I found this website which shows the descriptions of scientists, by a group of 11 year olds before and after visiting Fermilab, one of the top particle physics facilities in the US. The difference in perception is quite interesting...

I particularly liked this girl's description AFTER visiting the lab:

Before:

You can see them as a mad scientist with hair standing straight up and a mean wicked laugh. . . . I see them with rubber gloves and safety goggles on. I see them in a chemistry lab surrounded by beakers, graduated cylinders and tables filled with experimental materials.

After:

Scientists love their jobs. They wake up in the morning and are excited to come to work. . . . When you are a scientist, you come to work ready to explore and learn new things. Things that may change the world someday. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow.

Over the past few weeks, I've been very impressed with the way that American universities try to get their best talent. As of now, I have had 6 PhD offers, and for several times I've had people call me me up to try and convince me to go there. The only universities which haven't called were Chicago and Stanford; with Chicago someone from the faculty did email me personally, and they set a few of their graduate students to email me to answer my queries and convince me. Stanford takes 60 students for their Physics department (which was what I applied to there, instead of astrophysics/astronomy in other places), and it's not surprising that that they can contact such a crowd except for the most exceptional students (and my application wouldn't stand out as far as pure physics is concerned).

Their financial muscle is very obvious as well, from the fact that all of them offered to pay enough travel expenses for me to fly over for a look if I wanted to. I will be flying over to a couple of East Coast universities to take a look, but even the Californian universities are offering for pay for me to go over to visit, which is tempting if not for the fact that it's going to be in the midst of my pre-finals cramming.

I'm not in general a brilliant person. I usually can follow the material in my studies, but often I do have to think about things for some time before I understand it. My strength as scientist, in fact, comes from the fact that I am very good at making connections between things which are on the surface unrelated. Let me illustrate with an example, which happened to me recently.

When I was in first year student halls, there was this guy called Chris with whom I occasionally sat with at dinner. He was a nice and friendly bloke, but I wouldn't really have regarded him as a friend. He was however unusual in studying classics (i.e. Greek and Latin studies, that sort of stuff), and apparently is unbeatable in chess.

In my present halls, over 2 years later, there is this student called Alex from I occasionally say hi to, but don't really talk to since he's very quiet and doesn't talk much, and I've been too busy to really get to know many of the newer residents. However, in a small hall like Netherhall, you learn things about people even if you don't talk to him. I overheard him mentioning to someone that he's from Norwich, and I sometimes saw him playing chess with people in the lounge.

One day, some of synapses just snapped together, and during after-dinner coffee I turned to Alex and asked him, 'Do you by any chance have a brother called Chris?'. He gave me a weird look and slowly said yes. 'Is he by any chance currently doing a Master's in classics in Durham?'. Now he looked slightly alarmed as he said yes again. I then told him that I used to stay in the same halls as his brother in first year. In some part of the brain I must still have remembered that Chris is from Norwich, and I must have made the connection that both their surnames were the same. As I started to look for connections, I noticed that they both had a vaguely similar appearance, and seeing Alex play chess just sealed the case shut.

I'm not sure how much this talent will come into use in my future scientific career, but I suspect that I don't make the grade, I'll just go and become a police detective, I guess....