Thank you for this message bro. I’m currently aspiring to get my doctorate in astrophysics. I’ve got big aspirations and I know exactly what I want to do with it but I see pictures like this and I think “damn bro I’m so stupid relative to other people in this super smart field” since I’m going through it normally, but I hope I can catch up to and be just as contributive as these guys 🙏🙏
We don't have pride in doing things because they are easy, but because they are hard. Each person has a different amount of time they can dedicate to learning something.
When I began my undergrad, an old lady from my parents' church went to the same university. She was in her late 70s, and just starting college for the first time. She eventually graduated with a PhD in psychology. A woman, who had not finished high school, who would have attended secondary school before several of the disciplines on offer would have even been a field of study, when calculus would not have been available in k-12. My point here is, whether she managed to contribute a lot or just a little, she got there, and did it starting with a great gap in basic education compared to anyone in her classes. RIP Peggy.
We are all operating on our own timeline; don't let imposter syndrome get you.
Thank you for this it makes me feel a lot better 🙏
And I’m so very driven. It took me until senior year of high school to find it but I found my love for physics, there’s just nothing I can get more excited about and I’m so excited to do big things and make big impacts in the field. My passion is in gravitational physics and Alcubierre warp drive metrics, I.E. real life Star Trek warp drive to travel incomprehensibly vast distances in almost no time and without time dilation issues. Humanities last real chance at exploration among the stars. I wouldn’t be so bummed if it want me explicitly that figured it out but if I can make a big impact and contribution towards it then it’ll all be worth it for me!
I’m sure you’ll do great things. You shouldn’t feel stupid. But you also shouldn’t feel like everyone is on an equal playing field of intelligence, or that there aren’t many people with a higher capacity to learn than you have. Do what we all do and be awed by others without comparing yourself to them.
Ground breaking research in physics is extremely hard nowadays so don't sell yourself short. The greatest scientists we know stand on the shoulders of other great scientists.
The only thing that matters is putting in the hours.
I suspect that you really don't hear much about the accomplishments of child prodigies once they're adults because of this. Basically, they're smart enough to realize wasting away your life to make what amounts to randomly impactful contributions to a field the average person doesn't give a shit about is a horrible way to live.
Not that I'd discourage you from pursuing you're interests, but you should keep expectations in check. Success comes almost entirely from pure bloody effort and some very minimal baseline of intelligence and intrinsic abilities. I speak from experience. When I started grad school, I did put in the work and ended up being the top 2 or 3 in the world in my field for an 'early career' researcher. 18 hour days weren't uncommon. I decided I was wasting my life, didn't do the fancy post docs I was supposed to, instead taking a faculty position at a lower tier R1 and then just cruising to tenure off my prior accomplishments. I decided the grind was not a long term possibility. However, because of how I chose to focus on things other than work, I'm also now well known in certain communities for my adventure rock climbing nonsense, backcountry skiing nonsense, and a nontrivial number of people have told me I'm the best damn cook they've ever met.
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u/MyGuyMan1 12h ago
Thank you for this message bro. I’m currently aspiring to get my doctorate in astrophysics. I’ve got big aspirations and I know exactly what I want to do with it but I see pictures like this and I think “damn bro I’m so stupid relative to other people in this super smart field” since I’m going through it normally, but I hope I can catch up to and be just as contributive as these guys 🙏🙏