My Role models during grad school

I never cared much for celebrity gossips.  I still don't, but there are things I noticed about them, that are very special, and deserves Mugu's seal of approval. Yes, there are a couple, and they are not who you think they are.

 

1) Silvester Stallone:  I had Rocky and Rambo playing on my repeat to keep me company during my lonely months of thesis writing.  A lot of people think that his movies are better suited for the brainless machos.  A friend of mine in LA, who knows the Italian Stallion personally, told me that he is one of the few actors who insists of doing everything himself, including scripts and stunts.  The characters he created (Rocky and Rambo) reflects on his ideals for the person.  It is good motivation, a reminder how one can overcome any challenge.

 

2) Billy Blanks:  I first came across him with his TaeBo infomercials.  At first I thought he is all BS, but at some point I decided to watch it.  It's physically demanding.  Now, some people like to make things demanding to show you how much better they are, but not Billy.  In his rigor you can see that he is humble and gentle at heart.  He is also very warm and genuine in what he says at the end of each video.

 

3) Kyung-Wha Chung:  I already mentioned her in a previous article on this blog.  Her strength and determination almost parallel that Stallone depicted in Rocky.  Back in the days when the Asian violinist wasn't a household phenomenon, and that the musical world where she was in was dominated by a cartel of musicians who didn't want to accept her.   She knew she would win, and she did.

 

4) Robert S. MacNamera:  I learnt of him from The Fog of War.  Yes, he has been a contraversal figure, having served both JFK and Johnson during much of the Vietnam war.  What I was impressed about him was his effective use of numbers.  He has a certain acumen in analysis that I came to admire.  I later read his work In Retrospect, a sort of autobiography with a focus of his experience from the Vietnam War.  It is a very inspiring read and no detail was spared.  Not to mention, he is also the personification of the American Dream, where hard work and determination was the virtue of his time.

 

5) Jacques Brel:  I was drawn to his music when I visited the Jacques Brel Museum some years ago in Brussels.  I was moved to tears by his music.  Also, the amount he has accomplished in his short life (he died of cancer in 1978) was incredible, and served as inspiration of a new generation of singers.  The moment he discovered his terminal condition, he simply took the devil-may-care attitude and learnt how to fly.  He knew pretty well, that his body might perish with the disease, but his spirit would live on.

 
6) Richard P. Feynman:  I got a hold of his biography, Genius, by James Gleick.  Behind his intellectual powress, Feynman is no different than another other human beings.  He had his successes and failures, his achievements and disappointments, his friends and enemies, and his mentors and rivals.  His willingness to tread unknown territories (e.g., painting, biology, and his revamped lecture notes) was also something that is now missing in to-day's academia.  Though he is not known for siring new generations of academics, his influence is perhaps more far reaching.  He was the reason I started doing my PhD in the first place.

Why I left academia

For a very long time, I had the utmost admiration for members of the academic world.  They do research for the sake of advancing humanity, independent of social-economical forces.  This is, I think, a privilege, of being able to manipulate ideas so complex that most people simply do not have the comprehension.  We trust academics for their creativity, and we give them the freedom to exercise them unhindered.

However, there were a few things I became aware in my experience as a PhD student through which prompted me to re-examine my value towards the academic system.  I think these are symptoms of a bigger phenomenon, through which the fundamental aspects of academia has twisted into something else.  So here are my episodes:

The Perpetual post-doc

One day, I found a USB stick somewhere on the corridor outside my lab.  A PDF of his CV saved in the stick confirmed the identity of its rightful owner, and it was returned to him very quickly.  He was a middle-aged man who was a post doc in a nearby lab.  He received his PhD some 10 years ago, and has been hopping from Post-Docs to Post-Docs ever since.  He in his fifth post-doc when met him over his USB stick.  While he seemed to be at peace with his situation, but more because he has accepted his fate.  While I personally don't think he was faculty material, I also see that his situation is not all that uncommon.  It could very easily happen to me.

The Professional grant writer

Later, I managed to reconnect with an old colleague of mine.  He was a few years ahead of me, who received a tenure-track position a few months back.  He decided to "invite" me for a talk, and afterwards we discussed my "options" as an academic in general.  He mentioned, his department just hired a new faculty member, but he deciding factor was his ability to pull in 20 millions of research funding a year.  He also lamented that, now, in his fledging career, he spent way too much time writing grants and wooing companies for research money.  He no longer has so much time to provide guidance for his students.  I also have a similar type of supervisor.  As much as he is supportive of my idea, he did not have the time for me.

Academic pedigree preferred

New faculties are always more eager to look for new research staff to boost their research capacity.  Browing their wanted-pages, a lot of these faculty names I have not heard of, even though their research area(s) are not all that different from mine.  Strange, then I looked at their CVs, and they all have one thing in common.  Their supervisors were those I quickly recognized.  My academic lineage is not so persuasive, however.  Though I still applied for these positions, I doubted I would hear from any of them, and I was right.  Another episode involved another colleague of mine, a definite genius, who got his PhD in 2005.  Though he's no longer in Post-Doc Purgatory, he is still not faculty, all because his supervisor is not someone famous.

The Glorified technician

I did not have the luxury of having a post-doc lined up for me, so I spent some days towards the end of my PhD for research positions.  Things have evolved in academia, that professors preferred people with specific skills, whether it be ability to program sophisticated simulation models, or experience in certain specific experimental techniques.  Aptitude and ability to make breakthroughs no longer play a role.  Simply put, faculty members are looking for skilled people more than talents to serve their purpose.  Isn't the point of academia is to solve new problems in new ways, as opposed to doing the same thing over and over again?  There is a famous saying:  If all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.  This brings me to the last point.

Lack of research insight

In recent years, there is a definitely shift of focus in research approach.  I was raised in the school where you gather the results, think very hard about why things happen in such a way, and then summarize them in the most direct way possible.  There is elegance, and it also gives purpose to the paper.  Whenever I write a paper, I abide to this principle.  However, the majority of the papers I read, or I was asked to review, simply tried to overwhelm readers with many figures, in the hope that the readers would be impressed by the shear amount of data.  These authors neither have the will nor the capacity to scrutinize their results in meaningful ways.  Many peer reviewers, who do not want to offend their mediocre efforts, approved the papers indiscriminately.

Part of a bigger phenomenon?

I think all of what I have observed is not so uncommon, and I have not said anything that my peers would disagree, whether they want to remain in academia or not.  "Economics" sums up my reasons for leaving academic very well.  By "economics" I do not mean financial rewards; I would sacrifice pay for academic freedom anytime.  By "economics" I mean how academia acts in a two self-contradicting aspects of the economy.  On one hand, professors are reduced to salesmen of their ideas in the name of attracting research capital.  On the other hand, costs of hiring talents were kept artificially low to increase head-count and therefore throughput.  As a result, what used to be an institution for higher learning now becomes a sweatshop for low-quality high-tech data.  I still believe that you need to start low and work your way up to build a career, but I have no longer desire to be any part of this intellectual Ponzi scheme.  Academic freedom is no more.

Objectivism - the misunderstood way of life

It is almost impossible to go through any stage of post-secondary education without coming across at least one person who calls himself (or herself, but most of the time it's himself) an "Objectivist."  "Objectivism" is some kind of philosophy introduced by the American writer Ayn Rand.  You will also find that these self-styled Objectivists will possess at least the Ayn Rand novels like Atlas Shrugged or Fountainhead.  I read neither of them, but I am never a fan for fictions that are more than quarter inch thick.

Ayn Rand believes that selfishness is essential for personal growth, and the potential to achieve the Greater Good through selfishness can be realized through rational perception of reality.  Emotion deviates from rationality, and acting selflessly is the same as acting without purpose.  Both cases lead to sub-optimal outcomes.  So, in a nut shell, Objectivism promotes achieving collective gain through rational thinking while acting in self-interest.

Practitioners of Objectivism often praise its simplicity, unambiguity, and maximization of human nature, rendering highly effective application and adaptation.  What constitutes "rational" and "self-interest" is open to interpretation, however.  From my experience with these so-called Objectivists, whether they are aware or not, "rationality" devolves to "indifference", and "selfishness" is another word for "disrespect".  Quite expectedly, this version of Objectivism typically yields to personal losses at the expense of the Greater Good, hardly what Ayn Rand had originally in mind.

Let me take a real-life examples of what I mean by "common interpretations".  Yuri (to honor Ayn's roots) and I went out to lunch a few times.  Everytime he would eat up about 80% of his orders. Afterwards he would pick a minuscule flaw, then flagged down the waitress to demand either a refund or a replacement.  In questioning his motives, he would say, "I am simply seeing this Objectively [ed.: notice the big "O"].  The fact that I don't like it represents a problem.  I reported the problem and got a new plate served.  Thanks to my vigilance, they are now aware of the problem and they can improve on it.  They should see that I am doing them a favor."  I stopped going to lunch with him.

Another episode of Objectivist abuse came from a former mate of mine from my teenage years.  While we were sitting in a coffee shop, he mentioned Ayn Rand's Objectivist movement.  My then naive self asked him what he meant.  He said, I could earn money by referring someone to buy products that he's selling, and this way we could both win by acting in our self interest.  I ran for cover as soon as I heard him say "AmWay".   He might got the "selfish" part half right, but "rationality" wasn't exactly his selling point, in this case.

Though I don't consider myself Objectivist, I found the same problem as my two acquaintances in my more youthful self.  For instance, going to concerts during those days for me, was an exercise of listening flaws from the performance.  Though I did not always criticize the player(s) openly, it did rob me the ability to appreciate the music.  I was miserable, but the prospect of finding mistakes, so I thought, would make me better at enjoying the "perfect" performance.

In time, I realized two things.  (1), What I perceived as flaws was actually what made each performance unique, and to "correct" these flaws was to destroy the whole notion of art itself.  And (2), I did not gain anything, emotionally or materially, by being critical of the performers.  Later, I came to accept these performances as they were.  I began enjoying the music immensely, and the performers were encouraged by my acceptance.  Both grew from this experience.

This is not to say that one should just "hang loose".  There are times when it is necessary to be rational and critical.  Working on projects is a good example.  All parties have a vested interest to examine their situations and options rationally and critically.  The best solution, however, is one that everybody gains.  This is the goal of the Objectivist approach.