Highly relevant icon

[steuard]

I've just arrived in College Station, Texas for Strings 2010 at Texas A&M. I've been to this conference once before (Strings 2002, in Cambridge, England), and it's a fantastic chance to get a broad overview of what's going on in the field. That's particularly useful to me at the moment since I've been a bit out of touch for the past two or three years (apart from attending a few weekly seminars at Caltech). Given that the conference was in the US for once I figured this was a good chance to attend.

I've got to admit that a part of me is a bit self-conscious about not having been particularly active in the field for the past few years. "What are you working on?" is a standard question, and while I do have an answer (I swear it's going to be done soon!), I've allowed the day after day grind of teaching to make my research progress frustratingly slow. That just compounds my natural shyness in large groups of people. So I'm not sure how much luck I'll have with the networking side of things while I'm here. Still, getting up to speed on the physics (and building some internal excitement and momentum) is my main goal, and I think it'll be hard to go wrong on that. I'm looking forward to it! (And honestly, I'm perfectly willing to tell people that I'm here to get back in the swing of things: maybe my concerns about meekness are overblown.)

Comments

[chalgaryn.livejournal.com]

I have no particularly useful comments, but "Yay! Hotel internet works!" :-)

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

just say the truth. I think other college profs will find it a perfectly normal thing for a new prof to say.

[steuard.livejournal.com]

As noted in my more recent post, I've very much found this to be the case. In fact, I've been surprised by the degree to which even some postdocs at top universities seem to envy me my tenure-track job.