Physicist...

When I first started this blog, almost twelve years ago now, I needed to pick a domain name to use, and after some thought I settled on "physicistfarmer". It wasn't, perhaps, the deepest of thought, but it expressed something of a dual nature: on the one hand, an aspiration to be a physicist, one who studies the deepest fundamental workings of nature, to answer that insatiable thirst to know why things work. And on the other, a recognition of the past and what felt like the present, the generations of farmers in Nebraska in my family and the feeling that, for all my newfangled learning, perhaps I was a bit out of my depth in college. (And also "physicistfarmer" made for a nice alliteration, though I have deeply regretted it many a time since when trying to point people towards this blog!)

Today the first part of that aspiration is finally fulfilled, as I passed my thesis defense this morning and feel I can finally call myself an (astro)physicist. Tonight it feels like I can finally let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding for a long, long time, perhaps ever since I started getting a PhD. The process isn't completely finished yet, as I still need to make some minor revisions to my thesis and turn it in again, but those are formalities; traditionally, you're allowed to start using the title of "Doctor" from when the review panel gives you a passing grade.

I'm still struggling to process it all, in some ways. It was certainly an interesting, four-country Zoom call! Besides me and the coordinator from Swinburne, on my panel I had Dainis Dravins in Sweden, a well-respected stellar observationalist some of whose papers (going back to 1982!) I've cited and were instrumental in understanding some of the systematic errors we encountered in stellar atmospheres, and Susana Landau in Argentina, a theorist in the field of varying constants whom I wasn't as immediately familiar with but still recognized by name. They had some questions and some interesting suggestions related to my thesis and while I certainly found the entire affair rather stressful it went off without a hitch. I've spent the rest of the day coming down from the adrenaline high, and am still a bit exhausted, so I'll keep this post short.

Oh, and what about the second second half of that domain name, you ask? Well...keep an eye out for tomorrow's post to hear about some recent developments in the "farmer" area! A hui hou!