{"id":1952,"date":"2017-03-31T22:49:59","date_gmt":"2017-04-01T02:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/?p=1952"},"modified":"2017-05-01T11:35:29","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T15:35:29","slug":"and-now-for-something-slightly-different-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/2017\/03\/31\/and-now-for-something-slightly-different-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking Math Life with Christelle Vincent (now for something slightly different, part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Christelle Vincent and her pet icosahedron.<\/p><\/div>\n

Readers, I realize that you may be tired of hearing about my life.\u00a0 I mean, PhD+Epsilon is about early-career mathematical life, but when I write, it\u2019s usually about my<\/strong> life\/career, which is only one of many options. Thus, this week we have a blog experiment\u2014I ask someone with a slightly different job a few questions about their life.\u00a0 In this first installment (hopefully there’s more!), I check in with Christelle Vincent. <\/a>She was in town last week to talk math (torsion points on the Jacobians of Picard curves) but we also talked math life. Christelle and I met in 2013 at a Sage Days workshop and have been part of many workshops together since.\u00a0 After graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 2012, Christelle spent three years as a post-doc at Stanford.\u00a0 She then spent a semester at ICERM before starting a tenure-track position at the University of Vermont in January 2016. She\u2019s at a state school, is currently supervising a Masters student, and will be taking PhD students sometime in the next couple of years.\u00a0 I asked Christelle a few questions, and here\u2019s what she had to say:<\/p>\n

Have you realized anything surprising in the last few years of your math career?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I remember vividly being in the audience of a career panel the year after I graduated and someone asked how one thinks of new problems to work on. That was an anxiety that I very much shared. I felt that the biggest threat to my budding career was to run out of problems and that one day I would just not be able to publish anymore because I ran out of problems to solve. Five years later, that is not an anxiety I have anymore. I do worry about working on problems that are \u201chard enough\u201d to get grants and recognition from the community, but even that doesn\u2019t feel so bad. I think it\u2019s because having the experience of progressing from working on exactly one problem (my thesis) to working on enough problems that I feel that I could keep going on for a few years at this point, I feel like it\u2019s likely that naturally, if I keep working and doing what I\u2019m supposed to, I will find myself working on harder problems and developing more of a program.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the best part of your job so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I feel very valued at my job. As a professor, I am more involved in the department life and I feel that I am really contributing to making our department a better place for my colleagues and our students. My colleagues value my research, ask me about it, and support me when I need to travel. My students enjoy my classes and what I do for them. I feel like I\u2019m coming into my own a little bit more, I\u2019ve shed a lot of the insecurities I had about being good enough to \u201cmake it\u201d in academia. For me, being a math professor has been the endgame for a very long time, and finally getting there is really enjoyable.<\/p>\n

What are some big issues in your math life\/career?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As much as I am enjoying taking some time to enjoy where I am after getting a tenure-track position, I know that very soon I will start to worry about getting tenure. Right now I feel like I need to find time to do even more research, to carve out and protect that time. It\u2019s something that I\u2019m struggling with a little bit. It\u2019s easy for me to get caught up in a bunch of little things that leave me exhausted and research has to happen before all of those little things. I\u2019m still very new at my job so I think the rhythm will get easier with time.<\/p>\n

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Thanks to Christelle for taking the time to talk with me (math and blogwise)!<\/p>\n

So, now my questions are for readers\u2014what kinds of early-career math lives would you like to read about, and what would you want to ask? Let me know in the comments!<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Readers, I realize that you may be tired of hearing about my life.\u00a0 I mean, PhD+Epsilon is about early-career mathematical life, but when I write, it\u2019s usually about my life\/career, which is only one of many options. Thus, this week … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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