How to become a professor (I)–Do you have the passion?

By DrBiologist@mitbbs.com

What is the most important attribute of a graduate student that foretells
his or her success in landing a faculty job in the future? After some
pondering, I chose interest. I know someone may argue that intellect,
publications, connections, language skills, luck, etc., are all very
important, which I agree. Nevertheless, looking back to my graduate student
years, I have to say that a strong interest in research is the most
reliable predictor of a future professor.

What attracts you to the job in the first place and makes you stay on the
job is your strong interest in (or passion for) research. Once you have the
interest, you will go to the lab not because you have to, but because you
want to; you will automatically keep up with the current literature, be able
to identify an interesting phenomenon, think hard to explain it, and find
ways to test your hypothesis, which may lead a good paper. I know this
sounds like a cliché. But, assuming you have reasonable intelligence (I
believe we all do), the only thing that makes the difference is, alas, your
interest. This is perhaps the biggest difference between doing research and
working in many other occupations.

Does intellect matter? I would say, only to a limited extent. Recently, I
heard that, to my surprise, the former “bottom scorer” of my college class
is now a tenured Associate Professor in a fairly good US university. He
used to flunk one or two exams every semester and had to take makeup exams
when others had gone home for vacation. As a result, his transcript was
full of 60s – the teachers had bumped up his scores just to let him pass.
He nearly dropped out of college in order to end his misery. (He would have
, if he knew what else he could do.) How he “woke up” and excelled in
graduate school (I assume) is beyond my comprehension. (I will try to find
out.)

On the other end of the spectrum, there were (officially designated)
juvenile prodigies from top Chinese schools. Legends abound, yet they ended
up in completely different careers. One of them started out very promising
and began her Ph.D. studies in the U.S. at age 18. However, she soon lost
interest in science and, after a few years of procrastination in graduate
school, became of career TV hostess, a job she held for ~5 years. I’m not
trying to compare careers – I totally agree that a 5-year TV hostess job
may be more satisfying than a life-long career of a professor. I simply
want to point out that interest is most important when deciding on a career
path.

Your intellectual capacity performs its best when you have a passion. If
you have a passion for research, as a graduate student or postdoc, you will
likely be able to identify significant projects and gain from them. However
, if you treat research as mere assignments and just blindly do whatever
your advisor tells you to do, you will not learn as much. Moreover, if you
find yourself often falling asleep in seminars or while reading CNS papers,
you should know that probably research is not for you. You should find what
interests you as soon as possible before your talents are wasted.

Interest is important not only for research, but also for any job that you
want to have as your career. Some time ago, someone on the biology board
pointed the way for biologists seeking alternative career opportunities:
casino card dealers and restauranteers, among others. I don’t think I have
the interests in doing any of those jobs – I know I would be bored.
However, for someone addicted to card games, a card dealer job is perhaps
ideal. Likewise, for someone with a passion for cuisine, running a
restaurant might be most satisfying. So, follow your passion.

To be honest, I didn’t find my passion in my early years as a graduate
student – I was distracted by too many things, personal and otherwise.
Although I had been interested in science in general, I didn’t find a
meaningful research project during my first 3 years of graduate school, and
became a little dispirited. At that point, one of my classmates published a
CNS paper and was preparing to graduate the next year. He had been deadly
serious about research, his topic always being a new CNS paper that had just
appeared. And I used to laugh at him, telling him that he had to talk
about things other than science in order to find a gf. :-) Now it was his
turn to laugh at me. “You need to get serious about work,” he said. “Your
time is running out!” Indeed, I found myself contemplating the years I had
spent (without obvious gains) and my future… I decided to drop the
project that had not worked and was unlikely to make much impact, and
embarked on a new project, which eventually rekindled my passion for science
. Thus, year 4 of my graduate school marked a turning point in my research
life. And the rest is history.

Somewhere toward the end of your graduate school, you should have some ideas
as to whether you want to become a professor. At this point, you should
have experienced real research and known how to experimentally investigate a
phenomenon that interests you. You should have a good paper (or two) that
attests to your ability and, importantly, gets you into a top-notch lab for
a successful postdoc stint. Once you are there, a faculty job will be very
close.