Saad's Stories

If you’ve been around longer than 20 years, you’ve done a lot of things, a lot of things have happened to you, and it becomes hard to remember why you chose one path and not another. In my case, I’m in my second year out of school and working, and I have to admit that if someone asked me in high school, “Where will you be in 10 years?” the answer would not have been working on the next generation of materials and their interaction with humans and the environment.

I’ve been working on a series I call Connecting the Dots of my Career to help myself make sense of where I’ve been and how my interests have grown and evolved, so I may better understand where I’m looking to go next. The writing is driven by my school and work experiences, but I’ve found that many of my personal relationships are inextricable from the narrative. I’ve been writing it in parts, and here is each one with its own teaser.

Part 1. My plan changed a few times in college:

I chose Chemical Engineering. Why I made this choice, I cannot remember today. But 3 useful things came out of that choice:

#3 - Because of a scheduling error, a ChemE course in Cell Engineering that all of us wanted to take junior year conflicted with the required Physiological Foundations course… What course did we end up taking? Micro/Nanotechnology.

Part 2. Laying the groundwork for breakthroughs unknown, in my first two years of grad school:

The funny/unexpected thing about all those AFM hours is that it ended up being a minimal component of the ellipsometry work… but later it was crucial to my report on free-standing films and for measurements of sub-nanometer thickness graphene sheets.

Part 3. The lowest point of my time in grad school occurred, but I turned things around to graduate on a strong note, while several useful ideas were planted, in my last three years:

Looking back at it now, I realize I effectively staked my PhD career on this technique… I faced a lengthy struggle to make it work well… An accumulation of frustrations gave rise to self-doubt. Thoughts of “file paperwork to get the Masters degree and leave” crossed my mind.

Part 4. To Sweden and back, with a clearer understanding of the impact I want my work to have:

Nanomaterials will improve many technologies, and consumers will compel us to prove that the materials don’t harm them. Having come down this path, immersing myself in nano-health-risk studies and gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges in using CNMs commercially, I’ve begun to envision my potential next step. I believe my knowledge can contribute to the development of actual products, not just published papers and patents. I think the following two areas are ones in which my understanding and skills may prove effective…

The title of these posts, Connecting the Dots of my Career, is inspired by the first story in the famous Steve Jobs commencement speech.

On a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky. She saw no Indians now; she saw flour-mills and the blinking windows of skyscrapers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Nor was she thinking of squaws and portages, and the Yankee fur-traders whose shadows were all about her. She was meditating upon walnut fudge, the plays of Brieux, the reasons why heels run over, and the fact that the chemistry instructor had stared at the new coiffure which concealed her ears.

A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom. She lifted her arms, she leaned back against the wind, her skirt dipped and flared, a lock blew wild. A girl on a hilltop; credulous, plastic, young; drinking the air as she longed to drink life. The eternal aching comedy of expectant youth.

It is Carol Milford, fleeing for an hour from Blodgett College.

The days of pioneering, of lassies in sunbonnets, and bears killed with axes in piney clearings, are deader now than Camelot; and a rebellious girl is the spirit of that bewildered empire called the American Middlewest.

– The opening passage of Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

Ebonee Walker

Get out your headphones and iPods!

Instead of a written post, I’ve made a podcast for you. Joining me on this podcast is my good friend Ebonee Walker, who is currently a grad student and one of those people who excel at the art of conversation.

Our topic is the title of this post, but in 16 minutes we zip our way through a discussion of ex-girlfriends, maid services, eating cereal, music by Babyface, and house husbands.

How to Listen

The podcast is in mp3 format. To play it through your browser or iTunes, just click on the link below. For iPod listening, you can download it by right-clicking and going with your browser’s expression for Download file as…

Podcast file: Every_graduate_student_needs_a_wife.mp3

This podcast is definitely an experiment, so if there’s one thing you enjoy about the podcast, do me this favor: leave a comment telling what you liked so we can do it for you again and share the joy by sending the link to someone you know.

If there’s something I could do to make a better podcast, do me this favor: leave a comment suggesting an improvement.