Ania Polomska
Ania Polomska
Ania Polomska is in her first year of a Ph.D. program at Memorial University, specializing in Condensed Matter Physics, focusing on light scattering from photonic materials. I am from Swidwin, a little town in North-West Poland. I did my undergraduate studies at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. In 2003 I graduated with a Master of Science degree in Physics.
I have always wanted to be a teacher. I decided to do my masters in Physics first (still at Adam Mickiewicz University) to be a better one. Physics, however, is corruptive. Once you are interested in it you are gone - you want to explore more, confirm with no doubt, and go to the deepest roots of a problem. But this is also a subject that teaches you how to think and analyze. Therefore I chose to continue my studies at the doctoral level because of a new found love for research and also due to the fact that education never closes any doors and if I ever want to teach there might be new levels of opportunity open to me.
The graduate program in Physics seemed really good at Memorial (and was found to be so later on), my potential supervisor's laboratory just got a brand new and powerful spectrometer and the area of research he was interested in was the same one I have wanted to work in. It is also located in an English speaking country, which was tempting because of the opportunity to improve my knowledge of this language. At the moment of decision there was no single argument against studies here --maybe just the distance from home. But I love challenges like that. Memorial combines great atmosphere, amazing and unique location with good education. This is why I never regretted my choice.
The Physics Department is not very big and therefore the people know, support, cooperate with, and help each other as well as share ideas rather freely. You really do not need more in science. What is more, there is always encouragement to participate in programs that help you evolve and improve. Apart from the reasons mentioned above - it has a great atmosphere, as well as a good offering of programs. Not to mention an amazing library that cannot be forgotten.
For a foreigner Newfoundland is amazing with its friendly people, unique location and the ability to teach you how to understand many types of English accents quicker than you ever suspected you could. But it is also a very safe and unique place. The city of St, John's, being big enough to offer a lot and still not to big to make you feel lost and totally meaningless guarantees you can make yourself feel at home here no matter where your actual home really is and how rarely you go there.
I work in residence as a Proctor, which makes me feel connected to society and protects me from transformation into a typical physicist. It also helps in understanding mentality of Canadian students. Outside of that I am a movie geek, I love watching movies, talking about them and reading about them. I also cannot exist without literature therefore I read everywhere and everything. To keep myself sane I run and participate in intramural sports (also to be involved in residence and show the students that a proctor's job is not only a disciplinary one). Anna received an SGS Fellowship during her M. Sc. program (2003-2005) and so far, during her Ph.D. program (2005-).
I am still thinking of teaching, probably at university level. But I also want to be able to continue doing research on photonic materials - there seems to be a lot to look at and discover in this area. I think I am very close to dedicating myself to an academic career, but I also want to keep all my options open - after all, this is what education is for.