Introductions to be introductions.
> How did you manage to get a PhD in theory then?
Certainly not by being a walking glossary. If that was involved, I’d not have done it.
Same way that everyone does. I gravitated towards a niche, found a new method to analysing it, generalising that method to many more applications and spending the final year trying to ride the metaphorical unicycle on a tightrope hanging high above a cavern of nervous breakdown. The usual.
Now, the way you talk sounds very familiar - I know mathematical physicists who are very much used to throwing mathematical terminology around. But on the theory side, it’s quite rare to generalise that far so early on in an academic career. It’s far more about the concrete application than the abstract viewpoint, unless it’s somewhere where the abstract viewpoint makes a lot of sense.