a journal of a researcher

Saturday, October 03, 2009

The European School vs. the North American School of Research

I like the European school of research. Here people are trained well. The atmosphere of research is strong. The struggling and surviving atmosphere is less. I feel that research can be a part of your life, a part of your life style. We do not link research to the pure interests gain in our lives. In North America, research is a tough career. The successful rate is so low that only the most ambitious and persistent people can survive.

The Europeans have their deep heritage in research. Their training in philosophy and logics is sufficient when they begin their research at a young age. They are used to analyze problems in a systematical way and tackle difficult problems very early due to their background. And there are many good institutes where the research atmosphere is strong and financial supplies are sufficient. You have almost no problem to take research as a part of your life and a part of your life style. I like this kind of sophisticated atmosphere. I feel relaxed in my free thinking. However, their “engineering” skills are also too sophisticated. I found sometimes they make simple problems too complicated. Sometimes, a 50 pages report can be summarized in 2 pages. The ideas are simple. However, to particulate it, it involves deeper skills, not the other sense.

The advantage of the North American school of research is that they change fast. They dare to abandon some old “productive” topics to try something new. The progress can be fast. However, their professors are too, too busy that their students are lack of supervision. Sometimes, the papers are clearly not reviewed by their profs, because they are very coarse. But if well written, the North American style papers are very clear and straightforward. And most of the time, they are accompanied with good motivations and concept proving experiments.

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