 My name is Jessica Finzen, I'm a professor of mathematics based at the University of Bonn and I'm an invited speaker here at the IHS Summer School. Well that happened somehow gradually by accident more or less. When I was a grad student I just needed somehow a thesis problem. So I was looking around and I attended a summer school back then and at the summer school I was really excited about one of the lectures that one of the professors gave. So I read a bit more about what this person had done in recent paper and I just found an open problem there that I solved that became a thesis and that wasn't the local Langlands correspondence yet. That was about the structure of periodic groups and then it involved over time I was then studying the representations of periodic groups which are one side of the Langlands correspondence. So the local Langlands correspondence is the idea that the representations of periodic groups are somehow in deep connection with L parameters with number theoretic information and so it just happened that I gradually got into this area of the Langlands correspondence coming from the representations of periodic groups. So I think a moment that made me really happy is not the biggest result but my first big result when I was a grad student and I think because that was the first time, I mean I have to say so I was working on a project which I was hoping should become my PhDs either so that I can graduate and get my PhD, my degree and I was just completely stuck on it and I spent month and months just sitting in the common room of the math department trying to solve it and I was very close to giving up and maybe nowadays I would have given up but back then I was just so focused on it because I wanted to graduate and then there was just one moment where suddenly the idea came to my mind and I think I will never forget that moment because it was in the end so simple and I was wondering why didn't I come up with it earlier and it was just so nice and clean and that made me really happy and it meant that I could graduate and become a mathematician. I think the summer school has several different goals and I'm mainly thinking of it as a service to the math community and to the next generation so I think there are many things to take out of it. First of all we learn a lot of interesting mathematics we have very interesting lectures going on but I think a very important aspect is also to get to know each other in particular for the new mathematicians, the early career mathematicians to get to know each other, get to know the lecturers I think that's a very important part of it and to form new collaborations to find new ideas for projects to work on so I think the networking aspect of it is very important and then I think last but not least this conference also should have some important influence on the future so we are writing proceedings and we recorded all the talks so we hope that mathematicians in the future will profit from the summer school as well so it's not just for the hundred people who are here but it's for a much broader audience and they are not joining us also virtually so it's really nice to have this third aspect of it. Well that's difficult I think I've enjoyed everything so far the summer school is very well planned and thought through so I think the organizers have done an excellent job I've learned a lot, I've met a lot of interesting people I think as a speaker I find very interesting to see how excited the students are the postdocs and grad students and there are so many questions so to really be excited about learning and that's I think an aspect I really enjoy to interact with them and try to answer as many questions as I can but of course also show that my knowledge is limited and learn myself a lot of new things That's a good question I think just being very interested and wanting to know the answer like solving a mystery like when you have a puzzle that you want to solve just you really want to solve it and just being fascinated by it and often what also happens when you try to solve something you think you have solved it and then you realize oh there's a small mistake it's actually much more complicated that makes the problem often much more interesting and then you encounter new things and go forward you just find out a lot of new things that you haven't thought about before I think that's very interesting and just the idea of trying to want to resolve the mystery and understand why are these things the way they are and how can we solve them I think that's very motivating and also of course to keep in mind the nice feeling of when you actually solve things I think that's also a good motivation That's a tough question and it's not always clear I think when I just notice that I run in circles and repeat the same ideas over and over again and don't get in anywhere then I think I just try to put the problem aside and think about a different idea a different project and maybe try to come back when I have a different idea or maybe I try to talk to people and see if others have other ideas or think it's maybe a good idea to put it aside so yeah I think just when you notice that you just don't get anywhere it might be helpful to re-orient do something else and keep this in the back of your mind and come back when you have a new idea