My friend sent me an article a while back called "The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research". The author defined "stupidity" not as a lack of intelligence, but simply not knowing what the answer was... and devising ways to find out. He wrote that research is delving nto the unknown, and realizing that we'll never know everything about what's around us. Granted, scientists are making discoveries faster than ever, but the more we find out, the more we realize how much more we need to learn. There's always going to be phenomena that don't necessarily fit with our theories, and even as we learn new things, we can't say we've ever proven anything... just that whatever we discovered "supports" our preexisting hypothesis.
Unfortunately that's not my problem. I might not be fully aware of how much there is to learn, and I'm not too afraid of venturing out to learn something new. My biggest problem right now is that sometimes I feel stupid. And this time I mean lack-of-intelligence-howcome-I-can't-see-that-but-everyone-else-can stupid.
I'm currently writing a fellowship to be submitted to the NIH, and while the research strategy, experience, and rec letters are the most important, I still need to submit my list of science classes I took in college/grad school and the grades I got in them. I'm quite self-conscious about my grades; this problem happened when I was applying to grad school, when I was working as a rotation student, and it's happening again now. In college, I took liberties to challenge myself with multiple science classes (like any science major), but I might have underestimated what it was going to be like. Eventually I learned how to effectively divide my attention between three or four different science topics, but sooner or later, I would focus much more on the class(es) I liked, and as a result, the other subjects were set on the back burner. All in all, I was an "average" student.
Science might not be full of super-geniuses, but sometimes I wonder if there is a baseline level of intelligence and whether I'm floating around that line. My grades aren't saying much, and sometimes (like now) I get afraid that they might stand in the way between me and a fellowship. Do you have to be above average to succeed here? When do grades stop mattering at all?
