Someone might, therefore, have too much Openness and too little Conscientiousness to make it through the filter, despite having enough of these traits (a large amount of Openness, and a bare minimum of Conscientiousness) to function as a brilliant researcher.
So, I’ve definitely both underloaded and overloaded myself academically (well, by ‘overloaded’ I mean ‘had to drop all non-school projects to do my school projects well enough’). I feel tremendous sympathy for people who, for whatever reason, don’t line up with the university standard: one of my friends in undergrad would be able to work solidly for around three months, but then have a breakdown for about a month, before the cycle would repeat. This was tremendously unhelpful, because semesters were four months long- but if he were on a trimester schedule, he would probably be fine.
And so people do slip through the cracks, who could probably be great researchers. (He had a terrible time keeping regular jobs as well, because they don’t like to give three months of vacation a year.) But it’s not clear to me how large an issue that is. Someone who can only do two courses a semester can get a college degree eventually- the system is just not set up to encourage that, and if you believe strongly in the importance of youth for research (which I mostly don’t) then you might want to dissuade the people who be able to devote a smaller portion of their youth to research than others.
So, I’ve definitely both underloaded and overloaded myself academically (well, by ‘overloaded’ I mean ‘had to drop all non-school projects to do my school projects well enough’). I feel tremendous sympathy for people who, for whatever reason, don’t line up with the university standard: one of my friends in undergrad would be able to work solidly for around three months, but then have a breakdown for about a month, before the cycle would repeat. This was tremendously unhelpful, because semesters were four months long- but if he were on a trimester schedule, he would probably be fine.
And so people do slip through the cracks, who could probably be great researchers. (He had a terrible time keeping regular jobs as well, because they don’t like to give three months of vacation a year.) But it’s not clear to me how large an issue that is. Someone who can only do two courses a semester can get a college degree eventually- the system is just not set up to encourage that, and if you believe strongly in the importance of youth for research (which I mostly don’t) then you might want to dissuade the people who be able to devote a smaller portion of their youth to research than others.