[_polymer_]

I've often felt I'm not smart enough to be a theoretical physicist, but smart enough to know the difference between a real explanation and word vomit.

And that is extremely stressful for me. There is a desire to feel like you can understand some key part of the world you live in.

Failing to get into academia feels like I've personally failed at calming this desire. And I hate it.

Sometimes I think people refuse to believe this course of life is necessary, it feels elite and exclusionary. Knowing your world shouldn't require this, it cant't.

But it does.

[mizzao]

Speaking as an academic, "getting into academia" requires some combination of luck, perseverance, and personality fit. It has very little to do with being "smart enough".

Also, you end up being a specialist in a very, very tiny aspect of the world, rather than having a lot of general knowledge. A good illustration:

http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

[_polymer_]

I mean sure. It's just when I look at my heroes, Feynman, Polya, Dirac, etc. They all went to places like princeton.

And near as I can tell, that seems to be important. The only person I can think of who blew the door open was faraday, a spooky good experimentalist.

Granted it's rediculous to compare oneself to people like this. I'm worried I'm half depressed.

Worrying about specialization seems, to me, misleading. At least in math. People regularly use their entire experience on problems. The specialty just reflects your values and talents. I dunno, maybe I am wrong, I appreciate your thoughts.

My goal with my original post was to explain a strong desire to be "right" about things one cares about. I think this emotion is destructive, and unproductive, but I see it in myself. I think others might cope by not fighting it, pretending to know, then moving on with their life. Then some scientist comes along, tells then they don't, and they get defensive.

[effie]

If you want to be like them, focus on the process of science, not on being right about how nature "really" works. Those guys were driven by the desire to figure things out, to get some understanding of things but they knew when to stop worrying and move on to the next interesting thing where progress could be made. They were not so religious as to spend their life trying to achieve some sort of final absolute understanding.