Interview with a Physicist 

In a brewery, located in the Arts District of Rochester NY, sitting over beers, surrounded by artwork by local artists, I had the opportunity to talk to one of my oldest friends about his job as a medical physicist. It was an opportunity not only to learn more about what he did, but to pick his brain about how he used language. His job involves training medical residents on the use of medical imaging equipment, how to calibrate it, how to operate it, how to understand the science behind this incredibly expensive and sensitive machines. Not that these residents will necessarily be operating them, but they need to know about them, they need to understand the basics, what can go wrong, what has to happen for things to go right. The conversation was enlightening. At first he was not sure he was going to have much to say about the subject of academic language, even though he spent nearly 9 years of his life in academia. He was not sure why I had picked him, instead of another friend of ours from High School who is a Astrophysics professor at CUNY in New York City. I asked him what he thought academic language was, and he thought for a moment and responding almost immediately with the reality he faces everyday, different disciplines have different languages, and different vocab and different ways of thinkings, and this is maybe no where more apparent than in science, where things become so specialized that it can be hard for a medical physicist and a nuclear physicist and a particle physicist to all be able to talk to one another. He mentioned the need for accurate, concise and specific language. He even went on to say that he spends at least one hour a month meeting with the residents he is training and intentionally practicing the language of medical physics. When asked why this training was so important his response was that they needed to sound competent, not only to their patients, but to the operators or the devices and the other medical physicists they might come in contact with. Getting the words right led to respect and others in the field’s ability to be able to trust them. The language was a key into being a part of that community, and understanding the science and the equipment was not enough, one had to be able to talk the talk. I was told about how he assigning readings to get them up to speed on the specifics of the new language they are learning, and that during field work he coaches them on the appropriate way to say things, what words to use and in what order and when. “I would say it this way” and “that is not accurate” are common phrases out of his mouth during these moments, he endeavors to create a nurturing environment free from embarrassment where the residents can practice their new language in a safe space, where they can make mistakes and learn from them before facing the medical scientific community, where they will be clearly judged by what they say and how they say it. What was maybe most surprising to me was that this language was more than just a key into a tight community, but it was a part of being a successful professional. To become board certified, a lot of the testing is about language, and reaching that stage is about more than just understanding the principles that go into operating the machinery.