| > Systematic hard work can get you results in academia. This is not necessarily true. At least in life sciences, there is a big element of pure, dumb luck. Biological systems are inherently noisy, and no matter how diligent we try to be about our processes and protocols, there is always luck. I spent nearly two years of my life performing a single protocol (an endocytic receptor internallization assay) and the line between "good results" and "wasted a week" was incredibly thin. Some things just require luck to work out, no matter how careful you are. I left academic biology because I didn't want luck playing into my career. In academic biology you must be incredibly smart, incredibly dedicated, willing to work long hours with little pay, AND be incredibly lucky. I looked around at the post-docs in my department (at MIT, mind you) and saw brilliant people who would never produce a top-tier article, who had spent so long in their post-doc that they had no chance of ever becoming a professor. They would probably wash out to some industry job at Merck testing cholesterol drugs after wasting 10 years of their life pursuing some fictitious dream. Truth be told, I wasn't as brilliant as most of the people around me, so I made a judgment call and left. It was the right decision, I'm happier than ever (and actually make money too). |