When I was a student, often elderly gentlemen would ask me..."so you are doing research in Chemistry? tell me what is this made of?" after picking up a random object. I would say, "Well I don't know. One has to test it ...." and they would shake their heads and with varying degree of politeness let me know that I must be useless if even with a PhD, I cannot tell them what an object is made of. After sometime , I got a little smarter, and would say " oh this is surely made of 20% aluminum, about 33% steel about..." at random just to avoid the sad head shaking.
Another question I would always get was "what is the use of this research?" I would be unable to answer that too, since my PhD work was studies on some complexes of one of the less common metals. Again I would cook up stories on how one can get useful materials from this(true in a way, but that wasn't really what I was doing at that time)
Those days I believed science was done just because you wanted to know. Now I am more inclined to believe that science specially in a resource-poor country like ours, must be either the earth-shaking- pushing-the-frontiers-of-knowledge kind of research, or the kind that is of use in the near future... ways to grow crop in arid zones, ways to purify water at low cost, the cliched cure for cancer, cheaper efficient energy sources, etc.
The kind that I did, though it got me good papers in good journals, were not meaningful enough and I was not mature enough to see that.
9 comments:
I disagree.. Questions like 'what is this and that made of...' need to be addressed to a quizzer rather than a PhD student. The notion that a PhD student or even a prof knows it all is one that reflects immaturity, naievete and narrow mindedness on the part of the one who asks.
I doubt if India can be labelled as a resource-poor country. Far from it, our human resource is pretty good. Management of resources is totally another ball game and I concede that we have a long way to go in this regard.
I respect your personal views on the science that you are inclined towards. But I find it hard to digest that contemporary science is more meaningful than others.
Thank you for a thought provoking post. You write rather well, and genuinely so!
Yes! such questions are of course asked because the 'asker' is ignorant.
Thanks for the appreciative words.
I now think that one must do science that is of immediate use, (Very very few can do the earth-shaking kind) because, I see so many people doing really worthless work just to get a paper and be eligible the raise in salary. Lakhs of rupees literally down the lab drain.
BTW, I don't do any research at all now- just teach.
I have often wondered what decides whether some science is good or bad. As of now, everyone looks at impact factors or a bunch of indices, number of citations, name of the journal. A lot of this can be misleading and is resulting in a mafia within the scientific community.
And please remove the 'just' from your last sentence. Teaching is of big task and I am happy that thinking people like you are here. Students like me need thoughtful teachers. Unfortunately, the gestation period for a student to graduate from a class and 'achieve' something is too long for teachers to get rewarded. But the fruit is too sweet to miss :)
Ranga; thanks for the comment. I am at a time in my life when I regret having left what could have been a good research career. I used to enjoy teaching, but of late, the students make me feel I am talking to the walls.
Maybe the research career is far from over. Check this out: http://www.xlab-goettingen.de/index.php?id=6&L=1
One of things that our science community back home sorely needs, and is quite unaware of. Just thought you might be interested. And I agree, we students are becoming increasingly insincere to our teachers, extremely non responsive and indifferent. Barring a few places, that is.
I understand your pain. I left teaching when I had a feeling of saturation and stagnation and felt that my students are not putting effort to learn as much as I am putting an effort to teach. I can't blame them as well. They had no idea what their science education mean to them other than getting a degree which could be as useless.
I started to look for opportunities to go out of situation and luckily got a wonderful opportunity as a SERC visiting fellowship from DST to visit IISc. Later, I went to one of the top most research institute for doing research in my field. This changed my life beyond my wildest imagination and I am happy that I look for opportunities and took the risk to go out of my secure and permanent job.
I hope you will find a way to engage in active research if you are interested in it.
@RS; glad to see that you could change your life for the better. I really love teaching and am not planning to get back to research now. I am more interested in teaching smaller children nowadays.
@Ranga;Thanks I will see this. The xlab sounds interesting.
I am glad you love teaching and you don't need to abandon it for research as well. I think right now there is plenty of funds available in India to involve in research if someone wants to. The exposure and knowledge gained with active research will help in undergraduate teaching as well.
Its great that you are interested in teaching younger kids. I wish you good luck and success.
RS; thanks. I just have days when I don't like teaching. On the whole, I love it.
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