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>> 2) High levels of impostor syndrome. I felt this, but was surprised that while there were a few genuine genius-level people in my program, the vast majority

>> 2) High levels of impostor syndrome. I felt this, but was surprised that while there were a few genuine genius-level people in my program, the vast majority spent most of the effort trying to look like a genius but were far from it. One of the things I tell people when they ask me about grad school is, "I thought everybody would be smarter".

neuromantik8086 8y ago
> I felt this, but was surprised that while there were a few genuine genius-level people in my program, the vast majority spent most of the effort trying to look like a genius but were far from it. An astounding amount of time is wasted in academia on puffery. I'm not sure how it compares to industry because there's never been a systematic comparison (and I don't really believe such a comparison would be feasible). My personal experience was that the "mediocrities" who kept a low profile and stayed out of departmental politics as much as possible seemed to actually be accomplishing the most work with any actual substance. Some of these folks were working in state-sponsored institutions rather than universities. All of them seemed to be in their 50s and 60s, tenured (or tenure-equivalented) before higher ed became a hypercompetitive shitshow. This pretension really comes through when scholars don't respect the limits of their expertise / properly delegate to specialists. In software and IT especially, you find academics using technologies that are a poor fit for their work, not understanding budgeting and concepts such as total cost of ownership for compute resources, and reinventing the wheel.
fybe 8y ago
>"I thought everybody would be smarter" I don't remember where I heard it but I think has some truth to it. A bachelor believes he's the smartest A master thinks he's not smart at all A Phd understands no one is smart

neuromantik8086 8y ago

> I felt this, but was surprised that while there were a few genuine genius-level people in my program, the vast majority spent most of the effort trying to look like a genius but were far from it. An astounding amount of time is wasted in academia on puffery. I'm not sure how it compares to industry because there's never been a systematic comparison (and I don't really believe such a comparison would be feasible). My personal experience was that the "mediocrities" who kept a low profile and stayed out of departmental politics as much as possible seemed to actually be accomplishing the most work with any actual substance. Some of these folks were working in state-sponsored institutions rather than universities. All of them seemed to be in their 50s and 60s, tenured (or tenure-equivalented) before higher ed became a hypercompetitive shitshow. This pretension really comes through when scholars don't respect the limits of their expertise / properly delegate to specialists. In software and IT especially, you find academics using technologies that are a poor fit for their work, not understanding budgeting and concepts such as total cost of ownership for compute resources, and reinventing the wheel.

fybe 8y ago

>"I thought everybody would be smarter" I don't remember where I heard it but I think has some truth to it. A bachelor believes he's the smartest A master thinks he's not smart at all A Phd understands no one is smart