Re:The Four Quadrants of Conformism
by croissants on Friday July 24, 2020 @09:11AM
(#23939013)
> You don't have to be independent-minded (from the group) to be "average" successful. Quite the opposite.
If this is true, then what exactly separates successful faculty from unsuccessful faculty? There are lots of graduate students who want to be faculty, but only a small percentage do. What do you think the distinguishing factor is if not some kind of new ideas?
Re:The Four Quadrants of Conformism
by raverbashing on Friday July 24, 2020 @09:15AM
(#23939054)
Conformist or not, resiliency and building relationships still play a part.
Given faculty positions are (very) limited, it seems resiliency might be the most important factor.
> Many professors are independent-minded — especially in math, the hard sciences, and engineering, where you have to be to succeed.
And I disagree with it. You don't have to be independent-minded (from the group) to be "average" successful. Quite the opposite.
Follow the lead, follow the procedures, always take the skeptical side and you'll just coast through it. A lot of people succeed doing exactly that.
Research? Take the latest papers in an area, try a similar research (nothing too out of the consensus) and write a grant request for it.
The hard nonconformists, those will have a hard time. And the sad part is that most of them won't be nonconformists "for good reasons" but rather they will be most likely quacks. And I say the percentage is high exactly because academia does not favor anything out of the beaten path and independent thought is shunned.