Do not try to google the ‘RSP’ on Google – it is an acronym I just invented for the title of my new post.
I was discussing with a friend/colleague from France who was here at Fermilab for the end of his thesis. We first talked about the social part in research. Actually, there are two main ideas I want to share with all of you.
First, how great it is to work at a lab when you are on a great team. From the tiny part I know about research, I can really say that research is a full-time job, which by the way will seem obvious for all of you. Actually, the word ‘job’ does not fit very well to the situation and it is much more like a real engagement.
Professeur Tournesol from the french comics Tintin.
You are a puzzle part in the team – the central or the side one, depending of your skills and your experience. Everyone is aiming to bring a new skill, a new point of view on the current work to the team.
Of course, feel free to make comparisons with sports — that is to say everyone has a specific job to help the team win the game. Or you could make comparisons with an orchestra, where everyone has a specific part to play in order to make a better harmony!
And in physics? Some people have very good physics sense: They know immediately how to answer when the group raises some hard questions. Or they will drive you and let you be aware of the correct questions to consider. Others, of course, are more involved in the computing parts and enable us to upgrade our own skills and make the analysis fast.
Some will be able to give you a lot of references papers, books, etc., to make you learn much more than you ever thought when asking your ‘simple’ question. Usually, they know how to understand all parts of the research and summarize all of the stuff that is really necessary in this job. As far as I know, in my team, all of these skills are available. And of course, the human part is our own ‘glue’ to make all of us, to be part of this gorgeous team.
The second part I would like to share about is that non-scientific social part. I cannot say that I saw a lot of people being single during my previous researches internships but, for sure, it does not seem very easy to be engaged during full-time research. The main thing is that the time spent working is very long mainly because you do not have enough time to perform all the analyses you want.
For me, it is much more because I want to understand all of these things and to be quickly available to be part of the entire work performed in the team. It seems to take a lot of time to be familiar with all the tools so quickly I will work with this, quickly I will be able to do some work – at least, I hope that …
