Imagine being 19 years old and entering ANY unfamiliar course of study. Who's going to rock your world -- somebody who is engaged in esoteric research and finds

Imagine being 19 years old and entering ANY unfamiliar course of study. Who's going to rock your world -- somebody who is engaged in esoteric research and finds lecturing a distraction, or someone who views himself less like a guardian of arcana and more like a streetcorner pusher who has recently run across the most AWESOME brain-twisting drug in the ENTIRE FREAKIN' UNIVERSE and YOU GOTTA TRY THIS SHIT! That's not to say that somebody at the forefront of research (or, for that matter, somebody of "a certain age") can't generate that kind of enthusiasm for his/her subject -- one of the most entertaining and informative lectures I ever saw was one given by Bill Phillips of NIST at the Perimeter Institute on time measurement, cooling and the Bose-Einstein condensate. Nobel Laureate, unapologetic geek, energy and sense of wonder not often seen in the average six-year-old. Gimme a grad student with that kind of unbounded love for the subject over an expert any time. I like to think that's what I brought to the classroom when I taught, but then I like to think a lot of good things about myself that ain't necessarily so.