Why did I chose science?

It took me 3 years to realise how stupid I am (a PhD).
I did some great things (at my scale) but still feel unfulfilled on my academic side.
I know appreciate how long good research can take and that my time is precious.
I have rediscovered the importance of long periods of uninterrupted concentration.
My obsession with productivity has often made me unproductive: I often have to remind myself that real science is done with a pen and paper and by following ideas to the end.
Part of the problem is that computers are a big toy.

I got a motivational message from my Dad yesterday (31/05/2014).
My Dad is a particularly passionate man which makes him a great motivator:

"
On Francis Crick
It was like sitting next to an intellectual nuclear reactor. I never had a feeling of such incandescence.

These are the words of Oliver Sacks, a famous American psychologist and writer (author of Awakenings that was made a film with de Niro in one of his best performances), on first meeting Francis Crick. The article, from the New York Review of Books, written by Sacks, goes on to describe the immense impression the fertile mind of Crick made to Sacks.

Crick showed an interest on colour-blindedness and how the sense of colour is generated in the retina. Sacks had sent him his paper on a colour-blinded patient of his and Crick responded with a five page letter, saying that some of his ideas were wild speculation. 

Sacks: The letter seemed to get deeper and more suggestive every time we read it, and we got the sense that it would need a decade or more of work, by a dedicated team of psychophysicists, neuroscientists, brain imagers and others to follow up on the torrent of suggestions Crick had made.

I am writing this to you, my son, because I realize upon reading such articles, how only science can focus a man's mind and give real meaning to his days. Literature and the arts can easily lead one astray, sometimes into paths that are very difficult to tread. The driving presence of focus, the incandescent idea that dominates a scientists mind, can prove excessively taxing, but at the end of the day, his work and effort have not gone to waste. Someone, humanity, will benefit from them.

Consider yourself privileged, my son, that you are into science, and although at times you are disheartened by the sluggishness of things and the hardheadedness of colleagues, the end result will carry part of your signature, and that is never lost.

Have a good, productive day, my Nikolas

Papa

"