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[quote=Anonymous]Good work habits - and thus both persistence and the ability to overcome paralyzing perfectionism - are very important.  You need to be fairly intelligent but you don't have to be brilliant.  This really came home to me when I took up martial arts.  I had always thought that if you made it to black belt that you had to have your hands registered as lethal weapons (not truly but it was that kind of thing).  But then I saw people who got black belts just because they stuck with it and did all the work.  They had to be somewhat athletic of course but they didn't have to be brilliant athletes by any means.  It's the same for PhD programs.

It took me 9 years to finish my dissertation while it only took dh 5 years.  This was because I had this bad perfectionist streak and I didn't know how to finish things.  I worried a lot about my work - all the time! - but I didn't get it done.  Meanwhile dh just blew through his work because he could focus well and complete stuff!

On another note I was also in an interdisciplinary program and did not have a helpful advisor - so there's that as well.  If you're looking to go into an academic field, avoid interdisciplinary degrees.  There are people who can do them and excel but mostly I was looked at with suspicion by hiring committees because I didn't have a mainstream degree and I didn't have teaching experience in that field so I learned it all as junior professor.

And the comments pps are making about getting your school funded are spot on.  I wouldn't go into a PhD program if I didn't get a teaching or research assistantship or fellowship.  It's not just a question of funding but it's also how you look when you go out on the job market.  If you didn't qualify for an assistantship, hiring committees may be less disposed to look at you.  Of course, that is for the academic job market.  I don't know how the applied market would look at someone without an assistantship.

Anyway, all this is to say that you need to know how to work regularly and get things done in addition to being somewhat smart.  Being very very smart isn't much help if you can't produce.[/quote]

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