Questions?

I am writing this post to discuss the inherent fear of raising a question in public, which undoubtedly resides within many of us. Most of us fear becoming the butt of everyone’s jokes for asking a seemingly dumb question, although we secretly admire someone brave enough to ask the same question. Having experienced the pangs of many an unasked question personally, I can easily relate to this thought. Where does this apprehension arise from? I feel one overarching source is the fear of being judged by others. Questions tend to acquire tags, which lead to you questioning yourself and that eventually results in hesitation. I am, often, amused by the tags people assign: a ‘simple’ question gets the ‘dumb’ tag, a well-framed question might be called ‘smart’, etc. Such tags invariably get transferred from the question to the questioner, and may have high levels of persistence.

As a high schooler, I remember feeling happy asking questions in class. Some were due to my imagination, a few would come to my mind because I would day dream in lectures and lose track of what was being taught, yet others came up when I wanted to break the monotony of the class; and I would always have one question to eat up the last five minutes of class hours! Asking questions is always easier when people around you are interested more in the discussion than in taking potshots at each other. It also has a lot to do with how the respondent answers a question. I have felt less inclined to question teachers who have rubbished my questions nonchalantly. Instead, those who would help me frame a question properly and then go on to answer it were the ones who got more queries from me later. Brushing aside a question without paying attention is probably the worst thing a teacher could do. It breaks the confidence in the teacher, sending out a message that the teacher is superior and hence should not be bugged with trivia. Giving a patient hearing to a question breaks the ice between the questioner and the respondent, paving the way for detailed discussion.

Some of my most memorable classes were in Biochemistry during my Masters where my teacher would set aside time in each lecture for questions alone. The thought of being able to ask any question, even one without any relevance to the day’s discussion, was liberating. He would then ponder over it for a minute, and give a lot more than just a straightforward answer. A good answer should open one or more windows, he would say, that allow the questioner to look beyond the confines of a specific answer and provide ample opportunities to scratch parallel lines of thought.

Shashi Tharoor, former Under-Secretary General of the UN and member of the Indian Parliament, said about his undergrad life, “In College, in addition to answering questions, we learnt to question the answers. Some of us would go a step further and question the questions!” Questioning observed and abstract concepts lies at the root of science and life. Ignoring or discouraging this basic act is akin to anathema.

An oily soup

I took a Genomics class in spring that consisted of lectures by an enthusiastic professor and a presentation by each of the 20 odd students who took the course. One of the presentations was based on Asian carp infestation of freshwater lakes across the United States. After the presenter finished speaking, we brainstormed on ways to tackle this issue. This particular problem began when catfish farmers in the U.S.A. imported Asian carp decades ago to eat up algae in their ponds. Little did they know of the fish’s alarming capacity to breed and infest new water bodies. Today, this nuisance has assumed such alarming proportions that the White House needs to sit and debate on possible solutions. A mild-mannered classmate commented that such problems arise only when we try to meddle with nature’s ways of working, to which a few people replied that human interference wasn’t a bad thing in itself. It had to be monitored rationally and any challenges should be dealt scientifically.

As I checked out nationalgeographic.com this evening, I could not help but reflect on that discussion. If the previous issue was about encroachment, this one is just the opposite. The pictures screamed of an ecosystem being uprooted. Pelicans with oil dripping off their wings, hermit crabs struggling their way through the slick, dead fish floating amidst swathes of oil, a laughing gull not laughing any more surely – these are only a handful of millions of species being put to sleep as we breathe. Repositories of endangered and extinct species will have to be rewritten all over. The birds also ingest some of the oil in attempting to get it off their feathers and wings, which could prove fatal. Rehab personnel would rather have them die than suffer a painful recuperation. So much so for our quest to drill out every bit of earth’s resources before anyone else can get their hands on them.

I am eager to see how human intervention can provide a satisfactory solution to this challenge. Forget removing the oil, the hole that is spitting out oil has still not been closed. For all our technical acumen, scientific capabilities, Nobel prizes, etc we have spent 50 days with no clue as to how we shall separate oil from water.

Chem. Graduate recruitment week @ UW Madison

Having been assigned the job of hosting a prospective student for my department's graduate program, I found myself holding a placard at the Dane County airport. With other grad (graduate) students and professors in tow, I was waiting for my guest student. As people started streaming out of the arrival gates, we rose in anticipation. Inadvertently, many of us started looking for a smile here, a wave there. We also began to guess if a certain person looked like a prospective grad student or not.

A few things made life easy for us hosts. Look for someone will a medium sized bag and possibly another backpack. We could remove a lot of people out of the equation this way. Next would be the age, early to late 20s is what we were looking for, although we knew this could lead us down many a false trails. Things started getting difficult beyond that. Specs for some, a serious, anxious look on some faces, a wide smile on others, a huge wave from a few, an assured walk and firm shake of hands... these did the trick.

Observations

Not all budding chemists look nerdy / intellectual. Far from it, I met this guy who walked up to a prof in a flowery, beach tee and shorts, with sunglasses, a flowing beard and long hair, a small backpack and the most casual walk I have seen in ages; like he was flying in fro, Hawaii! 'Not quite like what you would expect, right?', he exclaimed tongue-in-cheek to the Prof, who was his usual nice self in laughing it away spiritedly. Most guests to a prospective grad school are jittery, nervous and curious. It is best if grad students welcome them and show them around the place before they get to meet the faculty. They tend to feel more at home with fellow students who have been in a similar position earlier and that helps them ease into the things to follow. It is also a good idea to have an extended interaction session between guest and host students where guests could ask questions that why might not mouth with profs around. Having said that, it is crucial that professors speak to as many prospective students as possible. It gives the guests a feeling of being important and needed in the school. I know of schools and departments within my school where the profs simply don't care. This leaves a sense of insignificance in the minds of the visiting student and its highly likely that he or she would rather go to another school.

A lengthy session of talks after talks can be subjugated by one where each student can pick and choose the groups he or she wants to interact with. Meetings involving a bunch of students (around 5) and a research group work best because each student gets a fair idea of the group's profile and is given individual attention for queries. Posters do help in getting initiated into the group's affairs but don't go far beyond putting up beautiful pictures and photos.

A grand dinner to round it up is always welcome and much enjoyed. More so if it is in as beautiful a setting as Monona Terrace, Madison.

Hilarious videos

A friend showed me these two videos and I can't stop laughing whenever I think about them. Watch them NOW!

Video 1

Video 2

Science

'Appreciate science for what it is', says Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan, one of the Nobel laureates in Chemistry for the year 2009. Touring southern India for the first time after being awarded the Nobel, he muses rather amusingly on the nearly twenty-fold increase in the audience strength for his lecture after a group of Europeans decided to burden him with extra responsibilities outside his domain. He also stresses on the idea of science being a journey rather than a destination. In his words, 'You can't go into science thinking of a Nobel Prize'.

Without daring to make any comparisons whatsoever, a similar thought was echoed not too long ago by my roomie, Sriram. According to him, people in India (and that includes students of science) have a very blurry vision of what science is about. Most think more scientific research would lead to more applications, and a general alleviation of standard of living. In fact, this is but one aspect of science. A lot of science has got to do with the very pursuit of science, which can be understood only by experience. My teacher in New Delhi puts it simply, 'Science is not a spectator sport. To know it, you have to get in and get your hands dirty'.

To this day, science remains a niche enterprise, with a whopping majority of the world completely unaware of what it means.