When I was making school visits as complimentary of their PhD admission, one of my peers asked a professor:

“What is the ultimate goal of your professorship? Is it to win a Nobel Prize?”

I remember giggling, in my mind, a bit. First, the concept of an end goal for research feels antithetical to the virtues of the profession. School, for people who have made their way to the near highest levels of the academe, can feel partly like a competitive game that they have emerged victorious. From here on, the noble and novel challenges involve escaping the mentality of being graded. Doctoral studies are supposed to be at the forefront of science–who is there to judge? We have to wit, without the authority figures presiding over whether our research should be considered better than others, let alone the best, the ways with which we choose to let the merits of our innovation speak. Second, the Nobel Prize has not existed since time immemorial. It is rather young compared to when humanity started realizing impressive revolutionary ambitions, so for a career that is motivated by its legacy way further than most available specialities on the job market (read: one really has to not be in it for the money to spend time navigating the realpolitik of tenure) to be confined in its scope to a prize feels a bit out of alignment with conventional professional progression. Third, it almost posits the notion that there are Nobel-grade accomplishments, that academics can optimize their odds of pulling a Nobel prize through a combination of research locus, foundational potential, and scholastic prominence. The conceptualization of this possibility has to be in bad faith. Fourth, almost all winners of the sciences win past their productivity apex. I would assume that the impact of most of their works has been felt much more extensively before the Nobel committee doles out their recognition. Fifth, and most importantly, engineering disciplines seldom get Nobel Prizes. This was the main reason that inspired my reaction.

I did not really remember how the professor reacted. I would think that they tried to argue against such notion of intellectual foresight as well, like how declaring such a grandiose objective would jinx their prospects, or something along the lines of my fourth reason. My realization after talking to an abundance of professors is that everyone vehemently believes in their research, as they should. I can imagine that those self-select into this career ought to have exceptional capabilities and optimism thereof, as the economic arguments for it are becoming more deficient. But I could sense that the professor in our conversation was slightly taken aback by the question. Perhaps they never thought about it that way: is there any professor who would actually anchor themselves in the pursuit of a Nobel Prize, or a MacArthur Genius Grant, or a Breakthrough Award, or a Fields Medal, or an NSF Presidential Award? What is the goal of an academic?

I toy with the idea of being a professor sporadically. When I enrolled in my first semester, this could not be further from the truth: I frowned upon the idea that I might be in graduate school, and became fixated on job opportunities right away. Slowly I fell in love with my course materials, the level of rigor and profundity of research, and most importantly the people that surrounded me. I greatly enjoy knowing my professors, becoming aware of the intermingled networks of academic trees, and receiving attention on my Twitter from prestigious cognoscentes. Worse is that I rejoice in not just the commentary nature of academia, but also commentary on academia–being privy to the gossip-ridden sleuthing of Polisci Rumors or EJMR, where high-brow merit valuations are doled out by the most brutal critics. It is no surprise that several of the people I lived with had the same journey, as we all grew fond of the nourishing intellectual style we have sustained for each other. For me, specifically, a PhD program only materialized on the condition that most R&D chemical engineers are recruited with a doctoral degree anyway. I found it tricky to settle on the paths of being a faculty member, a national lab scientist, or an entrepreneur. The operative remains clear: I need not climb the ivory tower of prestige for the sake of it. I have to do what is best for myself, optimizing for what I want the most in life.

Being a researcher can afford an asylum from the fickle conditions of social realities. I do not need to worry about the market-savoriness of my inventions, the geopolitical ebbs and flows of supply chain, or the geographical location of where I want to house myself for multiple decades. My work spans generations, and the nice thing about academic truth-seeking is that said truths are ever-lasting, especially in the natural sciences. But if I am being honest, however, I dislike this growing aversion to failure. I seem to try to predict the goodness of the outcome of my ventures even before I embark on them, developing a complex system of rationalization that is both dauntingly impressive and hauntingly futile. From a self-development perspective I hope to be in a capacity that propels me to take leaps of faith and produce ad hoc solutions. It is what I thrive off of, and it somehow explains the nagging belief that pure scholarship is not the best path for now.

My parents are advocates of my academic advancements, be it that they have not tried to investigate too far into what I actually study since high school. They do not share the same speed with which I caught wind of the most recent breakthroughs in spiking neural networks, nor do they quite get my elaboration on how my sister’s escapade into the prowess of ethnographic anthropology sets her up neatly for future research endeavors. Yesterday I felt a bit discouraged reading about one of the newest inductees into the Nobel Prize winners cohort: her father was a professor of physics at MIT, her siblings dreaming of becoming nuclear physicists (and knowing what that actually mean) since middle school, and herself never really being in any department that is not considered at least top 10 of her field. In fact this story is totally not unique. Even beyond the lineage of highly accomplished pedagogues is the studied correlations in determining intergenerational success, or the self-sustaining tactics of the status quo that especially pervade institutions like my alma mater (read: nepotism babies). It feels defeating to think that given the question, ‘would I like to devote myself to being in a position where I am eligible for consideration of a Nobel Prize’ only made sense in my mind in my 20s, I might have already been ten years behind schedule.

It is counterproductive to assume that this has anything to do with fairness. On the contrary it is beautiful to witness someone’s intelligence, grit, and talent becoming showcased because of their prime background–I honestly hope to cultivate the same conditions for my family and more. A new hypothetical arises: what could I have done to improve the odds of general intellectual success? My attempt at de-enigmatizing a life I never lived hints at answers having to do with the differentials of exposure: the awareness, availability, and accessibility of resources. It is as simple as knowing statistical regression and as esoteric as macromolecular tacticity, but so much of learning is specifying what one does not yet know, or what no one actually knows, and finding the rational next step. In some sense my high school experience was the maximal degree of exposure I could have received; it was still insufficient in preparing me for the more global types of social stratification. What is the best strategy to sánh vai với các cường quốc năm châu? Maybe it is in academia. Somehow I end up in the opposite direction of where I expected myself to go.

Through genealogizing a different professor’s education I read up on another anecdote. A formerly tenured professor at MIT went back to her home country of Singapore and became involved in the national directing of university research and development. Giving up tenure at MIT might sound absurd, but at the end of the day it might feel irrelevant to the way someone legitimizes their own legacy. There are plenty of professors who are not just known for their h-index: they are simultaneously venture capitalists, novelists, or government counselors, whose net impact has long left their original scope of interest. I would love to keep my prospects open still; I am relatively young and in no rush to make regrettable decisions. I think, though, that it is beneficial to evade the limelight of prestige, the allure of sophistication, and focus on the art of doing good. This might have actually been the insinuation of the professor’s response: that being a professor should be rewarding in so many other regards that winning a Nobel Prize, if it happens, feels more like a corollary, or an opportune token of confirmation, than a holy grail. As an early-career professional I would not reject either a permanent position at one of the premier universities of the world or a share of the Nobel prize pool. But I hope that somehow the originality, influence, and longevity of my undertakings can find their way to outshine both.