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    The Quote of the Week: Ask Questions!
    By Tommaso Dorigo | August 11th 2012 07:29 AM | 3 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
    About Tommaso

    I am an experimental particle physicist working with the CMS experiment at CERN. In my spare time I play chess, abuse the piano, and aim my dobson...

    View Tommaso's Profile
    The way to get people to know you, attach your name to your face, and realize you are knowledgeable is, maybe suprisingly, to ask questions at meetings, as often as possible. You do not understand something about a plot your colleague is showing during his talk ? Ask about it. The x-axis labels are missing ? Ask what the heck are the units, even if Groucho's child of five could understand it. You arrive before the last slide and the speaker is saying she measured x with two inverse femtobarns ? Sit down, wait ten seconds for the dust to settle (you do not want them to see you have just arrived), and ask her whether she plans to add more data to improve the measurement. You doze off during the talk and wake up at the Summary slide ? Ask to see slide 7 again (there is always a slide seven, so this is a safe call), and then stare at it pensively for five seconds, finally saying "Ok, I see, thank you".

    A Quantum Diaries Survivor, Five tips for Particle Physics PhD wannabes

    Comments

    Hi Tommaso - now I wonder if this reminder was prompted by any specific event :)
    (Btw it'd be good in general for bloggers to find a way to rerun memorable pieces.)

    I still stand to the comment I wrote when you first posted that ;)

    dorigo
    Hi Eleni, yes, of course. I of course forgot most of the things I wrote in 8+ years... And when I come across something I like I am tempted to reuse it, but blogs do not lend themselves well to that.

    Hi Andrea, I know... And I still hold that the advice above is a good one :)

    Cheers,
    T.