It May Be Interesting, But Is It IMPORTANT?

I think that the fuzzy boundary between simply being a "student" of physics and a professional, practicing physicist is the ability to answer that question.

Again, as I've mentioned a few times in my journal, there are some skills that are not part of your physics curriculum. One such skill is the ability to determine if something is not just interesting, but also important. Strange as it may seem, those two are not always mutually inclusive. As a student, one doesn't have to figure out if something is "important" because hopefully, the wise guidance of the academic advisor would steer one onto the right area. However, when that line between a "student" and a "practicing physicist" is crossed, that question now becomes relevant.

What is considered to be interesting is mainly an individual preference. This is what you yourself want to do and what to spend time doing, without the need of any external impetus. However, what is important is usually determined by things outside of you. This may be the state of the field at the time, the research funding goals, the reason why you were hired, etc.

Now, in many instances, what is interesting and what is important overlap. However, any physicist can tell you this that this doesn't occur all the time. Personally, I've encountered a few situations where I find something quite interesting to study, but simply can't quite justify why it would be "important" to spend time and effort to study it. The real world in which physics is done involves money, time, effort, resources, etc. While a student is usually immune to such constraints, a practicing physicist isn't. There are many external considerations beyond just the physics to determine what gets done.

Of course, there are times when what was merely interesting becomes important, and what was important becomes merely an interesting curiosity. Unless we are also psychic (assuming such things are real), we can't predict such changes. Thus, it might sometime pay to keep some things in the back burner just in case while one continues working on those "important" stuff.

Zz.