Active Watching

New students to cryogenics are always in a rush.  When you start cooling a system, there are a set of time constants that govern how fast the various parts get cold.  They are usually measured in hours.  The temptation is to maximize your efficiency by going off and doing other work.  Certainly there's a place for that, but if you never let yourself watch your experiment all the way through, you will never really understand what's going on.  Physics means real things happening.  You can calculate time constants and try to optimize various goals, but in the end there is a real time which must be waited out.  It will not be exactly what you calculated.  Your exchange gases and vacuum ratings are real pressures and they almost certainly won't do in real life exactly what your model says they should.  So watch carefully when everything is working.  That way when they break you will know what is different.

Getting a new student to sit still the first time isn't very hard.  Once they learn how complicated their job is, they are usually happy to step aside and watch you do it for a while.  You may think they are learning patience from you, but as soon as they take the helm chances are they will go back to rushing.  The problem is they are used to doing homework, where progress occurs at the speed of thought.  As soon as they have enough information to paint a picture of what's going on, they act.  But they don't usually have enough information to make a good decision and they fear doing nothing when something is wrong far more than the reverse.

The same is true elsewhere although it isn't usually phrased that way.  Any time you try to change some piece of the world, there is a timescale in play that has nothing to do with your mental or physical speed.  Petitions take time to move through committees.  Children take time to grow up.  Sometimes things change all at once and you have to move fast to keep up; part of wisdom is learning when to act and when to sit.  The time to be seated is not just down time.  Its when you watch how the world works in your absence and what needs your action.  If you want to make a meaningful change, these are very important things to know.  And actually this is what science is all about, really getting immersed in the details and finding out how all the unregarded bits work.  Science starts with watching.

One of the risks of really watching things is that you notice the things that are broken.  And if you watch them be broken every day, you might feel inclined to fix them.  This can lead to a lot of extra work.  Sometimes its an easy fix; re-glue a joint, forgive a friend.  Other times you change the entire course of your life.  Maybe you find a persistent noise source in your microwave array and then spend the rest of your life studying the Cosmic Microwave Background.  Maybe there's a place right nearby where hunger and loneliness are rampant and no one but you seems interested in going there.  Whatever it is, being a watcher first means that when you do act there will be a reason for your action.

Active watching is terrible for your schedule.  I don't know how many times i've popped my head into lab with the intent to spend two minutes watching before going home, only to discover some problem and spend multiple hours fixing it.  In the long run i'm glad i discovered it; my experiment didn't break.  In the short run, i'm tired and wish i was at home.  On the flip side, i remember discovering one morning that my little boy could climb stairs.  I thought i had several weeks to get the baby gate ready.  I was somewhat late for work that day.  Whatever plans you have, active watching means giving the world permission to change them.

Building an intuition and learning to trust it can take years.  That was one of the most frustrating things about grad school for me.  Even if i understood a fridge on paper, i didn't react in the right way when something went wrong in the lab.  Or i thought the right thing and then did the wrong thing.  Over time, watching puts you in tune with the thing being watched so you act appropriately when there is no time to think.  In fact, it gives the world permission to change you.