User:Nrui

I'm not totally sure when this picture was taken, but I seem to be having a good time.

Hi, I'm Nicholas Rui, I'm a physics and astrophysics double major at Berkeley and also an incoming NSF Fellow to the California Institute of Technology in physics. My website can be found at [1], and I can be contacted at [2].

During my time at Berkeley, I have worked on a number of research projects:

• The reduction of a proper motion catalog of the Quintuplet catalog and analysis of its structure (with Jessica Lu, UCB Astronomy) [3]
• Various experimental projects broadly related to quantum sensing using the nitrogen-vacancy and silicon-vacancy centers in diamond (with Norman Yao, UCB Physics)
• Identification of globular clusters with models on a recent large model grid (with Fred Rasio, NU Astronomy)

Some other stuff I liked to do:

• Hang out with the Society of Physics Students. This turned out to be my major friend group and support structure at Berkeley.
• Teach DeCals. I co-taught the Python DeCal twice after taking it freshman year, and afterwards co-founded a DeCal called the Beginner's Guide to the Universe, where we qualitatively described interesting physics concepts to non-majors.

My course schedule throughout the years has been as follows:

	Fall	Spring	Summer
Freshman	Mathematics 53* Physics 7A* Breadth Breadth	Astronomy 7B Astronomy 98 (Python DeCal) Physics 5B* Physics 5BL* Physics 49* Physics 89*	Breadth
Sophomore	Mathematics 110 Physics 5C* Physics 5CL* Breadth Breadth	Astronomy 198# (Python DeCal) Physics 110A* Physics 137A* Physics 151 (Quantum Computing) Physics C161*	Physics 111A*
Junior	Astronomy C249* Physics 105* Physics 129* Physics 137B*	Astronomy 199# (Python DeCal) Physics 112* Physics 138 Physics 139 Physics C202
Senior	Astronomy 199# (Beginner's Guide) Breadth Physics 209 Physics 221A	Astronomy 199# (Beginner's Guide) Astronomy 128* Physics 111B* Physics 221B

where an asterisk (*) indicates that a course was a "non-negotiable" major requirement (electives are not counted here), and a pound (#) refers to DeCal teaching credit.

In retrospect, some things I would like to have known:

• The Physics 5 series is the physics "honors" sequence at Berkeley, and will therefore take the place of Physics 7 in any context. I took Physics 7A not realizing this; switching to the Physics 5 series was straightforward, but I was asked to take Physics 49, which was a straightforward unit where I sat in on a few lectures of Physics 7C and took low-stakes exams.
• Physics 89 is a mathematical physics course which covers linear algebra as well as other assorted topics relevant to physics. It is generally considered more difficult (but not unreasonably so), but it helps later on to know this material pretty well. The Physics Department is generally not accommodating about taking Math 54 in place of Physics 89 unless you are a double major with mathematics. I wasn't personally affected by the last point, but some of my classmates who learned this later than I did were often unfortunately required to take another lower division linear algebra course to satisfy their major requirements.
• While it's tempting to try and take an "easy" semester, try to be introspective about what this actually means to you. My sophomore fall semester was probably my "lightest" semester in terms of the expected grade averages in the classes I was taking, but also was probably my most unhappy semester, since I found myself doing much more work on my breadth courses and not as much work on physics, which I wanted to do more of.
• Math 110 is a fantastic course which helped me a lot when I later took quantum mechanics. It's an upper division linear algebra course, but is much more proof-based than Math 54 or Physics 89, and provides a very solid theoretical foundation on linear algebra. I'm sure other math courses would help also, but I never took any others and was told that Math 110 was the most helpful math upper division.
• I personally found that I didn't really need to respect prerequisites very often because classes would often review critical material at the beginning of the class. Sometimes this required some kind of catch-up at the start of the course, but if you are cognizant of this and are willing to put in a little extra work at the start, it's minimal in my opinion.
• Taking a lot of technical courses (you can think of them as "science" courses which are comparatively substantive) is tempting because you can get rid of a lot of requirements and also explore a lot of fun topics, but it's also a lot of work. If you take four technicals in a semester, for example, you can expect to have on average a little less than one problem set due per day of the school week. Depending on your background in the subject, this might be a lot, and so you might not want to do this. You may find that it is helpful to take a bunch of classes and drop them as you learn how they interact with your schedule, but I (and many other students) typically found that it was hard to let go of classes I was enrolled in, as I would feel too invested.
• Imposter syndrome refers to the feeling that you are an "imposter" within your community and don't actually deserve to be acknowledged as a competent student/researcher/whatever. This may take the form of feeling like people will soon realize that you don't know as much as people think that you do. In fact, I strongly suspect that it is actually relatively rare to not have imposter syndrome, at least at some point, and that you should know that you do, in fact, belong. Yes, you are good enough to come to Berkeley, yes, you do deserve all of your academic and professional achievements, and, yes, you are deserving of understanding. Only you see your flaws, and it's easy for you to be an expert in something without really realizing it, and not realizing that everyone else just feels the same way.

Some things which may seem obvious to some people, but which I would really have loved for people to have laid out to me:

• An undergrad is a college student who has not yet obtained their bachelor's degree (this is what people usually mean by a "college student"). Most undergraduates graduate in four years (eight semesters), but many also graduate one semester early or late for a variety of reasons, and this is not considered unusual.
• A graduate student is a student who has a bachelor's, and is usually seeking a doctorate, or Ph.D. Graduate students do some coursework at the beginning of their Ph.D. typically but generally focus on their thesis, a long research document detailing a long-term research project. People are typically graduate students for ~5-6 years, but the time period is much more flexible. Graduate students also lead your discussions at Berkeley (as GSIs), but are still students and learning to teach and are almost always understanding of your situation (as recent undergraduates themselves).
• A publication (or "paper") is a document describing the details of some research project to an academic community, and is part of the "(academic) literature." Papers are typically peer-reviewed (or "refereed"), meaning that the editor has forwarded the paper draft to an anonymous other scientist in the relevant field who voices their concerns in a "referee report" and "accepts" the paper once they feel that the draft has been modified to their satisfaction. For probably unfortunate reasons, a big deal is made out of which journal things are published in, and different journals have different purposes/reputations. Depending on the field, a big deal may be made out of the "first author" (first listed author), who generally does most of the work, and the last author, who is often the leader of the group in which the work was done. These conventions are highly variable across fields. Sometimes, papers from large collaborations (e.g., LIGO, EHT, ATLAS) break these guidelines by putting everyone in alphabetical order.
• A postdoc (postdoctoral scholar) is a researcher (not a student) who has obtained a Ph.D. and is working on their own independent research in order to make a research name for themselves, generally in pursuit of some kind of faculty position. Postdocs can either be associated to a specific faculty or "prized," in which case they are funded by some external prize and are self-funded. Postdoctoral positions are a variable number of years, but during this time the goal is to publish many high impact papers.
• Faculty refers to professors whereas staff refers to advisors, lab staff, and other employees who are tasked with maintaining the day-to-day operations of the department. Professors generally start as assistant professors, where they are given a number of years to demonstrate ability in the areas of research, teaching, and service (i.e., committee work, outreach). If they achieve these things to the satisfaction of relevant people in the department, they will be granted "tenure," which entails life-long job security in the absence of particularly egregious acts. At this point, they will also typically be promoted to "associate professor," and "(full) professor" at some later point in the future. Adjunct faculty positions are generally not tenure-track, and the former points usually don't apply. This timeline and terminology are not 100% hard and fast, and it is not particularly unusual for professors to switch institutions (often taking their graduate students with them).

Some research/graduate school-related points:

• When you start doing research, you will generally be paired up with some graduate student or postdoc who will guide you through technical details. There is no universal way for research groups to operate, with some advisors being reasonably hands-on (meeting with you personally on a consistent basis) and others being very hands-off (not necessarily even knowing your name).
• You won't necessarily get to start working on the thing you find most interesting from the get-go. This is just as well, since I personally didn't really know what I wanted to work on anyway. Once you get experience (and, with it, more perspective), many more options will open up to you, as well as more knowledge about which of those options best suits you.
• Graduate school applications will usually require three letters of recommendation, and it is best if as many of these are from people (with Ph.D.'s) who you have worked alongside with in research (i.e., professors, postdocs). It is helpful to know about this requirement early if you feel that you one day would like to go to grad school.
• Graduate school is about research, period. If you do a few research experiences as an undergraduate and decide you don't like it very much, it may be the case that graduate school is not the right path for you. From high school to college, it often seemed like people were going to college as the "next step," and in some ways in our society that's what it has become. However, grad school is not the end-all-be-all next step, and it is perfectly acceptable (and probably even financially wiser) not to go. Also, many people work in industry for some number of years before returning to grad school and leading successful academic lives. Your life is your own, and in college it really pays off to think about what you personally want for yourself, not what you think is expected of you.
• While it's hard to get a good baseline of comparison, you should talk to people around you and figure out if you are being treated well in your research group. While I have been lucky to have extremely friendly research environments consistently, I have friends who have been in very hostile research environments, and did not know that their situation was particularly problematic until they switched research groups. It should be expected that your advisor and relevant mentors are accepting of your course deadlines, life obligations, etc., and are reasonably supportive of your aspirations.