Learning Curve

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Online Webster:

blog: "a web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer".

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Just now I happened to ask myself what were the phases in my long life where there was Learning, whatever that means.

Like for everyone School Life takes the cake....everything was new....and it is the start of self-discovery: What I like and what I dislike, what I was good at and where I felt bad.

And since our School Life was casual and stress-free, I could indulge my likes and dislikes.

I learned that I liked English in all its aspects...prose, poetry, grammar, usage: the stuff needed for reading, writing and communicating.

I also learned that I was no good at all in Arithmetic, but Algebra was a relief and that starting fuse: "Let x be the the unknown wanted thing" cracked walls that seemed impenetrable".

Unfortunately the six years of my College and University student life were full of unrelieved Agony. It need not have been so, yet it was.

To put it bluntly, our Physics teachers knew no Physics. They just committed their horrendous text-books to memory, with their left-hand, right-hand, cork screw and swimming-man's Rules, vomited them and fled from their students. Exams too were based on Essay Questions (!) in Physics, with not a single problem solved either in the class or outside.

The little bit of Ecstasy was again in the two years of English that were compulsory: we had excellent teachers and wonderful books (17 in all).

And in the Physics Labs: Each of us dozen students were on our own (no partners) and the labs were very good. I didn't fancy myself as an Experimental Hand, but Lab had no fear for me then on: to this day!

The two years of Experimental Research in Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance Spectroscopy at my University were Hell. Everyone was soldering, pushing samples, taking readings, reporting them; soldering, pushing samples, taking readings.... and getting their degrees in 7 years of Unrelieved Ignorance followed by ganging up and browbeating anyone who dared talk of Dirac Equation as an upstart.

But no one could explain to me the first para of the Only Book on the subject by T P Das & E L Hahn: Solid State Physics Supplement 1: It started with writing down and taking for granted the Matrix Elements of the Electric Quadrupole Moment Spherical Tensor Operator between Angular Momentum Eigenstates; and Wigner-Eckart Theorem; Jobberwocky to one and all (we will return to this later).

At the very first opportunity I ran away like a Bat out of Hell (I started the Exodus); and unbeknown to me landed in what for me was Heaven (IIT KGP) as an Associate Lecturer.

My bewilderment knew no bounds when I discovered in my very first class that I got to learn Physics on my own if I had to survive there with some sort of honor. The threat of impending humiliation at the hands of students ten times more talented was enough to drive me to learn: it was Agony followed by daily doses of small Ecstasy that I was learning just enough to keep my classes pleased.

Back to School Life again!

There was intense pressure on me to join one or the other Experimental Groups, solder, push samples, take readings and report results; solder, push samples...

I congratulate myself on my stubborn refusal to do so.

And then the 5 years of Theory under SDM started as Agony Supreme!

It was as if a pygmy was asked to ride a high horse on which he was supposed to mount by himself; And SDM was no Born Teacher to Idiots. He never suffered fools gladly.

Again I congratulate myself that I stuck stubbornly to him. My earlier 5 years of trying to learn Elementary Physics by myself to survive in the class room helped a lot.

Within a year SDM found me ok.

Getting a Ph D Degree was bonus: SDM deleted from my soul the fear of Theory once for all...Exorcised what to me (and my Teachers at my University) was the Ultimate Evil Spirit.

I welcomed opportunities to teach new subjects (at the cost of Publications).

The very forbidding subject of QM I learned all by myself my own way and kept my students just happy enough.

The greatest Agony and Ecstasy was when I was asked by my students to learn and teach GR (Einstein's Tough Baby).

I didn't shrink. The year I spent with Weinberg's Gravitation & Cosmology was the best in my Learning Curve.

And then a colleague who was teaching Spectroscopy had family problems and went from pillar to post for two successive semesters requesting everyone to teach his course as a standby. Everyone declined. I took it up more out of courtesy.

Then I found that he was teaching from a wonderful book.

Those 2 semesters were again a great learning experience for me: Using Dirac Equation for bread'n' butter Physics.

It was then that I learned what rended my heart 30 years earlier: "Matrix Elements of Electric Quadrupole Moment Spherical Tensor Operator between Angular Momentum Eigenstates; and their Applications " ...Better late than never!

My joy knew no bounds.

In 1965 when I joined IIT KGP there was the latest IBM 1620 Digital Computer that filled a whole floor but couldn't calculate what my pocket calculator does now (I had to learn Fortran Programming and Punching Cards instead of punching buttons).

We were young and all of us learned it as a lark, but left it since it was not easy to get Time on the Computer (you leave your Requisition in the Box and you will get a Call two years later; if you are not an Insider).

A full twenty years later, I was extraordinarily lucky to get in touch with the Father of Educational Physics at MIT who developed the first good Relativity Problem-Solving Package and sent me two 5.25 Floppy Diskettes.

Once again the challenge was for the asking. We didn't have a PC in our Department. I had to go begging all over the town just to know what was there in those two queer-looking objects.

Then I learned in 30 days the Relativity I couldn't learn in 30 years.

Once again a Moment of Joy!

10 years later a PC came to my Personal Office Desk (it was thrust on me).

My son showed me how to use MS Word (he was another SDM!).

It was a major end-life crisis.

But I stuck on and in a year learned to use its Equation Editor all by myself. Once again the incentive was from students: to write up a 250-Page Lecture Notes full of Equations.

At 57 I learned to drive a Maruti Car (suffering sneers from my Son of a Fun)...a big achievement after the agony of trying to reverse, which persists. All I needed was two more eyes at the back of my head like Calvin's Mother.

After retirement at 62 I learned the hard way what Severe Clinical Depression is like: it was touch and go (mostly Go!) for two long years; but something I cherish in retrospect because I learned that it can be cured by the right combination of drugs, time, and love.

Now I am learning what it means to blog daily a few hundred words of Readable English. It is a daily crisis till the Title hits you..the rest is as easy as keyboarding (which I learned on a Remington Manual Typewriter in the couple of months I was unemployed nearly half a century ago)....This seems enough challenge to last a Lifetime (of the brain).

I keep repeating but, as Feynman said, there is no harm in Redundant Truth...no point trying to stick to a minimal set of self-consistent axioms which Kurt Godel proved leads one nowhere.

In short the symptom of Learning is Pain...everyday Ishani falls down and cries but never gives up...

If you are leading a painless life rest assured you are what looks like that Brand-New ATM; the only thing that can happen to it is break down frequently in due course and be a nuisance to everyone.

Now I know why my students change over from String Theory to Finance and Biology...to suffer the pains of continuous learning....it becomes a habit....



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