INFJ's and academia

[Jalla]

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!

 

[Dave Fallon]

It's funny that there was a recent thread about a similar topic: "Why is intuition not prized in academia?"

I've recently been taking some graduate courses, and I can say that the few courses I have taken have not shown me any particular "focus" from the professors, but that may be only because I am early in the journey. I'm afraid I can't comment on whether jobs in that field are broad or focused, but I would expect it's not just academia, but the field in academia you choose. For contrast, I'm looking to achieve an MBA, and as much as specialization is helpful in business, my impression so far is that a well-rounded background is more helpful right now.

To your question about "coming up with new ideas" vs. "specializing on old ideas", I think a balance is what I've seen. Obviously, you don't want to teach untried ideas as facts; at the same time, you don't want students who are limited to the ideas of the past as they forge a new future.

But check that thread about intuition in academia, as I think that may be relevant. What you may be experiencing is not so much a bias towards focus but a general avoidance of un-researched intuition. If that is the case, I urge you to not allow these feelings to impede you. Intuition is important and a valuable gift, but the follow through of research and documentation is also important and valuable, and having both together may give you an authenticity that you seek, no matter what field you end up in.

Hope that helps!

 

[SealHammer]

The reason you're not enjoying yourself is because you're studying law.

e: To clarify, law is boring as shit.

Also, the "new ideas" and "theories" side of academia is almost entirely in research. If you're interested in research and not teaching then I'd say that it's pretty much a necessity to be prepared to collect and synthesize huge amounts of data to create a foundation for your hypotheses. I don't know anything about the inside of a law school, so it's up to you to find those kinds of opportunities if they exist.

 

[the]

What kind of new theories do you intend to prove regarding law? Its all man made, made up bs.

 

[Jalla]

It's funny that there was a recent thread about a similar topic: "Why is intuition not prized in academia?"

I've recently been taking some graduate courses, and I can say that the few courses I have taken have not shown me any particular "focus" from the professors, but that may be only because I am early in the journey. I'm afraid I can't comment on whether jobs in that field are broad or focused, but I would expect it's not just academia, but the field in academia you choose. For contrast, I'm looking to achieve an MBA, and as much as specialization is helpful in business, my impression so far is that a well-rounded background is more helpful right now.

To your question about "coming up with new ideas" vs. "specializing on old ideas", I think a balance is what I've seen. Obviously, you don't want to teach untried ideas as facts; at the same time, you don't want students who are limited to the ideas of the past as they forge a new future.

But check that thread about intuition in academia, as I think that may be relevant. What you may be experiencing is not so much a bias towards focus but a general avoidance of un-researched intuition. If that is the case, I urge you to not allow these feelings to impede you. Intuition is important and a valuable gift, but the follow through of research and documentation is also important and valuable, and having both together may give you an authenticity that you seek, no matter what field you end up in.

Hope that helps!

Thank you Dave for this comment, and for the link to the other thread. I've read through it and there are some interesting ideas there. I guess to be clear, I want to emphasize that I totally see the value in needing to back up speculation and theory with detailed research, data, and so on. Intuition and theory can easily be wrong! But my particular intellectual strengths are in coming up with the theories and ideas. I am not so good at the work required to test those theories, or even in seeing where the possible holes in the theories might be. But once the holes are discovered and the theory disproved, either in whole or in part, I am very good at coming up with the next theory or idea that can explain the new data. I have even had a conversation along these lines with my thesis supervisor, who by his own admission is not very good at what he calls "theory", while for me it is the theories and possibilities that interest me and drive me forward.

I see the process of knowledge generation as having three phases or stages: 1) gathering information and context, 2) proposing explanations or theories, and 3) testing the ideas or theories. It is a cycle that gradually leads to refinement in understanding over time. Every so often there can be a paradigm shift that leads quickly to major changes, but even that can be seen as part of the cycle and not really outside of it. My point is that I think I am really good at 2, but not so much at 1 or 3. My experiences so far in academia suggest that only established superstars are taken seriously for 2, and everyone else is really only able to do 1 and/or 3. If that is true, then I don't think I'm interested in continuing, because anyone's chances of becoming an established superstar are incredibly slim even if their ideas are really good. And then perhaps my ideas aren't even that good, in which case I really need to find another path!

Good luck with your MBA! As a professional degree I am not surprised that the emphasis in that program would be on breadth, not detail. I found the same during my JD. When you do an academic research degree, however, there seems to be more of a need for focus and specialization.

 

[Jalla]

The reason you're not enjoying yourself is because you're studying law.

e: To clarify, law is boring as shit.

Also, the "new ideas" and "theories" side of academia is almost entirely in research. If you're interested in research and not teaching then I'd say that it's pretty much a necessity to be prepared to collect and synthesize huge amounts of data to create a foundation for your hypotheses. I don't know anything about the inside of a law school, so it's up to you to find those kinds of opportunities if they exist.

LOL it's true, law can be extremely boring at times. I am trying to follow up on my philosophical education as an undergrad, so I am studying the philosophy of property. I would love to do an interdisciplinary study that combines philosophy, economics, psychology, sociology, and law, but it seems that a grad student has a much easier time of it if they can pigeon-hole themselves into a defined box rather than trying to do something truly innovative. It's ironic because the earlier texts on these issues did not make such distinctions, which is why you see the old philosophers taking on broad sweeping theories about ethics, metaphysics, psychology, and so on as part of an integrated whole. But starting in the middle of the 19th century this stopped happening, and since then the game has been not about synthesizing grand theories but about analysing tinier and tinier bits of things.

I was wondering whether the desire to integrate on a large scale is an INFJ thing, and whether an academic career would be more frustrating than rewarding for someone with that kind of mind in this era.

 

[SealHammer]

LOL it's true, law can be extremely boring at times. I am trying to follow up on my philosophical education as an undergrad, so I am studying the philosophy of property. I would love to do an interdisciplinary study that combines philosophy, economics, psychology, sociology, and law, but it seems that a grad student has a much easier time of it if they can pigeon-hole themselves into a defined box rather than trying to do something truly innovative. It's ironic because the earlier texts on these issues did not make such distinctions, which is why you see the old philosophers taking on broad sweeping theories about ethics, metaphysics, psychology, and so on as part of an integrated whole. But starting in the middle of the 19th century this stopped happening, and since then the game has been not about synthesizing grand theories but about analysing tinier and tinier bits of things.

I was wondering whether the desire to integrate on a large scale is an INFJ thing, and whether an academic career would be more frustrating than rewarding for someone with that kind of mind in this era.

Have you spoken to your advisor about what you specifically want to do? As I understand unless you have a very clear idea of what you want to do and can coherently express as much, then university staff will basically tell you to go fly a kite.

It probably also doesn't help that you're in a law program wanting to do an interdisciplinary study. It might help to see what other opportunities there are either at your school or at nearby schools, since it could be easier to find interdisciplinary programs in subjects that have higher ratios of purely academic research to immediate practical application (i.e. not law).

 

[say what]

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!

I'm currently going through a similar transition and crisis. I think there are multiple things going on that make it difficult for a graduate student, especially an INFJ, to battle academia. First is the traditional culture of the institution. As a graduate student you're largely trained for working in the institution, and the expectations are that you will be a fruitful new academic/faculty member that is focused on research and generating grants and money. Wanting something outside of that, or feeling as though it's not you, is often frowned upon and you're made to feel as though you are inadequate for not wanting to work in the ivory tower. This creates a cycle where we push ourselves to want to work in the institution and to enjoy that work, in order to please our advisors and committee. But the reality is that academia is not for everyone.

Practising law vs. academic law are very different. You'll likely have a heavy teaching load with minimal time to do research. This is like most academic positions- and it can be extremely rewarding for some, or not for others.

I would ask yourself: Do you want to be a professor because you want it, or do you feel you should be a professor? What about academia do you like? Are you interested in research? Teaching? Both? Practicing law? Research isn't always about coming up with 'new' theories- within law it can be about assessing policy changes and resulting implications, it could be about evaluating legislature, or you could go broader and interdisciplinary and look at legal assessments of environmental impact > There's a lot of breadth with law, especially if you do a PhD that is interdisciplinary...you'll likely be able to situate yourself in another department if law isn't where you want to work.

I think every grad student and professor goes through periods where they feel academia isn't for them. I think we always re-evaluate our choices. The main thing is asking yourself what you want, and making sure you're not being influenced by external pressures or others' expectations - because they're not the one getting up every morning to go to that job!

 

[Jalla]

It's funny that there was a recent thread about a similar topic: "Why is intuition not prized in academia?"

I've recently been taking some graduate courses, and I can say that the few courses I have taken have not shown me any particular "focus" from the professors, but that may be only because I am early in the journey. I'm afraid I can't comment on whether jobs in that field are broad or focused, but I would expect it's not just academia, but the field in academia you choose. For contrast, I'm looking to achieve an MBA, and as much as specialization is helpful in business, my impression so far is that a well-rounded background is more helpful right now.

To your question about "coming up with new ideas" vs. "specializing on old ideas", I think a balance is what I've seen. Obviously, you don't want to teach untried ideas as facts; at the same time, you don't want students who are limited to the ideas of the past as they forge a new future.

But check that thread about intuition in academia, as I think that may be relevant. What you may be experiencing is not so much a bias towards focus but a general avoidance of un-researched intuition. If that is the case, I urge you to not allow these feelings to impede you. Intuition is important and a valuable gift, but the follow through of research and documentation is also important and valuable, and having both together may give you an authenticity that you seek, no matter what field you end up in.

Hope that helps!

Dave, thanks for your comments. I wrote a long reply to your message a couple of days ago, but it was sent to moderation and doesn't seem to have survived the cyber-ether. I just wanted to thank you for sharing the link to that other thread, which I read with interest, and to wish you the best of luck with your MBA. I think MBA's are probably like JD's in that breadth is emphasized, whereas in a research-based masters program concentration and depth is considered more important.

I completely understand that theories need to be confirmed and backed up with empirical research. I even took an empirical methods class as part of my master's coursework, which is a fairly novel thing in legal academia, because I wanted to learn more about that process and the methods that are applied. I just feel that my strengths are really geared toward creative idea-generation and that I might really struggle if most of my work involves testing or data analysis.

My general sense is that the creation of new knowledge can broadly be described as a three step cycle: 1) gathering background information and context; 2) generating possibilities for explanation, and 3) testing those possibilities to either disprove or confirm the theories. I can do all three of these but 2 by far interests me the most. However, I am not sure that most academics do much of 2. It seems that only the real superstars have ideas that are taken seriously, and that most academics primarily do stages 1 and 3. And I'm not interested in fighting to try and become a superstar. It is extremely difficult to become one, and in any case I have serious misgivings about any system that revolves around a small elite group.

 

[Jalla]

Have you spoken to your advisor about what you specifically want to do? As I understand unless you have a very clear idea of what you want to do and can coherently express as much, then university staff will basically tell you to go fly a kite.

It probably also doesn't help that you're in a law program wanting to do an interdisciplinary study. It might help to see what other opportunities there are either at your school or at nearby schools, since it could be easier to find interdisciplinary programs in subjects that have higher ratios of purely academic research to immediate practical application (i.e. not law).

Thank you for your thoughts. I have discussed it a bit with my supervisor. The problem is that our minds work very differently, and though he is very nice and supportive, I'm not sure that he really understands what I want to do. He is very much a "gather facts and summarize context" style of academic, whereas I am much more of a "look at these cool possibilities for explanation" kind of academic. If my program were longer I would probably try and switch supervisors, but it is a short program and I am almost finished so I think I will stick it out with him.

I am wary of doing an interdisciplinary degree at the PhD level. While it might be a better fit for me while I am in it, I don't think it would be very marketable. If I can say I have a PhD in law then I think I am much more likely to get a tenure-track position than if I have a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies or something like that, even if the research and content of the program is essentially the same.

 

[Jalla]

It's funny that there was a recent thread about a similar topic: "Why is intuition not prized in academia?"

I've recently been taking some graduate courses, and I can say that the few courses I have taken have not shown me any particular "focus" from the professors, but that may be only because I am early in the journey. I'm afraid I can't comment on whether jobs in that field are broad or focused, but I would expect it's not just academia, but the field in academia you choose. For contrast, I'm looking to achieve an MBA, and as much as specialization is helpful in business, my impression so far is that a well-rounded background is more helpful right now.

To your question about "coming up with new ideas" vs. "specializing on old ideas", I think a balance is what I've seen. Obviously, you don't want to teach untried ideas as facts; at the same time, you don't want students who are limited to the ideas of the past as they forge a new future.

But check that thread about intuition in academia, as I think that may be relevant. What you may be experiencing is not so much a bias towards focus but a general avoidance of un-researched intuition. If that is the case, I urge you to not allow these feelings to impede you. Intuition is important and a valuable gift, but the follow through of research and documentation is also important and valuable, and having both together may give you an authenticity that you seek, no matter what field you end up in.

Hope that helps!

Hi Dave,

I have now written two long replies to your thoughtful post, and both have been sent to moderation only never to be seen again. I just wanted to say thanks for your post and the link to the other discussion. Hopefully this reply will be posted!

Jason

 

[Jalla]

I'm currently going through a similar transition and crisis. I think there are multiple things going on that make it difficult for a graduate student, especially an INFJ, to battle academia. First is the traditional culture of the institution. As a graduate student you're largely trained for working in the institution, and the expectations are that you will be a fruitful new academic/faculty member that is focused on research and generating grants and money. Wanting something outside of that, or feeling as though it's not you, is often frowned upon and you're made to feel as though you are inadequate for not wanting to work in the ivory tower. This creates a cycle where we push ourselves to want to work in the institution and to enjoy that work, in order to please our advisors and committee. But the reality is that academia is not for everyone.

Practising law vs. academic law are very different. You'll likely have a heavy teaching load with minimal time to do research. This is like most academic positions- and it can be extremely rewarding for some, or not for others.

I would ask yourself: Do you want to be a professor because you want it, or do you feel you should be a professor? What about academia do you like? Are you interested in research? Teaching? Both? Practicing law? Research isn't always about coming up with 'new' theories- within law it can be about assessing policy changes and resulting implications, it could be about evaluating legislature, or you could go broader and interdisciplinary and look at legal assessments of environmental impact > There's a lot of breadth with law, especially if you do a PhD that is interdisciplinary...you'll likely be able to situate yourself in another department if law isn't where you want to work.

I think every grad student and professor goes through periods where they feel academia isn't for them. I think we always re-evaluate our choices. The main thing is asking yourself what you want, and making sure you're not being influenced by external pressures or others' expectations - because they're not the one getting up every morning to go to that job!

These are great questions to ask. Thank you! I can say that there are not any external pressures for me to go into academia, in fact mostly the opposite. My wife and family are OK with me going, but they would be just as happy if I said I was not going to bother with it. I already have a job teaching at a community college, and I enjoy teaching, so I have my eyes wide open there and know what that involves. However, I have been doing it for a few years and I'm feeling that it is becoming stale and is under-stimulating intellectually. I have the sense that I am not living up to my potential, nor am I doing anything meaningful. I would love to learn more about my field and commit myself to research, but the question I have is whether I would be able to accept the culture of academia or whether it would just lead to frustration. I have a lot of friends who left academia at various stages, and it seems none of them regret it at all! Most of them are not INFJ's though.

I am curious, are you able and willing to share more about the crisis/transition you are going though, the questions you are asking, and the issues that you are mulling over?

 

[Jalla]

Reply to Dave

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your comments. I have written several long replies to your message, but they keep getting sent to moderation and don't seem to have survived the cyber-ether. I thought I would try posting without quoting your message to see if that helps.

I wanted to thank you for sharing the link to that other thread, which I read with interest, and to wish you the best of luck with your MBA. I think MBA's are probably like JD's in that breadth is emphasized, whereas in a research-based masters program concentration and depth is considered more important.

I completely understand that theories need to be confirmed and backed up with empirical research. I even took an empirical methods class as part of my master's coursework, which is a fairly novel thing in legal academia, because I wanted to learn more about that process and the methods that are applied. I just feel that my strengths are really geared toward creative idea-generation and that I might really struggle if most of my work involves testing, summarizing, or analyzing data at a minute and detailed level.

My general sense is that the creation of new knowledge can broadly be described as a three step cycle: 1) gathering background information and context; 2) generating possibilities for explanation, and 3) testing those possibilities to either disprove or confirm the theories. I can do all three of these but 2 by far interests me the most. However, I am not sure that most academics do much of 2. It seems that only the real superstars have ideas that are taken seriously, and that most academics primarily do stages 1 and 3. And I'm not interested in fighting to try and become a superstar. It is extremely difficult to become one, and in any case I have serious misgivings about any system that revolves around a small elite group.

 

[Dave Fallon]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your comments. I have written several long replies to your message, but they keep getting sent to moderation and don't seem to have survived the cyber-ether. I thought I would try posting without quoting your message to see if that helps.

Hmm... Come to think of it, I've experienced that as well when I first started visiting this forum. I think after you've posted a while that stops happening.

I wanted to thank you for sharing the link to that other thread, which I read with interest, and to wish you the best of luck with your MBA. I think MBA's are probably like JD's in that breadth is emphasized, whereas in a research-based masters program concentration and depth is considered more important.

Thank you!

I completely understand that theories need to be confirmed and backed up with empirical research. I even took an empirical methods class as part of my master's coursework, which is a fairly novel thing in legal academia, because I wanted to learn more about that process and the methods that are applied. I just feel that my strengths are really geared toward creative idea-generation and that I might really struggle if most of my work involves testing, summarizing, or analyzing data at a minute and detailed level.

My general sense is that the creation of new knowledge can broadly be described as a three step cycle: 1) gathering background information and context; 2) generating possibilities for explanation, and 3) testing those possibilities to either disprove or confirm the theories. I can do all three of these but 2 by far interests me the most. However, I am not sure that most academics do much of 2. It seems that only the real superstars have ideas that are taken seriously, and that most academics primarily do stages 1 and 3. And I'm not interested in fighting to try and become a superstar. It is extremely difficult to become one, and in any case I have serious misgivings about any system that revolves around a small elite group.

Wow, that is a good analysis of knowledge. I think I agree with the three steps you list. I recently watched a video on Netflix called Particle Fever about physicists searching for the Higgs Bosun and there was a dynamic between theorists and experimenters like what you mention, where the theorists were more like 2 in your list, while the experimenters were like 1 and 3.

The only one that can truly know your strengths and weaknesses is you, and if you feel your interests align closer to number 2, I would listen to that feeling. I think you will probably find that all three of those steps are going to apply to one degree or another, but maybe, like with the physicists, there are places for specialists in any one of them. I don't know.

Yesterday was election day here and I had a discussion with my wife over whether there are politicians that have not, in some ways, compromised their integrity for their ambitions. I believe there are, though I will agree that politics is a system around a few elites. I hope that is true of academia too, and if you wanted to you could carve out a position that gives you the work that most interests you. Just like a politician with integrity, it is probably often frustrating work, but somebody has to do it or else we'd all go down the drain.

 

[Scientia]

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!

Your description sounds a little bit like my experience. I was en route to a PhD and decided to stop at my MA for similar reasons. I did not experience ageism but I did experience sexism and I can see how that might happen in academia. I was discouraged by the minutiae the faculty spent their time researching as well as the general lack of social skills I encountered in my field. It seemed to me that new and interesting ideas were not valued as much as criticizing the research of colleagues. Mind you, this is in the field of ancient cultures and languages, so you can imagine the general atmosphere. Also, I was furious because a professor I admired told me that no one would hire me in my male-dominated field because I was too pretty and would most certainly get pregnant. What?!

Yes, I do think we make good academics. Are we appreciated for being big picture thinkers? Not often.

So, I understand where you are coming from.

 

[Smallville]

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!

Hi , I am not sure if you still follow this thread. But, i agree with you. (1) academia is generally, at least in social sciences, very detail oriented. Examples include literature review, analysis, and so on. Some research works are more detail-oriented than others. But, i think it is possible to choose your own research topics that has big-picture element or sections. But you still need to some detailed task for some sections of research paper (e.g., literature review). When i told my professor that current academics are only concerned with details at the expense of big picture, he said, this is when we learn something, and make some definitive contribution. (2) as an infj (which i recently found out accidentally coming across this personality test) yes, i also have big-picture perspective on any topic. I think that details can be done, but humanity is better off having bigger picture of issues, i tell myself. I think for INFJs doing academic work itself not interesting (because of detail-nature of papers), instead running own research projects where you will need to show proposal with big-picture to show the problems missed, its practical or policy implications.

By, the way, is there a club or something like this for INFJs to join? thank you