Navigating nonlinear career paths -- a personal perspective

Today, I would like to share my personal motivation for studying physics and eventually pursuing a PhD. You will realize that my motivation has changed quite a bit over time, but I firmly believe that I always followed my heart and trusted my instincts. Perhaps the main takeaway from this blog post is this: Always follow your passion, stay open to new opportunities, and do not view shifting gears as a negative thing. I hope that my personal story will inspire some of the readers and encourage folks to chase their dreams. While many steps in my CV may seem logical and straightforward, I would state that, in some regards, my career has taken a nonlinear path.

 

My initial passion was astrophysics. As a kid, I was captivated by documentaries on German cable TV that dealt with black holes, supernovae, comets and the Big Bang. I also loved watching the science-fiction series "Stargate" and admired the role of the astrophysicist Dr. Samantha Carter, who could eloquently explain everything that is going on in the universe. In high school, physics was not necessarily my best subject, but I certainly did enjoy it. Other contendors for my future college major were computer science and electrical engineering, but ultimately I decided to pick physics. My decision was primarily driven by the hope to find answers to the big questions about the universe while still being able to secure a decent job in the future, since physicists appeared to be in reasonably great demand in the job market.

Having the right mindset for a physics degree

Recently, I had a nice discussion with a colleague about the mindset of undergraduate physics freshmen (i.e., first-year) students. This conversation has inspired today's blogpost on the very same topic. 

Many things are different at a university as compared to high schools. Physics students oftentimes feel overwhelmed during their first semesters at college. Professors are rushing through the course material, homework is due every week in multiple classes, and a major part of the fellow students appear to be geniuses. They seem to grasp even complex contents very quickly, do not need to spend much time on their homework and ask a lot of smart questions during the lectures. One might get the impression that they do not need to work hard to pass exams and achieve their goals. These are only a few examples of the mindset that many students tend to develop. I would like to argue that such thoughts are largely unfounded and are making life unnecessarily harder for many students.