That's why you have to do lots of them. With lots of variations. It's nearly impossible to really understand the theory without seeing it in action a few times.

That would make you my favorite kind of student. :)

Definitely. You wouldn't believe how much physics and math I've taught myself simply from having to mock it up into my research code. I can safely say I never understood the beauty of a transfer-matrix method until I was getting my code to do 17 of them in a row for me.

YES. As a self-taught computational physicist, I can honestly say that all the theory in the world is worth absolutely zero compared to the experience of just writing that stupid piece of stupid code and debugging it until it works, dammit. :)

If it's a problem-solving-type science class, just skip reading the book altogether. Do more problems. That is all.

You know it's sad when the American Institute of Physics is excited that women have risen to a whopping 14% of faculty members.

I like it! It's like "Shakespeare does Science" with all the gender switching!

I would echo that for the physics classes that I teach. My january class has no women. My spring class has just one. Only my labs for the biology majors (which has a better gender balance) have a significant number of women.

I've come to the conclusion that the best advisors are also the worst ones at those "little things". They hold paper revisions forever, they forget things, like telling you they're going to be out of town when you have a standing meeting (Our biggest success as a group was getting him to set up a group calendar, so…

My grad advisor was nothing short of amazing. We actually had two women in the group (unheard of!), and there's two again now this year with the new postdoc and my best friend from grad school who should graduate in a year.

LOL, I know, right? My friend asked the guy, after the talk, exactly what he meant by that. How does one do physics like a man? And again, with zero irony:

Oh man, Jackson. That's enough to drive me to drink right there.

Tiny bottles of coconut rum in the gas station cherry Pepsi — got me through studying for my qualifier.

Or not. Depends on the family situation.

We should start a side business selling lab desks with little wine fridges in them for days like this.

Maybe that's it. But ugh.

That would be so very nice. Not even just for the gender aspect, but for the stupid referees with axes to grind against certain people/research groups.

Oh I get plenty of shudders and "I hated that class" too. I have better luck if I call myself a "Nanoscientist" (close enough)

Thank you *takes it under the desk*

I must be living in hell then. Because where I'm at — relatively fresh out of grad school, it's still a sausage-fest. Or it just physics that's still ass-backwards?