For a good part of my life, I've lived in and around areas where there were Universities and Colleges. It suits me well because I have an intellectual disposition, and although I had to leave school to run my business, I do enjoy intellectual discourse. I find some of the best conversations happening in coffee shops. And once I get the individual academic professor, PhD or grad student past their own academic arrogance, I can learn quite a bit.
You might try this sometime, talk to a PhD, professor, or grad student and ask them what they do, have them explain it to you in layman's terms, that is if they are able without using their own vocabulary going along with their scientific endeavor. Not all of them can describe things in simple terms, and when they can't, it makes me wonder if they really know what they're talking about as well as they think they do. Someone who knows their scientific niche completely well should be able to explain it in simple terms. The inability to do this shows a lack of mental acuity/
Next, ask if you can read their PhD dissertation, or where you might find some of the research papers they have written. Then go read them all, read the references, look up some of the papers they have cited, and even some of the papers which were cited in the papers which cited them - and look it up with all the current information online, realizing that their PhD project came from a previous period. The next time you see them, ask them questions, have an intellectual conversation with them, and I think what you'll find is you know more than they do about the topic because you have all the latest information, and you've looked up all that they've written, and you have a pretty good grasp of it.
They may be smart for doing all the research, but you are smarter for reading it, therefore you didn't have to do it. Thus, you can learn all that they know a lot faster or enough of what really matters, skipping all the monotonous and boring experiments they had to do to get there. Now then, let me ask you a question; have you ever wondered how long it takes, that is how much time it takes to burn out a topic, to learn all you can in a niched area of scientific endeavor using online tools - perhaps a few trips to a university level library?
So, how long does it normally take until you've satisfied all of the notes you've taken, questions you've asked, and references you didn't know. The point at which you have a substantial grasp of the topic to the point you could give the speech or lecture as if you were the researcher, grad student or research assistant. Let me tell you what I found, it takes about 15 to 17 hours a day of reading research papers were about 1 1/2 to 2 weeks online (no days off). Such concentrated study, and taking notes, and asking questions will put you
further ahead than the PhD or professor because they are too busy doing what they do, than to read all the information that you are able to while bring yourself up to real-time.
If you'd like to discuss this at a higher level, and some the tools you could learn to use to burn out a niche research topic, then please shoot me an e-mail. You'd be surprised at how you can start brushing up against the 20 percentile in just about any scientific endeavor in just a couple of weeks. No, you probably won't be able to ever replace the 20 to 30 years of experience of someone working in applied sciences, or out in the real world making it happen, but you should be able to keep up with them in any conversation if you play it just like I've explained here. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.
Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on the Future of Education. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net
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