>>12194757>Plus is anyone else here a alcoholic or druggie how much does this affect your ability to be a smart nigga or rather just your interest in science.Grad student here. No one cares how smart you are. The only thing that matters is 1) work ethic, and 2) the ability to write things down and work out an experiment ahead of time so you don't make a stupid mistake during it. Which is forgiveable, as I expect new rotation students to fuck up quite a bit, as you learn-as-you-go.
If you have no work ethic, it literally does not matter how smart you are. We will politely call it a mismatch and not let you join the lab.
We have a few normal-intelligence people in the lab, nothing special, but their work ethic (especially one of the post docs) is incredible. She can output work in a thoughtful manner (your typical secretary has the organizational skills necessary to succeed in science) at an incredible pace. You learn enough of the material, you can easily make next-experiment decisions without a lot of guidance.
They have a couple of well-cited papers because its so well put together and everything is just easy to digest.
I stress this as the new rotation students we've gotten over the past few years are showing quite a lack of work ethic. We've had several promising candidates who just didn't produce, even though they had really good ideas when we sat down to discuss the data.
If your work ethic is solid, everything else falls into place.
It's impossible to predict how much your personal ability is affected by your alcohol consumption, and a useless exercise. Look at yourself now, evaluate how you are, and go from there.
