Journeys

From: NY Times

Every year in October, when the Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine or physiology are announced, the predictable parade of American honorees is reported on television and in the papers with a combination of patriotic glee and almost total befuddlement about the nature of the work being honored. Hardly anyone pauses to think about the educational system that has been so fabulously productive in turning out scientists in this country. It is a system limited to about 120 research institutions, and at the upper, rarefied reaches of that system are the elite universities. As James Anderson, chairman of Harvard's chemistry department, puts it: ''The students here are spectacularly good, very bright, very committed. They want to win Nobel Prizes, and some of them will, and some of them want to do it before they're 30.''

Graduate study in the sciences, however, is a very unsentimental education. It requires the intellectual evolution from undergrad who can ace tests of textbook knowledge to original thinker who can initiate and execute research about which the textbooks have yet to be written. What is less often acknowledged is that this intense education involves an equally arduous psychological transition, almost a second rebellious adolescence. The passage from callow, eager-to-please first-year student in awe of an often-famous faculty adviser to confident, independent-minded researcher willing to challenge, and sometimes defy, a mentor is a requisite part of the journey.