Hi Sierra,

The most difficult part of my education was graduate school. During my first year of graduate school, I had a full course load of classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, and quantum mechanics. All of these courses were taught by theoretical physicists and were highly mathematical. To help pay for my education, I had a 50% time (20 hours a week) appointment as a teaching assistant in the physics department. I think I ended up spending more like 30 hours a week on my teaching assistant duties. We also had to study for our PhD written qualifying exam during our first year of graduate school. The combination of course work, teaching assistant duties, and studying for the qualifying exam was very stressful. Fortunately, things got easier after I completed my course work and passed the qualifying exam. Once I finished these basic requirements, I was able to obtain a research assistant position and focus on my Ph.D. thesis research. I still had to work hard, but working on my thesis was much less stressful than teaching and taking classes.

The greatest difficulty I faced in choosing a college major and a career path was the lack of guidance I received in high school and college. My high school counselors didn't really know anything about careers in engineering or the space sciences, so I had to find information on my own. One of my high school counselors actually discouraged me from studying science in college, even though I received A grades in all of my math and science courses. Even when I was in college, my advisors were not always very knowledgeable about the kind of jobs people could obtain with degrees in science. It was very hard for me to find good information and advice since there were (and still are) so many misconceptions about the types of people who obtain science degrees and the kinds of jobs they can do.

If I had a chance to do things all over again, I might consider majoring in aerospace, mechanical, or electrical engineering in college. While working here at the University of Iowa, I have done some work testing instruments for sounding rockets and satellites. I really think it would be interesting to be more involved with developing new scientific instruments and building spacecraft. Many of the people involved with designing instruments and spacecraft have backgrounds in electronics or engineering.

Kris

My 2nd try with this: I agree with Kris - 1st yr grad school was hardest. For me that was in physics at Univ of Illinois, 40 years ago. A buddy & I had a bet that whichever passed the qual would buy the other dinner. I passed, he didn't, but he refused to collect the dinner. He was kicked out, went to UVA where he got top honors, ended up getting tenured in physics at Princeton U, where he wrote one of the top-cited seminal papers in physics. Then he quit school to found one of the first internet banking companies. Finally THEN he let me buy him dinner, when he could've bought the restaurant!

Best part of being a scientist is of course the "Aha! Eureka!" moment, rare as it is. (e.g. My latest was realizing that variations in the Sun's facular brightness can alter the Earth's clouds.) But another benefit that I didn't anticipate is that becoming part of the international community of scientists allows you to form relationships by speaking the common language of science. Because of that, I now have close colleagues on many of Earth's continents, though I'm only fluent in English, and know only enough to say "Your health!" in the other languages.