Thursday, October 30, 2008

Strengths

In science, as in most anything, it pays to know your strengths and weaknesses.

I am about as good as anyone I have known at understanding, remembering, integrating and evaluating biological concepts. I am terrible at calculus. I am very good at recruiting, evaluating and training assistants. I am hopelessly slow at learning programming. I have very steady hands for lab work and a hip that is bad enough to keep me from doing much field work. I am a gifted improviser and a mediocre follower of protocols. I am the king of scrounging and am pretty good at applying for funding, but I struggle with remembering to do the accounting or keeping track of receipts. I am a great teacher but a disinterested disciplinarian. I am unrivaled in my ability to start research projects, but need serious improvement in my ability to finish them. I have great fun with ideas but no fun with spelling. I collaborate well but self-motivate poorly. I am good at being blunt and bad at being not-blunt. I am a good scientist, but need improvement as an academic.

4 comments:

Jason Levitis said...

If it helps, your brother is excellent at calculus...

Dan Levitis said...

If it helps, your mom is excellent at spelling.

Dan Levitis said...

And your sister has wonderful communication skills.

jte said...

And your sister's husband has, to date, perfectly good hips.