[Bee wrote these drafts before she left, and asked me to publish them while she is away for your and my entertainment. - Stefan]

I always love to hear other people’s stories of how they got to where they are and why. It seems to me an essential part to understand motivations, and to make sense of what people are doing. Blogs I always found to be a good medium to tell these stories, just that in most cases it is hard to get a continuous picture of the blogger without following his or her writing for a longer time. Even then, parts often remain missing. Occasionally, I would like to have a quick intro to know what I am at.

So, this is part of the reason for me writing this, and I hope it clarifies for some of you what you are at. E.g. it should be clear by now, if you’re looking for a place to complain about the alleged arrogance of PhD holders (as has happened), you are on the wrong blog. Likewise, if you want to practice bashing string theorists (as has happened), please go elsewhere. And if you’re not interested in what I’m writing (this seems to happen in abundance), I recommend you leave now, so I can continue with my sense-making efforts. After part I, Germany we now go West (don’t miss that video, isn’t she beautiful?). Again, I want to apologize but I’ve fuzzed out a couple of names and dates.

When somebody asked me what I wanted to do in the USA, I said “I want to become a string theorist.” I had read the first some chapters of Polchinski’s book, it looked doable, interesting, and like a good topic. I had worked on brane world models for a while, and wanted to understand them better. Besides this, for reasons that are hard to pin down, I have always been intrigued by T-duality. However, the first time I said I want to become a string theorist the reply was “You don’t want to.” Upon asking why I was explained “Because the community is really weird.” That remark came from a tenured string theorist. It was the first but not the last time I heard such a comment about the string community. It didn’t bother me much though since I’ve heard basically the same about the heavy ion guys, the condensed matter people, or the quantum foundations weirdos. As far as I am concerned I find it weird these communities exist to begin with.

Either way, I applied for a visa, sold my household, and moved to Tuscon, Arizona where I made my first postdoc at the University of Arizona. With an email address now ending on dot edu, it became noticeably easier to get replies from researchers in the States [1]. Being on a scholarship meant I could do how I pleased to some extend, an opportunity I used by spending part of my time working on the minimal length model I had proposed briefly before I left Germany. With my supervisor in Arizona, I worked on neutrino physics in extra dimensional models. Since that time neutrinos are definitely my favourite particles of the Standard Model, and badly documented Monte Carlo simulations are my worst enemy. Besides this, I learned that the correct plural of cactus is cacti. And yeah, it’s hot, but it’s a dry heat.

The US $ was dropping then and since I was paid in Euro my salary increased every month which was a pleasant side effect. Unfortunately, when I moved to the USA at the beginning of a calendar year I hadn’t been aware that most positions in North America start in September so I ran out of money before I could apply for a new job. A whole bunch of people later said they could have told me that, which was very helpful. My supervisor in Arizona financed me for some months and my former supervisor helped me out for the remaining time [2]. I am very grateful to both for their efforts and that we could work it out somehow, but it wasn’t a particularly good time [3].

To make a long story short, the outcome of my applications the coming year was that I declined a three year position to go to Santa Barbara for a year. I am still sorry about declining the other offer. I really liked the people, but the year in Santa Barbara was supposed to be the first phase of a program from the German Research Foundation. It was meant to bring younger researchers back to Germany, and sounded very promising to me [4].

I packed my few belongings in an U-Haul van and drove to Santa Barbara to start my second postdoc. Since it seems to be a source of confusion, let me clarify I was at the Department of Physics at UCSB, not at the KITP. Both are however essentially next door to each other.

It was quite a change. Tuscon is a rather sleepy place, whereas Santa Barbara basically bursts of activities, visitors and programs. This of course had to be outbalanced by spending sufficient time on the beach. I am serios, my brain functions optimally in close contact to the holy trinity of sand, sea, and sky. What I remember most vividly from that year (except the beach) was a program on Earthquakes, and the omnipresence of higher dimensional black thingies. While at UCSB, I thought quite a lot about the black hole information loss, something that however hasn’t yet come to any fruition - just that the name for this blog originates there. Besides this, I worked out the relation of the minimal length model to DSR, something that I am still working on today in certain regards (and in uncertain regards as well).

Anyway, one year isn’t a timescale on which one can do sensible work in theoretical physics. Immediately after I moved to Santa Barbara, I had to write applications again for the next year.

Around that time I started blogging so if you’ve followed Backreaction for a while you know the rest of the story. The German Research Foundation (DFG) offered me the Emmy Noether fellowship I had been hoping for, a 5+1 year position in Hamburg with grants to build up a group and hire some people. Perimeter Institute offered a three year postdoc. Negotiations with the DFG to postpone the starting date or work out some other solutions failed. As a friend summarized so aptly “They basically beg you not to come back.”.

I declined the German offer and moved to Canada.

And that’s were I continue tomorrow.