Accidental Inspiration
"Where did your Surrey education take you?"
The heading to a University of Surrey alumni survey, aiming to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the polytechnic being elevated to a University. In the days when I went there, Surrey was a 'red brick' university - the new generation of upstarts, despised and derided as 'ex polytechnics'. Now, of course, it is the next generation of polys-turned-unis that fill that slot, and Surrey is an august established institution.
Where did my Surrey education take me?
It seems the most common thing people say about their education is that they don't use all that stuff they had to learn. I am lucky, and perhaps unusual, in that I use what I learnt all the time - as well as using the 'learning how to learn' that I learnt, to learn afresh. I was lucky in that my career - by accident more than design - took me exactly where I would now wish to have gone: challenging, stimulating, rewarding, endlessly changing, fascinating.
Can I ascribe it to my education at Surrey?
Well, not to the institution. Surrey, like most Universities I think, was an immense and largely faceless institution - a nice campus, yes, and accommodation and facilities and teaching and so on - but institutions don't in themselves inspire and guide and mentor: people do. And at Surrey I met, and was - more or less accidentally - inspired, mentored and guided by people. I say accidental inspirations because those people didn't know they were inspiring me - and at the time, to be honest, nor did I. But they did, and I was, and so here I am.
These were not, I should add, inspiring inspirations. Not like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society: not even really meaning to be inspiring, but inspirations nevertheless, and life-changing, for me.
I went to University to study Physics because I felt - and I suspect I am still right to think - that science was not well taught, especially at primary school level. So my ambition was to graduate and become a primary school teacher - with an understanding of science.
But University does not necessarily turn out as one expects, and life is not decided by schoolboy ambitions. As it happened, I became interested in the Students' Union - first through the Environment, but then most interestingly through the Occupation of Senate in Protest at the Introduction of Tuition Fees for Foreign Students. Yes, in those days we were outraged that even foreign students should have to pay for their universal right to an education - how the world has changed.
The Occupation, planned with what we students imagined to be the precision of a military operation, proceeded flawlessly, apart from one flaw: the Senate, being in session, declined to leave the Senate Building until they had finished their meeting. So my fellow student protesters and I engaged in possibly the most gentile face-off in student protest history - standing around watching a meeting - until they had finished and departed.
The following day, Felix (fellow leader of the Occupation) and I were invited to meet with Professor Daphne Jackson - first female Professor of Physics in England, renowned Particle Physicist, and Head of Department. Daphne (or 'Professor Jackson, as we called her to her face) was more bemused than angry. "Can you tell me" she asked, "why that occupation seemed to be led entirely by Physics students? Physics students just don't do that."
I do not remember, actually, if we managed to explain that inexplicable fact. Scientists, then as now, were mild-mannered Jekylls, not Mr Hides of protest and occupation. But the significant thing, I think now, was that Felix and I - through our inexplicably surprising act of rebellion - had come to the eye of Daphne (Professor Jackson, as we called her to her face). Which was the first accident that led to inspiration.
Now I would not say that Felix and my heroic act of protest in any way made us notable in the eyes of Daphne. Far from it: as I later learnt, the Department was in the throes of a massive, bitter and still even now reverberating split based (as I heard it) on the premise that acoustics was not a Science in the same way that Particle Physics assuredly was - a split that led, as so many such splits do, to the Diaspora of acoustic physicists far and wide, establishing notably the renowned Institute of Sound and Vibration at Southampton. So two undergrads were unlikely to have remained of note beyond the initial bemusement. But we had in some small way come to Daphne's notice: and in my final year I was invited, by Daphne, to take on a student project in particle physics - specifically on Chemical Effects of Muonic Atoms - on whose curious import (including notably Proof of Relativity, and Cold Fusion) I can still hold forth at will.
Now Daphne was a Particle Physicist, and Particle Physics is a curious branch of science that is peculiarly rigorous, mathematical, and self-challenging. I recall Daphne saying, more than once, what might be the creed of Particle Physicists: "Remember, it is only a model: it doesn't mean you really know anything." Which is, basically, the foundation for Science with a capital S - and especially relevant in the modern world where Models Rule and reality comes a poor second. Don't think you know something just because you made a mathematical model of it. So that, for me, was the first spark of guidance - of mentoring - at Surrey: the first time I encountered, and absorbed the implications of, the limitations of Science and the need for rigour, for self-challenge, in Science - and later throughout my career in Signal Processing and data analytics. Never, ever, let yourself get carried away by the beauty and elegance of your models - see the press for numerous examples of that creed being impressively, magnificently, violated, in what I would politely call Junk Science.
And having worked on a Daphne Project, on earning my degree I was once more invited to a meet Daphne (Professor Jackson, as I called her to her face).
Daphne asked me what were my plans on leaving University. To which I replied, to become a primary school teacher. To which her response was brief and to the point: "What a total waste of talent: I can arrange for you to do a PhD."
And so I did - a fascinating, challenging, worthwhile PhD in the then new science of MRI. That was the second spark - of inspiration, of reconsidering, seeing an alternate career path and being inspired to follow it.
The point here, in terms of my blog subject heading, is that my actual interaction with Daphne (Professor Jackson as we...) was really minimal. She was nice, as I recall, pleasant and unassuming - hated with a passion by acoustic physicists, and embroiled in the toxic Departmental politics that seems to be the Poisoned Chalice that goes with Departmental Headship in the Halls of Academe - but I didn't really know her at all: no more than a pupil at school 'knows' their Head Teacher. But some of that contact led directly to "Where my Surrey education took me?"
I don't recall Daphne much during my PhD - apart from there did come a time when I called her 'Daphne' - but she was on my case when I finished. I was determined, you see - always have been a bit stubborn - I had gone to University in order to become a primary school teacher, and the PhD only equipped me the better to be that. So Daphne called me in for a chat - by that time I knew her well enough to deserve a 'chat' not a 'meeting' - and did her 'phenomenal waste of talent' thing again - this time to urge me to take up a Fellowship at CERN. At that time CERN was not as widely known as it is now - but even then it was, of course, the only worthwhile place for a 'real' - that is, Particle - Physicist.
So my third Surrey spark - guidance - led me to CERN. Which, most definitely, was the most inspiring, challenging, stimulating place for someone like me to work, ever: and the beginning, sadly, of the end of Daphne's Physics ambitions for me - the amazing CERN world of machines, robots, computation, huge data, triggering my inevitable slide into the technology of those new-fangled 'computer' thingies, and Signal Processing, and Data Analytics, and Software Engineering, and well, just about everything that since has constituted my rich, varied, stimulating - and mostly accidental - career path.
So:
"Where did your Surrey education take you?"
On the most inspiring, rewarding, challenging, enjoyable career path: through technologies that never existed when I started, to where I am now. And it is the accidental inspirations - the tiny, easily missed, few but brightly remembered interventions, interactions, words - that changed and steered not only my career path but the way I work, the foundations of the approach I take to what I do.
So I said I did not owe this lucky accidental career path to the institution. But I do: because although I said the institution provides a campus, accommodation, facilities, and it is the people that make a difference, the institution is, and provides, its people.
So yes, Surrey, my Surrey education took me to here - which is a nice place, where I want to be.
Thank you, my Surrey education.
The heading to a University of Surrey alumni survey, aiming to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the polytechnic being elevated to a University. In the days when I went there, Surrey was a 'red brick' university - the new generation of upstarts, despised and derided as 'ex polytechnics'. Now, of course, it is the next generation of polys-turned-unis that fill that slot, and Surrey is an august established institution.
Where did my Surrey education take me?
It seems the most common thing people say about their education is that they don't use all that stuff they had to learn. I am lucky, and perhaps unusual, in that I use what I learnt all the time - as well as using the 'learning how to learn' that I learnt, to learn afresh. I was lucky in that my career - by accident more than design - took me exactly where I would now wish to have gone: challenging, stimulating, rewarding, endlessly changing, fascinating.
Can I ascribe it to my education at Surrey?
Well, not to the institution. Surrey, like most Universities I think, was an immense and largely faceless institution - a nice campus, yes, and accommodation and facilities and teaching and so on - but institutions don't in themselves inspire and guide and mentor: people do. And at Surrey I met, and was - more or less accidentally - inspired, mentored and guided by people. I say accidental inspirations because those people didn't know they were inspiring me - and at the time, to be honest, nor did I. But they did, and I was, and so here I am.
These were not, I should add, inspiring inspirations. Not like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society: not even really meaning to be inspiring, but inspirations nevertheless, and life-changing, for me.
I went to University to study Physics because I felt - and I suspect I am still right to think - that science was not well taught, especially at primary school level. So my ambition was to graduate and become a primary school teacher - with an understanding of science.
But University does not necessarily turn out as one expects, and life is not decided by schoolboy ambitions. As it happened, I became interested in the Students' Union - first through the Environment, but then most interestingly through the Occupation of Senate in Protest at the Introduction of Tuition Fees for Foreign Students. Yes, in those days we were outraged that even foreign students should have to pay for their universal right to an education - how the world has changed.
The Occupation, planned with what we students imagined to be the precision of a military operation, proceeded flawlessly, apart from one flaw: the Senate, being in session, declined to leave the Senate Building until they had finished their meeting. So my fellow student protesters and I engaged in possibly the most gentile face-off in student protest history - standing around watching a meeting - until they had finished and departed.
The following day, Felix (fellow leader of the Occupation) and I were invited to meet with Professor Daphne Jackson - first female Professor of Physics in England, renowned Particle Physicist, and Head of Department. Daphne (or 'Professor Jackson, as we called her to her face) was more bemused than angry. "Can you tell me" she asked, "why that occupation seemed to be led entirely by Physics students? Physics students just don't do that."
I do not remember, actually, if we managed to explain that inexplicable fact. Scientists, then as now, were mild-mannered Jekylls, not Mr Hides of protest and occupation. But the significant thing, I think now, was that Felix and I - through our inexplicably surprising act of rebellion - had come to the eye of Daphne (Professor Jackson, as we called her to her face). Which was the first accident that led to inspiration.
Now I would not say that Felix and my heroic act of protest in any way made us notable in the eyes of Daphne. Far from it: as I later learnt, the Department was in the throes of a massive, bitter and still even now reverberating split based (as I heard it) on the premise that acoustics was not a Science in the same way that Particle Physics assuredly was - a split that led, as so many such splits do, to the Diaspora of acoustic physicists far and wide, establishing notably the renowned Institute of Sound and Vibration at Southampton. So two undergrads were unlikely to have remained of note beyond the initial bemusement. But we had in some small way come to Daphne's notice: and in my final year I was invited, by Daphne, to take on a student project in particle physics - specifically on Chemical Effects of Muonic Atoms - on whose curious import (including notably Proof of Relativity, and Cold Fusion) I can still hold forth at will.
Now Daphne was a Particle Physicist, and Particle Physics is a curious branch of science that is peculiarly rigorous, mathematical, and self-challenging. I recall Daphne saying, more than once, what might be the creed of Particle Physicists: "Remember, it is only a model: it doesn't mean you really know anything." Which is, basically, the foundation for Science with a capital S - and especially relevant in the modern world where Models Rule and reality comes a poor second. Don't think you know something just because you made a mathematical model of it. So that, for me, was the first spark of guidance - of mentoring - at Surrey: the first time I encountered, and absorbed the implications of, the limitations of Science and the need for rigour, for self-challenge, in Science - and later throughout my career in Signal Processing and data analytics. Never, ever, let yourself get carried away by the beauty and elegance of your models - see the press for numerous examples of that creed being impressively, magnificently, violated, in what I would politely call Junk Science.
And having worked on a Daphne Project, on earning my degree I was once more invited to a meet Daphne (Professor Jackson, as I called her to her face).
Daphne asked me what were my plans on leaving University. To which I replied, to become a primary school teacher. To which her response was brief and to the point: "What a total waste of talent: I can arrange for you to do a PhD."
And so I did - a fascinating, challenging, worthwhile PhD in the then new science of MRI. That was the second spark - of inspiration, of reconsidering, seeing an alternate career path and being inspired to follow it.
The point here, in terms of my blog subject heading, is that my actual interaction with Daphne (Professor Jackson as we...) was really minimal. She was nice, as I recall, pleasant and unassuming - hated with a passion by acoustic physicists, and embroiled in the toxic Departmental politics that seems to be the Poisoned Chalice that goes with Departmental Headship in the Halls of Academe - but I didn't really know her at all: no more than a pupil at school 'knows' their Head Teacher. But some of that contact led directly to "Where my Surrey education took me?"
I don't recall Daphne much during my PhD - apart from there did come a time when I called her 'Daphne' - but she was on my case when I finished. I was determined, you see - always have been a bit stubborn - I had gone to University in order to become a primary school teacher, and the PhD only equipped me the better to be that. So Daphne called me in for a chat - by that time I knew her well enough to deserve a 'chat' not a 'meeting' - and did her 'phenomenal waste of talent' thing again - this time to urge me to take up a Fellowship at CERN. At that time CERN was not as widely known as it is now - but even then it was, of course, the only worthwhile place for a 'real' - that is, Particle - Physicist.
So my third Surrey spark - guidance - led me to CERN. Which, most definitely, was the most inspiring, challenging, stimulating place for someone like me to work, ever: and the beginning, sadly, of the end of Daphne's Physics ambitions for me - the amazing CERN world of machines, robots, computation, huge data, triggering my inevitable slide into the technology of those new-fangled 'computer' thingies, and Signal Processing, and Data Analytics, and Software Engineering, and well, just about everything that since has constituted my rich, varied, stimulating - and mostly accidental - career path.
So:
"Where did your Surrey education take you?"
On the most inspiring, rewarding, challenging, enjoyable career path: through technologies that never existed when I started, to where I am now. And it is the accidental inspirations - the tiny, easily missed, few but brightly remembered interventions, interactions, words - that changed and steered not only my career path but the way I work, the foundations of the approach I take to what I do.
So I said I did not owe this lucky accidental career path to the institution. But I do: because although I said the institution provides a campus, accommodation, facilities, and it is the people that make a difference, the institution is, and provides, its people.
So yes, Surrey, my Surrey education took me to here - which is a nice place, where I want to be.
Thank you, my Surrey education.
Comments
Post a Comment