EFTA00968070.pdf

From: Lawrence Krauss 5 To: Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacation®gmail.com> Subject: Fwd: about studying physics Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 02:36:48 +0000 another... since it popped up immediately too.. Begin forwarded message: From: Marie Euh Subject: about studying physics Date: Jul 17. 2013 3:36:50 AM MST To: I le lio. I hope I'm not being too intrusive by writing you this email at this address and if I am please forgive the intrusiveness. The reason I'm writing to you is because you're one of the many who contributed to the decision I took to go back to college to study physics and for the part you played I'll be forever grateful. Let me introduce myself, my name is Marie-Claire. I'm 32 years old and I live near Paris (I am French). I have an educational path that can be described as hectic. I studied Economics then got bored and went to Japan to finish my undergraduate studies there. I came back to France and proceeded to study languages (Japanese and English) but I got very quickly bored as well. Right now, I translate as a free lance for some dull companies in Luxembourg (the year I spent in the US is my credential). I had heard about Carl Sagan a couple of times but thought he was related somehow to the French novelist Francoise Sagan and so didn't try to find out more about him (I am not a fan of Francoise Sagan). Then one day I was reading about Asimov and read what he said about Carl Sagan and that got me interested. As cliché as it may sound, watching the Cosmos series was the first big step in my journey. I listened to the explanation and it awoke that desire to understand I had buried so deep because I was so sure I could not understand however hard I tried. I studied physics in high school and it was a nightmare. I was interested in completely different things then and being bullied by the teacher for needing more explanation didn't help either. So I spent most of my time after that thinking understanding how the hell electricity works was just out of my league. One day last year (I think) I became very frustrated with some religious fanatics and my boyfriend suggested that I should watch one of Richard Dawkins documentary. He said it would make me feel better. He was right, it did. From there, I watched some of the videos of Richard Dawkins and yourself then some of your videos. I remember watching one of your internet interview where you explained about the Higgs Boson and some of your lectures available around the internet. They were very enjoyable and very frustrating. Enjoyable because I felt I understood what you were saying, it made sense. Frustrating because I kept thinking "those images used to explain the ideas are fine but I really would like to be able to understand the maths behind it." And that was it. I got books about physics and maths and am still trying to get through them. It's hard to study by oneself but I kept at it. Eventually, it became clear that a more structured learning process would be nice. Hence the decision EFTA00968070 to go back to college. I take genuine pleasure in doing maths and have grown addicted to the "ah ah!" moments. I've always been one to back out of a challenge telling myself I didn't have to do it anyway but this, studying physics, is here to stay. I've studied enough maths in high school and college to be used to the methods and all but physics is really new to me. I understand the explanation fine but when comes time to do problems I'm always stuck because I never learned the proper methodology. I'm doing better but it's still very frustrating. And yet I haven't quit and am not planning on doing so. I know it's going to be difficult but I am so certain I can do it that I don't mind the hard moments. This is a first for me who gets bored so easily. Physics is never boring (except maybe optics but it's mainly due to a lifelong trauma) and maths are rarely so. The point is, I'm really going to do this. I'm going back to learn more and it is largely thanks to those lectures of yours which left me wanting to dig deeper. Thank you very much for everything you did and still are doing. Marie-Claire Dessard. Lawrence M. Krauss Foundation Professor Director, The ASU Origins Project Co-Director, Cosmology Initiative Assoc. Dir, Beyond Center ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Liberal Arts and Sciences School of Earth and Space Exploration EFTA00968071