Science is incremental.  I get that.  And my job is awesome.  I get that, too.  For example, today I am writing from the beautiful Getty Center Library, where I can see all of West Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean.  But it requires persistence and patience and a willingness to slog through details while keeping an eye on the bigger picture.  This is not advertised in the glossy pages of top journals or popular science magazines, radio shows, or anywhere else that I am aware of.

When I was younger, I thought that research was fast-paced and that the excitement of discovery overflowed from scientists, for whom it would be easy to spill words onto the pages of journals.  Then, other researchers (and the public) could drink up, pull ideas from different domains and ka-pow, even more exciting discoveries.  Being in my third year of graduate school now, and being at the Getty to work on my prospectus, I just want to be clear: for anyone who is thinking about a career in research, the elements that seem most necessary for good research once you have an idea (at least in my field) are good orgazational and planning skills, the ability to manage people (research assistants, coordinate with the business office, the people who manage the equipment, etc.), and attention to details.

I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.  One of the two major criteria that Gladwell sets forth as key to success, is a willingness to work really hard.  Contrast this with one telling teaching review that Brett got last quarter in which one of his students complained that the course demanded an unreasonable 4 hours of homework each week!  Horrors.  Four whole hours.  Cry me a river.

If you can identify with the student above, if you do not want to sit around and think about the same set of problems for more than four hours, then research is probably not for you.

But if you are willing to dot your i’s and cross you t’s and you want to know how the world, or people, or anything else works, then you too, could be sitting in a beautiful library every Thursday, possibly even overlooking an ocean, and working on your prospectus too.