How Robin Williams helped me out in graduate school

Spring 2004. I was a callow first year graduate student, with an insouciance and naiveté befitting a first year graduate student. At that point like most of my fellow grads, I was hungry for knowledge and thought that everything that I needed to know would be found in books and lectures. Lab work was simply a question of putting some of this knowledge into practice and producing a passable PhD thesis.

I was a voracious reader and used to check out as many books on chemistry, physics, drug discovery, molecular modeling and the history of science as I could physically carry out of the library. Because I was cocky and stupid, I used to read these ponderous books and think I understood the world. I threw around jargon from quantum mechanics, biochemistry and the philosophy of science and thought that because I understood the jargon I comprehended how to apply it to real life situations. I lived in blissful ignorance of the fact that all my bookish knowledge was almost useless when measured against the fickle complexities of real life problems. 

Surprisingly, I had not seen "Good Will Hunting" until my first year of graduate school. It turned out that my introduction to the movie was also an awakening and I have to thank a fellow graduate student, more experienced and wiser in the ways of the world, for this. Once, as I was strutting around the lab, tossing out concepts from quantum chemistry and pontificating on how a particular protocol could be better for a certain kind of molecular system - all when I had never actually applied such protocols to real life problems - my fellow graduate student interrupted my chatter to suggest something.

He asked me if I had seen the movie "Good Will Hunting". I said I had heard of it but had not seen it yet. He told me to watch the movie, focus on the main protagonists and tell him what I thought. I checked out the movie from Blockbuster (I know) that very same evening and was blown away when I saw it. That's because I could relate immediately to the protagonist, Will Hunting (Matt Damon). I wasn't even remotely close to being a genius like him, but the similarities nonetheless struck home. Just like me Will was cocky and arrogant, and just like me he thought that his bookish knowledge made him an expert on the world's affairs.

But the scene from the movie that really left me feeling like I had been mowed down with a scythe is the scene in the park with Robin Williams and Matt Damon in which Williams's character (Sean Maguire) launches into what I consider to be one of the most beautiful and profound monologues in movie history.

In a previous scene Will had displayed his customary indifference and arrogance by presuming to know everything about Sean's life through the lens of a particular painting that he had painted.

In the scene Sean shows Will how deeply ignorant and naive he is. The monologue's basic message is simple: You may have read everything there is to know about the world, but that does not mean you have seen the world. Here are the lines that I found most poignant and profoundly true:

So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, "once more unto the breach dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable.

I could almost hear Williams speaking to me, translating his words about Shakespeare, war and love into ones about science and knowledge. 

"If I asked you about synthesis, you'd probably give me the skinny on every total synthesis ever done. Woodward, you know a lot about him. Life's work, academic aspirations, him and the MIT chemistry department, his marathon drinking binges, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it means to spend two years' worth of your life synthesizing even a moderately complex organic molecule and having your efforts fail in the twenty-fifth step. You've never actually stood there and compared the NMR spectrum of your product with its natural counterpart. If I ask you about drug design, you'd probably give me a long synopsis of the challenges in drug development. You may even have talked to an actual pharmaceutical scientist. But you can't tell me what it feels like to be a part of a multidisciplinary team of scientists, work on a project for five years, guide it through false alleys and a litany of frustrations, and then see it fail in Phase 2 clinical trials. And I'd ask you about the philosophy of science, you'd probably throw Kuhn at me, right, "Normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments". But you've never been part of a paradigm shift yourself, seen the world shift beneath your feet the way the creators of quantum mechanics did."

At that point I felt more sober than what I would have had I suddenly stopped drinking after a twenty-year binge. It was as if a wall of wisdom had driven itself between me and some cherished destination that I now realized did not exist. I did not even know half the things that a fictional Williams would have admonished me about, and yet here I was, wallowing in the heady, careless naiveté of premature intellectual jubilation.

Since I first saw that scene it has probably become my favorite scene of all time, and the movie itself is now my all time favorite. I have memorized dozens of lines from it and I find myself watching it at least once every month. But the central message of the movie which has stayed with me is very simple: knowledge, no matter how extensively you acquire it, does not automatically translate to wisdom, let alone real world experience. It's of course important to get as much knowledge as you can and share it, but it's also imperative to be always mindful of what it takes to turn that knowledge into understanding and expertise. That extra something is experience, it's team work, it's character-building. Knowledge is important, necessary in fact, but not sufficient. No amount of reading about classical architecture is a substitute for smelling the air in the Sistine Chapel.

For the last ten years, many times when I was getting ahead of myself, many times when I thought I actually understood how to apply a scientific concept I have watched that scene. And so today, when I feel myself stunned and deeply saddened by Robin Williams's premature passing, I realize the debt I owe to him and that magnificent monologue. He may be no more, but I am hoping his words will keep my head sober and my feet on the ground. Every time I think I know, I will hear Robin's voice saying, as patiently and clearly as he says to Will, "You don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about."

In small and big ways Robin Williams touched the lives of countless people. Among them was a chemistry graduate student. Thank you for that, Robin.

Does modern day college and graduate education in chemistry sacrifice rigor for flexibility?

This is what I love about blogging; it's the classic "one thing leads to another" device. The previous discussion on the paucity of thermodynamics in college coursework led to a more general and important exchange in the comments section that basically asked: Are we sacrificing rigor for flexibility by giving students too much freedom to pick and choose their courses?

The following sentiments (or variations thereof) were expressed:

- There should be a core curriculum for chemistry students that exposes them to mandatory courses in general, organic and physical chemistry at the very least. These requirements seems to be more widespread among physics departments. To my knowledge, Caltech is one of the few schools with a general core curriculum for all science majors. How many other schools have this?

- Part of the lack of exposure to important topics in grad school results from emphasizing research at the cost of coursework. And this is related to a more widespread sentiment of woe: it's become all too easy to get a PhD, partly because of the curse of academia that encourages one to become a glorified technician at the cost of instilling creative scientific thought. The belief is that many professors (and there's many exceptions) would rather produce well-trained manual laborers who contribute to the Grant and Paper Production Factory than independent scientific thinkers who can assimilate ideas from diverse scientific fields. You shouldn't really get a Ph.D. just for putting in 80-hour weeks.

We need to hold students to higher standards, but I think this is not going to happen until the publish-or-perish culture is fundamentally transformed and the movers and shakers of academic research take a hard look at what they are doing to their graduate students.

- Many textbooks are mired in the age-old, classical presentation of thermodynamics that emphasizes Carnot cycles and Maxwell relations much more than any semi-quantative feel for the operation of thermodynamic in practical chemical and biological systems. We are just not doing a good job communicating the real-world importance of topics like thermodynamics; add to this students who are not going to study something if it's not required and we are in a real bind.

- Physical organic chemistry - the one discipline that can naturally build bridges between physical and organic chemistry - is disappearing from the curriculum. Those who intellectually matured in its heyday were naturally exposed to thermodynamics and kinetics. Graduate students in organic chemistry shouldn't be able to get away with just synthesis and spectroscopy courses.

- Matt who, unlike most of us armchair philosophers, is a live professor at an actual research institution, makes the point that we should do an outstanding job of emphasizing thermodynamics in the freshman general chemistry class. We should do such a good job that students should always be able to connect those concepts to anything else that they study later. As Matt recommends, we could include the more qualitative important real-life applications of thermodynamics (and not just to antiquated heat engines) like those in drug discovery in this gen chem class.

All great points in my opinion. I have strong feelings about all this myself, but I have not done any detailed study of college curricula so my opinions are mostly anecdotal. Feel free to chime in with actual data or more opinions in the comments section.

What lessons did you learn from your graduate school advisor?

For better or worse, very few professional relationships in your working scientific life have as much of an impact on your career and your thinking as those with your graduate school advisor. You learn a lot from him or her, and sometimes if things unfortunately don't go well (as in the case of the recent much discussed fiasco), you learn what not to do.

Your graduate school advisor imparts little tidbits of wisdom every single day. And yet there are a chosen few general lessons which stay with you long after you leave. These are lessons which you may not have imbibed consciously, and yet you find them being an integral core of your everyday scientific thinking. There is no big secret in these lessons, yet the process of internalization has greatly amplified their impact on a personal level. I was lucky to have been educated by two first-rate scientists who were (and are) also great human beings. I learnt a lot from them, but a handful of lessons have stayed put. This is of course a listing of key scientific lessons. Let's not even get started on other kinds of lessons which would fill an entire notebook.

1. Always question the assumptions: This was the single-most important lesson I learnt in graduate school and one that was driven home both subconsciously as well as vociferously. Because if the assumptions are flawed or questionable, then no matter how beautiful or even meticulous the study, ultimately it may be fundamentally wrong. How many times have you come across a piece of work which looks both exhaustive and elegant, and yet you don't buy it simply because you cannot accept the basic premise?

Questioning the assumptions can keep you from being swayed by pretty papers in prestigious journals and turn you into the critical thinker that you crave to be. More importantly, this habit will be a perpetual guide that will help you realistically assess the conclusions of every project that you work on. Ultimately you have to remember that there is always an assumption behind every piece of scientific analysis, and assumptions are like enemies bearing gifts who want to become friends. You want to be suspicious of them until convinced beyond a shade of doubt.

2. Keep in touch with the basics: I mentioned this point in my last post, but it's worth reiterating. I used to be impressed by how my advisors would bring a point from college chemistry to bear on the analysis of a seemingly complicated synthetic scheme, reaction mechanism or NMR spectrum. Discussions of complicated problems often used to revolve around basic ideas of nucleophilicity and basicity (remember the differences in trends?!), hydrogen bonding, ring conformations and oxidation states. Chemical problems often look complex because simple principles like to dress themselves up in fancy forms. These principles reveal themselves only when interrogated by equally simple questions. The great mathematician Paul Erdos once said that a tough problem proves its worth by fighting back. But on the flip side, it can also give way sometimes when subjected to the simplest of inquisitions.

3. Think multifactorially: Most problems in chemistry, no matter what discipline they are from, involve dissecting the myriad factors operating in a system and then putting your finger on the one that tips the balance. Integral to such an analysis is to first list the factors. A useful technique I try to practice is to list all the factors responsible for a particular chemical effect.

For instance, if I were analyzing the binding of a ligand to a protein, I list all the possible hydrogen bonds, stacked aromatic interactions, hydrophobic contacts and other kinds of forces that could possibly operate between the different parts of the molecule and the protein. If it were to try to predict the stereochemistry of a reaction, I would think of dominant conformations, steric factors in the reagent and substrate, electrostatic interactions between the two. More sophisticated analysis can then follow, but this simple action puts things in perspective and sets you up favorably for getting a feel for the system.

These lessons are certainly not panaceas and it takes a lot of practice and experience for them to become second nature (although ideally they eventually should). As time goes by you also find yourself adding your own functionality to them. But I will be grateful to my graduate school advisors for imparting them. And not through mere words, but through purposeful action.

What scientific lessons did you learn in graduate school?

That about says it

Truly, time to get out