Passage Four
My past students and collaborators are starting to organize a scientific conference for my 60th birthday to be held about a year from now. Their gesture reminded me of Rabbi Hanina's words:“I have learned much from my teachers, more from my colleagues, and the most from my students.”
We all started as students. Just as kids bump into things as they're learning to maneuver through the world, many of us have scars and bruises from early encounters with our mentors. Conflicts arise when those mentors attempt to establish their authority by trying to make us respect traditional thinking. Memories of these events should encourage us to do better as we change roles and mentor others later in life.
For example, the first advice I received from my postdoctoral mentor was to develop specialized skills and focus them on a narrow niche of the field, where I would establish myself as the world expert. But I decided not to follow this advice as soon as I recognized that by drilling down narrowly, one often encounters the bedrock of a subject, where no further progress can be made. Under these circumstances, the potential for a breakthrough improves with a broader perspective, which identifies the outlands of the bedrock and enables“out of the box” opportunities for drilling deeper around it. This is especially helpful after the discovery of something unusual and unexpected that cannot be explained within the prevailing model.
Keeping in mind the fallacies of indoctrination into a narrow expertise, I encourage my students and postdocs to think broadly and independently about the most exciting problems in astrophysics, such as:“What happened before the big bang?”;“What will happen in our distant cosmic future?”; “What is the nature of dark mater?”;“What happens when one gets close to a black hole singularity?”; “When did life start in the universe?”; or “How can we find relics in space from other technological civilizations?”
It is customary to consider a student's raw potential as a stand-alone commodity whose value can be judged through examinations. But my experience taught me that young scientists do not blossom into exceptional researchers unless they are supported by encouraging words and inspiration; these ingredients are as essential as nutrients and water are for seeds of flowers. Accomplishments are sometimes self-fulfillig prophecies; without the initial belief in the potential of a student to become a successful scientist, this outcome may not come to fruition.
As chair of the Harvard astronomy department for almost a decade, I witnessed multiple examples of students who were initially very slow to make progress but blossomed academically as soon as they selected a different advisor and a new topic for their Ph.D. A successful mentoring experience often reflects a good interaction between a fledgling scientist and an advisor.
In Paragraph 2, “scars and bruises” are used metaphorically to show().
A、the aches and pains that one experiences in his life
B、the acts of violence that exist in the process of learning
C、the conflicts that lie between students and their mentors
D、the circumstances when mentors have the authority over their students
【正确答案】：C
