Is anybody really listening?

I like teaching and I like being a teaching assistant in general. Students at Northwestern are pretty smart, so it's not so much a challenge of getting them to understand the material, but to get them as excited about it as you are. And yes, the evolution of homomer protein assembly can get me pretty excited, especially when you throw some mass spec data in there. Oh man. (Levy ED et al. 2008, Assembly reflects evolution of protein complexes, if you're interested) I did two different discussion sessions today on this paper and it's so interesting to see the different responses that two different classes will give you. One class can follow your questioning and reasoning so well, and the other, well, let's say there were a few blank stares. Did I really present the material that differently? Are they just acclimated to the other TA's teaching style? I'll probably never figure it out. And I'll take hundreds of blank stares as long as there are those few moments where suddenly the light comes on and there's the "ah ha" moment. Those are great moments.

Astronomy and Particle Physics

I have the latest issue of Science on my desk, and I'm browsing through it while drinking coffee, which seems to me to be the ideal thing for a grad student to be doing on a Friday morning, especially since I am getting over a cold and can't think. The issue is all about astronomy, which ever since I was a kid has been one of my favorite subjects. I had "Where in Space is Carmen San Diego" and played in religiously. I used to know all the moons of Jupiter and I'm a total sucker for PBS specials on neutrinos. There is a spread in the middle of the magazine, outlining major discoveries in astronomy from Galileo to the Hubble telescope. As I'm reading through all these little snippets, I keep noting the common thread of astronomical observations confirming physics observations and vice versa and thinking what a beautiful combination these two fields are. Physicists, studying the smallest subatomic particles in existence, confirming their theories of particle behavior using the largest laboratories possible. The world is both astronomical unfathomably huge and ridiculously small all at the same time. I like to sit and meditate on that and try to let the true scope of the universe sink in. It makes me feel at one with something much larger than myself, but also excited and amazed that the human conciensce allows us to discover and explore all these things that not long ago were out of our reach and past the limits of understanding. It's a little boost of morale and inspiration which makes me remember why I wanted to be a scientist to begin with, and it is much needed for those research slumps which inevitably happen in grad school. Here's to an inspired and productive quarter!