This was one of those rare occasions in which I was not displeased that some of our talks ended up on the last day of the meeting-it gave me the opportunity to stay longer and savor the beauty of the environs. And on the last day, my colleague Jim and I walked over to Old Albuquerque for dinner with two of my graduate students. It was an old-style tourist trap of a restaurant, a faux adobe construction, with real Mexican tile floors and fake Mexican paintings on the walls, and a cuisine designed not to distress the gringo/gringa palate. The waning hours of the meeting cast us all into a nostalgic, reflective mood, and Jim and I waxed eloquent about the good old days when we were graduate students.
A story that lingers in my mind is one about a professor of biochemistry who was particularly hard on Jim. Apparently ...
