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What surprised me of this bunch was the general lack of curiosity, passion, and depth that many of them had My experience has been different from yours. Every
by timwiseman 14y ago
What surprised me of this bunch was the general lack of curiosity, passion, and depth that many of them had
My experience has been different from yours. Everyone I have known well that attained or even sought a PhD has had curiosity, passion, and depth.
However, many of them had narrow curiosity and passion. Engaged within their specialty and their brilliance would shine through, but outside of it they were realtively intelligent but fairly ordinary people.
Of course, there may be a bit of sample bias on my side. The PhD's I got to know tended to be focused on math or a tightly related hard science. They also tended to be the ones that were tolerant of hanging around with someone like me that liked talking about math.
- ap22213 14y agoTo be clear, the lack was in relation to my expectations, not in relation to the average. That is, I had very high expectations. But, when I came to know more people with advanced degrees, what surprised me was that they were generally more like the people that I knew with lesser education, than not. I hope you see that I'm not claiming that people with advanced degrees have less curiosity, passion, or depth than the average. In fact, I think it's slightly above average. Instead, I am pointing out that many people achieve the levels that are expected of them. Some people are expected to get a Phd. (or other advanced degree) as similarly they are expected to brush their teeth twice a day. My observation is that (holding natural abilities constant) achieving higher education seems to have more to do with internal self-expectations than with those other attributes. And, that was the surprise to me.