Quote:
Originally Posted by Brutha  |
Thank you, thank you, Brutha, for directing me to the Cal Newport site! I've been reading it all morning. That site looks like the motherlode of info that I need to make it in grad school.
Your statement about compromising intrigues me. Do you have some more info about your notion of not compromising? I'm wrestling with this right now, regarding grad school. Here's some detail. (This is long, but here goes.)
Long ago, when I first started undergrad, I hated it, for two reasons: (1) taking multiple classes put me into "subconscious brain-clash": I feel the desire to dig deeply into one topic, but it's always time to move on to something else, resulting in a long-running, very unpleasant feeling; (2) most classes are taught as meaningless symbol-manipulation, without much regard for applications, making the material very difficult to retain (and hence the need to explore it on my own as in (1)).
I thought back then that if someone wanted to set up an organization to teach people subjects to a high level of mastery, they would not do it much like college. You would take one course at a time, and you'd focus on doing the real thing, not on exams.
So, I quit. I refused to compromise. I got a job in software development that I wasn't anywhere near qualified for (I didn't know much C, and I didn't know how compilers worked). Within a year, I had learned more comp sci than most people learn in four years in school, and I was earning money and doing well. I got what I wanted: all-day-every-day focus on one subject, oriented by doing the real thing and not exams. Life was good.
Later, I felt the calling to become a researcher and teacher (i.e. a professor). I decided to compromise and just get the degree, no matter what. I tolerated college for two years and got a degree, without getting much knowledge--too busy doing homework problems to learn the subject. And now I'm in grad school, experiencing the same frustrations I had my first time as an undergrad. "Subconscious brain-clash" is back, and I feel disgusted with the inefficiency of trying to learn while taking multiple classes.
So now I'm pondering the question of whether to compromise and go along with the grad-school system, in order to participate in the research community that interests me, or bail again and go my own way and just trust that things will work out.
Looking back, I'm happy with some compromises I've made, and unhappy with others. Some have led to logjams getting unstuck, and the other side had something valuable that I couldn't appreciate at the time. Others have led to me wasting time, doing things ineffectively, making a bad situation worse by going along with someone whose approach was as bad as it seemed at the time or that just didn't fit me.
The pattern seems to be: you can only tell if a compromise will be worthwhile later, after things have played out. Not very helpful for making the decision at the time.
Have you written any thoughts about this--when it's wise to trust that compromise will bring benefits that can't be fully understood at the time, and when it's not?