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How do you deal with weak background at the start of PhD?
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[QUOTE="BvU, post: 6447337, member: 499340"] I sympathize. Personal story: Embarked on a PhD in high-energy physics when, just a year before, I had casually remarked that I would get my experimental physics masters pretty soon without knowing anything at all about elementary particles. Following some lectures for theoretical masters students (field theory, phenomenology of elementary particles, both given by later Nobel prize winners! :smile: ) did not help me much further. Nor did a series of lectures later on at CERN by [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Weisskopf#Biography']Victor Weisskopf[/URL] [INDENT=4][COLOR=rgb(161, 161, 161)]One of his few regrets was that his insecurity about his mathematical abilities may have cost him a Nobel prize when he did not publish results (which turned out to be correct) about what is now known as the [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_shift']Lamb shift[/URL].[URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Weisskopf#cite_note-6'][6][/URL][/COLOR][/INDENT] [INDENT=4][COLOR=rgb(161, 161, 161)] [/COLOR][/INDENT] And, still later at SLAC, a series of QFT lectures by [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dirk_Walecka']John Dirk Walecka[/URL] -- they were aimed at theoretical physics graduate students and way above my abstraction level. Couldn't finish a single execise on my own. I kept the notes and the book for fourty years but now I'm going to chuck them out (anyone a good offer for Itzykson and Zuber: QFT ?). You simply can't know everything. But you can still achieve a PhD for what you can know and do (as you understand, I got mine -- in experimental physics). I second Choppy: you have been selected for a reason (that you apparently still have to find out). Find out what the expectations are (and manage them if unrealistic). Find your forte and thrive. ##\ ## [/QUOTE]
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