Thursday, December 3, 2009

Quick update

Since I have had 2 replies on my posts (and there aren't that many posts), I think I should continue this.

But I am just swamped.

I am also frustrated.

Dear wonderful tenured professors who hired me. I talked to each and every one of you. To each and every one of you I said -- I know some math, I know some physics, I know some programming. But I have never taken a course in X subfield of physics. And I am not an expert in Y language, although I have used and modified codes in that language. In other worlds, I think the project is really cool and I would still love to do it, but I will need the help at the beginning.

I know I am a postdoc and therefore should be able to do a lot of things on my own. But you do have to realize things would actually work a lot better if you spend some time with me at the beginning. Which didn't happen. Well not on time. It happened 6 months later.

So now mere weeks before these results are due, you could try to help me out by telling me how scaled parameter P relates to its real life value. Or tell me how to figure it out. I looked at the code. I looked at the governing paper. You agreed that there is quite a jump from the paper to the code, but still I looked. P isn't defined in the paper. And its values is being read in as a non-dimensional parameter. Now I can explore the behaviour for some made up values of P. But I cannot interpret the results. So what am I supposed to do -- a computational exercise or some science? Or I can try to figure out the normalization. But did I mention I have mere weeks? So please help.

I am also wondering if I destroyed my career by taking on this chance...