The PhD in physics was difficult but …
UC Berkeley, Yale, UC Santa Cruz, and Stanford were challenging, but becoming an expert in 19th century Vietnamese classical literature was even more difficult.
First The PhD
I was extremely lucky to have studied with two of the greatest theoretical physicists in of the second half of the 20th century. Lenny Susskind and Lee Smolin.
While in graduate School at Yale Lee got me excited to think about approaching problems with a mindset of “Lets throw out all we know and begin again and see where we go. Lenny was more of a let’s start again from first principals and see where we go.
One of my proudest moments as a graduate student was I wrote Stephen Hawking a hand written letter asking a question about cosmic string theory. Lo and behold, one day I found a letter from Stephen Hawking in my university mailbox, answering my question.
I wanted to quit so many times but stuck with it to the end.
I thought Physics was hard until I discovered…
Can’t beat a dictionary - yet
To get learn this I had to read a lot of old dictionaries. The internet didn’t help much. But now with AI? Maybe not perfect but on its way.
I “accidentally” became an expert in an epic poem called Truyen Kieu.
https://vtv.vn/video/talk-vietnam-jaipal-tuttle-tien-si-nguoi-my-yeu-truyen-kieu-397681.htm
I have been interviewed numerous times about it, including on international television here in English.
What did I learn?
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