When I was in middle school I loved math. It felt powerful to prove something was true regardless of anyone's opinion. If math can prove it, it doesn't matter who you are, or the position you have, it is the truth. I was not concerned with constructing proofs for theorems nor derivations, back then the problem was to find the roots of a 2nd order polynomial. I was just a regular kid, Ok? not some sort of Gauss. So even if I didn't understand the quadratic formula I could verify if the answers I or my classmates got were correct or not, every time. I didn't even need the teacher for doing so. That was quite the powerful to me. I also loved my Math teacher though, he was such a smart, humble, concise, direct, kind but strict human being. Everyone in the school (not only my classmates) respected him, even people who didn't like him. I didn't only respect him, I admired him. Therefore, it was not only about the subject, it was also about the psychological traits associated with my teacher. I wanted to become him.
Then highschool years came to be. A new thing called Physics was part of the collage of things we were learning, along with Anatomy, Biology, Chemistry, Philosophy, History, Ethics, Religion, and what not. It's sort of crazy the amount of things we were expected to learn. Every teacher thought "it is just the basics", but when you add all the basics up, it's just unthinkable to really understand and learn everything. Anyway, I managed to memorize most of the things to 'excel' in most areas and make my teachers happy. Physics added a layer of complexity to math with a great perk in return, I could actually use these fancy formulas to 'explain' processes that occur in the real world not just as an abstract thing in my head. That was quite impressive.
During my highschool years I have the thought that I could be a teacher, from an outsider perspective it seemed like a good and balanced job that I could have while I dedicated my life to my true passion, which was music at the time. I was the guitar player in a heavy metal band, and even though my execution skills were not the best, I did (and I still consider I did) a really good job at composing music. With that thought in mind, I applied to the same program my physics teacher went to, and I was accepted. Nowadays, thinking about it. I'm very grateful to my parents for giving me the freedom to choose the path I wanted to take, and the full support that I received from them. I remember, my Spanish teacher questioned my decision to study to become a teacher, she said something like "you should study engineering instead". That's how college started for me. Not a really well thought plan, but more of a "let's see what happens" kind of plan.
I'm grateful I chose the program I did. Due to the nature of the program I not only learnt about physics but also about philosophy, history, psychology, pedagogy and instrumentation. Other programs would have focused more on physics and math but I would have missed the richness of other subjects. Even one of my professors kept reminding us during class that Physics was a very narrow way of seeing the world, I didn't appreciate it back then, but I did later on, and I do now. During college years my love for physics only grew. I could only be ever more impressed of the amount of things we could explain with physics with every course I took. I was in love with it. On the other side, my love for music was fading away. Even though I was still playing and enjoying music, the dynamics of the band were not the same. It was difficult to find people who were as committed as me and my closest friend (we founded the band together). Playing in a band for many people I encountered was more of a way to have fun, get drunk, and get girls than to actually make music. By seeing that, I decided to step back from the band and focus on my studies. At the same time, I reconnected with an old, burning passion: computers.
My early experiences with computers were in highschool where we played with HTML and learnt about Visual Basic. I loved to have the capacity to create and to concretize my ideas through code. It was, like physics, an empowering feeling but more on the creative/artistic side. I didn't have my own computer back then, so I remember I continuously bothered a friend of mine so I could borrow his computer and "play" with it. Nothing fancy, but changing the color of the background of the google home page was quite the achievement for me. I remember he complaining about me spending too much time on his computer, but this didn't stop me from asking him again and again to let me go to his place and "play" with his computer. I remember I was so excited about the things I was learning that I couldn't wait to go to his place and try them out during the weekends.
During college I had the opportunity to meet my college advisor, who recently had come back from doing his PhD in the US. He had a project in mind, during his PhD he got familiar with a C++ software package that is, to this day, vastly used in the field of High Energy Physics. He wanted to see how could we leverage such package to create simulations to be used in physics teaching and he threw that idea on me. I had no idea what I was getting into. I had barely touched C++ before, and I had no idea of what a GUI was, but even though I was scared, I was excited and jumped right into the project. My advisor gave me plenty of freedom to explore and learn, he was encouraging and supportive trough the whole process. Every little achievement I shared with him was celebrated. I sometimes was scared that he realized I was not as good as he thought I was. But he was always excited to see what I had done, and always showing excitement about the development of the project.
During my later years in college I also met a colleague from my advisor, who later became my Computational Physics professor. He, as my advisor, did his PhD in the US in the same field. He is a remarkable human being, not only very smart, but also very humble and kind. During the course we went through some projects that were challenging but that taught me a lot about coding, and physics data in the Nuclear Physics field. I felt lost most of the time when he was talking about physics concepts but once I got my hands on the data and the code, I felt I knew what I was doing and I always had him to help me out when I was stuck or when I had questions.
I graduated from college writing a book about the project I did with my advisor. I am still very proud of it, I took care of every detail of it, from the cover, to the vectorized figures, to the content. Then I went through a kind of dark period in my life. Being a teacher was not what I expected it to be. I was not happy, what I thought it was going to be a balanced job was not balanced at all. There are a lot of things outside of teaching and the subject you love that you have to deal with. I was not prepared for that and I was quite unfulfilled. It was also not fair for the students to have a teacher that came to class stressed out about things that were not related to the subject, thinking about parents that didn't offer support, the sheer amount of students in the classroom, the planning of the classes, the grading, the bureaucracy, the politics. I didn't take that into account.
Fortunately, the same professor that taught me Computational Physics kept insisting that I should do a PhD in the US. He had more faith in me than I had in myself. I applied to many programs abroad. Some of my college classmates went to Mexico, some of them went to Spain, Some to Brazil. And I tried, I applied to Chile, to Spain, to a couple of programs in Brazil, even in Colombia. I was rejected by all of them. But 'this guy' kept insisting that I should apply to the US, where I didn't even speak the language. Nuts. Right?
Time passed by, and the same professor asked me for a CV, I didn't have one. But then I got plenty of time because of a motorbike accident I had. I wrote a CV and sent it to him. My attitude was "Look, I'm doing this because you asked me to, and you're someone I highly respect. But I have no hope of getting accepted, I have been rejected by all the programs I applied to, there's no chance". After a couple of months I received an email from a professor in the US, asking me if I was interested in doing a PhD in her group mentioning that she had seen my CV and that my skills were a good fit for her group. I was shocked. I dived right into it, during the recovery of my accident I watched movies in English learning a ton of vocabulary from the subtitles, I read news from The Guardian, listen to VoA and the BBC Podcasts, I listened to music and actually read and learnt the lyrics of songs that I liked, I can assure you that the vocabulary you learn from reading Death metal lyrics is not something that will help you on a day-to-day basis, but it is something that will make you appreciate the music even more. While I was learning English, I was also preparing all the paperwork I needed to apply to the program. Preparing for the TOEFL, the visa application, etc. I'm grateful for the support I received from who became my first PhD advisor (I had two), she was always encouraging and ready to nudge people whenever I needed a faster response. She was constantly checking in and guiding me through the whole admission process.
I got accepted to the program, I took my first international flight from Bogotá to Washington, DC. I didn't estimate back then the magnitude of this decision. I was leaving my family, my friends, my country, my language, everything. I came to the US during a hot summer day wearing my leather jacket and loaded with a backpack full of clothes. That was it. I didn't even know what was this thing called seasons. Somehow my attitude was once again "let's see what happens". Spontaneity has brought to my life either the most fulfilling rewards or the most valuable (and sometimes painful) lessons. I put my heart and soul into the program. Classes were hard. I needed to review a lot of things I had forgotten and it implied studying a lot and sacrificing many aspects of my life. I renounced to anything that was not related to my studies. I spent most of the time studying, or in the lab. I'm glad one of my classmates was willing to study with me, we struggled together, we lifted each other up when we were down, and I should say I was down a lot of times. I constantly felt I was not good enough, that I was not smart enough, that I was not capable of doing what was expected from me. But I kept pushing through. My performance on the research side was better than on my classes but I went through my coursework and passed my qualifying exams.
After my qualifying exams I decided to switch groups. I asked the professor leading the High Energy Physics group if I could join his group. He accepted and gave me plenty of freedom, something I was yearning for. Now, it was me being part of CERN, the place where the Higgs Boson was discovered. The little kid that was solving quadratic equations couldn't have imagined that he would be part of such a big thing. I looked for projects within the collaboration that were heavily based on software development. I had the opportunity to work with more senior people in the collaboration. In one of the groups I was the youngest individual contributor, I was in the same meeting filled with postdocs, professor and senior researchers. This time I was not scared, because most of them were not only smart and knowledgeable but kind and humble which is not always the case in the field. Some of them were mean but honest, People who spoke their mind, something I have always valued. I received tough feedback from them, but it was worthy because I learnt a lot. My advisor was very supportive, he said yes to every project I wanted to work on, that's probably what I liked the most about him, he trusted me and that trust created within me a sense of responsibility and a desire to excel at what I was doing. The quality of my work was a form of tribute to the trust he had in me.
Fast forward, I completed my dissertation, defended it, and graduated. My Defense was also marked with distinction, not to brag but I wanted to be accurate ;) . Not without struggles, but I aimed to give my best in every aspect of my career and I have the certainty that I did. After graduating from my PhD driven by the increasing interest in A.I and Machine Learning I decided to move to industry and I'm currently working with an amazing team of people. I can't emphasize enough how grateful I am to have met the kind of people I met during my journey and I aim to offer through my attitude and actions the same kind of support and encouragement I received from them. Without them, I wouldn't be where I am today. It comes back to that comment from my Spanish teacher "You should study engineering instead", I do a bit of Engineering right now, but I'm so glad I walked the path the way I did.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Colombia License.
I'm committed to the privacy of k-lab users. Each time you access content delivered by http://www.k-lab.tk/, information like referrer, anonymized IP (255.255.X.X), date, time and requested resources are sent to a Google Analytics. This is done in order to know user preferences to adapt our content for users needs and to detect failures in the website. However, respecting your decision we don't store any of this information if you have enabled Do Not Track option in your web browser (Preferences/Privacy/Tracking/Tell Websites I do not want to be tracked). Protect your privacy.