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The difference is that startups go out of business when they fail, whereas publishing papers like this is considered success in academia.
by houseabsolute 16y ago
The difference is that startups go out of business when they fail, whereas publishing papers like this is considered success in academia.
- api 16y agoYou fail in academia too, but the floor is different. With a startup, you cease to exist or drop off into an abandonware project. In academia, failure means you get lackluster appointments, little grant money, etc. You kind of stagnate. I've noticed that smart self-aware people in academia can right this by recognizing that kind of stagnation for what it is, namely failure, and responding by changing course, increasing effort, etc. The dangerous thing about academia is that failure just looks like mediocrity... mediocrity is failure. This isn't the case in the real world, where mediocrity is just mediocrity and failure is... well... you see them sleeping on the sidewalk. Your dopamine system is not calibrated this way. So to succeed in academia I think you have to realize that if you're not a star you're sleeping in a gutter and respond to your situation accordingly. Respond to mediocre results the way you would respond to sleeping in the gutter in the "real world."