The importance of mentors during undergraduate studies:
During the undergrad years of a student, it is extremely important to find a suitable advisor who can guide them through the thick and thin of the field they are interested in. I consider myself to be extremely lucky to find such an advisor - and not just one, I found two of them. They are Dr. Sunil Mukhi and Dr. Nabamita Banerjee, both of whom I have great respect for and every time I meet them for a presentation or perhaps getting my doubts cleared, I get to learn and understand something new.
The knowledge and physical intuition they have is vast and even if I can acquire a bit of it by the end of my degree here at IISER, I would consider my time here to be quite fruitful. While physics is something which I constantly learn from them, there is also something which is equally important for me at this stage of my life. It is to understand what kind of a person one should be. Their modesty and the patience with which they answer trivial questions is something which I find admiring, because it is a quality which I want to develop further.
It can be an intimidating task to find a suitable advisor during the undergrad years. Any student in their undergrad years can be divided into three classes :-
- You have NO idea what you like, or dislike but certainly have a clue that you meant to study and learn physics. I would suggest that you ask your seniors about which professor in your university and department gives sufficient amount of time to students and just ask them for a project to work on. Soon, you will find wheter or not you are interested in that topic and field. You would have either selected a particular area of interest or eliminated one( thus narrowing your search to other hot topics of research).
- You have an idea of what you are interested in but have not looked into the depths of that subject because of which you are not completely sure of what to do next. I would advise to find an advisor who is an 'expert' in the field you are interested in and ask him/her for a project on the important aspects of that topic. If you have covered the basics, ask her for a project in which you can work on a research problem(Start reading research papers of the past and move slowly to the recent papers). Sounds daunting. If by the end of a year or so, you are more interested or motivated to work on that problem, go ahead. If not, you at least have an idea what not to do.
- You are completely sure about what you want to do. You are one of those people who does not yet understand research papers and yet scans through them. I would suggest to this class of students that you should try and audit some senior level courses( after covering some basic stuff on your own, perhaps with the help of seniors). If you really belong to this class of people, you probably have a problem in mind(need not be an original one, just has to be a vague idea) to work upon and hence, I suggest that you should approach professors who are currently working on that or to problems closely related to that. Be brave and ask the professor for a project. If you get the project, great. If not, don't be disheartened, just keep reading advanced stuff, audit senior level courses and try to understand the current research problems people in your 'field' are working on.
I certainly don't know whether my suggestion would be useful or not. I hope it is and all of you who read this remain motivated to do physics and understand more about this field.