I thought second year graduate classes would be easier than first-year classes. Think about it: first year classes are mainly grinders, trying to get students up to par in terms of the lowest common denominator. Students of the physical sciences, regardless of discipline or placement along the experimentalist/theorist continuum, are expect to know basic things like how to manipulate differential equations (or at least know what Matlab command to code to crunch the numbers), quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics, to varying degrees. In contrast, second year classes are primarily geared towards students with inclinations toward more specific interests. Professors will realize that second-years in special topics classes will be crammed full of research responsibilities that are much less the focus of first years. So second year should be a piece of cake, n’est ce pas?

Think again.

If the level of intellectual achievement could be quantified and plotted as a function of academic standing, it would be basically a curve that increases with them. There there is a humongous jump from senior undergraduate to first-year graduate level, which comes to many smug self-conceited ink-wet-on-diploma graduates as a complete shock. How could they, who managed to breeze through even the so-called toughest undergraduate classes, have descended to the level of struggling through tedious (20 page) problem sets with other uncomprehending, clueless first-years? OMG.

The panic then builds up to a frenzy until quals are over. You’d think that departments would be torturous enough to mandate GREs, but wait till you get in, you’ll still have to prove your worth and qualify for PhD candidacy! Many people at this juncture are content to quit with a consolation prize;l a Master’s degree. Oh well, at least you tried.

Those who pass, of course, and get into their choice of research group (what a story that one innocuous statement is) then get their hands dirty in research, only to have advisors advise them to go back for more classes. This is when the second roadbump in the curve comes in. When they said that first year was introductory, one laughed at the notion that anything in graduate school could be called “elementary”. Then one ends up in a second class, only to realize that they really meant it.

At times, one feels like running a sharp pencil through Einstein, Newton, Gauss, Hamilton, Schroedinger, Onsager, Schwinger, Feynman, and all the other insanely way-off-the-curve too-damn-clever-for-their-own-sanity people who have tortured generations of students ever since they burst onto the scene with their ingenious theorems and theories.

It is a sobering thought that in order to earn a doctorate, one will eventually have to become familiar with a significant portion of the entire sum collection of human knowledge and ingenuity.

OK, I got that off my chest. Covering the Singaporean blogosphere earlier this week has managed to throw my work schedule into disarray, and I have a field theory homework due tomorrow. Time to contract some tensors, gauge transform some fields, and diagonalize some matrices.

All in a day’s work for a theorist.