A lot of people say follow your dreams and do what you’re passionate about. Scott Galloway says do something you’re good at don’t – do what you’re passionate about. If you’re good at it, your passion will come later. My other favorite influencer Gary Vee says you have to Hustle. Of course, as you all know, I say be a shark. So much advice! How do you make sense of it all?

I think students and their parents think that at 18 years old a student needs to know what they’re gonna do for the rest of their lives and then dive into it full on cannonball style. And maybe that’s true in this cutthroat AI driven world, but today I’d like to take a moment and change your perspective.

For a while, there was a discussion where people didn’t ask what you wanted to major in or study, they asked what problem did you wanna solve? The reason they did that is because for any given problem, there were multiple ways you could work on it. For example, let’s say you want to send somebody to the moon. While there are people who work on the rockets, there are people that work on astronaut health, finances, project management, construction, etc etc. There are thousands of people who are working on this one problem. They are coming at it from all different points of view and with different skill sets. If your goal is to send somebody to the moon, you can work on this project a number of different ways

I wanna talk about the flipside of this. Just because you choose a field of study doesn’t mean you can’t graviate toward the things that interest you. As a atomic physicist, there are experimentalists, there are theorists, people who do low risk research, people who do high risk research, there are people who become business leaders, there are people who become entrepreneurs, there are people who educate, and many of these people do more than one of these!

I literally throw physics parties.  

I have developed my own conference with my amazing team called Cosmic Pathways, but I also work on planning a number of cool outreach events for students, and planning other conferences such as Sigma Pi Sigma Physics Congress, AAPT meetings, and APS meetings.

This morning I was reminded of many of the epic parties my friends and I have thrown in the past. In fact, planning these events was a huge part of my childhood and young adult years. I was always trying to throw some kind of crazy party, pushing the envelope.

For example, I had a annual camping trip called camp slole (Slole is old nickname – long story).  It was a near 50 person event that usually involved about five days of camping. We did this for like 10 years and it had its own webpage in the 90s – Go Go Gadget HMTL.

I started on the normal physicist track. I did research. I worked with some of the biggest names in the field. I published some very nice papers. I became a professor in the cutthroat professor world, but ultimately the thing that I’m good at and the thing that I’m spending most of my time at these days is throwing physics parties. I have literally come full circle.

I have some students who have gone on to do some very amazing things with their physics degrees. One of my current students is going to go to graduate school next year for museum studies! I’ve had other students who have gone into neurobiology, consulting, psychology, health fields, and environmental entrepreneurship. The sky is the limit. Don’t think choosing a major locks you done one pathway. If you work and are creative, you can make your own pathway.

Maybe the thing that makes the most sense is just pick something that seems right, work really hard, and go with the wind when it pushes you and interesting directions.