Just another thought!
One thing every graduate student hate most is trying to prove everything to pass committee’s approval for graduation. One more thing, in case we are good enough to fall into wearing lab coat as a researcher, is to have research papers published regularly, in highest ranked journal, and preferably standing on top of the world research findings. This amount of effort, therefore, does not make just one. Once we try hard enough, we’ll get rewarded. Once the reward is given, people will try harder to earn more reward. Being regularly a loser, I simply feel that this is just a paradox for perfectionists.
From industrial and user base perspective, scientists or machine level programmers have never been remembered for their greatest contribution to humanity. Average people often gravitate with the current trend, or with the most crowded crowd, etc. Therefore, this idea has given so much opportunities to those who know what to act at the right time, with the right people, and minimum effort - a really great opportunity for politicians, bankers, economists, lawyers, etc.
Another opportunity is to be really talented in a specific area for people who are in need. We don’t need to explore anything else other than the main goal to serve clients, and then to earn their trust and money. This is great but not anyone can be really great with a single useful function because the Earth is always moving. Then, we tend to fall down to knowing everything, and therefore, very little about everything so that we won’t be ignored.
In academic institutions, graduate students and professors are not often required to make any applicable finding for mass production, in case they are sponsored by the government bodies. However, we should be aware of some questionable schemes which may distract our direction from contributing to knowledge pool.
For example, to get a job, we need to have a degree in the required field. If we are not yet good enough, we apply for graduate program, expecting a miracle can help to earn a better position. After graduation, there is not place for higher education people. So we come back to school, call more kids to come to school, and prove as often as possible that education is good for their future. We can end up surviving by trying to fool people that our survival is so great.
Another back story is with the requirements by the university. Some faculties may set a minimum number of publication for each professor for their PR purpose and actually, we don’t really know yet how much important to get these paper published. Professors keep pushing their students while students keep cooking their data. At the end of the year, students pass, professors get promoted, the faculty receive more awards and fundings. Everyone seems at their point of success. However, if everyone succeeds, somebody else must be failing, unless we are not aware of or we choose to ignore them. The failure is transfered to next generation when many papers become too many, or too many of them becomes indistinguishable, except by fancy wordings.
Cynicism does not help either. When we are not interested in promoting, and therefore motivating people, evolution ceases. Otherwise, people other than we will still do it because people simply enjoy diversification. The problem is that the truth behind famous people are not really famous. Einstein didn’t get a secure job by himself, Darwin either, Nash did try too much harder than his brain can handle, Faraday didn’t earn any recognition by the community, Tesla was almost erased from the history because of his ingenuity.
Happiness can be defined as excitement, for young people, and peace, for the old ones.
Source: someone from TED Talk (I can’t remember)
I choose the second one. To solve this problem, I don’t need to solve the problem. Let’s just ignore them, do whatever best we can do, and therefore, try not to impact the world. I chose to be indifferent so as to be a happy being.
While attending a training session by top academic journal publisher, I just feel that everyone are seeking to compete against each other, to stand above low quality researchers, to collaborate with only the best people, from best institutions, so that to publish in the best journal again, so that to maintain the reputation of being the best. Behind this competition, some lose and some win, but I’m sure the publisher will always make profit from motivating this battle.