The conversation with my advisor today
I feel really glad that as I interact more with D, I become more open and dare to tell my real feeling to him. We had a long conversation today. The aim was to improve my presentation for a poster competition and the prelim. During the conversation, I asked a question about whether it is necessary to emphasize potential application when we present our research. I don't remember his original sentence but the general point is that potential application is not the only way to motivate people. He set L's molecular robot as an example. And his oscillator is also really interesting, at least to me. —> It's all about how you sell your work.
It certainly cleared many things in my mind. I remember half a year ago. I posted something:
When an apple dropped onto Newton's head and he decided to explore it, did Newton ask himself why he needed to know the reason why the apple dropped?
Can we do science just because of curiosity and fun?
I was confused at that time. Because according to my experience interacting with people, I felt that they were only interested in research that could be applied. But I did not think it was a good idea to judge based on whether the work could be directly applied — since you might never know what would happen, what would be changed 50 years later. I wanted to set Newton as an example to question those people who only cared about application. (It was all due to that I was not so sure about how to judge a work.)
When I decided to stay in this field, I was always afraid of people asking me what direct application my work could bring. I was never confident on this question, since I myself did not believe my work is “useful”, then how could I make other people buy it?
I did not like this application question, and it somehow affected me a lot. Afraid of people asking me this question, I started to look for answers from other people's work with the idea that I might find a way to defend myself. But then I got completely lost. Not every paper mentioned application. — Could I say that their works were not important, not meaningful? No, I could not...
I struggled a lot on it until today. I felt so happy that D always mentions mathematicians. Because that's the answer, the analogy I wanted to hear. (Mathematicians pursue the beauty of math and they do not care about practical application.) I was pleasant that I completely agreed with D and I just did not find people think in this way before. So I felt relief. Yes, relief.
If you do not know how to sell your work, then the only selling point you can think about is application. —> My conclusion.
Learn how to sell, learn how to present, learn how to be a good researcher.
If you are really interested in your work, you would try your best to make it perfect. You would “spend more than 100% of effort to get things done to 100% level”. Now I totally understand why HY thinks it is important. See how people in Caltech do research. See L's beautiful science work. See how D prepare for presentations. See how I put effort to build my own personal website. —> It's all because of true love. When you love it, you would think of your work as art, then you would pursue the perfectionism in your heart. And that's the motivation.
I love this field and I love the people in this field.
If you would like to leave a comment, feel free to contact me at Mastodon @bios@moresci.sale