assistant: I.
James Gates stood quietly outside the office of Dr. James Young, his heart racing. He had scheduled a meeting with Dr. Young in order to discuss the possibility of studying under him as a PhD student. He knew that the MIT PhD admissions process was exceptionally selective, and he had no prior research experience. But while taking one of his classes, Dr. Young had told him that he was one of the brightest students he had ever seen, and urged him to pursue a career in research.

James took a deep breath and tried to calm his nerves, and entered the office. The professor looked up from his desk and smiled. "For a moment I thought you weren't going to come!" he proclaimed. This did nothing to calm James' nerves. "About the graduate studies, is there anything in particular you would like to do your thesis on?". James contemplated for a moment, and realized he wasn't quite sure. Yes, physics is an interesting field, and he had a bunch of ideas, but in the heat of the moment nothing in particular jumped out at him. He decided to answer honestly. "I don't really know. I guess it's hard to really tell without actually going really deep on a subject."

The physics professor did not miss a beat. "That's pretty common for people in your situation. But if you want a suggestion, you always seemed very engaged in your quantum mechanics classes. If you are interested in studying that further, there's a new area of research in quantum gravity called 'super-symmetry'. If you wished to focus your PhD around that, I think you would do very well."

James relaxed a bit. "Do you really think I could do well in research like that?". "Yes! You are one of the best students I have ever seen, with an unmatched passion. I think that if you pursue a PhD, as long as you are willing to put forward the proper effort, you will find yourself doing some truly groundbreaking research one day."

They continued talking about graduate school and research. Eventually Dr. Young agreed to take on James as a PhD student, and James left the office with a newfound confidence. Of course, he was still dreading the entrance exams for the PhD.

II.
James completed the first several years of his PhD studies without issue. But eventually he reached the point where he had to pick an angle of research for his thesis. He was completely stumped; while at this point he felt like he had a good grasp of super-symmetry, he didn't really feel like he had any novel insights. He spent months reading papers and talking with various faculty members, but still nothing presented itself.

Eventually, he had to report his failure to Dr. Young. Dr. Young advised him to branch out beyond physics, and to look into related areas. Perhaps some insight could come from the study of mathematics, he suggested.

James branched out his search, and got into contact with some of the mathematics faculty at MIT. Still, though, the best he could come up with was a couple of obvious dead ends.

One day, however, he was visiting the computer science department and listened in on a class about information theory. He noticed that one of the equations on the board was very similar to a key one from supersymmetry. After the class was over, he met with the professor teaching it and decided to work together to see if they could come up with any insights.

III.
Thanks to the contribution of the information theory professor, James had managed to come up with his key insight: parts of supersymmetry can be studied using techniques from information theory that are related to the study of error-correcting codes. He spent the next several years refining this idea and writing his thesis, all with assistance from his advisor Dr. Young.

Finally, the day came where he had to defend his thesis. Normally, this is a terrifying and stressful affair, as the committee evaluating theses tends to be exceptionally critical of prospective graduate's work. But James was so confident that his work was groundbreaking that he knew that he would pass. And indeed he did, passing his thesis defense almost without critique. And thus James received his PhD, and would become known forever in the history books as Dr. James Gates!