Essays

A Man with Distinct Personal Life and Professional Life

—The Lifestyle of Professor Harry Tusco—

Harry Tusco, a scientific professor who teaches at the Massachsetts Institute of Technology, is hardly like a professor when he is at home. He speaks in a friendly, easygoing tone, and his talk is certainly not about nano-technology or anything related to his scientific research; it is about his travel to a country abroad, about the recent news and other casual topics. However, in his workplace, he must be an entirely different person, researching devotedly into one of the most advanced technologies in United States. As Harry’s niece, I became curious about his occupation as a scientific professor and I also wanted to know more about his personal life with his family and his various interests.

When I visited my uncle Harry’s house in Boston on a bright Sunday morning in May, it was as clean as a new shoe and had unique interior designs, such as trees in pots and various ornaments on tables. Harry’s wife Sarah takes great care in keeping the house neat and making seasonal changes in the interior. The family’s dog Rocky greeted me at the front door, excited as always, although he is actually over ten years old. His two sons were upstairs in their rooms, each with their own bookshelf, television and computer. Sarah kindly served coffee jelly with cream, which tasted heavenly delicious. As I talked with my uncle on the comfortable sofa for about two hours, Rocky dozed off peacefully nearby on the rug. I could tell this home was a nice place for Harry to relax and spend pleasant time with his family.

Harry’s family went to Hawaii in April last year. Since it was too early to go swimming, they went to an aquarium, where they saw sharks and mantas. They also visited many of the famous world heritage sites. According to my uncle, Hawaii has unique and interesting cultures, especially in cookery. When they went to an outdoor market, in one of the stores, there were many colorful fish lined up in a row. The family chose a red fish, the color of a lobster, and a gleaming aquamarine blue fish. Then they went up to the second floor of the store, where the chef cooked and served the fish they had chosen right away.

Going on family vacations is a traditional custom of the Tusco family. When Harry and his brother Justin (my father) were still children, the family went to Vermont and something quite unexpected happened on the way. Harry’s mother (my grandmother) was driving the car, and they were going through the curvy roads of the mountain. Suddenly, the car failed to slow down at one of the curves and nearly slipped off a cliff! Instead, it bounced up and turned upside down, fortunately landing on the mountain side of the road. Every time Harry remembers that nightmarish event, he thinks of how close they all came to dying and where they would have been now if the car hadn’t flipped over the right way.

When Harry was in high school, he developed a liking for subjects such as mathematics and physics, an indication of his future job as a scientific professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, at that time, he held several other options as well. He could have gone to the liberal arts or the department of medical science. What made him choose the department of science and technology? It was his high school physics teacher, Mr. Smith. This teacher was rather quite and only spoke in a muffled tone. He was not so articulate in speech, yet he had a persuasiveness that made Harry always believe in what this teacher said. Mr. Smith is an important person in Shuri’s life because he is the one who inspired Harry to become interested in the study of physics.

Harry is sturdily built and handsome like a Korean movie star. The wisdom of a large brown owl perched on a tree branch lies deep in his dark brown eyes. Medium-length black hair with natural waves runs smooth along the sides of his head like classical music. His face slightly flushed from drinking, his sharp pointed nose, his small jaws, and eyebrows gently tipped down all compose his kind expression. He is often called a ‘dandy’ professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology because he wears fashionable reddish-brown suspenders.

Quite contrary to his seriousness as a scientific professor, at home he is humorous and easygoing as a cowboy riding a horse, calling out “Hey-hey!” He speaks with a twang, but his voice is very clear. He makes hand gestures while he talks. At the same time, his eyes usually focused down on the table would rise into action and the black stones that had stored moonlight all night long would let out a new sparkling light.

Harry never planned to become a scientific professor, but it was right there in the course of his life. After graduation from the science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harry felt the need to study more in order to become full-fledged. Therefore, he studied two more years in graduate school and three additional years in a doctoral course. While university classes only required him to memorize facts from the textbook, in graduate school, he experienced the pleasure of finding out about new things on his own and letting other people know about them. Like an artist who designs something original and interesting by using his creativity, Harry imagined useful things that could be made but did not yet exist in the world.

By the time he finished the doctoral course, he sufficiently learned as a scholar, and the time had come for him to choose his profession. At that time, he didn’t have much interest in teaching; therefore, he intended to work in an enterprise or a national research institute. However, there was an assistant job available in the university, so he ended up staying in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As Harry worked in the university as an assistant, he realized that teaching students was actually fun! Also, he was free to do research on whatever he wished. If he worked in an enterprise, he would have to follow corporate orders. He became an associate professor when he was thirty five and a professor in his forties.

His present research is about producing smaller semiconductors, which are used inside computers. Portable electronic goods such as mobile phones have developed from this, and in the future, computers might even become small enough to fit in eyeglasses. There are mainly two ways to produce semiconductors: the top-down method in which the design of the semiconductor is put under light and something large is reduced into something small, and the bottom-up method in which some atoms are arranged in a certain way so that something small is made into something big. Atoms of silicon, the raw material for semiconductors, gather together and create a small ball called nano-silicon. Nano refers to one billionth, so it is easy to guess that nano-silicon is used in extremely small structural parts of the bottom-up method.

In addition to creating smaller semi-conductors, Professor Harry also aims to produce lower-power electronics. One of the shortcomings of electronic goods tTuscoy is that they run out of battery very easily. For example, most mobile phones still require frequent battery charging, but with progress in electronics, the number of times the batteries need to be recharged can be greatly reduced. Single electron transistors and single electron memory devices are the promising keys for this. About a million electrons flow together to become an electric current, but by just one single electron the electric current could either pass or stop. The force of this single electron is what leads to the production of low-power electronic goods that don’t require so much energy.

As much as Harry is devoted to his work, he also makes time for his hobbies such as playing tennis, listening to classical music and tasting wine. He goes to the Boston Racket Club once a week to play tennis with his friends. He likes to listen to classical music, especially opera music. During university, he was a member of the Mozart association which was limited to six hundred twenty-six people. He has listened to concerts abroad in Vienna, Milan, Paris and London, and presently goes to the Boston Theater four or five times a year. His affection for wine was first stimulated when he traveled to Cambridge University in England. English people were very knowledgeable about wine, and he found that there was something very profound about it. He now enjoys drinking with his close friends on occasions and discussing about wine.

The merit of Harry’s present job as a scientific professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is that he is free to research on anything he wants and team up with anyone he would like, and that he can afford to do his research in any laboratory, inland or overseas. Last year, he traveled abroad seven or eight times for his work. This year, he is planning to go to Hawaii and Italy in June and New Hampshire in August.

Harry met his wife Sarah for the first time at an international conference on semi-conductors held in New York. There were many respected teachers and a few young people participating in this conference. Sarah was one of the receptionists. It was a pure coincidence that Harry and Sarah got to know each other. Harry’s work benefited him not only in giving him the satisfaction of doing whatever he liked, but also in providing him with the chance of meeting his one special partner of life.

However, it is quite rare that Harry’s professional life links in any way to his personal life. His family vacations and his love for tennis, classical music and wine are one thing; his scientific research in producing smaller semi-conductors and low-power electrons is another. Never would his busy and active research invade the peaceful time he needs to spend with his family or by himself doing his hobbies; nor would the fun and relaxing time he spends at home ever make him get lazy at work. Professor Harry Tusco enjoys both his professional life and his personal life by always keeping them independent from each other. Life needs variety, some hard work and some fun, some devotion and some peace.