On the importance of writing
Since starting as a bright-eyed bushy-tailed tenure-track Assistant Professor, I’ve been told through every outlet and medium imaginable that I need to write every. single. day. That it’s absolutely critical to my success. That I need to guard my writing time jealously. That writing is more important than the research itself.
I don’t mean to imply here that I disagree; in fact, these are excellent bits of advice. The problem is not the content, so much as the timing: only upon starting this position did I start hearing this advice. Which is odd, when you consider that graduate school is supposed to be training.
It’s in that spirit that I am excited to introduce The Quarks. Clever title aside, it’s meant to be a platform where my students and I can informally hash out ideas, review papers, explain new methods (or even old ones), and generally train in writing.
Writing is how we communicate our ideas. Writing permits us to collaborate with people inside our field so we can better understand the intricacies of an equation we’re developing. Writing enables two stakeholders with vastly different backgrounds to understand the needs of the other and work toward a common goal that overlaps their otherwise-disparate areas of expertise. If you can’t communicate your work and its significance, then your work never happened.
Most of the posts here will be made courtesy of my students, on topics that they find interesting and/or relevant to their work. Some of the posts might review papers (morning paper -style), while others might be step-by-step walkthroughs of new developments (perambulations -style), while still others may be of a unique style on a topic I cannot begin to anticipate.
Meanwhile, I encourage you, dear reader, to engage in the conversation! What made sense, and what didn’t? What did you like, and what left you confused? Like writing, science is never perfect; it can always be improved, but only when inspected. So help us build better science through a written exploration of our current understanding!
