Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers
Season 2010 Episode 8 | 2m 19s | Video has closed captioning.
Gavin Schmidt: A Balancing Act
Aired: 01/21/10
Problems Playing Video? | Closed Captioning
(light music) - When I was in high school, I had a friend, who I suspected was doing better with the girls than I was and he could juggle.
(light music) In my scientific way.
I put these two things together and I thought, oh there must be a correlation.
So I thought, if I can teach myself to juggle, then you know, I'm gonna be able to do much better with the, with the girls.
And so I taught myself how to juggle.
That hypothesis was falsified.
Subsequently, you know, when I was doing my PhD, I kind of started hanging out with a crowd of unicyclists and jugglers and circus people.
And I got much better at juggling.
And I learned how to ride a unicycle.
You hang out with jugglers, you know, you have a good time.
(man screams) What tends to happen is that, you know, for the first few years, you know, you'll get better.
You'll add to your repertoire.
And then there's a point where you have a balance between how much you need to practice and whether you're gonna improve.
And then you have to decide, you know, do I wanna increase the amount of practice that I'm doing and get better?
Or are you kind of happy at that level?
And so right now, I'm kind of happy at my level.
You know, there's some of those people that can juggle, you know 13 objects and it takes them years and years and years and years of practice to be able to do that.
But they're also kind of dull, right?
Because that's all they can do is concentrate on having you know, 13 objects in the air at the same time.
And then there are people who are extremely funny and who build in a little bit of magic and they're great.
They're people that you really wanna spend time with.
(men shout) I try to keep balance in my life.
The way to do it is just to do it, you know, is if there's something better for you to be doing than fixing a little bit of code, yeah, then go and see Shakespeare in the park.
The computer will still be there when you come back and you know, I can work for hours and stay late but then I can also just cut it out and go and hang out.
