back I shudder to think of the security holes it had. Still, that was all part of the learning process!) On top of the normal work there were of course all the other burdens that go with being a student, such as writing a thesis, taking a lecture course, and helping with the then brand new series of student seminars. Add to that the tedious paperwork of being an expat in the US, and taking the time to react to the funding cuts on both sides of the Atlantic I had a full schedule. It was a brilliant experience, and one that left me exhausted.</p>
<p>Then I moved to Geneva to work at CERN and things changed quite radically. My new boss was an old colleague and friend of mine and we had high expectations of each other. The three years we spent working together were probably the most rewarding of my career so far. As well as all the usual work: taking part in two analyses (one of which I started and lead for a year), service work, software development, giving talks at international conferences, and mentoring students, I also took part in many extra curricular activities. I was one of the most prolific outreach bloggers in the field, making liveblogs and videos, including a 10 minute April 1st video. On top of this my programming and photography skills saw a huge improvement. I directed and gathered footage for a horror series (still to be edited and published, alas) and started a whole new set of blogs exploring life as physicist, life following bereavement and musings about life in general. One of the long term projects where I'm still active is the LGBT group at CERN. When I arrived there was no such group, which I thought was a gross oversight, so I aimed to fixed this. After negotiations with CERN management we got recognition and paved the way for other similar groups to join us, modernising CERN's approach to equal opportunities by (in my opinion) a couple of decades. Towards the end of my contract at CERN I was spend more of my time evangelising particle physics, first by reaching out to particle physicists in the field to advertise my new analysis (and to try to change the focus of the work from a bump hunt to a signal strength measurement, which was largely unsuccessful) and later to advertise the work of the whole experiment to the US funding agencies. This had style and flair that went beyond what is normally expected of physicists. Most talks we give are clinical and drab. Mine were bright and energetic, conveying emotion and wonder as well as information. I also spent a great deal of time socialising with my students and colleagues, often at my own expense, not only because it's a pleasant way to spend time, but because it's vital that people in a foreign country feel welcome, supported, and willing to come back in the future. As all this happened I tried to tie the different activities in together. I explored CERN for fun, taking photos as I did and getting the idea for the horror series. The photos I took I posted on my outreach blogs, and I would go with some people from the LGBT group to film more footage. I socialised with the people I knew the best, finding common ground between the Brits, the outreach bloggers, the analysis team, and the LGBT group, drawing on the strengths of each and making new connections when useful, building stronger social networks for everyone. In all this my boss helped with the outreach, the horror series, the evangelising, and, of course, the work itself. All the time this was documented with a "photo of a day" project, and highlighted with the discovery of the Higgs and some truly amazing conferences.</p>
<p>The point to all this is that the physics itself was not enough to keep my mind occupied. I needed a lot of other outlets for my creativity and to keep boredom at bay. It also gave a welcome break from the physics, allowing my subconscious to take over those problems for a while and quite often in the middle of doing something else entirely I'd come acros the answer to a physics related problem I'd been thinking over for days. I had to have distractions to keep my mind active and reach those parts of my brain that physics research didn't exercise often. This has become more and more important to me as I've become more experienced and competent as a physicist. Since moving to Brussels I've found myself taking on additional projects that are moving even further away from physics. This blog is one example, where I take a deep and long look at where my life is heading. It's been an exercise in clarity that has taken a great deal of thought and attention, and many people have praised me for my writing on here. Finding the right words takes practice, and I've been developing the necessary skills in many different guises over many years. This has included being a student activist and support officer (including writing hundreds of pages of literature and policy), the technical writings associated with physics, some teaching and mentoring experience, documenting software effectively, blogging in many styles and contexts from the frivolous to the poignant to the serious, to the LGBT activism at CERN, writing for audiences of different levels of knowledge and competence of English. I find I have an ongoing need to explore new and different styles to challenge myself in novel ways. I currently have a few long term software projects taking place that go far beyond anything I've attempted before, and have definite audience demographics with their own challenges. One is an educational game for pupils in high school, another is a point and click tool for creating physics diagrams (an interface which is woefully underused in our field) and another is an online tile based exploration game that tests the limits of what a browser is capable of delivering, in terms of scope and resource use.</p>
<p>However the project that surprised me the most and what I enjoyed the most was taking part in stand up comedy at CERN. Writing a comedy set and performing it on stage for a given audience is something I had never done before. It tapped into a whole set of skills I had only skirted around before and never used fully. It forced me to think about the differences between being funny to friends and being funny to an audience, between telling a joke and setting up a joke. During the whole process I received all kinds of positive and negative feedback (all constructive), learned that the creative process is largely about deciding what not to include, received praise for my performance on the night, and ultimately made something of which I very proud. It also opened up a whole new avenue of possibilities for me. I met all kinds of creative and funny people who were equally as excited about the evening as I was, each with their own acts. Again, it fed into the social life I had developed at CERN, drawing on my experiences as a physicist, as someone who takes part in outreach, as an LGBT physicist, meeting familiar faces in a new context, and realising that a lot of the talent was already there at CERN. If only I had known this four years ago instead of being more mercenary! I look back on the experience as one of the most impressive and "cool" things I've ever done, and note that on the one hand it would not have been possible if I was not a physicist, and on the other that it used skills which are mostly non-overlapping with those of the typical physicist. It was outside my comfort zone by just the right amount, and that's what I'm looking for in the next chapter of my life. Something that builds on my creative and social skills, not necessarily a distraction from my technical skills, but something complementary that makes me a more well rounded person, and fulfils me in a different way. At that point I'll find my goalposts moving again and who knows where that will lead in terms of my personal life. I have a few ideas for short stories, so perhaps I'll take up writing for a few years.</p>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-17941760347011019582014-09-01T13:58:00.000-07:002014-09-01T13:58:02.564-07:00CERN people - The Shrinking Field<p>A friend of mine posted the following video, which sums up the situation in particle physics rather well. At times it can feel like exploitation.</p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/wcbBaKPuT4I" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-36948757130504508732014-07-24T09:29:00.000-07:002014-07-24T09:30:38.481-07:00Time to get serious...<p>At the end of this month I will have been in my current job for one year. It's a big milestone because it means I will start to have my name on the papers that the experiment produces and that I'll be more free to pursue my own research goals within in the collaboration. In principle I will have between 12 and 24 months after that to continue working, and the end date is not yet fixed because it depends on many factors some of which will be (by definition) unknown until next year. The biggest factor is whether or not our team make a significant discovery, which is mostly likely to happen in the first few weeks or months of data taking. If we get lucky I'll probably be convinced to stick around for a while longer to help out with analysis and organisation. I've led a fledgeling analysis that grew unexpectedly popular before and simply keeping the meetings going and introducing new analysts is a full time job that needs excellent communication and management skills, both of which are highly transferable. It's an exhilarating experience, and character building, although quite exhausting, and it would be an excellent legacy to leave behind.</p>
<p>Since this is the halfway point it makes more sense to talk about what kinds of opportunities are available and what I'd like to consider. I've spent about half a year discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the career I've had so far, and how my needs have changed, but in terms of career development this has been quite nebulous. (For those who read this blog you may be interested to see how some of the themes overlap with one of my other blogs, the <a href="http://goodgriefproject.blogspot.com">Good Grief Project</a>.) While it has been very useful to discuss these personal factors I should now start to focus more on what I want from the next stage in my career. I definitely want an opportunity for skill development and growth, which I find is lacking in my current job. It's not that a job in high energy physics does not give opportunities to develop new skills, it's just that I've already explored so many of them so enthusiastically already that my CV is already overflowing with skills that go beyond the minimal requirements of such a job. One of the biggest motivators is finding a job that challenges me and gives me a chance to contribute something new. It would also be helpful to have a job which will encourage me to confront my weaknesses as an employee in order to make me more desirable. Staying in a job that allows you to define your own working hours and (to an extent) your own working environment tends to lead to work habits that need ot be adapted when looking elsewhere.</p>
<p>While looking at was available I found some recruitment agencies dedicated to people with scientific backgrounds, although these do tend to focus more on students than on people who are leaving the field. Without further ado, and to ensure I never lose these links, here are a few that come recommended from the Institute of Physics. First, an article from Institue itself titled <a href="http://www.iop.org/careers/workinglife/articles/page_39037.html">Working in physics: Next steps for physics graduates</a>. There they recommend their own <a href="http://brightrecruits.com/">Bright Recruits</a> service, the ever present <a href="http://www.milkround.com/">Milkround</a> which I've known of since I was an undergraduate, and <a href="http://www.prospects.ac.uk/index.htm">Prospects</a>, which seems to be run by a charity rather than a business. In addition I also came across <a href="http://www.ecmselection.co.uk/">ecm</a> who specialise in high tech recruitment and seem to promise higher quality rather than a brute force approach.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UQpfBp3dCaY/U9Ey8Y2byII/AAAAAAAACIo/ewAiMd1-KvE/s1600/ecm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img width="550px" style="border:1px solid black" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UQpfBp3dCaY/U9Ey8Y2byII/AAAAAAAACIo/ewAiMd1-KvE/s1600/ecm.png" /></a><br />Tiime to get recruited!</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-35909739898079095342014-07-17T09:20:00.000-07:002014-07-17T09:22:15.112-07:00When "interesting" isn't enough<p>For the past few months I've been trying to find the right words for how I feel about my work and personal life and how they relate to each other. It seemed like an epiphany when used the word "outgrown" in January, and recently I've stumbled across another turn of phrase that sums up how I feel. Some people reading this blog have the impression that I hate my job, and this is not at all true. I quite enjoy the job, it's very interesting, it can be mentally stimulating, there is a lot of freedom and there are many things I'll miss when I move on to something new. I think the people who make this mistake have some confusion concerning the difference between a job and a career, because I can't see how else someone can come to that conclusion. Even the first post I ever wrote on this blog concluded with an image showing how much I've had being a physicist. That photo was taken during the preparations for the LHC running.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dtjw-fEI2pQ/U8f04vOnSzI/AAAAAAAACGM/wVqzo47iO_s/s1600/youtube_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dtjw-fEI2pQ/U8f04vOnSzI/AAAAAAAACGM/wVqzo47iO_s/s640/youtube_2.jpg" /></a><br />Spreading the physics joy in my spare time in my apartment.<br />At that time the job took my life, and it was great.</div>
<p>At the time there was a lot of excitement in the air about the upcoming data. We had access to fresh data at energies we'd never seen before and were eagerly awaiting more. There were discoveries to be made, old models to test, and it seemed to bring together young and old physicists. I made videos and wrote blogs about what was happening, I mentored students and often stayed up until 2am debating physical principles with people. I set up social groups and I frequently invited physicists over to my home. We were all excited, we were all part of something bigger than us, and we were all homesick and, to an extent, lonely. I found the job fascinating and it soon took over my whole life. My boss was one of my best friends and had been an inspiration to me for many years. We would often talk about physics in our spare time, over breakfast, on the tram to Geneva, or hikes in the nearby mountains, wherever we were. Shortly before that contract came to an end the wonder of it all had begun to fade and I already had a sense that it was time to move on, so I looked for another postdoc and found a position in Brussels.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HRMo0xgZJF4/U8f3i5DLCII/AAAAAAAACGY/llh89o53i1I/s1600/20140530.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HRMo0xgZJF4/U8f3i5DLCII/AAAAAAAACGY/llh89o53i1I/s640/20140530.jpg" width="550px" /></a><br />Brussels is reason enough to live in Brussels.</div>
<p>So here I am now, in Brussels. It's a fine place to live, there's no doubt about that. The job is still interesting, and I still enjoy it. The problem now is that I only find the job interesting, and the job is determining nearly everything else about my life. I find myself single and living alone in a foreign country for a job I find <em>interesting</em>. That's not enough for me, if something is going to eclipse all other factors in my life, whether it's a job, a relationship, my family, some charity work, it must be fascinating. I've got to fall in love with whatever it is that's making me make compromises elsewhere. If I'm going to have a job that I find just interesting, I may as well relocate and find an interesting job closer to home.</p>
<p>That's the phrase I've been struggling to find for the past few months:</p>
<blockquote style="font:12pt georgia, serif;font-style:italic">"I don't want to build the rest of my life around a job I find merely interesting."</blockquote>
<p>I've either got to go out and find a job that's fresh and new that fascinates me, then build my life around that, or spend more time prioritising the rest of my life. Or another way to think about is that:</p>
<blockquote style="font:12pt georgia, serif;font-style:italic">"I want my job to work for me, not have me work for my job"</blockquote>
<p>because at the end of the day who really cares if I do this job or someone else does? Probably just me, and I could be just as happy, if not more so in a different job.</p>
<p>As a side note, I also get the impression that some people have a problem with the idea that I might, for once in my life, put my personal needs above my career. That's not a healthy attitude for anyone to have, and you can probably guess what my two word reply to that kind of attitude would be. I'm not about to stay in the field for the sake of meeting someone else's expectations, especially if that person doesn't understand what factors have motivated me to choose the path I have taken.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-14626498334173829482014-06-08T14:10:00.001-07:002014-06-08T14:20:37.708-07:00Educated, first world, young, white male privilege<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've been meaning to write this post for a while, but I keep putting off in favour of other posts that address individual aspects of the career change instead of writing about myself. Some people have praised me for my honesty and self awareness, and some people have mistaken my blog posts as complaints about my job. I actually enjoy my job and find it a comfortable vocation. What has happened is that my needs and abilities have changed and the jobs that have served me well in the past are no longer what I should be doing with my life.<br />
<br />
At every stage in my life, for as long as I can remember, I've noticed the following patterns about my behaviour. I've always had a need to be mentally stimulated and this is by far the greatest drive in my life. Sometimes in my idle moments I've wondered what it would have been like to have lived in a different time or place where I didn't have the opportunity to go to university, own a computer or travel the world. You will notice that these are all very much first world opportunities not avaiable to the majority of the world's population, and that is the point of this post. I know am privileged to have these opportunities and I am extremely grateful to have them. They have enriched my life in ways I can't even begin to describe (and probably in ways I don't even realise, let alone understand.) I can't stand reading complaints from people with an over developed sense of entitlement, and hope to never be one of those people.<br />
<br />
Once my need for mental stimulation is met I move onto the second biggest motivator in my life, and that is helping others. If I don't take the opportunity to use the skills, knowledge and resources I have to help other people I am simply wasting my time here. In the final year of my degree my first choice for my next career move was a PhD in physics, and this is was mainly because I felt a need to give something back. The government had provided me with four years of free tuition at one of the best universities in the world, giving me a decent (although far from complete) understanding of the physical world. I felt that the least I could do was to give something back so that I wasn't just a consumer of knowledge. (Naturally when Dylan died this became not only an altruistic act, it was also one of personal self interest.) For as long as I can remember I've tried to make a different people's lives. From taking on extra curricular activities at school, to helping run the student union, to being an LGBT officer at university, to helping grieving friends talk, to setting up the LGBT CERN group, to taking part in physics outreach I have always wanted to give something back. I have done all of this without ever expecting anything in return (with the exception of the student union, which provided a modest salary) and for the majority of the time without seeking recognition for my contributions. I have no idea why, but I very rarely want to be centre of attention, and put on a façade of false modesty to avoid embarrassing myself a lot of the time.<br />
<br />
My third strong motivation in life is being independent. I grew up in a crowded house, sharing a tiny bedroom for the first 12 years of my life. I'm naturally an introvert, so I internalised most of my thoughts and feelings until I had the freedom to move away from home. Since then I've tried to do my best to be as independent as I can, although at times I've failed quite badly in this respect. I don't want to be the person that needs constant emotional support or financial support. I'm someone who needs solitude more than companionship, and for a very long time I've found the idea of "settling down" abhorrent. When I've moved from one place to another I've found the change invigorating (although I think I've done enough moving at this stage that it will do little to make me a better person if I move again!) It's with this sense of independence in mind that I keep trying to improve myself and see myself grow as a person. Having demonstrated to myself that I can move across the world, make a new life for myself and invite my friends to share some of the local life I'm starting to feel restless.<br />
<br />
I'm also very good at collecting large amounts of posessions, which is rather unusual for a physicst. Many of my friends and colleagues consider it impractical to fill a moving van with posessions, preferring to live out of a few bags and boxes for years at a time. I don't understand this attitude at all, and this materialism is one of the reasons I want to leave the field. To some people it would seem shallow to want to live in a nice apartment and work in a pleasant, modern office environment, but for me it's a sign of self esteem to want these kinds of luxuries. It took about a year of counselling after Dylan's death to convince me that it was okay to want to be happy and to take the time and resources to look after my own desires. Right now my job dominates my life and for a while I defined myself in terms of my job. Once that attitude changes, as it has for me, the materialistic quality of life becomes important, and he days where "love of the job" was enough to get me through another contract are over. Again, this is a sign of personal growth. I've lived the life of a student, in poverty, in putting up with substandard accommodation, looking to the future when things will improve. I'm now in my early thirties and I don't want to live my life as if I'm still my early twenties. As with the other motivating factors in my life, my materialism isn't just about making myself happier, I see most of my possessions as tools to help me build better things and improve myself in new ways. Despite the fact I love video games I hardly own any, because I usually feel that time spent playing videos games is time wasted.<br />
<br />
So that's where I feel am in my life at the moment. Behind me lies a huge trail of wonderful opportunities, some of which are due to being born in the right place, and some of which are due to my own choices. It's been a pleasure to be a part of this and I've always been grateful. As a person I've grown personally and professionally and now I feel I'm at the next stage of my life where I've outgrown a career in physics. I've had a brilliant time and most of the time I have enjoyed the experience (with recurrent periods of intense frustration and resentment every few years.) Looking back on what I've achieved and the experiences I've had, I have no regrets, but I do want the chance to do something different with my life in the future. I can't think of anything else that I could give the particle physics community in the near future that another physicist couldn't also give, especially with my current job. It's time I took my talents elsewhere, gave myself more opportunities to develop new skills and abilities, and allow me to maintain a higher quality of life than academia offers.<br />
<br />
If you've been reading these blog posts thinking that I'm a spoilt white man complaining about his job then I hope this has cleared some things up. I'm aware I have a lot of privilege and I am trying my best to not complain. In fact all of my problems are first world problems, and that's my definition of happiness. Instead of complaining I want to do more with my life and give something even bigger back to the world. I want to keep growing my potential alongside developing my abilities, but I've found I've reached a plateau. Any job has its downsides, and I've explained a few I've faced so far. For as long as the job allows me to grow and feeds my need for mental stimulation I'll put up with those downsides with a smile. The downsides haven't changed, I have, and I want to seek some new challenges somewhere else.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-82670819735944668312014-05-22T09:10:00.000-07:002014-05-22T09:10:32.283-07:00Academics anonymous<p>A while ago, the following article was doing the rounds:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/may/01/academic-anonymous-leaving-academia">Academic Anonymous: why I'm leaving academia</a></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/may/01/academic-anonymous-leaving-academia" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/10/8/1381206333745/A-young-woman-looks-at-he-010.jpg" /></a></div>
<p>The article talks about the kinds of pressures that people face in the world of academia and the advantages and disadvantages of academia. One of the lines that stood out and got my attention was (my emphasis):</p>
<p><blockquote>We put up with this in the hope that we will be rewarded with a permanent position at a university in a town or city <em>we would actually like to live in</em>.</blockquote></p>
<p>That sums up how I feel quite well. Of course my career is very important to me, and my work is probably the most important thing in my life right now, but it's not so important that it eclipses everything else in my life. One of the main reasons I want to leave the field is that I want to spend more time and energy on the other parts of my life. I've never had a relationship that lasted more than a year. Since leaving home I've never lived a reasonably from either of my parents. It's been years since I was able to just go and have a picnic with some of my university friends without first getting on a plane (or more recently the Eurostar) at a huge cost in terms of time and money. See friends shouldn't be that difficult. I should be able to give my friend the attention they deserve. When we get together we have a lot of fun, and I try to spend the time in a way that isn't just enjoyable, but goes a little way to making us better people, whether that means learning some local history, exploring some esoteric museum, or just taking some beautiful photographs. I'd like to have time to spend a night in playing on an Xbox, but that just seems like a wasted opportunity.</p>
<p>From this point there are only two realistic options for me if I choose to stay in academia:</p>
<dl>
<dt>Get a faculty position</dt>
<dd>There are two possibilities here, either I get lucky and get a safe tenured position, or I get unlucky and have to pursue tenure (so I'd be facing pressure to work hard and compete for the position.) Now being a professor would not be bad at all. The working conditions and pay are generally better, and I'd get the opportunity to teach, which I love to do. However it would still mean putting my career ahead of everything else in my life and saying that it's more important, as if my life should suit my career rather than the other way around.</dd>
<dt>Get another postdoc position</dt>
<dd>This is not desirable because it really just pushes the real question back a few years, and time is precious. This is the decision after my previous postdoc position and it's helped me to realise that I want a change. Getting another postdoc position would mean moving to a new city again, making a new set of friends again and upheaving all my life again, and then doing that once more after the contract has finished. Doing all that just to delay a career decision would probably be a big mistake.</dd>
</dl>
<p>Some people have the impression that I hate my job, and this is untrue. I quite like my job, it's fairly easy, the hours are flexible and the working conditions are laid back. Since I choose not to devote all my waking hours to it's become quite comfortable, and for me that's a problem. If I'm comfortable at work then it feels as though I'm stagnating. So either I stagnate, pursue a goal I don't want, or choose a third option. I think I'll take the third option: the unknown! With friends!</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-32174027120591638162014-05-08T08:44:00.000-07:002014-05-08T08:44:40.136-07:00More jobbortunities (and a couple of comics)<p>Recently I've come across a couple of job opportunities via family and friends. First of all, my step father suggested I look into the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_Six_Sigma">Lean Six Sigma</a> program, which specialises in reducing waste in industries. It would require some training (at some cost) to pursue this as a career, as well as meaning a dramatic change in the line of work, but it does look rather attractive. I do like this kind of problem solving, and cutting out the inefficiencies from a process is very satisfying. It would also give quite a good variety of work, as once a problem is solved it's generally solved permanently, and attention must go elsewhere.</p>
<p>In the meantime I've also been contacted by a few friends involved in software engineering about possible jobs. This includes startup work, a permanent position solving combinatoric problems, and taking on some freelancing. One of my friends also suggested I take on some science policy work with a colleague. So there are plenty of leads to follow up where I would not have to create a new social life from scratch again.</p>
<p>Since these two paragraphs didn't warrant a post on their own, here are some comics that made me smile lately:</p>
<p>First of all, a <a href="http://zenpencils.com/">Zen Pencils</a> comic about have the artist, Gav, found his true calling. I can't help notice that the character in the comic spent a long time developing the skills he really loved all the time. It's not as though the time he spent not drawing for a living were wasted, as he was developing his real interest all along. I suppose that's the point of the comic.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://zenpencils.com/comics/2014-05-02-henson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://zenpencils.com/comics/2014-05-02-henson.jpg" width="490px"/></a></div>
<p>And another comic that has been doing the rounds lately. This time it's about people going from the mundane to the amazing relatively late in life. Not that particle physics is mundane, far from it. It is, however, not hitting the spot anymore. I'm not lost either. I don't know where I'll be a couple of years from now, but I know the kinds of things I want and don't want.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HY_GyBP2mVI/U2ultRH3k8I/AAAAAAAABwo/vmnw6uBYy3M/s1600/lost.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HY_GyBP2mVI/U2ultRH3k8I/AAAAAAAABwo/vmnw6uBYy3M/s320/lost.jpg" /></a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-36065499057070396862014-04-22T14:54:00.000-07:002014-04-22T14:54:04.196-07:00Diminishing returns Part III: The competition<p>In the past few decades the field had changed in a rather disturbing way. The number of professors and faculty positions has increased slowly, yet the number of PhD students has increased significantly. This has had the effect of making the competition more fierce and the individual contributions more diluted. It seems that in order to get a faculty position one must work very hard on boring projects for little reward except for the faculty position itself. I'm not scared of competition, I just don't want the need to compete to become more important than the process of discovery and job satisfaction. I'm not prepared to work long hours and weekends on someone else's project to get ahead, when I can be having a much more fulfilling career somewhere else. The longer one stays in the field, the more one has to cling to "love of the job" to keep going, and that reservoir has been steadily drying up for me over the years. This plot shows how bad the situation is in the USA across all the sciences:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/fig_tab/nbt.2706_F1.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n10/images/nbt.2706-F1.jpg" width="473px" height="250px"/></a></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6171117536271734411.post-13023934490320460772014-04-14T05:09:00.000-07:002014-04-14T05:09:18.363-07:00The elephant in the room<p>So far I've written several blog posts outlining the various frustrations about being a physicist, as well as some of the perks. Underlying all this there is another factor that I've not touched really touched on and plays a big role in the events that have shaped my life in the past decade. In 2005 my older brother, Dylan, decided to kill himself. At the time I had just finished the final year of my undergraduate and I was starting my Sabbatical year. I didn't really have a plan for what to do after that, and a PhD in physics was the simplest choice, and a very good backup plan. Since it was the end of my degree, most of my friends had already left, with many of them having already left the previous year. I found myself alone, grieving, and in a job that soaked up almost all my time.</p>
<p>I've described the job I had in a <a href="http://aidanfindsanewcareer.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-brief-interlude.html">previous post</a>; it was a huge responsibility with very little support. The fact that my brother had killed himself was never a secret (although I didn't realise how widely known it was until the end of the year when I found out people were quite regularly asking colleagues how I was holding up) and by sheer chance the university Counselling Service were the first people to know about the news. I was having a meeting with one of the members of staff about listening skills training when I got the phone call from my mother. I spent the rest of the year in and out of counselling as they did their best to keep me functioning properly in the midst of the emotional strain I was facing. It took most of the year to convince me that what I needed was to spend more time and attention on myself, and find out what my own needs are.</p>
<p>With Dylan's death I knew it would take a long time for my life to come back to "normal", and that I couldn't think clearly about the future. There were many times when I couldn't even picture a future worth living. The idea that things might never get better terrified me, and there is a point in the grieving process where that feels like a real possibility. At some point you lose a sense of hope, and it takes a long time to return. When it does return you can suddenly see a future worth working towards and it becomes a lot easier to get through the days again. It was around this time that PhD applications were taking place and I decided to apply to Oxford. It meant I didn't have to travel and that the department knew me. The idea was that I knew I would need some way to survive the following year, even if I didn't care about that at the time, so I'd go to the interview, do my best to show willingness and ambition, and have something lined up for when my current contract came to an end. There was very little work involved apart from showing up, answering their questions and showing enthusiasm. Even so I was having a bad day (although better than most at the time), I knew I faltered on a couple of questions, and I didn't get the position. I resigned myself to taking another year out with a relatively menial job in Oxford with the few good friends I knew would still be around.</p>
<p>A few months later I got a letter from Brunel University. They had a position available, they'd heard about me, and they'd asked me to come to interview. On hearing that they were willing to take me on, with no competition, and send me to California at an electron-positron collider with real data I couldn't believe my luck! I took a couple of days to think it over, as I didn't trust myself to make a coherent decision with my then current state of mind. It would mean getting out of a tenancy agreement (that I'd pretty much just agreed to so that I didn't have to find a house myself) and going to a university I'd never heard of where I knew nobody. Given that I'd spent most of the past year having to make new friends, and that Oxford would be only a coach ride away it didn't seem too daunting. So after a few sanity checks with friends I decided to go for it and accepted the offer. This is still one of the decisions that makes me wonder what would have happened if I'd turned it down. A few weeks after accepting the offer at Brunel, I got an offer from the University of Birmingham, which was more prestigious and had a more established group, but didn't have the same opportunities that the position at Brunel had.</p>
<p>In any case I accepted the offer, moved to Uxbridge, and after a few weeks well deserved break I started my PhD. (It's a matter of pride to me that this is the only time I've ever actively chosen to be without work. Since then and before then I've always been either studying or in work full time.) The motivation for taking the position was two-fold. First, it meant that I could use the skills I'd learned in my degree to do something useful, and at the time I still felt a moral obligation to give something back in exchange for a free education. Secondly, and most importantly, it allowed me to put of career related decisions for a few years. I could come back to the most important questions later in life, once I'd dealt with the emotional fallout of Dylan's death and the effects it had had on the family. By choosing to stay in physics for a few more years I could remain competitive in the job market because the PhD was definitely a fine career progression.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0XcOseqDJ0M/ThjoIBPVDQI/AAAAAAAAAF0/L-9GPI_ev0o/s1600/sunset.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="1px solid black" width="500px" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0XcOseqDJ0M/ThjoIBPVDQI/AAAAAAAAAF0/L-9GPI_ev0o/s1600/sunset.jpg" /></a><br />To the USA, home of life changing road trips full of navel gazing opportunities!</div>
<p>After just under a year I had my bags packed and ready to go to the USA. This was something very new to me, as the furthest I'd ever travelled was to Germany for a school trip. Now I was getting the opportunity to go California with my flights paid for and even an allowance for moving my possessions there and back. As soon as I arrived in California I had a warm welcome and found everything to be relatively luxurious compared to in the UK. It was the perfect place to escape to for a few years and during that time I found a new sense of purpose in my life that I hadn't had before. The academic freedom was very important to me, and having that freedom in the absence of all family and friends from the UK enabled me to find the space I needed to come to terms with Dylan's death and to see a future worth working towards. I was lonely for much of the time that I was in California, but this was what was needed at the time, and this is one of the reasons I agreed to go in the first place. While I was there one of my close friends in the USA had to deal with the loss of her mother, and I did what I could to help out, give her space to talk and keep her company. It was around this time that I realised I was ready to go back to the UK and it was just a matter of finishing up the loose ends of my PhD (which had provided its own share of headaches.)</p>
<p>Towards the end of my PhD I was looking for postdoc positions after a few rejections I found a good match at Southern Methodist University (SMU), Dallas. The decision to work for SMU was based on a few major factors. The most important was that my boss would be Steve Sekula, who had been a brilliant and enthusiastic colleague at California, and proceeded to be the best boss I think I will ever have. Under his watch I contributed to the ATLAS experiment, started working on outreach activities, immersed myself in the activities at CERN, and created a new analysis from scratch. At the same time the Higgs boson was discovered and I got to be a part of the media frenzy and see the inside story as it unfolded. I doubt physics will ever be as rewarding as it was that summer, and with any boss other than Steve. The other reason for accepting the position at SMU was that time was getting tight towards the end of the PhD, and any job other than being a physicist would mean taking time off, looking over my options, and asking all kinds of questions that I didn't feel I had the time to answer. Given all this, working with Steve for a few years was an obvious choice and one of the best experiences of my life.</p>
<p>However, even though I had a very productive and rewarding time as a physicist it does not change the fact that the choice to pursue physics as far as I have was one of convenience and one intended to push back the more pressing questions about my career until I felt ready to deal with them. That's been at the back of my mind for all of the past eight years. A long term career in physics has always been a possibility, but it's never been the goal. I didn't really have a firm goal, and still don't have one. In a way, everything that's happened since Dylan's death has shown me that I'm not going to have a conventional life or career, that my life is a series of unpredictable events, that none of my "plans" have been realised (each career progression has been a second or third option) and that things have worked out very well in spite of all this. I have a lot of enthusiasm and creativity to offer any job I take, and people seem to confuse this with enthusiasm and creativity that is exclusive to physics.</p>
<p>The process of grieving has made life plans seems rather trivial in comparison. Obviously I never planned to lose Dylan for suicide, so none of my life plans before then could have prepared me for what happened afterwards. Since then I've only planned a year or so ahead at a time and that approach has served me well. I'm certainly not ready to settle down in one place at the moment, and I still feel as though I left a lot of friendships behind in the UK. Dylan's death gave me a huge opportunity for personal growth that I wouldn't have had otherwise and one that is still teaching me more about myself, while I feel as though I've come to the end of the road in physic. I don't know if I'd have realised that had it not been for the more important things in life becoming more prominent.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00418951857173254621noreply@blogger.com0