would you maybe… want to shelve some books together at the back of the library… and have our hands touch when we reach for the same book

does a cute guy, girl, or enby want to study together next to the fire while we drink hot tea and listen to the rain outside

I really want to open a bookstore like this with someone. We’d be a small store that not many people know about but our customers are loyal. We’d have a fireplace in the corner where people would sit and read all day during the winter. People would come by to hang out and drink coffee or tea, and pet our dog. On rainy days we would relax by the fire with a few customers turned friends and talk about life, books, and whatever comes to mind.

hey academics, any tips on staying motivated during school? I’m not doing well this year :(

honestly my ideal style is leonardo da vinci’s quirky, slightly gay assistant mixed with a 19th century poet

grad students really tired of academia and wanting to aboslutely destroy it can i get a high five

dukeofbookingham:

Conference abstracts are speculative fiction

** Scattering Amplitudes of Massive Spin-2 Kaluza-Klein States Grow Only as O(s) **

My next paper is officially available on the arXiv!-Here’s the link:arxiv.org/abs/1906.11098

I also described the paper’s general ideas in a twitter thread: https://twitter.com/DennisForen/status/1144043275587686401

I’m stoked! This is the first of several papers my group has planned, and begins to describe something we’ve been working on (in one form or another) since late 2017.

Best wishes, friends!

quantum-friend-theory:

⚛What questions do you have about particle physics,QFT,orgravity?⚛

I’m in the mood to do some writing & illustrating, and would love some inspiration! (Signal boosts welcome!)

The response to this open call for questions has been FANTASTIC! I adore the questions submitted so far. Thank you all so much!! (and please do keep them coming!)

Attending another conference means I gave yet another presentation!

It went well overall, but I did have a strange experience leading up to the talk. Specifically, I spent most of my time prior to my talk feeling confident about it, only to become Extremely Nervous out of nowhere 15 minutes beforehand. Like, much more nervous than my usual nervousness, and for seemingly no good reason beyond my body deciding it wanted to freak out? The whole time my brain was like “It’s going to be fine. Seriously, even the worst case scenario isn’t that bad… so why are we freaking out right now??”

Thankfully, I managed to push through whatever that was (definitely something I should look into), gave the talk (I converted as much nervous energy into talk-giving energy as I could), got some good questions, and now I’m free to enjoy the rest of the conference!

If you’re interested in checking it out, the abstract and slides for my SUSY2019 presentation, titled

** Unitarity in Extra-Dimensional Gravity Models **

are online NOW at

https://indico.cern.ch/event/746178/contributions/3383809/

⚛What questions do you have about particle physics,QFT,orgravity?⚛

I’m in the mood to do some writing & illustrating, and would love some inspiration! (Signal boosts welcome!)

I’m the kind of person who can talk about topics I love for hours without tiring. Combine that with how readily I lose track of time, and I can easily stretch a 15 minute talk into a half hour… unless I’m careful.

Here’s several tips for staying on pace & not going over time when presenting (for class, at a conference, etc.) from someone who frequently does so despitea poor internal clock:

1. Practice your talk and time yourself. For bonus points, practice and time each section of your talk separately. Based on the results, edit your talk accordingly.
   
   
2. Have a plan: if you (because of nervous energy, interruptions, magic, whatever) find yourself several minutes behind schedule, what material are you going to cut? Practice this speedy version of your talk too!
   
   
3. Furthermore, memorize the main point of each slide in your presentation. That way if you need to fly through them, you can rapidly convey your primary narrative. In fact, I recommend writing each main point explicitly on each slide, which has the added benefit of making your slides easier to follow on their own.
   
   
4. During the talk, I like to keep a timer going on my phone that I can glance at while speaking; I’ve found this significantly helps me maintain a desired pace. If you go this route, it helps to know at what slide you should be on at specific times.
   
   
5. If worst comes to worst and you find yourself running over, jump to your talk’s thesis statement and thank your audience. Maintaining the overall time schedule is important!
   
   
6. Finally: running over time happens sometimes, and that’s okay! Keep your cool as best you can, and know your talk is still good & valuable.

If you’re interested, these are all tips I originally posted on my Twitter.

You’ve got this! Best wishes!

⭐ a script for starting a presentation ⭐

“First, I’d like to thank [university / conference / host] for having me, and thank you all for attending my talk. Today I’m presenting work I performed on [general topic] with my collaborators at [university/universities]. To begin, let’s talk about [slide 1 topic].”

Bad Feeling: Getting stuck on a Chicago runway for nearly two hours.

Worse Feeling: Landing in San Antonio and realizing 1. you’re 2.5 hours from your final destination and 2. the department didn’t account for this when booking your travel.

One frenzied bus ticket purchase and many hours later, and I’m finally in Corpus Christi! Now to get ~6 hours of sleep before a full day of PHYSICS.

I hope y'all are doing well! (and getting your own adrenaline through less stressful means, haha)