October 7th Reflections

I dropped off Yuan at the airport today. In another month I'll be joining him there at CEMEF to perform a series of in-situ experiments. I assume that I'll be as busy there just as he was here, and probably towards the end of the exchange just as homesick. During the last few days, Yuan and I did less experimental work, but significantly more discussion between our data, our grain encounter program, and our ideas for twin formation mechanisms. We talked about each proposed mechanism, and I mentioned that it seemed impossible during our timespan to find the answer.

He quickly interjected, "That is not our responsibility. We cannot expect ourselves to change the world. Our responsibility first and foremost as PhD students is obtain our degree through doing good research."

At this point I contemplated what good research was. Isn't good research something that answers a fundamental question? Which in our case would be determining the origin of annealing twins.

Yuan told me something that Nathalie told him:

Research is the equivalent of a forest. We are completely lost, there are no paved paths that lead us, and instead we have to look for an exit ourselves. We don't know how large the forest is, we don't know what direction is right, and we don't who (or if anyone) has came through here before. All we can do is search for our way out.

That search is the one we find in research.

There is no right or wrong answer in our journey. As long as continue to trodden into uncharted territory, then we will always be finding something new.



Continue moving forward and continue exploring.

Ciao!