Albert Einstein was a rebellious student who chafed against traditional schooling and earned bad grades. After his university education, his brilliance was overlooked by a conformist academy who refused to give him a professorship. Broke and unemployed, Einstein settled for a lowly job as a patent clerk.
But this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Free from the bonds of conventional wisdom, he could think bold, original thoughts that changed the world of physics.
The reality, of course, is more complicated.
Einstein was a rebellious student, but he always received exceptional marks in math and physics in school and on entrance exams.
Einstein did struggle after college, but he wasn’t turned down for professorships. What he failed to obtain after graduation was a university assistantship — which is, roughly speaking, a way to fund a graduate student while he or she works on a doctoral dissertation (like what we now call a research assistantship in American graduate education).
This was not a case of his brilliance being ignored, because Einstein was too early in his education to have done anything brilliant yet (the paper on capillary action he published the year after his graduation was mediocre). The main reason for his assistantship rejection was a bad recommendation letter from a professor who didn’t like him.
The key detail often missed in this story is that while Einstein was a patent clerk, he was continuing to work toward his doctoral degree. He had an adviser, he was reading and writing, he met regularly with a study group (pictured above).
The same year Einstein published his ground breaking work on special relativity (1905) he also submitted his dissertation and earned his PhD. Soon after he received professorship offers, and his academic career took off.
In other words, Einstein had to work a job to support his family while earning his PhD (an exhausting turn of bad luck), but his career from university to graduate degree to professorship still followed a pretty standard trajectory and timeline.
A student may feel stifled by the rigid structure of a PhD program, as it limits the topics he may pursue and the scope of his research. But I argue this constraining structure is a good thing: it allows the student to focus and learn deeply the material and skills in his field, without the nagging concern that he must be ‘bold and creative’. It prevents students from trying to innovate without the prerequisite knowledge (and wasting time pursuing dead ends other people have explored already). 5+ years of doing grunt-level research builds enough knowledge to push the boundaries of science and ruminate on novel ideas.
Think of a high school kid trying to come up with breakthrough research in physics. Nearly impossible. The most he can do is reinvent the wheel. The same dynamic is at play for an undergrad before going through graduate school and being immersed in research for 5+ years.
This is the story everyone tells, but I don’t buy it. Are institutions really trying to stamp out inspiration in brilliant, but misunderstood individuals? I haven’t seen much evidence of that.
The tricky part to me is that it can be frustrating to maintain the drive to do something new and different through a long period where you’re not able to act on it yet. This seems to take a lot of self-confidence.
What would you say about Zukerberg? what would you say about plenty of fifteen year odd young kids who have their own startups and doing good from their first go ? Why do i start getting this feeling that you are only selecting examples that fit your theory , one contradictory example can ruin it.
The real world is full of stories all inclusive of people who put 10,000 hours before they become successful, people who are successful doing right thing at right time and being with right people (which some people call luck ), people who did follow their passion and become successful etc. Multiple theories could be true (Integrative Pluralism) . There could be many different phenomenons working for people become successful and make a difference .. Just my 0.02 cents.
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