{"id":1221,"date":"2007-05-09T12:09:08","date_gmt":"2007-05-09T17:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2007\/05\/09\/focus\/"},"modified":"2007-05-09T12:09:08","modified_gmt":"2007-05-09T17:09:08","slug":"focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/09\/focus\/","title":{"rendered":"Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A true story.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sitting on the graduate admissions committee for the physics department at a major research university.  Across the table, fellow committee member Prof. A is perusing the file of an applicant who is on the bubble.  Prof. A turns  to Prof. B next to him and says, &#8220;Did you see this one?  The student has a Masters degree in Divinity.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now, you know me.  Not really the Divinity-School type.  But still, I&#8217;m thinking, that&#8217;s interesting.  Shows a certain intellectual curiosity to study religion and then move on to physics.  There&#8217;s some successful <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2007\/03\/12\/catholic-priest-proposes-new-model-for-creation\/\">tradition<\/a> there.<\/p>\n<p>But Prof. A shakes his head slowly.  &#8220;I would really worry about someone like this, that they weren&#8217;t devoted enough to doing physics.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Prof. B nods sagely in assent.  &#8220;Yes, you have to be concerned that they just don&#8217;t have the focus to succeed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The student didn&#8217;t get in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A true story. I&#8217;m sitting on the graduate admissions committee for the physics department at a major research university. Across the table, fellow committee member Prof. A is perusing the file of an applicant who is on the bubble. Prof. A turns to Prof. B next to him and says, &#8220;Did you see this one? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}