Hi there,
This is my first time starting a thread on these forums!
I am curious to hear about the experiences that other INFJ's have had with academia. I am mid-career and went back to do a Master's degree in my field (law), thinking that I would continue on to a PhD and attempt a career as a professor. However, I am now having very serious doubts about this. Partly it is a matter of age - at 42 I don't have as much energy to compete with younger grad students and junior professors. The academic job market is also terrible right now and I also have some concerns about ageism. However, I am wondering if there is something even deeper going on in my resistance.
My sense is that academia generally requires a person to specialize and focus on extreme details. Most fields, and not just STEM fields, also place a lot of emphasis on data collection, sorting, processing and cataloging. I find that my intellectual strengths are in coming up with new ideas and proposing theories, and seeing links between disciplines and discovering hidden patterns. I am not as strong either in doing detailed meticulous research or in applying whatever methods are used in a particular discipline to confirm whether and to what extent the theories can be justified.
From the outside one might assume that academia is all about coming up with new ideas and sharing possibilities with others. However, through my Master's work I am starting to suspect that this isn't true at all, and that most academics do something very different from this.
Does anyone here have experience in academia, either as a grad student or a professor? Would you agree with my characterization, or not? Do you think INFJ's, as big-picture intuitive thinkers, make good academics or not?
Thanks for your input!
This is my first time starting a thread on these forums!
I am curious to hear about the experiences that other INFJ's have had with academia. I am mid-career and went back to do a Master's degree in my field (law), thinking that I would continue on to a PhD and attempt a career as a professor. However, I am now having very serious doubts about this. Partly it is a matter of age - at 42 I don't have as much energy to compete with younger grad students and junior professors. The academic job market is also terrible right now and I also have some concerns about ageism. However, I am wondering if there is something even deeper going on in my resistance.
My sense is that academia generally requires a person to specialize and focus on extreme details. Most fields, and not just STEM fields, also place a lot of emphasis on data collection, sorting, processing and cataloging. I find that my intellectual strengths are in coming up with new ideas and proposing theories, and seeing links between disciplines and discovering hidden patterns. I am not as strong either in doing detailed meticulous research or in applying whatever methods are used in a particular discipline to confirm whether and to what extent the theories can be justified.
From the outside one might assume that academia is all about coming up with new ideas and sharing possibilities with others. However, through my Master's work I am starting to suspect that this isn't true at all, and that most academics do something very different from this.
Does anyone here have experience in academia, either as a grad student or a professor? Would you agree with my characterization, or not? Do you think INFJ's, as big-picture intuitive thinkers, make good academics or not?
Thanks for your input!