Knowledge is power!

"The more we know, the more we don't know, can confidence really help?"

I went to the office today. It's Easter Holiday Monday and it was quiet, but I met MT and we had a chat. I would consider our chats to be one of the more important chats that I had with anyone in the academia.

I don't aim to be like anyone, not even MT, but MT has some good quality and attitude in him that made him a good role model for the junior people to follow. We had a chat about research, regarding a published paper I showed him last week to ask him about the potential further research area that can be developed from my published work. He had some criticisms about my paper and he was honest about it. He was also encouraging and I find the discussion with him very morale and esteem uplifting and they are all very important to me, because of his experience and expertise.

MT is also pragmatic, as he advised me of the need to do the RIGHT thing as we are all facing the "institutional constraints" to produce research paper and therefore the CHOICE of the area is important. As a serious research himself (and I believe I am one too!), he definitely see the TRUTH underlying each research, such as the level and margin of contributions of each piece of published research. He suggested me to keep doing what I am doing and be aware of the more "revolutionary" issue that he told me about, which I am sure I will.

The chat with MT further reinforced my decision to want to "do something" in the academia. I don't want to turn my head back twenty years later to know that, all that I did in that twenty years for published research work is just to satisfy the institution's needs to produce research papers, and not taking care too much about the extent of my research's contributions to NEW knowledge. And that's VERY sad.

In fact, the more one knows, the more one don't know, how can one be just satisfied to go by the "empirically convenient" means to do research, and totally ignore the fact that we are in a business of building new knowledge. The next phase in my academic career will be an exciting journey and perhaps going to be a lot more challenging than I thought, but the good discussion with MT today already inspired, encouraged and more importantly, motivated me.