Xiaohan Zeng
Edited by Nicolas Pelaez
When you write a paper, you are thinking about science. When you watch a superhero movie, you are being entertained. A paper and a superhero movie appear entirely unrelated to each other. People rarely realize the similarities between them: They are both telling a story; they both require tremendous effort to produce; there are a lot of things behind the scenes. Here I will briefly describe why and how papers and superhero movies are similar. The parts in parentheses (the behind-the-scenes) are what usually happened but remained unknown to public.
A very serious problem occurs. This could fundamentally change the whole world and thus demands the attention of all humans. Many people attempted to solve it, but provided futile solutions, and failed abysmally. There is an urgent need for a powerful entity to deal with it.
Now the protagonist appears. (Most likely, she/he is a normal person with a plain life and modest dream. In some cases her/his family might be rich but that provides zero help towards solving the problem. More often than not, the protagonist inherits some sort of a will from a senior person. She/he also acquires equipments and advice from this senior person to attack the problem.)
The protagonist starts out to deal with the dire situation. Initially, the protagonist has no idea about how to proceed, but together with the senior person and other team members, the protagonist breaks the problem down to smaller parts and is able to get rid of the peripheral pieces. (During the process, the protagonist constantly faces challenges. Sometimes she/he has to make a difficult choice between her/his career and family life. Sometimes she/he might be overconfident by small successes and gets beaten up. Sometimes she/he has problems with the senior mentor. Sometimes an important member leaves the team permanently. Sometimes the protagonist even doubts her/himself and wonders why to begin this career in the first place. Anyway, having gone through numerous failures and some defining moment, she/he becomes confident, intelligent, and powerful.)
Finally the protagonist appears shining and almighty, and comes to confront the most difficult part of the problem. By using the most advanced techniques and following the perfect strategy, the protagonist is able to tear down the enemy. At the same time, she/he shows the audience fantastic moves in great details. Eventually, the problem is solved in the most glorious way, and the entire world is greatly rejoiced to see the outcome. (The protagonist shares this exhilarating moment with the team members and family, with a mixed sense of honor, relief, and accomplishment.)
The story may or may not end here. Sometimes the audience expects to see more, and it is revealed in the very last part that there is an even greater problem waiting, but very briefly so that the audience won’t question the protagonist too much. In other situations, the story has to end, simply because of financial problems.
Now you may find papers and superhero movies are not that drastically different. In fact, you may even think that PhD student and superheroes are not that far away from each other (Ask Dr. Bruce Banner or Dr. Jane Foster)! I think there is a superhero in every PhD student: Dealing with notorious enemies such as bugs in the code, doing marvelous things such as manipulating DNA sequences, and lastly, transforming the world (in a way) with our strength.