Re:A lesson on thinking and acting long term
by SubiculumCode on Sunday December 16, 2018 @03:48PM
(#18695142)
So many undergraduate research assistants want to be in the lab to do the minimum time and effort, get the check mark in their cv, and move on. Then they go interview with an impressive looking list of labs and projects they've worked at, but when you inspect their thinking there is little depth. Then you find the jr specialist applicant that stayed at one lab their entire undergraduate career, shows some understanding and language surrounding the basic problems in that field, and mental dedication to work through the hard problems without bailing. That is what I valued in candidates. No matter how tough it gets, they didn't give up.
Re:A lesson on thinking and acting long term
by ThomPete on Sunday December 16, 2018 @04:00PM
(#18695207)
Little depth is exactly the problem.
I am all for the expert generalist but you need to at least have tried to dig into something really serious and spent the years learning to become really good at something.
First time I did that was with music where you learn that you will hit plateaus along the way were it feels like nothing happens until then suddenly you are catapulted to an ever more accomplished level.
Luckily this still happens but it seems like it mostly happens outside of academia because it's not been as politicized as much of that seems to have become.
Re:A lesson on thinking and acting long term
by captainperl on Sunday December 16, 2018 @10:21PM
(#18696705)
Similarly, you can see a remarkable model airplane collection by Edward Chavez at SFO now. It was sponsored over two decades by the Nut Tree restaurant owner:
https://www.flysfo.com/museum/exhibitions/masterworks-edward...
A friend of my parents spent more than 30 years building a famous watch called "jens olsens world watch" in half size by hand (as in litreally everyhing is done in hand also the wrenches which for some of them takes 400 years to go around their own axis)
This is on top of a bunch of other things he built. If there is a modern day da vinchi he would be it (he paints, plays music, writes assembler like it's an artform, understand mechanical engineering and electrical engineering he reversed engineered the Mac2 back in the days, I could go on)
https://imgur.com/a/wfQNM
He never brags about it so I have to do it because I think there are far too few people like him left and they are the ones who really do things in life.
There is much to be learned by someone like him.